A Meandering Post that Almost Comes Together at the End

I started reading Tim Lawrence's book Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 despite my general apathy towards non-fiction, because The Atlantic included it in their list of "Five Books About Going Out That Are Worth Staying In For."  They said:

Versions of this story have been told before, but what distinguishes Love Saves the Day are the more than 300 interviews Lawrence conducted with promoters, partiers, and legendary DJs such as Frankie Knuckles. It’s full of wisdom from the elders of American club culture: how to stagger straight and gay crowds on a Friday night, how to find the next great floor-filling single, how to build a DJ set like a furnace that can burn all night. Lawrence also folds in a number of select club “discographies” so you can reproduce Jimmy Stuard’s set from 12 West, circa 1976, at home (on nice speakers, perhaps, or an iPhone placed in a cereal bowl). 

so I said "Why not?"  I'm about halfway through and I'm not sure that I'll finish, I'm so bored by non-fiction that I haven't taken a history class since high school.  And my main motivation to finish the book--compiling a playlist of all the mentioned songs--was obviated when I learned that someone already did it.

I am not, however, bored by podcasts about non-fiction and I recently stumbled across the One Song Podcast, a show where DJs Diallo Riddle and Luxxury break down the backstory to a song or album.  This isn't just stories about the first time they heard the song or why it's one of their top ten songs, there's some serious music theory.  Here's Luxxury explaining why the bass line to Nas's N.Y. State of Mind sounds so menacing:

The whole episode is great but many of you aren't into Nas and probably don't care who DJ Premier sampled and how he looped it.  Here's an episode I suspect most of you will enjoy.

But the real reason I'm posting all this drivel is their interview with Fab 5 Freddy.  It's two parts and only the first one is out yet, but they talk about some of the clubs and records from Love Saves the Day, so if you don't want to read 400-plus pages of non-fiction just listen to Fab 5 Freddy talk about the good old days of the NYC disco scene, how DJing was invented, the making of Wildstyle, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Put Some Funk Into Your Hump Day

This song makes me happy. It could be linked with a post I made last week, but I believe I have already pushed beyond the group's tolerance for my thoughts on coital tendencies.

And the best part of the post (other than the tune, duh) is that most of these tags have been used before.

Baller For Life: SNL Edition

As the photos above show, I've been a freak of the industry since I moon-walked out of the womb a few decades back. However, my social life has taken a bit of a hit in recent years, due to fatherhood, commuting and general apathy. This will change in a big way on Saturday night. The wife and I have gotten a long-awaited invite to attend a live taping of SNL with another couple (the wife in that couple is Bobby Moynihan's sister). While I am not overly excited by host and musical guest Lady Gaga, it should be a bitching time. We will start the night with a dinner at Del Frisco's, then watch the show from the dressing room, where we can sip on brown liquor and (hopefully) find Keenan Thompson's entourage, which we've been told consists of aggressive papal electors.

I have been a huge fan of SNL since I was a kid. I remember taping the 15-year anniversary show on VHS and watching it repeatedly. That was 23 years ago. Pretty impressive run. So I will do my best to keep my inner fan-boy at bay while seeing the stage, watching the show and heading to the after-party. I told my wife my goal for the night was to finger-blast Aidy Bryant, and that it wasn't really cheating if we didn't kiss. That joke went as well with her as it probably did with our ones of female readers

Wish me luck. The night could go until 5 AM and I will be lucky to sleep until 8 AM on Saturday morning. Thanks to Zman for offering to take my boys until 4 PM that Sunday, although I may not have asked him this favor yet.