Happy New Years from Blue Suede Souls!
Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Mother's Little Helper - Happy Mother's Day
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Happy Cinco de Mayo from Blue Suede Souls! If you tango, make sure to spike your tea!
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
Buddy Clark: Merry Christmas Waltz
In 1946 Buddy had his biggest hit with the song Linda. By chance the Linda of the song was the (then) six year old daughter of Clark's business partner Lee Eastman. That girl would later grow up to become a musician, spokeswoman for vegetarianism, and wife of Paul McCartney.
Clark's career hit its stride in 1947 when he produced the hits How Are Things in Glocca Morra?, Peg O' My Heart, An Apple Blossom Wedding, and I'll Dance at Your Wedding. In '48 he had a major hit duet with Doris Day entitled Love Somebody as well as nine other songs that hit the charts including solo pieces and duets with both Day and Dinah Shore.
On October 1, 1949, as the 37 year old Clark's career continued to soar, he perished in a small plane crash while returning to Los Angeles from a Stanford vs. Michigan college football game. A month after Clark's death, his recording of A Dreamer's Holiday hit the charts.
Monday, November 30, 2009
It's a Wonderful Life
Maybe the 20's and 30's are starting to come around again. Both decades were marked by a fad for dance contests and the current craze for Dancing with the Stars and So you Think you can Dance sort of look back to that trend. I'm not sure what to attribute the 20's/30's fad to and I don't feel like I can comment with too much authority since I wasn't there to experience either era. As for the modern trend? Personally I link it with my reason so many people have a taste for reality shows: you can watch people acting like idiots without their behavior impacting you personally.
Those of you who've read Blue Suede Souls know I've got a real nostalgic streak but that streak doesn't extend to the fad for dance contests. There are a couple of reasons for this (and they apply to the modern fad too). First off, the whole idea that any judge or panel of judges could, on any given day, make a decision on who is the 'best' at any dance style (or worse, compare say Waltz and Jive and come up with a 'best') is ridiculous. It falls into that old algebraic conundrum of dissimilar terms, they can't be compared.
Another difference between the 'good ole' days' and modern times is that in the 20's/30's there seemed to be a focus on quantity rather than quality. Dance marathons were the rage with contestants dancing to the point of barely remaining upright so that they could win cash prizes. Maybe this was just part of 20's youth culture – an emphasis on virility, endurance, and strength over refinement, skill, and experience. As I said earlier, I'm not qualified to interpret and I can only imagine what the experience must have been like. Jam 200 teen-somethings onto an improvised (or actual) dance floor and the band kicks off the event with all the festiveness of the first day of a carnival. After a few hours the weaklings are culled from the heard, after a dozen hours only the most determined remain and the crowd of onlookers thins. Sometime after about twenty hours the crowd returns to see the end, it's like waiting for a matador to dispatch the bloodied beast he's been tormenting. Finally one of the couples drop and the other is crowned victorious. The swell of adrenalin is just enough to get them to smile for the photos – then they're asleep before they're out of the venue.
How do I hook this up with the holiday? Well, one of my very favorite movies contains a nice dance contest scene. It's a Wonderful Life depicts a Charleston Contest. George Bailey gets roped into accompanying Mary Hatch to a high school dance and then finds himself in the midst of a Charleston contest. I love the teetering on the edge of the pool portion of the scene – they move up and back, unaware they're about to plummet into the swimming slowly opening gymnasium swimming pool. Sometimes dancing feels like that scene. You're out there, having a good time and going at it like wild but totally unaware that disaster looms just at your heels. At least in the movie the disaster only ended in winning a loving cup and plundering the high school locker room for dry clothing! Anyway, I did my best to find a clip to show but You Tube came up bare. A still will have to do for this post. Maybe at some point the video will fall into my hands and I'll air it.
Oh, and a little something to show I'm not all about flashing back to the way things were in 1946 when It's a Wonderful Life is set. The movie contains one of the hardest scenes in cinematography for me to watch – the scene where drunken druggist Gower slaps a young George Bailey in the head until his ear bleeds. The violence is troubling enough by itself but the 'angelic' commentary provides a window into the thinking of the era. Clarence doesn't show a hint of horror at what has happened to George, he doesn't remark on the violence at all except to say 'is that the boy who got his ear slapped back…' when he sees Bailey as a grown man. Omission, for me at least, is acceptance of normality and that says a lot about the era of this film. I guess not all that's old glimmers with a soft, sepia-toned love light.
Those of you who've read Blue Suede Souls know I've got a real nostalgic streak but that streak doesn't extend to the fad for dance contests. There are a couple of reasons for this (and they apply to the modern fad too). First off, the whole idea that any judge or panel of judges could, on any given day, make a decision on who is the 'best' at any dance style (or worse, compare say Waltz and Jive and come up with a 'best') is ridiculous. It falls into that old algebraic conundrum of dissimilar terms, they can't be compared.
Another difference between the 'good ole' days' and modern times is that in the 20's/30's there seemed to be a focus on quantity rather than quality. Dance marathons were the rage with contestants dancing to the point of barely remaining upright so that they could win cash prizes. Maybe this was just part of 20's youth culture – an emphasis on virility, endurance, and strength over refinement, skill, and experience. As I said earlier, I'm not qualified to interpret and I can only imagine what the experience must have been like. Jam 200 teen-somethings onto an improvised (or actual) dance floor and the band kicks off the event with all the festiveness of the first day of a carnival. After a few hours the weaklings are culled from the heard, after a dozen hours only the most determined remain and the crowd of onlookers thins. Sometime after about twenty hours the crowd returns to see the end, it's like waiting for a matador to dispatch the bloodied beast he's been tormenting. Finally one of the couples drop and the other is crowned victorious. The swell of adrenalin is just enough to get them to smile for the photos – then they're asleep before they're out of the venue.
Oh, and a little something to show I'm not all about flashing back to the way things were in 1946 when It's a Wonderful Life is set. The movie contains one of the hardest scenes in cinematography for me to watch – the scene where drunken druggist Gower slaps a young George Bailey in the head until his ear bleeds. The violence is troubling enough by itself but the 'angelic' commentary provides a window into the thinking of the era. Clarence doesn't show a hint of horror at what has happened to George, he doesn't remark on the violence at all except to say 'is that the boy who got his ear slapped back…' when he sees Bailey as a grown man. Omission, for me at least, is acceptance of normality and that says a lot about the era of this film. I guess not all that's old glimmers with a soft, sepia-toned love light.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
July in a Nutshell
Sorry to say I've been slacking off on my writing. I'll give the standard excuses: work's been crazy, time's been short, and I've been busy with a lot of stuff. To tell the truth there probably were several chances to sit down to write an entry but I just didn't do it. Confession is good for the soul, right?
Anyway, July was great - slower in terms of dancing than most months but I think that's because (in the modern era) people view summer as a time to 'go do things outside' which precludes dancing. For Kelly and I, not so much. We'd happily spend our summer on the dance floor…if there were more dances to attend. I sweat whenever I dance, it doesn't matter if its summer, fall, or the middle of the winter I'll be dabbing my forehead with a handkerchief between tunes.
July in retrospect? We attended a dance at the Riolo on the Fourth - it's a great venue for an Independence Day dance. The Riolo is surrounded by great windows that offer views of the city and, in this case, the annual downtown fireworks display. The evening was well arranged - dancing up to just before the fireworks and then easy, air-conditioned viewing from the studio without having to fight the crowds. My only complaint was the fact that the Riolo's usual (free) parking lot was closed and we were forced to pay for parking.
During July we also started to pick up two new dances and we dropped one that we just didn't like so much. The newcomers to our ever-growing dance card are the West Coast Swing and the Cha-Cha. These are two dances I'd recommend to anyone who's decided that they want to learn to dance and they plan on attending ballroom or swing dances such as those held at the Starlight Ballroom or Indiana Roof Ballroom. In the past we always sat out cha-chas and WCS - but when you're at a ballroom dance that (especially the cha-cha) means you're sitting quite a bit. Picking up these two dances means that we'll be able to enjoy more of the music from the dance floor and less from the sidelines.
The victim of downsizing? That'd be the Hustle. I have to say I never did really like the hustle. There was all that 1970-something baggage and too many visions of John Travolta in a polyester leisure suit with a half-unbuttoned fly-away collar shirt and a gold medallion. Not exactly the kind of image I wanted to portray in clothing or in dance styling. There also was the realization that about 90% of the tunes we danced the hustle to we could also dance either WCS or cha-cha. The math was easy.
So, that was July. Now, to write about August without falling behind!
Anyway, July was great - slower in terms of dancing than most months but I think that's because (in the modern era) people view summer as a time to 'go do things outside' which precludes dancing. For Kelly and I, not so much. We'd happily spend our summer on the dance floor…if there were more dances to attend. I sweat whenever I dance, it doesn't matter if its summer, fall, or the middle of the winter I'll be dabbing my forehead with a handkerchief between tunes.
July in retrospect? We attended a dance at the Riolo on the Fourth - it's a great venue for an Independence Day dance. The Riolo is surrounded by great windows that offer views of the city and, in this case, the annual downtown fireworks display. The evening was well arranged - dancing up to just before the fireworks and then easy, air-conditioned viewing from the studio without having to fight the crowds. My only complaint was the fact that the Riolo's usual (free) parking lot was closed and we were forced to pay for parking.During July we also started to pick up two new dances and we dropped one that we just didn't like so much. The newcomers to our ever-growing dance card are the West Coast Swing and the Cha-Cha. These are two dances I'd recommend to anyone who's decided that they want to learn to dance and they plan on attending ballroom or swing dances such as those held at the Starlight Ballroom or Indiana Roof Ballroom. In the past we always sat out cha-chas and WCS - but when you're at a ballroom dance that (especially the cha-cha) means you're sitting quite a bit. Picking up these two dances means that we'll be able to enjoy more of the music from the dance floor and less from the sidelines.
The victim of downsizing? That'd be the Hustle. I have to say I never did really like the hustle. There was all that 1970-something baggage and too many visions of John Travolta in a polyester leisure suit with a half-unbuttoned fly-away collar shirt and a gold medallion. Not exactly the kind of image I wanted to portray in clothing or in dance styling. There also was the realization that about 90% of the tunes we danced the hustle to we could also dance either WCS or cha-cha. The math was easy.
So, that was July. Now, to write about August without falling behind!
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