And it always comes down to the music…and the dancing!
For years and years on this blog, one of my most common posts has always been Song of the Day. That is, until I stopped doing it a few months back. As a matter of fact, the original title of this blog was John’s Music World, and when I started posting daily songs, I did so because I almost always had something interesting to say about the song or the artist, or it was just so good I just wanted to share it. After all, I was a disc jockey for 10+ years, and I know good music when I hear it.
Alas, people stopped clicking on these posts for one reason or another and so I stopped doing them. Maybe they just weren’t into it as much as I was anymore, or maybe because it just became harder and harder to find things to either find a song every day or find something interesting to add to one. It developed into a chore, and so I just stopped. Regardless, that doesn’t mean the music has gone.
Music has always been a big part of my life. It gives me energy when I need to move and it consoles me when I need cheering up. And for anyone who knows me personally, they can tell you that I also love to dance. Believe it or not, I am a very shy person who has always had a tough time approaching people. Not so when I dance. In fact, I’ve met more people in my life on the dance floor than at the bar, because when I’m dancing is when I’m at my most confident. For various reasons, some out of my control, I’ve stopped dancing, and along with it, my confidence has waned…until now.
Johnny getting his groove back!
Ever since my post back on May 16th, Clarity and Confidence Along the Road to Home, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve decided I need to spend less time going back to Long Island and more time cultivating my new life here in Philadelphia. I’ve been making more of an effort to get myself out there, finding more sociable things to do. I’ve been going out to the bars more than I have been since I moved here, I joined a new bowling league for the summer, and an Italian American club, and I braved a brand new area of Philly last Saturday night to get my dance on.
Sex Dwarf First Saturdays
I came across an advertisement on Facebook a few weeks ago for an event called Sex Dwarf, which is a monthly New Wave Dance Party held at a club called Broad Hall, under the Divine Lorraine Hotel on Broad Street. The party is an ongoing event held on the first Saturday of each month. This month’s party came on the second Saturday due to Pride Month festivities a week earlier, which was perfect because it afforded me the opportunity to give a try, even just for the chance of getting to dance again after so long.
As I made my way to the venue, which was hella cool, I had visions of the old Spanky’s in Stony Brook from the 80’s. Back in those days, I would frequent the new wave/alternative club every Sunday night. It was one of the only clubs where openly LGBTQ+ people were free to be themselves amongst the mainstream in an alternative to the mostly straight discos of the day. Besides that, the music was always phenomenal! I’d envisioned a night like the many I had spent at Spankys, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Though the environment, and the people, were all new to me, I found myself in quite a familiar place on Saturday night. I expected most of the people would be around my age, but to my surprise there were also quite a few youngins’ there…a pleasant surprise to the staying power of the new wave genre. Within moments of my arrival, DJ Robert Drake spun the familiar riff to Prince’s classic Controversy and I knew straight away it was going to be a good night.
As the evening progressed, the room filled with more and more people of all stripes, and any nerves I had going in dissapated, as it usually does, out on the dance floor. For the next few hours, I was lost in the music of Depeche Mode, Blondie, Culture Club, New Order, and so many more of those great artists of the time, and I left the club in the wee hours with a smile on my face, knowing that I now have yet another place here in Philly that will surely become one of my regular haunts. Besides that, the night put the new wave sound back in my consciousness all week, and I’ve been listening non-stop to the genre, and mostly one of my favorite bands of the time, Dead or Alive, dancing and singing all the while.
All in all, I’m feeling like I’m starting to get my groove back with Sex Dwarf and some of these other things I’ve started to become involved in. I should have realized sooner that it would be the music and the dancing that would get me going, finally. Though I really didn’t make any new connections yet, I know that the more often I can find myself dancing, the more opportunities I will get. Oh, and I may resurrect Song of the Day, at least once in awhile. We’ll see, but in the meantime, here’s the song that got my feet moving first last Saturday night:
I want surprises…
johnsworldblog 