How sweet the sound!

As a den mother who relies *heavily* on puns for her blog posts, I felt a bit intimidated by the challenge DJ Amazing Grace presented for me. Was I really going to try to draw awkward parallels to what is, hands down, one of the most beautiful hymns of all time? Truly, I can’t, so instead I will offer you five six facts about “Amazing Grace” culled from Wikipedia (albeit with some additional commentary):

* Its author, English poet and clergyman John Newton, wrote the song from personal experience, having been raised without much religious conviction and having (ugh) participated for a number of years in the slave trade. During that time, Newton was best known for the bawdy songs he would write about his captain, such that, “[i]n a culture where sailors commonly used oaths and swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.” Well, I NEVER, John! Did you kiss your mother with that mouth?

(Well, gosh, now that I see it, that mouth DOES look mighty kissable. Did I just type that?!?)

* Depending on your reading of the events, Newton was “saved” either by one too many brushes with death while aboard those slave ships or the love of a good woman. He eventually found his way into the clergy and wrote the lyrics to “Amazing Grace” for use in a prayer meeting in 1773. It was published in a collection of hymns in 1779.

* If you had sung “Amazing Grace” in 1779, it would have sounded very different. It wasn’t until 1835 or so that these lyrics were sung to a tune called “New Britain,” which is how we all know the song to sound today.

* Judy Collins began performing the song frequently in the late 1960′s, largely to express her frustration with the Vietnam War. Her version of the song, released in 1970, rose to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the charts for 15 weeks.

* The U.S. Library of Congress has a collection of THREE THOUSAND versions of “Amazing Grace,” including versions by Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers (1963), Elvis Presley (1971), Johnny Cash (1975), Willie Nelson (1976) and the Lemonheads (1987). Huge Lemonheads fans (Lemonheads-heads?) will note that Wikipedia has *incorrectly* claimed they recorded “Amazing Grace” in 1992. And so, while trying to fact check a joke I was going to make about the song’s relationship to “Mrs. Robinson” (*actually* covered by the band that year), I detected this error and am contemplating updating the Wikipedia page accordingly. Someone please rescue me from myself??

* The 1982 science fiction film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan used “Amazing Grace” amid a context of Christian symbolism, to memorialize the death of (spoiler alert!) Mr. Spock, but more practically because the song has become “instantly recognizable to many in the audience as music that sounds appropriate for a funeral,” according to a Star Trek scholar (I swear, it wasn’t me!!).

Now then, don’t we all feel a bit smarter?

Back to the music. The MODERN music, that is. I wish I had it to play for y’all, because when her playlist started  we were all greeted with a cyborg voice announcing DJ Amazing Grace’s arrival to the studio and It. Was. Awesome. Our DJ gets sooooo many points for effort for having actually mixed her playlist like a real DJ, with transitions and everything! Though it wasn’t the precise playlist she’d planned on (darn stereo equipment!), we were all delighted with the tunes, new and old, that she so effortlessly stitched together. Behold for yourself those sweet, sweet sounds:

1. Breathe – Telepopmusik
2. Push the Feeling On – Night Crawlers
3. Faith – Rozella
4. Around the World – Daft Punk
5. Sexy Back –Justin Timberlake
6. Eyes Like Yours – Shakira
7. Pump up the Jam – Technotronic
8. I Got a Feeling – Black Eyed Peas
9. She Wolf – Shakira
10. Sexy Chick – Akon/David Guetta
11. I Know You Want Me (Calle 8 ) – PitBull
12. Barbara Streisand – Duck Sauce
13. Boom Boom – Black Eyed Peas
14. I Want to Rock You – Giorgio Moroder
15. Strange – Amando Amargo

Thanks, DJ Amazing Grace, for making us all feel like Sexy Chicks. I know I want YOU…to DJ again for us real soon!

The Get Wild Kingdom.

I’ll tell you what, after I saw the name our DJ had chosen for last Wednesday night I was runnin’ scared. We’ve all seen the YouTube, all experienced the meme that is the Honey Badger, right? [Sidenote: if not, please to spend the next 3:21 educating yourself]:

So you can see that I, DJ Ssssnake, had reason to be alarmed. Honey Badger just takes what it wants, you see, and apparently it has a special affinity for my species. I thought about trying to hide up in a tree but, yup, Honey Badger don’t give a shit. (Also: no trees in the DDPP studio.) So I was forced to gather my courage and slither into that studio all “DJ Ssssnake don’t care” and hope for the best.

And I was rewarded for my bravery, boy howdy! As you can see from the playlist below, DJ Honey Badger took us on a tour of her kingdom and boy, did it get wild. Our DJ proved herself to be, yes, really pretty badass, though I’ll take issue with the idea that she has no regard for any other animal whatsoever. I mean, Honey Badger don’t even live in the jungle, but she sure wants the animals there to boogie! She told us she named her mix “General Electric,” and it’s damn clear she DID have the power (get it?) to take our whole group’s dancing to another level. So thanks, DJ Honey Badger, for caring so much and giving us such a great hour of music to dance to!

Oh and P.S. Our DJ wants to keep a low profile on the Interwebs, so asked that in lieu of any other pictures, I offer this one to you all. If you happen to see a stick-chewing, sunglasses-, bandana- AND fur headdress-wearing woman standing in front of a sunburst walking down the street, though, now you know who to thank for this terrific mix!

Cutting Rugs and Melting Faces

If I had to pick 2 words to describe this Sunday’s mix, they would be NONSTOP HITS.

It was a day of firsts as DJ Cut-a-Rug unleashed her very first mix on a room totally packed full of mostly newbies! The air conditioning that felt refreshing when we first walked in was no match for everyone jumping, runway walking, and invisible pony-riding all over the studio with abandon to this jam-packed playlist:

James Brown – I Feel Good

Gloria Jones – Tainted Love

The Who – Can’t Explain

The Knack – My Sharona

Little Richard – Tutti Frutti

Jerry Lee Lewis – Whole Lotta Shaking Going On

Otis Day & The Knights – Shout

Chuck Berry – Maybelline

ABBA – Take a Chance on Me

Bruce Springstein – Dancing in the Dark

Devo – Whip It

The Ramones – I Wanna be Sedated

Billy Idol – White Wedding

Prince – Raspberry Beret

Tom Jones – Sex Bomb

Le Tigre – Deceptacon

Lady Gaga – Bad Romance

Michael Franti – Shake it

And if we weren’t already feeling melted enough between the heat outside and the profuse sweating inside, that guitar solo in “My Sharona” definitely melted everyone’s faces off! How have I heard that song 1,000 times and never truly noticed it?

I’m not sure if DJ Cut-a-Rug meant to do this or not, but the way she ordered the playlist made me feel like we were

…and I. LOVED. IT. Just in case you missed Cut-a-Rug’s superb debut, let me try and set the scene for you with this video by the same name as our DJ:

So basically…we were in a dance studio much like that one, but multiply her by about 20, take away the outfit and the line dancing, AND that song, and…oh, never mind. There’s no way I can try re-create or explain the vibe that was in that room yesterday! Every single lady- especially each and every new one- shook it like a salt shaker, a polaroid picture, a tambourine, and Lady GaGa herself.

Kudos, DJ Cut-a-Rug! You cut us up with your tunes like no other.

 

*SCHEDULE REMINDER!!!* 

Our Sunday summer schedule is still rolling along, which means NO DDPP on Sunday, the 17th. We’ll see you on the 24th for den mother/DJ Sex Frosting’s greatest hits birthday mix!!!

Letter to a DJ.

Dear DJ Ssssnake of early 2010:

I know, it’s totally weird that I, DJ Ssssnake of mid-2011, am writing you this letter on the DDPP blog. But due to DJ Moo-ve It’s illness (feel better soon, girl!), I was asked to pull a playlist from the archives for tonight. I’d listened to our second playlist just a few nights ago, and so it seemed fitting. I’ll be honest, though, that it was hard at times to follow the first rule of DDPP (No judgment of yourself or others!) as I was reflecting on the You/Us that put these songs together nearly a year and a half ago. In an effort to stop, I started mentally compiling a list of things I would want to tell You/Us if we were somehow able to have a totally time- and space-bending face-to-face interaction. As that doesn’t seem possible until I engineer my own TARDIS (Doctor Who fans in the house say whaaaa?), I’ll have to make do with this letter. And so a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind tonight:

1) In the coming year, you will throw together half a dozen more playlists. Every time, you will stress about whether you went a little too obscure with some of your choices, but every time the other women here will love them. Thanks to DDPP, you will officially decide that Swedish pop star Robyn is your spirit animal and you will pretty much completely overcome your lifelong fear of public karaoke. You will sing “Ballroom Blitz” to your friends–loudly–at any given opportunity.
2) The economic condition in the U.S. will improve in some ways and worsen in others. A bunch of celebrities and politicians will behave badly and some really stressful things will happen with regards to the environment and human rights issues around the world. Not to minimize those things AT ALL, but on the upside, the last two seasons of Friday Night Lights will be completely amazing!
3) Later this month, you will meet a guy and he will be pretty supportive of this DDPP endeavor of yours. That relationship won’t pan out, and you’ll be a little bummed, but about a year from now you will meet someone so goldang awesome that he will volunteer to help out at DDPP fundraisers and everything! Which brings me to the final point….
4) You become a mother! NONONONONO not that kind–you can stop rocking back and forth in a little ball already (how DID you manage to do that so immediately?!?). Next spring DDPP’s founding Chicago den mothers will step down and ask you and a bunch of other terrific women to take over running this ramshackle collective. You will say yes and it will be a surprising amount of work, but such good, good GOOD work. You will do things like raise $1000 to aid the relief efforts following the tornadoes in Alabama (See item 2, supra), and you will treasure the friendships you’ve made and all of the great music you’ve danced to. Like that playlist you made back in February 2010. What did it look like again? Oh yeah:

And just like last time, the crowd of fourteen (including TONS of newbies!) followed You/Us through a set that was heavy on guitar riffs, but not SO heavy that we couldn’t just stop at moments to fling our hands in the air along with Kelly Clarkson or those dudes from Erasure. So thanks, DJ Sssnake of early 2010, old buddy, old pal…I don’t know where I’d be without you.

Very truly you(rs),
DJ Sssnake of mid-2011

Evacuate the dance floor cause here comes DA BRIDE!!

You will sweat till you bleed or else!

Transcend: verb (used with object)

1. to rise above or go beyond; overpass; exceed: to transcend the limits of thought; kindness transcends courtesy.

2. to outdo or exceed in excellence, elevation, extent, degree, etc.; surpass; excel.

Ya know, I have never truly understood it when fellow DDPPers have mentioned that they were “transcended” by a playlist.  Don’t get me wrong, I have been moved, danced my ass off, dropped it low, chair danced (ala Flashdance), jumped around, sang myself hoarse, tried to emulate Kelley C & her magical booty, wrapped myself in rope lights, wore a tutu & pretty much everything else…just not “transcended”.  Well–NO MORE, it is official this killer mix by Da Bride brought me to my knees & moved me someplace I have never been and it was GLORIOUS!

All ladies in attendance not only wanted to Dive In The Pool from the intense dancing going down in the studio, we became pools of sweat as well. Add to that the heat radiating off our moving bodies (+lack of AC) as we rhythmically spun, jumped, and moved to all 14 songs Da Bride put together.  This song here, really took me to another place & I am grateful for it…check out the chic in her PJ’s (awesomesauce!):

So for you chicks who missed out…here is the playlist:

You know what esle you makes Da Bride the coolest ever?!?!?  She put a RING POP on it (you may die of jealousy–right now!).  Da Bride brought a bag of the sweet rings & asked each of us “will you dance with me?”.  Seriously…it does not get better than that.

Yeah BABY!

Sunday Summer Schedule is about to be in FULL effect!

Baby, it’s clear that you’re a firework. C’mon. Let your colors burst. Just not at Perceptual Motion this Sunday.

That’s right, ladies- you’ll have to wait a whole extra week to get jiggy with us on the weekend. Our summer schedule starts…NOW! Right now! What does that mean, you ask? Well, look at the top of the page on the left for a handy cheat sheet including dates! Or read on…for the months of July, August, and September, DDPP will only be held every other Sunday. There is no change to the Wednesday schedule!  Wednesdays are gonna keep on rockin’ it like everybody has to go to work on Thursday, and not even in flip flops! Real shoes! But Sunday, oh Sunday, in the summers- you’ll be out of town, frolicking on the beach, BBQ-ing up a storm. Tim Allen might even lure you to Michigan with his soothing voice.

Don’t think that doesn’t mean we expect you to stop dancing, though. If every single one of you does not go to a fireworks display this weekend and inspire a stranger to record a video of you on their phone in equal parts shock and awe like the man featured below, well, then we don’t even KNOW you.

 

I would also like everyone to please note that the description for the video is simply “HELL NAW!” That dude makes me want to organize another co-ed event immediately just so I can invite him.

One more important reminder- at our next Sunday DDPP, which is July 10th at our regularly scheduled time and place, Old Town School’s Folk and Roots Festival will also be happening a couple blocks away. So if you’re driving, allow yourself some extra time to search for parking- it might be tighter than usual! And please, have a sparkler-tastic 4th of July! Or if you’re Justin Bieber, a happy Canada Day today.