11/8/08 Playlist- Let's Dance!; Ten November

Let's Dance!
I thought perhaps I'd start out by trying to get you all up and dancing. I was inspired a bit this weekend, not because I went to see Michael McDonald last Saturday night and ended up dancing in the aisles. On Sunday I tuned in one of the local cable access channels here in Nashville and found this little dance show. These couples were about 40-70 years old in age range and let me tell you, they were boogieing down, bebopping, just having a grand old time. It looks like they were from some sort of dance club—they danced one song right after the other for a solid half hour—it was pretty cool. Maybe I'll join one of those dance clubs, who knows. But right now, come one, everyone up on your feet, let's dance!

Four Tops – It’s the Same Old Song (and one of my favorite things was watching them dance)
Major Lance – Monkey Time
Sly and the Family Stone - Dance To The Music
Twisting the Night Away – Sam Cooke
Cool Jerk – Capitols
Dee Dee Sharp - Mashed Potato Time

Picking Through the Record Box
As I talked about last week, this is the part of the show that is like picking through the box of 45's you had as you were growing up and just playing whatever looks good to you at the time. Now for those of you who are younger and don't know what I mean by a 45, well, I'll presume you've at least seen what a vinyl album looks like. This is a tiny version of that with a big hole in the middle and you have to put a little odd shaped plastic spindle inside it to play it on a turntable. I know someone who has a neck chain with a little spindle charm on it and I said to this person, "isn't it scary that we're in a world now with people who don't even know what that is?"

Uniques - Not Too Long Ago
Reflections- Just Life Romeo and Juliet
Sandie Shaw - Always Something There To Remind Me
Human Beinz - Nobody but Me
Orlons - Wah Watusi
Rooftop Singers - Walk Right In
Swinging Medallions - Double Shot of My Baby's Love

Current
This week we are coming up on the 33rd anniversary of the shipwreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which disappeared on Lake Superior on the tenth of November, 1975, and its 29 crewmen disappeared without a trace. Many of you are probably familiar with Gordon Lightfoot's song on the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I played music from a production called Ten November. It's had dozens of performances across the US and Canada over the past 20 years. I saw it in St. Paul MN a couple of years ago and it was incredible. The liner notes to the soundtrack album, which is called Gales of November, tell us that the music and the play "reminds us how tenuous and precious are our ties to those we love in the face of the awesome power of nature." The singers are some of the finest voices in folk today: Prudence Johnson, who you may have heard regularly with Garrison Keillor on "A Prairie Home Companion", along with Ruth MacKenzie and Claudia Schmidt.

River to the Sea – Prudence Johnson (Gales of November)
Rich – Neal and Leandra – (Stranger to My Kin)
Listen Adversary – Prudence Johnson (Gales of November)

Wrap up - Telstar - The Toronados