DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
My Fellow Americans, Life is actually just a microscopic, deluded moment in time, so let's cut to the freakin' chase. One look at our impending election debacle can solidify my case. It has been my contention since birth, that the answer to every difficulty we encounter on this sacred yet demented Stone, can be revealed with ultimate clarity through the ultra neurotic engagements of Music, Art, Literature, Film, Poetry and a good Pastrami sandwich. Why would any sane human spend so must time on a film set (Do you know how long you gotta wait until your 8 second deliverance of an edited beyond repair line gets a chance to become a professional embarrassment etched in time forever? ) or expend so much energy in a recording studio, piecing together another ode to a man or woman who could not care less how much love existed within your digestive tract? It's all about hymns and prayers and a quest for mercy and forgiveness and silence and faith. We were blessed with Charles Bukowski, Gene Chandler, Lenny Bruce, Mitch Ryder and a legion of creative explorers whose influences provided the air we breathe. So Let's Dance! This site shall explore the reaper, find a way to disarm the stench of injustice, discover some true loves and talk it all over before it's all over. So what's the worst that our desires could produce? Failure? So sue me. I'm going to require your assistance in making as much trouble for the grown-ups as possible. Let the record show that my childish heart yearns to disrupt the madness. Join me Ladies and Germs!
With Gratitude For Gena Rowlands, Nancy Sinatra, Jerry Quarry, Leo Gorcey, Arthur Alexander and Joey Heatherton, Your Splendid Bohemian, Rich Buckland.
DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
"PUT ON A STACK OF 45's"- "THE HULLY GULLY CRAZE FROM THE WORLD OF A THOUSAND DANCES " - Featuring Rich Buckland and Bill Mesnik -The Boys Devote Each Episode To A Famed Rhythm and Roll Event And Shine A Light Upon It's Import
The 60s was a fun and a unique experience. You had to be there to understand. Just talk to any baby boomer who was an adolescent during the 60s and they will tell you how fun and how fortunate they were to grow up in the 1960s. School dances and the dance crazes during that period were something else. I couldn't even begin to write about or even talk about what dances are popular today. I guess I possess a generation gap. I am lost in the 60s and 70s.
The first dance craze I remember was "The Stroll." Of course it came out in the 50s but its popularity was still present in the 60s. You could stroll to almost any slow song. The Diamonds made the song famous in January 1958 and is still played today at many parties and weddings. It was close to being the first line dance. Girls on one side and boys on the other and the line moved up as each couple would meet one at a time in the center at the beginning of the line and stroll to the music down the line between the others and take their place at the end of the line.
The Twist was a rock and roll dance popular in the early 1960s named after the song that originated it, The Twist. It was the first major international rock and roll dance style in which the couples did not have to touch each other while dancing. The dance was first popularized by Chubby Checker in 1960 with a hit cover of the 1959 minor hit "The Twist" written by Hank Ballard. Checker's single became a smash hit, reaching #1 on the US charts. The song set a record, being the only single to reach #1 in two different chart runs (as it reached #1 in 1960, and then resurfaced, reaching #1 again in 1962). This has never happened again in rock history. Faced with explaining to the youthful audience how to do the dance, a member of Checker's entourage came up with the following description:"It's like putting out a cigarette with both feet, and wiping your bottom with a towel, to the beat of the music."
In 1961, at the height of the Twist craze, patrons at New York's hot Peppermint Lounge on West 45th Street were twisting to the music of the house band, a local group from Jersey, Joey Dee and The Starliters. Their house song, "Peppermint Twist (Part 1)," became the number one song in the United States for three weeks in January 1962. We even had a Peppermint Lounge in Circleville, Ohio. Of course it wasn't as famous as the one in New York. The lounge closed after a short period of time.
The Mashed Potato is a dance move which was a popular dance craze of 1962. It was danced to songs such as Dee Dee Sharp's Mashed Potato Time. Also referred to as "mash potato" or "mashed potatoes", the move vaguely resembles that of the twist, by Sharp's fellow Philadelphian, Chubby Checker.
The dance begins by stepping backward with one foot with that heel tilted inward. The foot is positioned slightly behind the other (stationary) foot. With the weight on the ball of the starting foot, the heel is then swiveled outward. The same process is repeated with the other foot: step back and behind with heel inward, pivot heel out, and so on. The pattern is continued for as many repetitions as desired. The step may be incorporated in various dances either as a separate routine or as a styling of standard steps.
James Brown had two Mashed Potato-related chart hits, "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" (1960; released under a pseudonym and "Mashed Potatoes U.S.A." in 1962. Brown also featured the dance prominently in his live performances during the 50s and 60s. The dance was also referred to in Connie Francis' 1962 hit "V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N" ("...we'll Mashed Potato to a jukebox tune..."), "Do You Love Me" by The Contours, "Harry the Harry Ape" a 1963 Top-20 pop and R&B novelty hit by Ray Stevens, and "Land of 1000 Dances", a song made popular by Wilson Pickett.
The Monster Mash came out around the same time that the song "The mashed potatoes" was popular ... and it was a vari
