Sunday 22 March 2009
Sunday night is.. the Isley Brothers
1959! So early!
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Written 80%-90% of BASEES lecture. It is going to be long so will cut. Plagued by allergic sniffs, as seems to happen from time to time. High pollen count?
It is a very strange world with all the attention to the death of Jade Goody. I have no opinion about her worth articulating. Max Clifford is another matter.
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10 comments:
Great song, but I think even for 1959 this was bad dancing. Did one of them fall down a hole at the end?
Oh Nicole. It's the camera that has got itself stuck not knowing what to do. And I love the dancing.
Great song and great dancing (with another splits-move at the end). The camera was too uptight and square to catch it.
How do you know he didn't get stuck doing the splits? I do love the clip but it worries me that you all appreciate the dancing. Ah well, as long as you don't try the moves at somebody's wedding.
"How do you know he didn't get stuck doing the splits?"
I just sense these things. It's a gift I have.
Great dance for weddings OR funferalls, I should think.
Sounds as though you have a pair of potential wedding-crashers, Nicole.
To be serious for a moment, what strikes me is the freedom and energy with which the Isleys dance. It was not generally the case with Soul and Motown bands - they tended to be choric and highly disciplined with set moves.
I know Elvis was doing the wilder stuff three years back, but he was out on his own (well, with perhaps Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard)as company. Elvis appeared on TV only waist up to begin with, his pelvic movements somewhat problematic for mainstream.
There is, incidentally, some wild Elvis from 1956 on YouTube.
Then he de-wilded himself and became more generally acceptable if a little more decorous, and the TV and the movies followed. But so did tedium, eventually.
Elvis tedious? Maybe sad, reined in, but never tedious. As for 'freedom and energy', if unrestrained, those are pretty much the prerequisites for bad dancing. Compare and contrast with John Travolta or Fred Astaire. Elvis was pretty bad too, but breaking boundaries with it. These guys are just having fun, and tickle me greatly. Enjoy the weddings.
I do find the movies tedious, and much of the later Las Vegas Elvis too.
Astaire and Travolta are excellent of course, in fact Astaire is a god of sorts.
But just different.
All quite funny. The dancing as well as the comments. "Did one of them fall down a hole at the end?" That produced a long, deep belly chuckle.
This was my era. I've watched it four times. Doo-wop, doo-wop, doo-wop, doo-wop. The dancing would be classed as 'rather gay' these days.
Dear George, sorry for putting this here but I cannot find your e-mail address - There is something wrong with your .co.uk website, I can't access it now. You may want to check what went wrong with that.
Kind regards from Hungary, Csaba - Nwch 2002, you might remember :)
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