Dancing in the Dark

As everyone knows, who reads me on Facebook or this Blog, Mac and I go out dancing on Friday and Saturday nights.  It started about 6 and 1/2 years ago.  Prior to that, in more than 37 years of marriage we'd probably danced once.  As all women know, Men Don't Dance!

But, as I was saying, about 6 and 1/2 years ago while doing a little gambling at a local Indian Casino (in California) we wandered into a room full of folks even older than us who were dancing to a live band playing songs from the Big Band Era.  It was really fun to watch.  Trembly old folks who could barely make it to the dance floor without their walker or cane, hit that floor and magic happened.  Th

ey dropped 40 years and waltzed, foxtrotted, jitterbugged and 2 stepped their way around the floor.  We were mesmerized, we kept coming back to watch them, and finally one day we turned to each other and said, "We can do this."  And so we did.  We discovered that the Casino had live music 6 nights a week, Big Band, Salsa, Country and Rock/Pop 2 nights a week.  We tried them all.

Then we moved down here, looked for places to dance and found Shag Clubs.  Now I know that sounds obscene, but it's just dancing to what they call Beach Music down here, think Swinging Medallions, not Beach Boys or Jan and Dean.  We went for a while, but we don't like organized dancing, having to dance in a certain way, doing the same steps to the same songs in step with all others.

Then we discovered all the live music that Savannah had and danced ourselves silly to the wee hours of the morning and in the process probably destroyed our knees dancing on asphalt in outdoor courtyards.  Then the weather changed and we needed to look for indoor places to dance and we discovered a little neighborhood bar with a dance floor and l

ive music on Friday and Saturday nights.  But it was usually Country, not our favorite.  Then we met a country band that adopted us, made us like country, and that's been our favorite ever since.

Which brings us up to last night.  We went to see a newly reformed band, the lead singer has been around forever, has made a couple of CDs in Nashville, and is pretty incredible.  Sings well, plays guitar like crazy and has written a number of good songs.  It's just that from time to time he decides to put on a show instead of playing dance music, and last night was one of those nights.  Music was good, sometimes great, sometimes pretty awful, and above all, just not very danceable.  And then, I guess because he hadn't played in nearly 2 1/2 years he let his keyboardist do much of the singing.  We know his keyboardist, he's been in about a million bands, never lasts long anywhere, not because he can't play, he can, he's good, but he's weird and unreliable and at best he's just a mediocre singer.  So last night was a major disappointment and we're considering our options for tonight, they includ

e a draggy a** band in a nice dark club we use to like or a boring band with a good playlist in an overlit place  that can't decide if it's a restaurant or a bar.

It may be time to stay home and play garage band again.