Top 5 Tuesday: Songs guaranteed to get me on the dance floor

This is a pretty embarassing list, as it falls out ... it makes me feel a bit dated, it reflects my rather cheesy tastes in music at least as far as dancing is concerned, and it also highlights the fact that it has been about fifty years since I've regularly gone out to clubs. In other words, it makes me feel old.

I used to go out dancing on a pretty regular basis, all through undergrad and when I lived in TO, then for the first few years when I was in London. Retro nights were always a favourite, and Call the Office has a great sunday night for that, as Londoners will attest. Then however came the day when I realized I was about ten years older, on average, than pretty much everyone at the club. And wow had that crept up on me. And while I was by no means alone in this respect, I also very keenly did not want to turn into -- or be perceived as -- the creepy older guy haunting the periphery of the dance floor. Ick.

This is one of the problems with living in a university town ... in TO it would never be quite as much of an issue, as there tends to be a much great age range at the average club, to say nothing of the places that overtly cater to the late-twenties, early-thirties set (of course, I could probably not afford the cover charge and/or drink prices at such places, but that's another aggravation for another day). I started feeling old in London clubs pretty much as soon as I arrived in the city.

Then there's the problem of running into students ... not in itself a problem so much as long as you recognize your students on sight. Then at least you're aware, and can flip the switch in your head to the setting "Student Present: Do Not Make Ass of Self." The final nail in my clubbing coffin came when I taught a class of 250 for the first time -- the problem here being that, with a class that large, I wouldn't necessarily recognize my students in the wide world. One begins to understand the principle of the Panopticon pretty keenly at the point.

At any rate, the long and short of it is that I haven't been out dancing in a long while, and I do miss it. There are still those songs however that require a pretty powerful force of will to keep me in my seat, and they are as follows:

(5) Rage Against the Machine, "Killing in the Name"
(4) Human League, "Don't You Want Me"
(3) AC/DC, "Shook Me All Night Long"
(2) KMFDM, "Juke-Joint Jezebel"
(1) Boney M, "Rasputin"

What can I say? A legacy of growing up in the 80s, coming of age in the early 90s, and having a signficant number of gay friends. And I can at least say that there aren't any wedding-reception staples here. Well, except for number one. And three. And occasionally four, I imagine. At least I kept the Village People off the list ...