The Rant of The Go-Go

New Year’s Eve had been the last show for the band, but a lot had been left up in the air. Lynval met up with Chela, Cale, and I and said that it was up to the three of us if we wanted to create a new band this time; he encouraged us to do so, but we were on our own. The three of them had also decided that I was still a great asset to them and should be involved in the next project. All my hard work, which I had felt was a lost cause when it all ended so quickly, hadn’t been for naught. I had made an impression, and that made me feel awesome. I was still needed!
Since then Cale had put out an ad for a new drummer and had gotten a couple answers. We were meeting up with Chela at our favorite Irish Pub to discuss the next plan of action. The meeting was short, more motivational than constructive, but we all agreed on the direction and steps that were needed to put a band back together. I felt really good about having a chance to really shape this next project and have a stronger role this time around. It was all so terribly exciting to be starting up something new. Creating new music and meeting new people.
The meeting didn’t take nearly as long as I was hoping it would since was I headed out to LSC that night. Going all the way back home I had the chance to change my clothes several times, needlessly, only to wear what I had originally been out the door. Women are so silly. When we have too much time on our hands we get to nit picking things that don’t need nit picking. I’m as guilty as the rest. I always think I’ve settled too soon or I’ve been too daring in my decision and that I’ll spend the whole night uncomfortable. But every time it never fails. The music takes over and as long as my legs aren’t hindered I forget everything else.
I walked in the door at exactly ten-thirty. After a cursory scan of the room I realized I was alone. None of my new friends were there. I felt suddenly abandoned, as if I’d never gone to a club alone before in my life. Immediately I knew that I was going to end up watching the door all night until my friends showed up. That was damn annoying on my part. Getting a hold of myself I moved to the edge I always stand in while I get a feel for the music and the dancers on the floor. I was going to make the best of my night.
DJ’s I didn’t know were spinning some incredibly hard stuff. For some reason the driving beats were making it easier to just dive in. Hard House and Electro just seem to speak to me. It all hits so hard it’s like being rattled onto the floor and vibrating with the music until you realize you’ve been dancing the whole time. There is something really natural about it, which seems like a terrible word to use for music that most often has no organic sound involved in it. There are moments when it feels like the bass and percussion is going to re-set your heart rate. Then everything inside you is working toward moving with the music: your heart, your lungs, and your nervous system. That’s what I mean by natural.
Taking breaks from time to time, I looked around and realized what a diverse crowd there was. For so many years LSC Open House had really just been one style of people. The clubber. We dressed up and strutted our stuff, but never beyond being about to dance. We had been a glamorous bunch once. Now it seemed like Thursdays was casual wear night and the flash was brought out on weekends only. But now, from where I stood, I could see four distinct groups other than us casual regulars. There were Thugs and this was the first time I’d seen such a crowd hanging out so nonchalantly bobbing heads that were either covered in bandannas or sideways ball caps. On the weekends the downstairs area played Hip Hop and R-n-B specifically. I was use to seeing Thug-ly dressed people biding their time at the bar waiting for the doors to open, but never seeming to enjoy the music for a moment. The Glow-stick Ravers were out in force more than I was use to. Normally they were solitary creatures that came to show off their dancing flare and then melt back into the crowd, but tonight there was several circles of friends crowding the sidelines and dotting the dance floor. Hot-Topic Goths were a strange sight. A group I would honestly label myself as being a part of in high school, I had never seen such a large number in one room with this style of music playing before. And last but not least the Newbies seemed to be streaming in from off the street as well.
The Newbie group included those who had just turned twenty-one and were new to the club scene as a whole or those that had never ventured into a club that played electronic music before. They had stuck to the safe havens of KISS 106.1 club patrol locations or KUBE 93.3 party spots. Having never listened to this style of music in their life it was interesting to watch them try and experience the atmosphere. They always dressed like MTV would dictate that a club in California or New York would expect. They always seem a little too business casual or a little to runway model ready. Too much flash and skin for a Thursday night out, and wearing outfits virtually impossible to do more than sit and drink in.
I think the increase of electronic or dance music in silly things like car commercials and background noise in movies has brought more interest in the many sub-categories associated with electronic music: Progressive House to Drum and Bass. For that I’m glad. But the false expectations still hang there with this increasingly more mainstream exposure. House does not equal New York Lounge and Techno does not always equal RAVE. People walk in the door expecting a vodka martini and get sorely disappointed. We’re here to dance, break a sweat, and give praise to our DJ. Not take our thousand dollar Christian Dior dress out for a little walk.
The people that were bumping into me as I tried to dance were obviously of the MTV expectations. The guys were all in shirts and ties, blazers of every type. The girls were in barely-there tops and stiletto heels that looked painful from any angle. One of the guys exclaimed, “I love this!” as he looked about the room with an appraising eye. That was of course why he slammed into me while they marched across the dance floor eyes everywhere but immediately around them. I gave them a mental twenty-minute clock that started after they had crashed into me. Without fail one drink and the girls were leading the way out of the door. They come to look but never to stay.
It was getting close to Mari Gras and the whole club had its decorations up. Even the employees were done up in beads as if reminding the rest of us that the real party was coming. I couldn’t help but be nostalgic about last year’s Fat Tuesday celebration. Jimmy and I had gone out with no expectations and had come back with a story to tell. But then again that was always how it was with Jimmy. As I always said, you could put the man in a room of twenty-five strangers and he’d come out with twenty-five best friends. I missed him terribly.
Floor Whore was up to her usual flamboyant self. She had grabbed a friend and had gone immediately for the space on the stage between the two bass cabinet platforms, right in front of the DJ. Her friend was trying valiantly to keep up with her energetic style of dance but was having some troubles. Then the crowd of guys moved in and that’s when things always get stupid. Why is it that female’s resort to disgracing themselves when drunken males start showing some attention? As more girls piled on every available surface to join in the fun I started mentally fuming. It wasn’t just the general public who ran up to every available surface to dance. I saw the same problems with “professional girls” as well. Go-Go dancing is an art form to me. There damn well needed to be a handbook I felt.
Being a Go-Go Dancer is supposed to be different than being a stripper. Bobbing up and down as if you wished you were either having sex right at that moment or pretending you have a brass pole is not the main goal here. A Dancer is sexy because a good dancer is sexy to watch move. She is fluid and graceful and very in touch with her own body in a very physical sort of confidence. Dance music is very primal in nature, and so is the art of dancing. 120 beats per minute is also most of our heart rates at a good run. The whole thing is very physical.
The Go-Go attire is a fine line. I think it should be flirty. Hinting at what a girl would normally wear going out dancing but freed up from an athletic standpoint. The shortie skirts over spankies and fishnet stalkings along with a sports bra top are awesome. It shows skin but not needlessly, and it allows the girls to really be free to really dance. You wouldn’t wear long pants to a high-energy aerobics class, nor would you try to put on a flimsy bathing suit top and expect yourself to be comfortable while you bounced around.
Then there is the problem of people putting themselves in the limelight and forgetting that about two hundred pairs of eyes are on you. Why would you dig out your wedgie, pick your nose, or do anything other than perform? Don’t talk with your best friend who’s stuck on the floor. If you want to dry hump your boyfriend do it in the corner of the club, not on the platform at the front of the club. I don’t even like it when professional girls stop to drink water for an extended period of time. You don’t get to call a time out, suddenly become invisible to everyone in the room, and then pop back into the energy you’re suppose to be creating.
That’s another thing. From the moment you get the crowds attention you are suppose to be LEADING the crowd through the music, not following behind in the trends. Some clubs hire girls to get dance floors started. For some reason dancers seem to inspire other dancers. If someone breaks the ice, even if it’s far away on some platform or a balcony, it doesn’t seem so weird for the general public to break out dancing. But I believe that those dancers should also be in love with the music they are dancing too. It’s like an amplification of the DJ’s passion. He is sharing the music with the room; the dancer is showing you how to love it physically. All of that gets poured into the whole “circle of energy” I always talk about, but a dancer was adding to the void. A DJ can express his passion through music but a dancer is taking her own energy to add a physical element. If done right, it all comes back as a physical and mental response from the crowd multiplied by each body you inspired.
Last but not least, this goes more for the general public than the professional arena, when you are tired or so drunk you can’t keep your balance, get the FUCK off the stage. This isn’t a tough concept. Every girl wants her moment in the testosterone driven spotlight, so share. It’s a small stage, only seven or so girls can squish themselves onto a flat surface big enough to shake your boobs or rub on your best friend for a while. When you’re done get down. Don’t just stand there talking with someone on the floor, or weaving all over whoever is next to you. Get down!
During this whole exodus of girls clambering to get noticed a larger girl dress in a track jacket was talking with a male friend of hers’ behind me. They were obviously talking about FW and I had to laugh. Her friend said she should jump up there and dance too. “I’m not that kind of girl,” she stated very matter-of-factly. That moment right there just fed back into my earlier fuming. Dancing on stage should be a fun way to show off and bring up the energy in the crowd, not written off as something only slutty girls did. I had seen the girl behind me dance before, and she was good. The rest of the dance floor was missing out.
It didn’t occur to me that no male had talked to me in quiet a long time until one finally did. Since rejoining the scene I had been hanging exclusively with friends. I hadn’t honestly been in a room full of strangers in quite some time. Still I was rather shocked and dismayed at the realization that I was getting older. I wasn’t the prettiest young thing in the room anymore. To add to my “getting older rant” the gentleman that tried to break the ice did a poor job of it. He leaned in as I was passing by and said, “I recognize you but we’ve never met.” I only nodded and said he probably recognized the hat, and kept walking. Stating the obvious doesn’t roll a girl into a conversation. Especially since he stood there staring at me like he expected me to do all the work after making his grand statement of acknowledgement. Sorry, a guy’s gotta come harder than that.
On another patrol through the club to see if I had missed my friends walking in, a guy grabbed my arm by the bar. Stopping my forward motion and reeling me in to where he was standing he said, “You’re a great dancer, we should dance some time.” First of all I cannot stand it when a man handles me like that. Tap my shoulder, touch me briefly to get my attention and then speak to me like I’m a human. I’m not a foul ball you have to grab up and carry off. I smiled, thanked him and kept walking. If you want to dance, ask me to dance right then. You didn’t ask my name, you didn’t tell me yours so why would I seek you out suddenly for the dance you wanted in the future. Again men trying to half ass this whole situation and leave it up to the ladies to do all the work. Live in the now gentleman! You want something? Ask for it. Be specific! You come off insecure when you down grade stuff to the future. Besides you put in all that effort to reel me in and then give me some weak statement of “sometime”? A waste of everyone’s time, his and mine.
Funny that I would one moment be all peeved that I’m getting no male attention, and then in the next paragraph be shredding the attempts made. I am getting too old for this I believe; too old to be going out alone anyway. I missed being able to talk to someone, have the private jokes that go along with being a regular, just be able to have company if you want it or lose yourself for a while if you didn’t. Going alone was just a sad business. Part of me was cranky at this less than independent trend of thought. Where was my dancing spirit? Where was my desperate need for music infusion? Was the Clubbing Queen really beyond being able to enjoy herself? It was too much to contemplate all at once.
I heard from the people around me that Josh The Funky 1 was headlining, which explained the different crowds that was there that night. He was a commercial superstar, which meant they had come to see him, not hang out at LSC specifically. It was also why the place was packing in so tight it was impossible to dance. It never fails, wherever I am standing is where the entire room is trying to cross the dance floor. Why am I the world’s gate for crossing? Four or five instances of people bashing into me in order to pass by and I was done. Out the door I went, sad that my friends had never showed up.
It wasn’t until the next day that I found out DJ L and S had showed up about an hour after I had. They were running on “S-Time” which I totally should have expected. Part of me was angry I hadn’t held out for a little longer, and part of me thought the whole thing was ridiculous. My clubbing habits should not be tied into other people and when they showed up. I had had fun, whether I wanted to admit it or not. But I still had a lot on my mind as to where my interests were. Clubbing alone wasn’t as fun as going out with friends. How was I going to rectify this? Or will I just get over this momentary lack of faith. Who knows? Only time will tell.