Saturday, October 18, 2014

I hereby declare a Dead 2 Rights dance party! RIGHT THIS SECOND!

These people are either dancing or reenacting their favorite lightsaber duels.

"Johnny Thunder is best live performer I've ever seen."
-Bob Dylan 

You know what you need in your life? The Muse Terpsichore. For those of you not up on the fruitier aspects of mythology, that's D-A-N-C-E. That's right. You need to boogie down, get your groove on, burn baby burn, disco inferno, etc. That's why I'm officially declaring a Dead 2 Rights dance party right this second. I don't give a damn where you are -- car, work, your own colonoscopy! You're gonna dance! Dance, I say! 

And, here, I've already selected the song for you to dance to. It's "Loop De Loop" by Johnny Thunder from 1963. That's Thunder, singular, not to be confused with the late punk musician Johnny Thunders, who died in 1991. Johnny Thunder, singular, is still alive. He's 82 and presumably retired now, but he's still out there somewhere. 

I discovered this track back in the '90s in a used record shop, where it was on the B-side of a reissue 45 of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As much as I dug that Archies tune, I dug "Loop de Loop" even more. It's got kind of a Jackie Wilson/early James Brown thing going on, except that it's based on a children's playground chant and sounds like it was recorded in an echo chamber with an all-Munchkin backing band. Check it out: