Boozy tunes

Disclaimer: Some of these songs contain lyrics which delicate ears may not like.  You have been warned.  
In no way is this an attempt to glamourise drinking, but hopefully it'll make you interesting in some form of dancing.

My regular readers will know that my life for the past year has mainly centred around studying alcohol and drinking it, and dancing blues or west coast swing. Yes, I've even combined both by blues dancing in a brewery and a recent wine trip to Serbia followed by west coast swing dancing in Hungary. Or perhaps you remember my vodka drinking exploits with the Polish dance community...
Over the last few months, I've heard several tunes on the dancefloor that got me thinking about the relationship between music, alcohol and dancing.  Who said white men can't dance sober?  Musicians certainly seem fond of a drink.  There aren't many dance floor classics that have the word wine in the title, so I've rummaged and broadened the remit to include general alcohol to provide you with:

The (not quite definitive) Purple Teeth Guide to Getting Grooving, or, Boogie by the Boozy Blog...

Blues dancing in a bar in London

Back in April while dancing the blues in Scotland, a Dutch DJ played D.R.I.N.K. by the Asylum Street Spankers.  It's a cheery sounding ditty that contains a very telling lyric "don't like to think about how much I drink".  If you're as much of a wine fan as I am, this thought probably passes through your mind more often than you'd like.  But let's hope yours is not "a habit that's out of control"...  If you like old time swing sounds, you'll enjoy this reworking of The Jazz Butchers' song.  Hearing it again recently inspired me to write this post. And a good friend of mine is probably among those who'd happily sing along to "hope I never get dry before I get old".

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It's in the world of west coast swing where I really started hitting the bottle on the dance floor.  I always used to drive to dancing, and so even when I went to weekend events, I felt quite at home with just a water or the occasional  coca-cola  if I needed an energy boost. 
But, feeling nervous before competitions and keeping friends company led me down the slippery slope.  Dancing was no longer an opportunity for my liver to recover, but instead became a chance to experience such  joys as calvados concealed in an apple juice bottle.  Oh how very classy I am.

West Coast Swing isn't  a genre of music like "blues". We dance it to a few different kinds of music from blues to modern R&B & pop classics.   I wish I could find some videos showing the dance with the songs I'll mention but here are a few drinking classics that will fill the west coast swing dance floor.

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Almost nobody dances sober, unless they are insane. - H.P. Lovecraft

Ed Sheeran's Drunk is popular but some think Ed is a little challenging to dance to.  I say, it all depends on my partner. More suitable for beginner dancers would beBartender by T-Pain featuring Akon which features such incisive lyrics as "she made us drinks to drink, we drunk 'em, got drunk, and now I know she thinks I'm cool".  Well, nothing like inspiring your public to start drinking by promising you're alluring to the opposite sex when you drink.  In fact, promoting alcohol in this way  is against the law in the UK, so I'll just remind readers to enjoy a drink in moderation and consult drinkaware.co.uk if you're at all concerned about how much you're drinking.

Gin and Juice  by Snoop Dogg is another relatively easy to dance to number.  I hadn't listened closely to the lyrics before writing this article and it's certainly not music from the genre "politically correct pop".  The lyrics that stand out for me, though, are those that many of my dancer friends will recognise, from weekend events if not from the song itself...

"I got me some Seagrams gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in"

It's not Shakespeare, but the predicament of the one who always seems to bring the bottle is as universal as any theme by the bard.

When the music changes, so does the dance. - African proverb

A blues song that would not be out of place on either dance floor is Denise Lasalle's Gimme Yo' Most Strongest Whiskey.  While demanding the spirit she also calls for the establishment's "finest bottle o' wine".  I can only assume Ms Lasalle has never heard the old adage about never mixing the grape and the grain. I also wouldn't recommend using fine wine simply to get drunk. There's plenty of cheap stuff around that serves the same purpose, as many a dancer will testify having witnessed a rapid decline in my spinning ability.  Though it has to be said, at a recent dancers' tasting, the tendency was to prefer the pricier bottles.  At least we took the high road as we annihilated our danceability.

Stick McGhee recorded the original version of  "Drinking Wine Spo Dee O Dee " in 1947, although he didn't have a hit with it until he re-recorded it in 1949 and released it on the Atlantic label.  The song was perhaps made more famous by Jerry Lee Lewis  and there are probably several more "dance friendly" versions out there.  Though there's plenty of swing in this tune. What's interesting is that Stick McGhee may have been the Snoop Dogg or Eminem of his day.  I'd always wondered what the point of the lyric "spo dee o dee" was.  Apparently the song originally had far more risqué lyrics, at least that's according to the person who uploaded this YouTube link...  Listen, dance, and imagine, if you will, what this might have sounded like with the original lyric. In 1947, it's fairly likely Stick McGhee would "never work in this town again" had he gone ahead with the gangster rapper style hook. 

Stick seemed well aware that if you want to get along as the new boy in town, passing around some wine is a fine way to do it.   I'm not sure how well this would work nowadays with the nickel and dime elderberry and blackberry wines he mentions in his lyrics, but it's still a reasonable strategy.
Lightnin' Hopkins however threw away his gin bottle and implored us not to pass him any wine.  Can there be any musical genre better suited to the plight of the dipsomaniac?  In this case though, it's probably not the song that will send me rushing onto the dance floor...

Americana details the lush's situation also in country music form.  While I'm no dancer of country two-step, or any of the other "country" dances, there are plenty of dancers out there who will happily whirl around the floor to a stetson bedecked band, and they will not want for tippling tunes to twirl to.  For example, Merle Haggard advises us that Heaven was a Drink of Wine.  I can only assume he was talking about a high end Napa wine, rather than those cheapo vinos Stick McGhee was sampling.

"Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory – but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living." --- Napoleon

I simply cannot imagine a night of West Coast Swing dancing without at least one track by John Mayer.  While it's unlikely that Whiskey, Whiskey, Whiskey will go down in history as one of his most danceable tracks, I couldn't resist including it in this list since at least he reminds us to drink plenty of water after a night on the booze.  And this is even more important if you've been dancing too.

For those more likely to do their dancing in a nightclub than with a partner at a blues or west coast swing club, there are plenty of tippling tracks for you too. For example Drinking from the bottle by Calvin Harris will certainly work up a sweat, though I prefer Theophilus London's Wine and Chocolates - and not just because it extols the virtues of two of my favourite things.

I may have mentioned it before but, I'm Scottish, so it wouldn't do for me to go without including a tune by one of my favourite Scottish bands of the late 1980s, Love and Money (two more of the things which, like wine and chocolate, make my world go round).  Whisky Dream is in waltz timing so it probably won't make it onto any playlists for dance events I'll be attending in the near future, but it contains the lyric  "dance with me, dance with me, in a whisky dream" and I'm not sure anything else sums up a blog post about booze and bopping so well, so humour me.

There is a long list of other songs that didn't quite make it onto the list but if you're looking for some more tunes to assuage your drunkenness or inspire a gentle bop around your front room, why not try some of these:

Dancing with the women at the bar - Whiskeytown
Drunk in a band - Del amitri
Lilac Wine - Jeff Buckley
Last of the big time drinkers - Stereophonics

You may wonder at me including "The humours of whiskey" which is a traditional Irish folk song...  I guess you can jig to it.  My real excuse is based on meeting an expert on sea shanties at a Blues dancing event, so I'm sure there is someone out there who may enjoy this apart from me.

And if you're worried that your drinking has gone too far, a listen to some of these cautionary tales may help.
Rehab - Amy winehouse
Old red eyes is back - Beautiful South 
But if you ever get in the state the Dead Kennedys did after drinking and dancing all night,  well, it might be time to seek out the 12 steps, and I don't mean those to the dance floor.

Meanwhile, I'll continue with my dancing and drinking as I head to France for a week of West Coast Swing and wine.  I'm sharing an apartment with some Polish friends so I imagine plenty of vodka will be drunk too! .  There's just about no chance I'll be dancing  to Deano, but if ever there was a song for Purple Teeth, I guess this is it... "I'm praying for rain in California, so the grapes can grow and they can make more wine." Little old wine drinker me.
Cheers!

PS, feel free to add your own favourite tunes to tipple to in the comments!