But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
"Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (via iamthecrime)
woah
(via neuroneptune)
Good lord. Sometimes, two paragraphs can completely depress the shit out of me.
(via punkassjim)(via punkassjim)
punkassjim replied to your post: How about I just make a note of the entire set list at the next dance I attend. DJ’d music around here has reached a really boring juncture.
colorfuloddity replied to your post: Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
harvesterofhearts replied to your post: our scene lags behind by like…10 years. We’ve only just got “I like pie”. Lots of jive aces and cheesy stuff like that :(
swinginforbreakfast replied to your post: They’re great songs, so it’s not super bad, but “I Like Pie” and “Long Gone John” by Gordon Webster.
eldergreene replied to your post: The Jungle Book song
beckzorz replied to your post: That five minute version of Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me. And this isn’t a bad thing, really, but every dance I’ve been to almost has featuerd “I Like Pie” off Gordon’s new CD.
swingdancing replied to your post: String of Pearls, I mean its not a bad thing… but I hear it all the time
doodledemoon replied to your post: My goodness is there a list! In the Mood, Sing Sing Sing, Stompin at the Savoy, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, One O’clock Jump, Caldonia, Sentimental Journey…..basically any song that is on a compilation disc of swing music is over played.
mistermigy replied to your post: <3 the overplayed song. They are overplayed for a reason. What I find interesting is when the same song is played over an event by different DJs. At one event I heard Sixteen Tons a total of 5 times!
yourfellowclassmate replied to your post: I haven’t been in my local scene in over a year but I remember they played Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” quite often. And Stray Cats songs were pretty popular too.
ahaleyscomet replied to your post: We get a lot of jump blues done to death over here. I used to call “Who threw the whiskey in the well” our scene anthem.
How curious. Is it safe to say that “I Like Pie” is a nationally (even internationally) overplayed song? Oddly, out of the few DJ’d dances I do attend, it’s always the Four Clefs’ version. It does its job every time, though, doesn’t it? I guess, like mistermigy said, that’s why they’re overplayed.
Weekly DJ’d dances must be a very hard thing to maintain. If you don’t have continuous variety, you get that monotony Jim mentions. For me anyway, my outing to the Golden Vagina China every week isn’t really a means to dance my heart out but to catch up with friends and maybe practice some moves off in the corner. It helps that it’s only 5 minutes away and free too.
LindyGroove, I think, has the ideal structure. While it still maintains a similar schedule, they bring in DJs from all over to spin every week. When I go there, I expect to dance my ass off and I always expect something different.
I’ve been organizing my music collection the last couple weeks and picking out tunes that may do well in the Ventura scene. It’s a very interesting balance to have to maintain. While you want to throw your own personality into the mix, you still have to please the crowd—a loyal group that may be perfectly content with dancing to the same handful of songs every week.
We’re more of a jump blues scene and I have quite a handful of Buddy Johnson and Lucky Millinder that would do the trick (among others). But I would love to play some Artie Shaw or Dr. Michael White or Petunia and the Vipers without things getting weird.
When you have the same group of people attending every week and dancing to the same tunes time and again, how do you gently break up the monotony without scaring away those who may be too afraid of breaking a routine?
It blows my mind that this could even be an issue at some weekly dances because of how much music was recorded during that era (from, what, late 30s through the 60s just about?).
On a completely different note, it’s funny when I hear a song and think, “Oh this would be good to play in this city or that city.” It’s fun to watch how other scenes dance and how they present themselves. Granted, I’m only familiar with the California scenes but it’s amusing to notice all of the little nuanced differences in our styles of dancing.
ANYWAY, thank you for answering my question and being such a fantastic community.
“It’s no secret that miscegenation (interracial marriage) was kind of a big deal in the United States until very recently — as in, it was totally illegal for a non-white person to marry a white person until 1967. That’s why it’s so shocking to learn that, just one year after that supreme court decision the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” featured the first ever interracial kiss on scripted TV in the US. It was so controversial, even on the set, that they had to shoot it twice — once where William Shatner (Kirk) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) kissed, and one where they didn’t. But Shatner intentionally ruined the shot where they didn’t kiss, forcing the studio to use the other one.”
“7 Ways Star Trek Changed the World” via Ranker
(Source: mefn, via lucent-and-luminous)
In other news, apparently I’m doing a swing performance/demo next weekend.
Two days set so far for rehearsing.
(Source: yournakedbatman, via wildernessbound)
Wow, I had no idea someone filmed this in its entirety.
“Of course it looks like a penis. Everything looks like a penis to you right now.”
