He's the Greatest Dancer (and Britney's not so bad either)

In my younger and thinner days, I used to go out dancing all the time. In Boston, in Providence (whenever I could get a ride), in Buffalo, in Chicago, I had what might be called “every night fever.”? In Boston, where last call was at two, I rarely got to bed before two or three; in Buffalo and Chicago, where last call was at four, I rarely got to bed before four or five.
I went out all the time because I love to dance and I love music, as the O’Jays sang oh so long ago, though unlike them I don’t like just any kind of music, even if it is groovin’. I also went out because I was bored and lonely and I wanted to get laid, or at least to feel wanted. Though I had more sex than I felt that I was having (does anyone ever have “enough”? sex?), I rarely got to have the sex I wanted with the men I wanted to have it with. But I had the music, and I could spend a good night in a musical trance, almost forgetting that I wanted to have sex. Almost. There were also the nights when I felt so lonely that a sad song would make me sit on the edge of the dance floor and cry. At first I accidentally typed “fly.”? That works too.
For most of my life I have felt very awkward and uncomfortable in my body and in my social presence. I feel better about both now, but still hardly at ease. But when I dance, which is rarely these days, I feel at one with my body. I was a great dancer (no boast, just fact—I rocked the dance floor, and still can) and, a little heavier and out of practice, I’m still damned good. When I’m dancing my movements are graceful and smooth. When I’m dancing I feel attractive, I experience my body as admirable, even masterful, just like Madonna sang in "Vogue." In the days of my constant clubbing, men who would never have slept with me would compliment me on my dancing, buy me drinks (I always chose soda or orange juice), befriend me, even. Sometimes a man would sleep with me because I danced well (as the old saying goes, if a man can dance that well, imagine how well he can fuck), though the dance floor brought me more friends than lovers.

I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I never have, but the moments of losing myself in a song, of immersing myself in the diva’s voicing of desires fulfilled and frustrated, of love lost and love found, in the rhythm’s promise of ecstasy in the next chorus or the body of the stranger dancing beside me, have been some of the most powerful in my life. In those moments, many of which were moments of intense misery, loneliness, and isolation which the music raised up, sublimated into something grand, noble, and beautiful, I could fleetingly feel the possibility of uniting body and soul, flesh and mind.
When I was dancing, even or perhaps especially when I was dancing by myself, as I usually was, I could forget myself for a moment, I could feel glad to have and be in a body, even if I usually went home alone, one body closed back into itself, trapped in my skin and my flesh that never lived up to the shiny-skinned ideals I longed for in the club. I was often torn between dancing and trying to meet someone. (I do love that euphemism of gay clubs and bars, “meeting someone” whose name you’ve often forgotten by the time you two get home). Sometimes I forgot to cruise, or didn’t have time to, because I just had to dance to this next song. Some nights every song was my favorite song.
I have often felt at home, experienced a sense of belonging, in gay clubs late at night or early in the morning. This despite the constant experience of being snubbed or ignored or patronized because I was black or not buff enough or too short or too smart or not cool enough or just generally not quite what was wanted. I’ve made so much of the promise of music and the promise of sex and the promise of belonging somewhere by means of sex and music, in a club’s crowd of men dancing together or apart, all dressed up in their bodies. That’s mostly what “gay community” has meant to me. Andrew Holleran’s classic gay novel Dancer from the Dance, set in pre-AIDS Nineteen Seventies New York, and the British novel Queens by Pickles, set in mid-Eighties London, are the best literary evocations of this experience that I have read.
I don’t go out dancing these days. My partner and I are pretty early to bed boys, and being partnered takes some of the illusory glamour out of going out, since the promise of meeting “him” (if only tonight’s “him”) is no longer there. Plus my partner, though I adore him and he is in most ways perfect, can’t dance and isn’t really interested in dancing, and there’s no point in going out with him and then dancing by myself. Plus the one club we once went to in Pensacola (or Pepsicola, as I often call it) was kind of lame. And these days it seems that clubs only play “tracks,” repetitive, monotonously mechanical, with only the occasional vocal sample of an “Oh yeah!” or "Alright" or some such. I always want to dance to actual songs, with words and feelings, though they have to be songs with real dance beats, not some garbage from the Fifties or the Sixties. Those may be songs, but they’re not dance songs. I’m gay and I’m black and I can shake my moneymaker with the best of them: when it comes to dancing, I know whereof I speak.
And right now, I’d like to speak of Britney Spears remixes.
Mostly now I listen to dance songs when I exercise, to keep me energized and motivated, and having no place to buy extended remixes (neither Barnes and Noble nor Best Buy nor Wal-Mart carries them), mostly I download them from iTunes. I do a lot of browsing, listening to things just to find out what’s out there, what the kids (the gay kids and Eurotrash kids, that is) are listening to these days. I have very little interest in Britney Spears, either pre-meltdown or post-, though I did like “Slave 4 U,” “Boys,” and “Me Against the Music,” which in some inaudible way featured Madonna. One day I’m going to write a poem called “Me Against the Music.” But browsing through iTunes, I noticed quite a few remixes, many from B in the Mix: The Remixes (featured in both a standard edition and a deluxe, extra-tracked edition).
The remix is a curious thing. Invented in the Seventies by DJs mostly at gay clubs to extend the songs the boys most wanted to dance to, it can anywhere from a simple extension that makes a song longer while still maintaining all its original elements (most Seventies remixes on labels like Fantasy and Salsoul were of this type) to a complete restructuring that bears no relationship to the original song, often dropping not only the melody, the rhythm, and the instrumentation, but even the vocals, which are often the only (tenuous) connection to the original. Some “remixes,” like the dance and urban versions Mariah Carey has done, are actually completely new recordings, not “remixes” at all.
Some remixes aim to make an already dance-like song more danceable, more suitable to nightclub play. But many remixes take ballads and turn them into dance tracks, sometimes slamming dance tracks. I’m thinking now of Heather Headley’s soul ballad “In My Mind,” which in its original version makes me cry every time I play, and in the Freemason’s Vocal Club Mix makes me want to dance while crying, which as I wrote used to be a common experience for me. A remix will often completely change the genre, sound, mood, and feel of a song, aiming I guess at a different niche market than the original, but also producing a new aesthetic product, an utterly different iteration.
For example, on the album In the Zone, Britney’s first foray into “serious” dance music, “Everytime” is a bland, tinkly ballad. (I have nothing against ballads. Sarah Brightman’s version of “Who Wants to Live Forever” always makes me cry, as does Ricky Martin’s “She’s All I Ever Had.” But I don’t like ballads that sound as if they’re being played on a toy piano.) Dr. Octavio’s Translucent Mixshow Edit (remixes often tend to ridiculous, convoluted names), while retaining the wistfulness of the original ("without my wings, I feel so small--guess I miss you, baby"), gives it a rhythmic force while retaining a floating quality that mirrors the free-floating emotional atmosphere. The Valentin Mix pushes the rhythm more while still holding on to the emotional field, but on both the single and on the remix album, it’s only three and half minute-long, which is just too short for a dance track. On the other hand, the almost ten-minutes-long Scumfog Vocal Mix features barely any vocals, and buries those it does retain. I’m someone who needs the hook of a human voice, the promise of human presence, to be drawn into a song, so the erasure of almost all the vocals ruins the song for me. Above and Beyond’s Club Mix has too much of that Eurodisco gallop that annoyed me so much in the Eighties.
I don’t know if there is an “original” version of “And Then We Kiss,” as the only version iTunes lists is on B in the Mix (I’ve frequently encountered the phenomenon of a remix with no available “original"), but the XL Remix is outstanding, with a slightly funky beat, nice guitar work, and a floating feeling (the strings contribute to this) which fits the song, “this moment where everything’s still.”
I also love the two remixes of “Breathe on Me," whose original version, what British dance-pop producer Pete Waterman (king of the Eighties PWL empire, which produced Kylie Minogue among others) used to call “a slow floater.” “We don’t need to touch, just breathe.” Both remixes are by Jacques LuCont, which I recently found out is a pseudonym of Stuart Price, producer of Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, which contains two of her best songs, “Hung Up” (with its great ABBA sample from "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie [A Man After Midnight]", the only time they’ve ever approved a sample) and “Get Together,” one of the most perfect dance songs of all time (though I do hope that Madge paid something to the S.O.S. Band for the vocal quote from “Take Your Time (Do It Right).” Strangely, enough, though he produced both, Price’s “Jacques Lu Cont” mix of “Get Together” flattens out some of the stuttery quirkiness of the original, stripping it of its combination of floating and thumping. Price also produced Seal’s new album, System, which contains one of Seal’s best songs, “System,” best enjoyed, of course, in its “Thin White Duke Main” mix, the Thin White Duke being another of Price’s aliases.
Sad to say, though Hex Hector is usually one of my favorite remixers (including songs by Deborah Cox , Lisa Stansfield, and J-Lo, among others), his mix of “Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know” is a bit generic, even bland, all gallopy Eurodisco beats and no feel. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it. It was only a Britney song, after all.
I’m outta here. Peace out.