Music, dancing and me

As a kid I remember always having music.

My dad played double bass in a jazz band, some of my earliest memories are of going to gigs.

As I grew up I was always 'borrowing' my mums and my sisters cassette tapes and learning the words or making up a dance to go with them. I particularly remember borrowing a Roget Miller cassette from my mum. Then later Levellers and Carter USM from my sister.

I remember in primary school putting a band together with a friend of mine - though mostly we made up dances to songs on Now 23!

Going up through secondary school I enjoyed singing in the choir, I tried a few different instruments, had singing lessons. I enjoyed socialising with the alternative crowd, rock & metal night clubs, moshing - about the closest thing to dancing I did in my teens!

Every new album I got I would sit down and listen to over and over again trying to learn all the words. It still amazes me if I listen to an album from that time how well all the words have stuck.

I was always big on the words. Tried writing poems in my teens, very angsty, unrequited love type things, I still have them in a box somewhere.

I never got into mainstream nightclubbing, went a couple of times, but really wasn't my thing,

I spent a bit of time in my late teens working with a friend of mine on the door at the 100 club in London for the Sunday night swing cats club. I loved the music, the atmosphere and was amazed by the dancing! I always hoped that one day I would be able to go back there and dance like that. I still have two much loved CDs from that time, Ben Waters, Shakin' in the makin', which I still dance around the kitchen to regularly, and The Fat Cats, Keeping up with the Dow Joneses, which I must dig out and play again!

I was about 19 when I went to my first Ceroc (modern jive) night, and was amazed to find how easy it was! I loved it, quickly went from going one night a week to going as often as I could, sometimes 3 or 4 nights. I was hooked. I danced and I danced until I met my husband, who didn't like the idea of dancing... I still went once every now and then, but never regularly.

I've been maybe 5 times in the last 5 years (since we had our first child), and now with this relapse dancing feels just out of my grasp. But then 6 months ago going into town to run errands was just out of my grasp, so I can do this!

It is such a wonderful feeling being on that dance floor, being led by someone else, not worrying or caring about what you look like or if you're doing it wrong, but just going with the flow.
Now I think about it I could say the same thing about moshing in my teens, it had nothing to do with what it looked like, but everything to do with how it made you feel.