Episode 0305: "Macarena" and Other Dance Songs

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome again to another episode of This Song Sucks. Podcasts with three musical pals get together and talk about the music that we hate. I am Josh Kavanaugh and I'm joined today as always by Hayden. I drink your milkshake Crawford. How's it going, Hayden?

[00:00:27] What kind of milkshake? I like a strawberry, honestly. Cookies and cream for life. Oh, OK. Oh, we're getting real fancy. Yeah. When I was a kid, I would eat jars of marshmallow cream with a spoon. Let you come by this door. Me too.

[00:00:42] There's some in our house right now. God, you are so disgusting. Jesus Christ. Joining us today in the third spot is Lindsey. Carbs and dairy Polinsky. How's it going, Lindsey? I'm good. Now how are you? I'm waking up, sipping on some chaffee. Carbs, dairy and cream.

[00:01:01] Carbs, dairy and sugar. Classic trifecta of the Midwestern cuisine. Absolutely. So today we're doing something a little different. We have our resident dance expert on Lindsey to talk about. I guess we call these line dances, line dance songs. These are bar and bot misfa songs. Oh, OK.

[00:01:20] That's a very specific to your experience. Yeah, so they all... I don't know that I would consider the chicken dance a line dance, but it's not a line dance. We'll get to that. Yeah, so if it's not a line dance, you know,

[00:01:38] it's a stupid dance that you see at weddings and bar misfa. It's just group dances that for some reason we've all decided it need to be in the cultural zeitgeist. So why don't you tell us which songs? You already said the chicken dance.

[00:01:50] What else are we going to be talking about today? So we are tracing a brief chronology through our lives of these group dances. We're starting with the chicken dance, then we are going to go to Cotton Eye Joe, then we are popping over to Macarena,

[00:02:04] and then we are ending with the cha-cha slide. I like that we're doing all these and somehow not doing the Apple Bottom Jean song. So that doesn't have like an organized group dance that everybody knows. There are a ton of other dances that could be included.

[00:02:20] I think all the care in the world would disagree with you. I think they know exactly what that song is. Oh, okay. Well, so there's also like there were a lot of other ones that I thought about. This actually started, I was talking to my sister

[00:02:31] about what song I wanted to do and she said, how about the cha-cha slide? You absolutely hate that song. And I said, yes. And so I brought it up to Josh and he said, why don't we do kind of like a mega mix

[00:02:40] because there's not really enough about any one given one of these songs. Not a lot of substance. There are a lot of other songs like The Wobble and The Superman and oh, I'm blanking on some of that. What's The Superman? Superman, that Hona, what are you watching?

[00:02:58] The Soulja Boy. That one. The Soulja Boy, yeah. I had to learn that for a wedding. That song slaps. Yeah. So the song is fun, but the dances are, but for various cultural reasons of like our three of our personal whitenesses,

[00:03:13] I don't think that we would be effective commentators on a lot of those songs. Josh had brought up Gangnam Style, which I also don't know over that song. But again, I don't feel qualified to speak on that because I'm sure there are a lot of like culturally

[00:03:28] historical important things from cultures that are not mine. So fair enough, fair enough. Yeah. I feel like another good way to categorize these songs would be songs that my mother would get turnt to when she heard it at a wedding. Yeah. Oh, we're back.

[00:03:44] We're going to drop Cindy Sorkin's name later. You know, I spent many years playing in a wedding band. So I've been to so many weddings and I've played at so many weddings and like it, it would always piss me off as a

[00:03:55] younger man because we would play like pretty complicated music for a wedding band, like play a great set and have like, you know, three people dancing and then the DJ would put on Apple Bottom Jeans and everybody would

[00:04:06] leave their plates behind and come dance and like be mad and we got our instruments back in our hands. Oh boy. Maybe you should have covered that song. Yeah. Probably should have played Les Frank Zappa at the weddings. Probably. No, but doing the ceremony is the best.

[00:04:24] You just, you play the common songs you get in, you get out before you know, they start getting wild on the dance floor. Makes some bucks. Oh yeah, for sure. Dollar per hour is way better. Let's get on with this. Yeah.

[00:04:36] So let's get into the chicken dance, which to me is just the most mind boggling. So the song is known by several names. If you go look it up online, chicken dance being one of them, chicken song, bird song, birdie song or bird dance.

[00:04:50] Let me tell you, it's a weird, it's a weird YouTube hole to go down. Oh yeah. It's really as soon as I typed it in, I was like, I don't know if I want to really do this again. We regret this episode instantly. Yeah.

[00:05:02] So the original song was written by a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas in the 1950s and Bandai. The song, the actual song was called Der Intentanz, which is actually duck dance. Okay, not chicken dance. So the original song is just duck dance.

[00:05:21] So he wrote this song in the 50s and he also created the dance for it and he said that it was inspired by skiers. I guess he's up in the Swiss Alps watching skiers and he said that, quote, skiers use certain hand

[00:05:34] movements that to him evoked the beak of a duck and that other gestures of skiers rinded him of flapping wings and waddling feet. Kind of sounds like you, honestly. Why? Has anybody ever seen Josh just walk down the street? Yes.

[00:05:51] I mean, I could maybe see like if you see a skier walk with the skis on it kind of looks like a waddling duck but I'm not sure like where the flapping wings and the beak thing especially comes in. When your bustin moves on the slalom, your

[00:06:04] elbows are out to counterbalance you. When you have your sticks in your hand, I, listeners, I've never skied a day in my life but I am an avid Olympics fan and your elbows go out to counterbalance. And you're correct. Yeah, thank you, Hayden.

[00:06:16] Well, this guy, this guy wrote it in the 50s and I don't, I couldn't find when he was born. I could actually find very little about this guy but I'm assuming he was old enough to like seen all the Nazis come and like vacation on the

[00:06:28] Swiss Alps when he was a kid. So maybe they just had a weird way of skiing. They look like a duck. They had to. Are we going to talk strudels? Oh man, we're back Ben. We're actually going to be, we're going to be calling back.

[00:06:41] Lindsay and I are back on the same team. I know we're going to be calling back to that original episode probably quite a bit here. So anyway, Thomas, Verna Thomas, he would play this song in restaurants. Vanetta. Vanetta. Say it right. Excuse me. Vanatomas. Yeah.

[00:06:57] So he played these songs in restaurants. Mine strudels. God damn it. And that was actually in the background of the original recording. I'm sure. Oh yeah, it was. So anyway, he was a accordion player. He'd go around and he'd play this song in restaurants hotels throughout the 60s.

[00:07:13] It was first actually recorded and released by this Belgian producer in 1970. The original version did not have much success. Shocker. Yeah. The first real bit of success for the song was in 1980. A Dutch band called De Electronica. Yeah, it's good. You can't make this shit up.

[00:07:33] It's about to get worse. Release their version of the song is a B side to another song and they called the tune. Here we go. De Vogue de Stans, which is the dance of the little birds. Oh, so this B side entered the Dutch radio charts and

[00:07:51] was there for like seven months. And this is what really kicked off the song's international kind of success. So it was kind of big in Europe. In 1982, another big hit version of the song was from a polka themed cover band from Canada called The Emeralds

[00:08:10] and they recorded a polka version of the song. And that's kind of I think what we associate the song with is sort of a mmpah polka type song. For sure. That version would go on to reach double platinum in Canada and gold in Australia.

[00:08:26] So even before the success in Canada, the song had already sort of been imported to the United States by a music producer by the name of Stanley Mills. And he went around and convinced several polka bands, I guess that toured around the country to

[00:08:41] include the song on their albums, although none of them really managed to turn it into a hit in the US. However, the song kind of slowly apparently gained following in cities with large polka loving communities. No, we're going to play a game where we guess which

[00:08:57] cities are on this list. I think that's a good idea. I have three cities that they've started walking. Yes, that's the first one. Okay, Lindsay. Well, Cleveland is on there. But yes, Cincinnati does come up later here in a minute. Okay.

[00:09:10] Well, the only one on my list is Austin. What? Yeah. Oh yeah, because of October Fest down in New Bromphils. Well, that and I would imagine Fredericksburg, which is with all the Germans down there. German kind of tourist town. Huh.

[00:09:24] So basically, you know, this was kind of in the polka scene in the 80s and a quote from the producer Mills. He said that people started dancing to it at weddings. I'm sorry. I just had like an initial image of like bi-weekly like entertainment publication called Poca Weekly,

[00:09:40] you know, or the polka scene. It's just got like a greasy man and later hosin as the cover picture. There's like a recipe of like boiling water and putting sausage links in it. Yeah. And they're somewhere. No, I mean, it would definitely be the magazine

[00:09:55] would ever be called polka beat. How to treat your rosacea. Oh, the answer is always more beer. More beer in process chemical meat. But as you said this song, as we've kind of talked about this song started kind of coming

[00:10:13] up at weddings and bar mitzvahs at the time. It was thought that American audiences were the first to start calling it the chicken dance. And the story is at the 1981 October Fest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there was a German polka band decided

[00:10:27] to play the song and teach the audience there the dance. And so the event organizers wanted to find a duck costume to use as a visual aid to teach the dance and they scoured the city. But the only thing they could find was a

[00:10:40] local TV station had a chicken costume. Leave it to fucking Tulsa. Yes. I forget Tulsa exists all the time. And Tulsa something like this comes up. Yeah. Well, our friend Jonah is from Tulsa. So we're reminded by the existence constantly

[00:10:55] always mostly just to make fun of them for being from Tulsa. That's that's unfortunate. Yeah. So that's essentially how it became known as the chicken dance. This song has been recorded over 140 times. It has appeared on an estimated 40 million records.

[00:11:13] So I don't know if that's how many it I couldn't find a whole lot about like sales data because this song is so diffuse and there's all these versions of it. But if it's estimated to have been on 40 million different records, it's essentially public

[00:11:25] domain at this point, isn't it? The song itself. I guess I don't know if Thomas Verner made like a huge amount again. I could find almost nothing on this guy. He was only known as the dude who wrote the chicken dance song didn't even have

[00:11:37] like birth and death dates on his Wikipedia page. That is dope. Yeah. You think his gravestone doesn't have any dates. It just has a picture of a chicken on it. I hope so. A chicken stuffed strudel. Oh, God. That sounds so gross.

[00:11:51] They do savory beignets here and stuff. It's a thing. Oh, flaky pastry with like a nice herb chicken. Yeah. And like a light cream sauce. I need the shit out of that. Yeah. All right. We're already off like pastry time. Speaking of chickens. Speaking of chickens.

[00:12:06] Any of our listeners who follow my Instagram account are aware that I've been plagued by a rooster. So there is a rooster that lives under my house that has made it. Its entire existence revolves around a egregious torture of my mental state.

[00:12:22] I'm going to need like a super cut of your neighbor rooster as advertisement for this episode of the podcast. I can't believe it hasn't screamed yet. Like I as we go through season three, that we will hear the chicken and you will hear

[00:12:35] me like throw my headset down and chase it down the street at some point. Fair warning. I found one more little fun fact for you just for Hayden. So apparently in 2004 at the Cincinnati Oktoberfest Vince Neil of Motley Crew served as a

[00:12:52] grand marshal of the parade and this Oktoberfest in Cincinnati holds an annual world's largest chicken dance. And so when like footage of Vince Neil, damn it Cincinnati doing this dance like got out like metal fans like flip their lid and apparently

[00:13:10] VH1 had a show at some point called the 40 least metal moments of all time and this and this was voted number one. I want to watch that so bad. I miss old school VH1 days man. Oh yeah for sure. But anyway,

[00:13:26] a quick anecdote about the chicken for me before we get before we get to Farah fast the chicken. The other night I don't know why I'm going to say this on the air. I'm going to the night is 4am. The chicken starts screaming right screaming out my window.

[00:13:38] I snap at about 5am and I literally am waiting for me to show up on the next door with someone's camera because I was running down the street in my underwear with a broomstick chasing the chicken barefoot through New Orleans streets and the

[00:13:52] chicken is just running in circles around a car and making me look like a total fucking idiot. Like it's just like ducking and diving. I'm like slipping all over the place. It's like totally in control of the situation. It's it was it's really embarrassing.

[00:14:04] Do you know who the chicken belongs to? It's a feral chicken. There's a feral chicken population in these neighborhoods. Okay, so you caught it and murdered it. No one would care. No, no, I've actually heard people talking about it on the street who are getting tired of it.

[00:14:16] Get a vigilante gang together. You have your own version of the chicken dance. You were running around the car with a broomstick. You had a prop. You had a little stage. It's your own chicken. I was doing the chicken dance.

[00:14:27] I would have loved to have gotten video footage of that and put it as the soundtrack. Yes. I mean it may pop up on next door. I'll let you know if it does. Yes, please. I can't wait. Let's let's get into actually talking about the song itself.

[00:14:41] I mean they're talking about my life here instead of that song. That's okay. Just interject as you feel you need to. So to me, the obvious thing to criticize here is this sort of like circus kind of quality to this main melody,

[00:14:55] you know, which is to me amplified by the fact that we normally hear this melody played by an accordion, which is kind of a circusy associated type instrument. But I think this what's special about how awful this melody is, is that it comes across regardless of what instrument

[00:15:13] is playing the melody. So I found a version of this song that doesn't have the accordion. So here's a little bit for you. Ooh, got the fake harps accordion now. Sounds kind of sci-fi. Yeah. Apparently there are a lot of like synthesizer versions

[00:15:39] of this song happening in the 70s and 80s. I'm shocked. I mean, it's just, I don't know what, what was this guy thinking of when he came up with this melody? It's so dumb. Nazis. It's real dumb. It's like Keystone Cop Nazis maybe.

[00:15:57] I mean in that melody itself, the thing about it that is especially annoying is other than the circus kind of quality, I think is it feels like it should never in and just completely repeat? Oh, that's definitely a thing actually. I don't know if you saw that online.

[00:16:10] There are communities of people who will like listen to this song for like 10 hours, like on repeat and stuff. Oh my God. I mean, it ends on a normal like just like one chord arpeggio, but it doesn't have a normal like feeling.

[00:16:22] I mean, if you sing the melody to completion and sing that little da-da-da-da at the end, it's impossible almost to not hear it start over again. I think that's the point. Josh, I've got news for you. Nothing about the song should invoke a normal feeling. It's terrible.

[00:16:39] She's not wrong, buddy. I also don't like how normally this thing is, you know, in a group setting is performed where the tempo just increases to where it just gets obscenely fast. You can also go very slow. It's kind of the same thing as you remember the song

[00:16:54] that doesn't end from like the Lamb Chop show and We Are Kids like this is what it reminds me of. It's like this is same idea. Like I think it's intentionally meant to drive you insane. Well, I mean the example I think of is Zorba the Greek

[00:17:05] which is another one that just gets intentionally faster and that one to me has a nice melody. But I just roll my eyes when you get to this thing is let's just see how fast we can go and that's like the shtick.

[00:17:16] You've just completely entered the realm of novelty music when you do shit like that. I'll tell you what to hear in this really makes me think back finally on all of the excellent life choices I've made that have led me to this point without children. Yes.

[00:17:32] Like all I can think about by the second minute of the song it's like the undeniable need for population control within our species. Well, I mean the thing speaking of children like to me this I don't understand how this is broken out of the realm

[00:17:45] of the elementary school music class right? It like it has this childlike quality and maybe it's like a good way to teach children like a stupid dance but you can continue continually see adults because it started with adults.

[00:18:01] I know but I don't start it at October Fest Celebrations because it's easy for drunk people to do. There are three moves. All right, so you're going to tell us about the dance? Yeah, I'll say about the dance. Okay, so the chicken dance if you have somehow escaped

[00:18:17] your life never done doing have done the chicken dance good for you but it starts where you put your hands in front of you and you clap your thumb to your rest of your fingers like a little beak of a bird. Mew, meew, meew.

[00:18:31] You do that four times and then you waggle your elbows like wings four times and then you waggle your butt as you kind of bend your knees and get a little bit lower to the floor. It's the same amount of time as the fingers and elbows

[00:18:48] but you are not required to waggle your butt four times and then you stand up and you clap four times. It's very easy for drunk people to do. In theory you could do it with a beer in your hand. You can do this all one-handed.

[00:19:04] You also can do it seated which is a very important note that the wiki how on how to do the chicken dance with illustrations brings up and I think that that's actually a really good thing because you know polka populations have a wide swath of ages

[00:19:22] and some folks may. By wide swath you mean 60 to 98. I was like seven at a polka festival one time in Michigan. I have been there but yes, their children go to these things kids and strollers like little babies can do this

[00:19:39] and super old as long as they can move their hands can do this dance and then in the I don't know if you call it a chorus or a bridge if we consider the as the Lawrence Welk show described it beaks wings tail feathers and then clap.

[00:19:56] That's the core of the dance and then the be do do do do do do that part. I'm very glad you bring that up. Yeah, that you can like link arms with your buddy like swing your partner round and round which is

[00:20:10] where this could maybe be seen as line dance territory because that's a very typical line dance sort of move and then you can trade partners on the other eight count of that when I was a kid we flew around like airplanes.

[00:20:26] I guess their birds soaring in the sky. That was a thing that we did. And or you can like hold you know when you used to like hold your friend's hand and just spin wildly as fast as you could. That is also an acceptable move or the Titanic.

[00:20:42] Or everyone holding hands and skipping in a circle is an acceptable group move for that. If you ever see people doing this and there's not a child involved like why are we doing it? I don't know why I don't have an answer for that because

[00:20:56] because contrary to like most of the belief systems in this group chat people just like to be happy Josh. Yeah, that is true. I mean like it is kind of like when your little pure blitz it spans the generations.

[00:21:08] I think it is a thing that like everyone can do. I was watching a lot of videos of the chicken dance and the one that stuck out to me was the marvelous bright ideas video which is just a woman alone

[00:21:25] in a really bad chicken onesie in like a hotel ballroom. It's very sad looking but she does some interesting moves during the little flying chorus bit. The she does a little hula move. I'm ringing the alarm bell on time for chicken dance here.

[00:21:46] I want to touch on the lyrics to the chicken dance. Do any of you know the lyrics to the chicken dance? Well, there's been several versions this this producer guy brought to the States. There are several versions of it but I think the most

[00:21:57] common one is that and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Oh God. Oh, I have never heard those lyrics. Okay. What lyrics do you have the lyrics that I know the kid friendly lyrics are I don't want to be a chicken.

[00:22:10] I don't want to be a duck. I just want to be me or I don't want to be a chicken. I don't want to be a duck so I shake my butt that you add the like you change it to so I shake my butt

[00:22:19] when you're in like fourth grade and it's funny because it's butts right but then there's the horny teenager lyrics. Oh, nice. Y'all ever sang these lyrics? Let's do that. Listener explicit language misogynist language. Awesome. This is just you know I don't want to be a whore.

[00:22:36] I don't want to be a slut. I just want to get fucked. Oh my God. Those were in Flint, Michigan the horny teenager lyrics to the chicken dance. Getting dirty at the Bob Mitzvah. There's one thing I want to touch on about this

[00:22:52] we move on this going to infuriate Lindsey and it has it does have to do with the interlude that you brought up that where the song changes. The little donation. Where do you want to call it? It makes me think of one thing immediately and

[00:23:05] Josh has a clip of that one thing. Yeah, yeah, I had a note on this to myself. I mean, I actually kind of like that bridge melody. It's it's kind of nice and it reminded me even though

[00:23:15] it's not a waltz it reminded me of the blue danube waltz had kind of like a lilting quality of that but this is this is what Hayden thought of when he heard it. Which immediately made me happy. Lindsey just rolled her eyes because she hates curb your enthusiasm.

[00:23:36] The chicken dance brings happiness to Hayden. What do you what do you got on the YouTube on chicken dance? Yeah, just okay close out the chicken dance with a little bit of YouTube glory here. There's a general theme with these here but

[00:23:47] Mark says I miss being a kid but some time has passed and I'm an adult now. Cool mark. I can't say you just you exist. That is is that mark my father because that sounds like something you might say just lame.

[00:24:02] Soviet cat after that follows up with why am I drunk and an adult and also listening to this. That's what I was asking. Yeah, so it kind of ties back to you. There was a whole lot of adults on the message

[00:24:17] board is asking themselves what the fuck they were doing there and to close it out Bernard Beard says I broke my leg today. Do you mean the chicken dance? Don't know. Well, he can do it from a chair now. That's true storytelling but I don't know.

[00:24:33] It's hard out here on the streets. All right, Katnai Joe the origin of this song are not entirely clear but there's like evidence collected by folklorists that suggest it was a well-known tune in Texas and Louisiana in the pre-civil war era.

[00:24:51] But the first printed version of the song was published in 1882 so it's at least that old. I'm sure it was written with great intentions in that year. Oh boy. Oh yeah, absolutely. This is from 1929 and this version is by a group called Gid Tanner and his skillet lickers.

[00:25:10] Ha ha ha. Listener, Josh and Hayden are getting down to this. You know there's one thing in the world I do identify as it's a skillet looker. What does that even mean? You would never know Josh. Thanks. So but yeah, it was like a hoedown fiddlin' tune, right?

[00:25:40] And it had an associated line dance and this was popular throughout in Texas particularly throughout most of the middle part of the 20th century. But there was a research and popularity of the song after the release of Urban Cowboy in 1980.

[00:25:56] There was sort of kind of like a western trend at that time because of that movie but there's an instrumental version of the song in the movie. But of course the version that modern audiences are most familiar with is the 1994 version by Swedish Eurodance group Rednecks. Yeah.

[00:26:14] And that is Rednecks R-E-D-N-E-X. Hot. So this group was the brainchild of three Swedish producers who wanted to mix American country and folk music with modern dance and pop. Why are we talking about so much Swedish stuff man? What is going on? Well the first one...

[00:26:30] You know what candy sucks? Swedish fish, that's a shitty candy. It's the worst candy! First of all the chicken dance guy was Swiss and this is Swedish. Two different countries. No they're not! You know a lot of the same letters and it's cold there.

[00:26:44] No they're not, they just ski and eat meat pies. Yeah. Do they both have strudels Josh? Yes. Yeah what's the difference? So this band Rednecks was basically just a parody of like Southern stereotypes so like the performers in the group all had character names including Mary Jo,

[00:27:04] Bobby Sue, which was actually a guy. I guess they didn't get that Bobby Sue is a lady's name. There was Ken Tacky, Billy Ray and Mup. Mup! Yeah. Oh I love Ken Tacky. Also don't put your American gender norms on these Swedish people.

[00:27:24] My grandmother's on my father's side name was Willie Jewel, what's her name? Pretty interesting one. Nice. So the music video and their live performances had all the band members dressed up in like tattered hillbilly attire and fake rotten teeth.

[00:27:40] The music video for Cotton Eye Joe is especially cringe worthy. Yeah it's bad. This song first appeared on an album called Sex and Violins which was released in February of 95. That's so great. Nothing gets me going like a little skillet licking am I right? Yeah.

[00:27:58] Skillet licking and Sex and Violins. Mm-mm-mm. It's exactly what the American South is like right? I mean yeah, eating squirrels and fucking. That's been my experience. Eating squirrels and fucking. So this song would hit number one on the radio charts

[00:28:15] and stay for multiple weeks in a lot of European countries including Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Austria and the UK. It peaked at number 25 on the US chart and stayed on the chart for 20 weeks and was like number 93 on the year-end chart

[00:28:33] and it reached gold status in the middle of 1995. And surprisingly enough this group Rednecks like continued to perform and release new music up to at least 2018 and as recently as September of that year you could go on the band's website shop section

[00:28:51] and you could literally buy the band for 2 million euros. Buy them for what? As a sex slave? For skillet licking. No, is it your cooking? You own the band and rights to Rednecks for 2 million euros. I don't think anyone took them up on it.

[00:29:09] This song sucks listeners come on let's get it together. Yeah, let's do it. Let's buy Rednecks. This is like 2022 goal, $2 million. How much is that? $82. I don't know how math works. Wait is it 2 million euros or dollars? It's 2 million euros which is more than 2 million dollars.

[00:29:24] I'm gonna let Google tell me which that is. Oh shit. Well unfortunately guys I don't think I can do it anymore because when you click on the link to their website it no longer exists so. Oh man that's a lot of money. Oh no. 2.29 million.

[00:29:39] Were the Rednecks like a Eurovision band or were they like a band outside of Eurovision? I didn't see anything that they ever performed on Eurovision but they were just like I said just these three sweetest producers are like we have all this electronic dance music

[00:29:53] that's popular now let's just throw some banjo and violins in there. Is that banjo real or is it set the size? I couldn't really tell. Yeah, I had a hard time telling too. I want to say that samples of real instruments weren't that good in the mid 90s

[00:30:09] so my guess is that it's actually real banjo and violin. It may have been that they took a sample from like another song and just repeated it you know but I think the original source is an actual real instrument

[00:30:21] but one of the things I wanted to talk about is the lyrics of this song okay. So the repeated refrain from the Rednecks version which is you know if hadn't been for cut and I Joe I'd been married long time ago that comes from the original folk tune

[00:30:37] and the verses that the woman sings are like a modern addition to it but the original tunes lyrics are about a man named cotton I Joe that ran away with a pretty black woman whom the narrator loved and it's the orange again are not exactly clear

[00:30:53] but the story is either of a slave owner who was in love with this slave woman and then cotton I Joe still are away or it's from the perspective of a fellow slave who cotton I Joe like betrayed and took his woman from him.

[00:31:06] Either way shouldn't be written by a white man. Yeah it's about fucking slaves and like maybe like we shouldn't be collectively dancing to it at fucking weddings and shit. I mean it's just either way you slice it the song is definitely like another example in the large pantheon

[00:31:23] of American music that was created by black Americans and co-opted and made worse by white Americans. Yeah it's pretty much all we talk about anymore. By the south in particular. Yes and I mean my least favorite part of this song is actually that verse with the female vocals.

[00:31:40] Yeah it's awful. I don't remember that being in there at all. It's a chicken she's a chicken. Well to me it sounds like a really shitty nasally mimic of Columbia from Rocky Horror picture show and the melody is also really dumb it's mostly just one note

[00:31:58] and then there just leaps into it like a higher octave for no reason and it seems really... I don't know what two notes are for this song. What? They are what did I do to deserve this Josh and what the fuck is this lady part? So

[00:32:14] I have a clip of that but I'll say that the second verse it ends with like a stupid fake horse sound as well. But the melody and her singing are worse in the first verse so what I did is I took the first verse

[00:32:30] and then stuck the horse sound at the end of it. So it's a little more seamless but here is the verse of the Rednecks version. Saddle up listeners. Whip Swing and a whip Here comes Here comes Ha ha ha ha ha Yesterday when I was listening

[00:32:59] I was watching dance videos of this song and we were in the kitchen I'm just listening on my like little laptop speakers Josh thought that I had discovered a whole new version of this song because on my little laptop speakers the fake horse sound to him

[00:33:13] sounded like Hayden's rooster. Oh yeah, it's pretty similar honestly. Yeah he made me stop what I was doing and rewind it and replay it for him to know for sure if it was the horse or if it was a whole where did you find

[00:33:29] that version with a rooster? I'm just imagining like these Swedish producers sitting in the studio and be like doesn't sound authentic enough we have banjo violin but what about a horse? No roosters. The really super high pitch voice this is very indicative and of the same time

[00:33:47] as like Aqua's Barbie girl so that was like a very time and place sort of vocal style. Except Aqua could sing. I mean better than that it's really better. So this song also commits one of my heart and all sins of songs which is just people yelling

[00:34:07] hey, hey, hey in the background over and over. It definitely does that. That's how you get the crowd hyped? So I will say this though for as dumb as this song is it actually doesn't do a half bad job of like the arrangement

[00:34:21] I mean it's like four minutes long but there's like texture and instrumentation changes and instrumental breaks between stuff I mean the chorus repeats 11 fucking times which again is ridiculous. It's only the chorus. Yeah the chorus, there's two verses and the chorus is 11 times.

[00:34:41] It most closely resembles a song than the rest of these things we're talking about for that reason. Despite it being repetitive it does have more dynamic shifts than anything else going on. Yeah it's like actually put together and another fact to find is apparently

[00:34:53] it was somewhat uncommon during this time period for a Eurodance song to have the chorus sung by a male and the verses sung by a female. It was usually like you had a verse like male rapping and then a woman would sing the chorus. So like

[00:35:09] apparently despite the really horrific stereotypes of the American South they're being somewhat progressive although I am now just realizing that almost every song that we're talking about today except the cha-cha slide comes from countries that were former Nazi sympathizers so maybe maybe they're not the whole that progressive.

[00:35:29] Alright Let's talk about the dance for a little bit. Let's talk about the dance. So I would like to preface this by stating that the French are super obsessed with this dance. Oh yeah? Half of the videos that I watched were from French country dancing groups.

[00:35:49] I did not dig into like why country dancing is so big in France but it apparently I didn't think French people were allowed to dance. I think they just like making fun of America. I thought they just scowled over cigarettes and newspapers at cafes.

[00:36:01] I think these are different French people. Oh okay. So I watched a lot. So there are a number of ways to do the cotton eye Joe. Now it is all still very square and it is what would be called a four wall dance. This is a line dance

[00:36:19] and so you do it in four directions to all four walls and it goes with the music and all of that. Probably the most common one is like you touch to the front with your right foot. Touch, touch back, back then

[00:36:33] out in, out in. And the out in is you touch your right foot on the floor and then you bring it up and you smack it and then you touch it on the floor to your side again and you bring it behind you and smack it.

[00:36:45] Wait what are we smacking? Our foot. Okay, rats. Not dad ass. Hayden is very disappointed. So it sounds like would you say that this, the cotton eye Joe dance of the ones we're talking about today is like the more complex and like actual dance of all of them?

[00:37:03] I would say it is probably the densiest dance of all of them because it has a core but then it also has a bunch of regional variations. It's still pretty square but that is most country line dancing is like very square four counts of everything. So why

[00:37:21] does the techno version become so popular compared to like the line dance version? Oh because of clubs. Because of clubs. Now because I think that like bringing in this like Euro techno version of it it was able to reach a broader audience right? You can't play

[00:37:41] a banjo and fiddle only version of this at like a dance club um so the Oklahoma version is the groupiest of the dance and I have only done the Oklahoma version of the cotton eye Joe in Texas. I went country dancing in Texas

[00:38:03] twice ever and I did this once and this one is the most complex. It requires teamwork. You have to like stand in a pinwheel dance where you're like dancing all around the floor in lines of three or four or however many and it also requires counting

[00:38:19] not just the steps but the phrases. Now the Georgia version it is by far the most athletic. These kids are like beating the ground with their feet jumping up and down like asses out knees up wham wham it is it looks

[00:38:39] so tiring but the kicks are very big but I'm never going to try doing this dance because it looks like it requires way more work than my almost 37 year old body is ready to put in. I just almost googled Georgia Cotton Eye Joe

[00:38:51] dance and I thought better of it on my work computer. You should google the Ohio 4H Cotton Eye Joe because that's a longer video if you want to see. I don't want to type Cotton Eye Joe into anything. Well, Hayden, what YouTube video did you look at

[00:39:07] for your comments? The Bain one. The Rednecks music video. The trouble thing that we all discussed earlier. I got some gillbuns on this one guys. Let's start off with a simple one. Darius just said this is an example of nice music thank you. Darius loves it.

[00:39:27] Darius is into it and you know what funny enough I think what we just got through determining together was that and I never thought I'd say this is I think Cotton Eye Joe is the best song we're going to talk about today. It's got the most nuanced dance.

[00:39:39] It's got the most nuanced songwriting. What the fuck? I think it has also been featured on the most versions of Just Dance the Video Game. Damn Cotton Eye Joe. Anyway, moving on to are you all familiar with the Instagram meme account LittleBubbyChild? No. There's this brilliant I actually

[00:40:03] don't think it's satire. It seems like a satire of like a southern person who is like who just makes memes of like extreme southern talking that we would all like grow up with like I don't know, and localisms and things it's just really popular. Anyway,

[00:40:15] the reason I bring it up because I know some of our listeners are familiar with it and this comment reminds me of something he would post. Anyway, every day says in regards to, okay, I'll let me preface this by saying there's a big conversation

[00:40:27] on the YouTube comments about this about whether or not this video actually reflects southern life realistically. It's like a lot of people like asking like is this what it's really like down there you know? Jesus. This is in relation to that. Every day says as an American

[00:40:43] I admit that sometimes this sort of thing happens but somewhat crazier basically any given Friday night at a bar with a mechanical horse and they do play this song during band breaks. Reminds me of this place I used to go to but now it's closed down

[00:40:57] because of stupid government punks. It even had a cage people would dance in. Oh wow. Stupid government punks. Can you guess what his profile picture was? Is it the Confederate flag? It was just an American flag so same thing. An actual American flag or an American flag

[00:41:19] with like a gun on it? Or like a blue lives matter. It's an American flag with like a kick ass hawk on it. All right, I got one more. This is the best one of it all. TaviDude says this song is quote

[00:41:33] how the rest of the world sees the USA how the USA sees the south, how the south sees the deep south, how the deep south sees Alabama and how Alabama sees Montgomery. Poor Montgomery. All right let's move on to the next one Macarena. This song

[00:41:59] was originally released by a group from Seville Spain called Los Del Rio in 1993. That was beautiful dancing Hayden. So this group has been around since 1962 and it's consists of two guys Antonio Romero Monde and Rafael Ruiz Pedagones. Pedagones! I don't know why it's Italian Pedagones!

[00:42:25] Well because her boyfriend is Vittorino which is an Italian name. Yeah, that's true. I couldn't find a whole lot of writing in English about these guys and their career before the Macarena but what I could find described them as quote purveyors of world class Latin lounge music.

[00:42:43] So I wouldn't look for it. Sounds like somewhere at Lea Bay would hang out right? Exactly. So I went and listened to some of their earlier records and the earliest one they had on Spotify was from 1974 and it's some actually pretty decent Flamenco style tunes. Here's one called

[00:42:59] Sevillanas de las Cruces This is kick-ass. Yeah. Listener we are all about it. We are all about it. This is awesome. Castanets. The singing is great, the guitar is great. What's the time to be on that? I think it's in three. One, two, three, one, two, three.

[00:43:29] I mean it seems, I'm not an expert on Flamenco but it seems pretty authentic and I listen to that whole record. It's pretty cool. But the original version of Macarena was entirely in Spanish and it has quite a different feel to the later version and the story is

[00:43:45] that the lyrics of the chorus were inspired by the duo. They saw this beautiful Flamenco dancer at a party in Venezuela. So here's a little bit of the original Macarena. Oh these are, there are actual lyrics not just talking about her skin.

[00:44:15] Can we talk about this in the way? Oh yeah. I mean so it's different for sure but basic building blocks of what we know. Oh god, it sounds like Poppa is hacking up some chewing tobacco. But it's the same, you mentioned,

[00:44:33] you talked about Lou Bega earlier, it's almost the exact same noise from my mind. It's a little grosser here. It's a little grosser on that one. I can really hear the back of the throat on that one. It definitely has more of

[00:44:43] a Boylo sound to it. There's no creamy strudel cream to lubricate it. Oh yeah now we're talking. Lindsay's talking about spanking and lubricating. Man it's getting dicey on there. So this original version, like I said, was released in 93 and the record label, which was RCA, they commissioned

[00:44:59] a bunch of remixes by a Spanish house group called Fangoria and the intention was to try to get this song to catch on in the clubs and it kind of did in an underground way and eventually we're going here Hayden, your favorite place

[00:45:13] it would catch on in the club scene in Miami. We can't stay away, can we? Can't stay away from Miami. So it would get popular in the clubs and at first it came to attention of a local radio DJ because people kept calling in to request

[00:45:31] that the song be played on the radio but this is kind of weird. This radio station in Miami, apparently they had a policy that they would not play any songs during this time period that were entirely in Spanish. So the DJ kept getting these requests

[00:45:47] so he went to a producer group that he knew, the Bayside Boys to create a remix with English lyrics and this Macarena Bayside Boys remix is the one that we that you heard on the radio when you were in elementary and middle school. It's the

[00:46:03] famous one. It would at first appear on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of 95 it peaked at number one in August of 96 stay at number one for 14 weeks. This is really crazy. It stayed on the Hot 100 for 60 straight weeks which at the time was a record

[00:46:21] and would not be broken until 15 years later by Adele's Rolling in the Deep. Good on you Adele. I mean that's freaking nuts. That is pretty crazy. It was also the number one single at the end of the year in 96 the single was certified Quadruple Platinum in October

[00:46:41] of 96 which is a little over a year after it was released. Four times Platinum is not like the biggest we've talked about on this podcast but I think that's one of the quickest to get to that many times Platinum in such a short amount of time. So

[00:46:57] my comments are mostly I'll start off with the lyrics they're pretty cringe worthy it was one of those things where you hear this when you're a kid and you go back and listen to especially the English version and you're like what the hell?

[00:47:11] It's not like the chorus meant until this week and it roughly translates to give your body joy, Macarena your body is made for joy and good things. So this is what he came up with when he saw this Flamenco dancer in Venezuela and the English verses

[00:47:29] from this Bayside Boys remix are even worse. I mean basically the story is that Macarena is a woman who has a boyfriend that joins the military and then she immediately cheats on him by having a threesome with his two best friends. Yeah, that's what I got.

[00:47:47] Like, I'm not sure the exact translation of the original lyrics because all I could find was Google Translate I don't really trust that but the least I could tell was it was about a girl that sort of hopped around between boyfriends it wasn't quite as explicit

[00:48:01] as the English version but what makes it particularly gross is that the name of the song was named after one of the daughters of the group. Oh! Damn it! Like, it was a different name when he first came up with it

[00:48:19] and then he changed it to his daughter's name. Oh I don't like that. It's funny I actually have a lot of recent experience of the song unfortunately back when I was still in Seattle you know I worked for a restaurant called Baca Bac

[00:48:31] and the kitchen staff there would have like once a week they would play this like 90s skating rink mix of songs Gat Band Baby I'm serious and this was always on it so I heard it like probably 60 times in 2020 which is like a lot

[00:48:47] to hear Makarina in your 30s It got me All I could think about was like skating super hard to the song at age 10 This would be the guy you amped up for those skating rinks I would skate to Makarina

[00:49:03] and then I would just go play the rampage video game just someone drug me out of there until somebody played Share when Share dropped I was back on the skating rink Which Share? Life After Love man! Jesus Christ What's Share?

[00:49:21] One of my pet peeves that comes in the song is just when you have random talking in the middle of them That's sexy I think it's laziness It's musical content and it happens to me made worse because it's the grossest part of the lyrics So here's the version

[00:49:39] I'm talking about for those who don't remember I don't want him cause then him he was no good so I now come on what was I supposed to do? He was at a town and his two friends were so fine How do they have men?

[00:50:01] I forgot about this What do you mean what were you supposed to do? Not fuck them Don't blame her This is the same attitude as say no to this from Hamilton FYI How do I say no? She wanted to try a little DP action Jesus Christ

[00:50:23] Think about that next time you see your grandma dancing this song in a wedding We've already got grandpa hocking up a loogie on the track Maybe he's hocking something else up You know what I mean The last thing I'll say about the music of this song

[00:50:39] is I think it's probably the most annoying of the bunch to me because it's more of an earworm than any of them I mean the beat while it is repetitive at least has some interest because unlike the other songs it has like syncopation in it

[00:50:57] I really enjoy like Latin rhythms and feels in general so that kind of helps it get stuck in my head and you know even though I've never known what the lyrics meant in the chorus until this week it would still get stuck in your head

[00:51:11] which makes it more frustrating because it's just like it sounds like a bunch of garbled nonsense that you don't know and I think the melody does that so I think it speaks to the unique power of the song to like drill a giant hole into my skull

[00:51:25] and just stay there way too long This is going to be the one that's going to be stuck in my head until next week Really? I think Katnagio's worse for me on that one Okay, well we can agree to disagree Well so from like okay so

[00:51:41] the music I think the original song is actual music whatever the Beach Boys Who? The Bayside Boys Thank you Whatever they did to it yes makes it far more of an earworm However it does really but tiny 13 year old midwestern girls feel themselves

[00:52:07] right like oh boy never have I ever like shaken my hips and my shoulders together in such a way than at every single person and it made it like acceptable like that hand upon my hip when I dip you dip you dip song that's the song

[00:52:23] that like the kids are all like ooh we hope our parents are in the kitchen drinking the leftover wine at the at temple instead of like this song you can totally just like feel yourself get down with your bad self to the macarena you have a freedom

[00:52:39] of movement with the macarena that you don't have in some of the more traditionally sexy songs that are played why is um the dip song played at a 13 year old's party unclear but boy you knew who was hooking up at youth group next weekend for sure

[00:52:57] um there was a lot of hooking up at youth group yeah I mean how again how does this fall under the radar of parents it just seems like a story throughout the ages I'm sure it happens for kids now because they because the parents don't listen to

[00:53:11] the lyrics right I mean like maybe now we have helicopter parents they do but my mom this is Cindy Sorkin's favorite song on this list okay she would you've never seen my mother get on a dance floor so fast as when macarena comes on

[00:53:29] all of the other Sunday school teacher moms it is mom ville this song is for the moms and then the kids can like do it also but like it gets in your bones it gets in your booty I actually couldn't find a lot of information on this dance

[00:53:47] like I don't know the history of this dance like where we decided we were just slapping our hands at various parts of our body however there is a wiki how on how to do this dance there is also and in there's an instruct a ball and the instruct

[00:54:05] a ball is even wilder than the wiki how the wiki how has little animated gifts of like a girl in a gray shirt with no makeup on just like blandly doing the moves but the instruct a ball has photographs of a frat reject in like baggy jeans

[00:54:21] and a red adidas like three line zip thing and he yeah it's like skinny fred durst um and he full on grabs his butt on the last move because you're supposed to go you cross to the front of your hip

[00:54:39] you cross to the front of your hip then you take your right hand you put it on the side of your hip side of your hip this man boy fully grabs his non-existent ass in his baggy ass jeans and like grabs himself to show

[00:54:55] how to do it is it is so wild it is so wild and just like the language on all of these like instructables and wiki hows are so like oh my god with your hands currently located on your hind quarters begin

[00:55:11] to shake your hips from right to left in a rhythmic motion proceed to dip yes exactly when I dip you dip this is often Makarena Dancer's favorite part of the performance and they can use it as a way to express their unique style and movement

[00:55:29] all this popularity despite it basically being about a girl who gets Eiffel Towered well the guy in the instructable would probably try to Eiffel Tower a non-consenting girl what is Eiffel Towering let people look that up on the road even though all right fine yeah yeah no

[00:55:49] all right so the first the first YouTube comment was in relation to the noise we already talked about the grandpa clearing his throat that was brought up so I'll skip past that one but what I do have here from Ket Ket says this is posted over

[00:56:07] a year ago quarantine has finally gotten to me there's no other reason why I'm here it made me think back to all the crazy whack shit people were doing north to quarantine I would get on Instagram and just like play googoo doll songs and stare at the camera

[00:56:25] yes you do remember that we were all having some issues you never reached the low of looking at the Makarena though I got on the dance studios Instagram and went on a walk around the neighborhood talking about my existential dread on like day five of the quarantine yeah

[00:56:45] didn't take long anyway to wrap this up this is a really good one with maybe the key to human happiness here says I don't understand anything but I enjoy very much I know it's like man that is a very zen like attitude to take

[00:57:07] all right let's get on to the last song the one that started it all for us the macho slide the worst for last oh DJ Collet horn another one I think it's like a real one of those you can just record me doing it

[00:57:23] just sample what she just did perfect so this song was written by a gentleman named Willie Perry Jr aka DJ Casper aka Mr. C the slide man it's definitely the coolest name so far very non-strutily well it's from Chicago fewer strudels in Chicago

[00:57:43] this is the only one outside of Europe that we're getting into well I guess Kat and I Joe's technically originated in America but this is all American from the beginning here Midwest is the best yeah we know this song is the cha-cha slide

[00:57:57] but the original title of the song is in fact called the Casper slide part two there's no part one there is I found it you're gonna hear it here in a second so in 1998 Perry wrote the original Casper slide part one and the intent was it

[00:58:13] was for his nephew to teach an aerobics class at Balli Total Fitness it originally existed as a step routine without any music but then the guy's class became so popular because of this routine that Perry decided to put music behind it

[00:58:31] so the original recording of the Casper slide part one it consisted of Perry reciting the words to the aerobics routine over an instrumental song called Plastic Dreams by JD this is J-A-Y-D-E-E and it's like a ten minute long synthesizer weird jam thing

[00:58:53] you can go find it on YouTube the cha-cha slide is also ten minutes well the original one is six and a half so yes it is ten minutes the four and a half minute version is also ten minutes too long one of my notes for this is

[00:59:07] has any human ever made it past two and a half minutes and if so why I found the original version was the podcast called Every Little Thing oh I like flora found in an interview Mr. Casper this is a clip from that podcast

[00:59:25] that has the original cha-cha slide everybody clap your hands clap clap clap clap your hand to the right to the left take it back one hop right foot let's stomp left foot let's stomp cha-cha now y'all so that song that he took from the Plastic Dreams song

[00:59:49] is literally just that little organ riff for like four minutes before anything else happens and so he's literally just saying the rhythm over that I was wondering if they were matching the rhythm to him or he was matching to the rhythm of the track

[01:00:03] he was matching to the rhythm of the track so this is a pre-existing song that he just took you know he was a DJ in Chicago so he like he had access to a lot of weird music I assume but the popularity of the class

[01:00:15] and the song grew they kind of got in a pickle because they didn't have rights to this song so Perry had to re-record the song with his own beat to avoid copyright issues the Casper Slide Part 2 comes in and that happened in 1999

[01:00:33] so the song begins to become popular Perry is selling the song on CD out of the back of his car the good old days like you do and these copies spread throughout the dance club scene in Chicago

[01:00:47] and eventually it grew in popularity enough for it to be picked up by universal records which licensed and released the song in September of 2000 and re-recorded it they just took the version he already had that's why it sounds so dated even for 2000

[01:01:01] because this is a guy who's like an independent producer who's just probably recording who knows where but it became popular enough in the US to stay on the Billboard Hot 100 for 5 weeks but it only peaked at 83 so it was never like a big radio hit until

[01:01:17] it became hugely popular in PE class sorry no in the United Kingdom so this guy a BBC radio host he's kind of known as the Ryan Seacrest of the UK but who was Ryan Seacrest again? that's the American Idol dude he does Dick Clark's New Year's Eve thing

[01:01:43] he also took Casey Kasem's gig for a minute too bastard this guy is a hit maker so he hears this song and thinks this is going to be huge in the UK and mind-boggling enough it was released in UK in 2004

[01:01:57] it reached the number one on the UK Singles chart number three in Ireland and hit the top 20 in other European countries including the Netherlands Belgium, Italy and France so this just became explosive in Europe on the radio chart and of course now we know it mostly is

[01:02:15] the song that all the most awkward white people at the wedding try to dance to I want to interject here the fact that it's gaining radio pop I don't understand how this is a song dance

[01:02:29] sure if you need to get the blood flowing out at the assisted living facility where me mall is locked up this is a good song to put on but why would anybody listen to this song? I have a clip of a little later version I think from 2009

[01:02:43] that has updated sound and some musical content into it but it's still 4 and a half minutes of almost nothing it's just an instructional tape because it's a dance this is a communal experience that's why you listen to this song is for the communal dance experience like

[01:03:01] I liken a lot of these songs to disco songs where you aren't really listening to a lot of this music outside of the dance experience of it I'm never just putting on the macarena while I'm chilling at home folding laundry and I'm realistically not putting on Donna Summer

[01:03:25] queen of disco while I'm sitting at home folding laundry it is all about the communal experience so yes, getting radio play seems a bit mind boggling because you're not really dancing when you're driving to work or whatever but I think we also forget that people used the radio

[01:03:45] at gatherings as well or how many times did we call the radio station to request a song and wait for them to play it so we could hit record on our little tape recorder to have it for later a lot, did that a lot

[01:03:59] it still just doesn't seem enough to push the radio success it had for it to just be a communal thing what was going on in Europe in 2004 they had PlayStation they didn't have anything better to do they had PlayStation but so what I will say about the song

[01:04:15] is obviously the shitty production quality of the sounds are very dated but the clap thing what I don't understand is when it gets remixed and you still maintain the shitty clap sound so this is from the greatest hits version of the song from 2009 and

[01:04:33] they have all this other production stuff that gets updated but the claps are still there please everybody clap your hands I mean iconic clapping sound check it out y'all this song was a huge hit by then Mr. C couldn't get like 12 friends to come into the studio

[01:04:55] and record some real claps I think you're missing the point buddy yes the charm, it's the charm of it it's just like such a distinct sound I don't know I have no problem with them keeping the clap sound Josh I'm gonna turn around this one

[01:05:09] oddly the claps are my favorite part of the song so your favorite part alright I won't die on this hill but I wish you'd die on some hill you know I had never listened to the whole thing through I didn't even to today

[01:05:21] I mean six six and a half minutes long but there is a part in one of the versions where he mentions part three is coming real soon and so I found part three oh hell yeah I'm getting sad so a quick google search for the cha cha slide

[01:05:39] part three leads to a youtube video which was posted in early 2012 but from what he said it sounded like it was actually in 2011 it's like 20 minutes long in the last seven or eight minutes of it or the updated version but he's performing well it looks like a radio

[01:05:57] promotion thing but it looks like it's inside a holiday in ballroom I knew you were going here and it's in front of about like a dozen or so like Jared Fogle looking dudes you know just like really awkwardly not knowing how to dance

[01:06:13] I was really hoping you were going to say like the private event room in Chili's yeah that's what I was waiting for it but you went to holiday and instead which is pretty funny no this clearly had a higher ceiling than the private

[01:06:27] event room in the Chili's could provide but so here is a sound clip from part three so the quality is not great but I suggest everyone just type in cha cha slide part three and go watch the last like eight minutes of this video or so

[01:06:43] so here we go Aiden is head his head is hanging so low right now he's my best favorite when he says giddy up everyone does like a little lasso movement over their head I'm holding back tears this man Listener Josh was dancing in his chair

[01:07:23] with a shit eating grin on his face he's the only one who enjoyed the last 30 seconds of our lives it's really sad but I'm guessing that there's nothing about this dance that actually has anything to do with the cha cha no you do a little cha cha move

[01:07:41] when he says cha cha real smooth do dee dee dee dee dee dee dee you do a little cha cha move you know speaking of that too how was just going to the left and to the right funky it is for a bunch of white people

[01:07:55] so this dance has its roots in the hustle the foundational element of this dance is the hustle you grape find to the right you grape find to the left you take it back and then in the hustle where you kind of go down and back up and stuff

[01:08:13] variations on that you do other things in the cha cha slide you cha cha real smooth take it back now y'all that one's very funky because what you do is you step back on your right foot bring with in breathtaking shoulder with you

[01:08:27] bring your left foot to meet it and then you go back on your right foot bring your left foot to meet it again very funky very funky we're adding shoulders with the legs Hayden whoa okay that's not so good I would love to see Hayden

[01:08:41] do any one of these dances okay so this one is the most hand-holdy of the dances that we've talked about the other dances just assume you know the dance and get on with this one this one is straight up hell this one he is chiming in DJ Casper

[01:08:55] like a ghost flying the fuck all over the place just chirping in your ears every two fucking beats with something that you have to do next it sounds like work it is work this dance is work it is physical work it is psychological work but it's because

[01:09:13] children and boomers are useless like the people who are primarily doing this dance can we change the name of the podcast now children and boomers boomers are useless that can be our mission statement it tells you everything you need to do because of its origins in the

[01:09:31] workout space right this was started as a workout dance like a little jazzer size probably pre-zumba craze all of that again there is a wiki howl on this but there is also a dance.love2know.com article

[01:09:47] there are two different ones and they both leave a lot to be desired for as in depth as the explanations are of like how to do some of these steps then there is just in both of these articles just a there might be other things

[01:10:01] follow along with other cha-cha slide veterans I mean the language in any of these articles is just so terrible I'm a veteran of the cha-cha slide wars 2004 they're miscellaneous steps they just tell you about the merciless but they said if you want to throw yourself

[01:10:19] your own dance party you can simply purchase the song or inquire at local dance studios I tell you something if you come to my dance studio asking to learn for me to teach you the cha-cha slide I will say you know what the mission of our dance

[01:10:35] studio is that dances for everyone except for you yeah I feel like step one in the instruction of how to do the cha-cha slide by yourself is open your bottle of Chardonnay hahahaha I think on one of them the first step is like to purchase the song

[01:10:53] and put it on a boombox hahahaha burn it onto a CD and put in your boombox also Josh wouldn't it be to put an ice cube in your Chardonnay first before drinking? we were really coming at my mom right now oh no hahahaha I'm sorry Penny

[01:11:11] we have a very recent episode of the Sporkful and Jacques Pappin puts ice in his white wine ohhh I used to know a guy from Louisiana who would put, sorry this would be very quick but he used to drink red wine

[01:11:23] iced down like in a big sports cup he called it Creol T hahahaha that's awesome that's great so I spent a lot of time watching the original video and I would like to point out that the original video really how everyone can come together

[01:11:44] and do the Cha-Cha-Sci Kids news reporters it's in a much faster tempo too which I found odd I think it depends on what version your Botmetsva DJ uses well I'm talking about the music video version is like a remix that has it's got that little like synthesizer going

[01:12:02] boo boo boo boo and it's a lot faster than like the one I think we heard is it the one that the lady news reporter dancing at the beginning of the video okay sure I guess maybe that's just the one I'm used to I don't know

[01:12:16] but I will tell you in this music video there are two middle aged men in Kipas and these men are who we have Kipa is a yamaka is the traditional Jewish head covering you could see me about to ask you that question yes I could

[01:12:32] it's the head covering that Jewish men wear these two men are the only reason that this dance was played at every single Botmetsva of my sister's generation and I completely blame them they are having the time of their lives doing this dance

[01:12:48] so the biggest gripe that I have with this song in particular outside of just general trauma in the middle of the song he wants you to do five hops okay and it throws the whole rest of the dance off of the one and five count right

[01:13:04] so like you count dances one through eight and it goes and there are moments where just like any Broadway great song that's based on a jazz form where you should count music in fours even though you count dance in eight

[01:13:18] so there's a random what a dancer would consider a random four count left angling but you go to five hops everything else about this song is in twos and fours you cannot do five hops it gets everything off the counts two is one and two

[01:13:36] and then you hear it again on five and six and that makes sense also sounds like a cajun monster the boo-doo-doo get out of the boo-doo-doo when you're in the swamp the boo-doo-doo might come for ya so the middle part where he says let's get funky now y'all

[01:13:54] and he tells you what to do but there's like the music drops out and it goes every time you're supposed to stop like five six and one two it just doesn't quite fit right because you want the D's to be on like seven eight

[01:14:10] three four and seven eight and the fact that they're at the top of the phrase is very strange to me it's because we got off earlier in the song and then you just go back to work when he says go back go to work after the funky part

[01:14:24] I don't wanna fuck you DJ Casper I don't wanna go to work now I will say my very favorite part of the song this is why it's my favorite part of the song that everybody clap your hands resets you to the one eight sort of

[01:14:36] structure like the clapping of your hands resets you and I really appreciate that and I need that in my life well that's kind of one of the things that blows me away about this despite the fact that it's a very simple beat there's like no syncopation

[01:14:50] really some of the weird like what you're talking about the hits where you're supposed to dance stuff fall in weird places that make the phrases kind of awkward it's because the boo-doo-doo don't care none about your counting moves

[01:15:04] that I think Josh is what I was trying to say but I'm also like confined to a chair and I can't like to me that sort of like defeats the purpose of this being something easy for like people who can't dance

[01:15:16] no it's easy because they tell you what to do and there are sound effects when you're supposed to do them so like it's also easy because you don't it's like a bop it you don't have to count the music

[01:15:26] like the fact that we are it is like a bop definitely recorded this on a bop it originally um no the fact that like Josh that you and I are taking the time to count this song is so above and beyond any type of

[01:15:40] thought that would have gone into this that any person who dances to this song has ever done except for extreme dance does a video where there's like hip-hop dancers doing hip-hop dance it's actually a pretty good video we've truly descended into some weird circle of hell now

[01:15:56] we're counting we're counting out this song yeah so there's there's like a lot of other like versions there I would like to point out a highlight that I discovered on the internet last night which is the crazy frog version which is like a CGI blue

[01:16:10] frog in a helmet like antagonizing a mobster in a limo and then he finds a bunch of kids and makes them all just like shake their booties for the camera and the mobster in a limo has the idea to make this be a music video anyways

[01:16:24] blue frogs voice is you guys remember it's my favorite thing on the internet the little red race car it was just a picture of a red race car and someone goes I'm laughing I'm laughing it's the best thing on the internet

[01:16:42] but that's the blue frog's voice and so they just like remix those sounds in with a bad cover version of the cha-cha slide well you know that blue frog is right no is it from a video game that's the boo-doo-doo hahahaha nice that's good

[01:17:04] can we just talk about the boo-doo-doo a little more yes also this one is not on any of the just dances all of the other three songs that we have talked about today have been featured on the just dance epic video game franchise in some

[01:17:18] way or another but cha-cha slide has not and I think it is because it is the most structured dance all the rest of the just dances do elements of the dances that we know from these three the three other songs but they make up their own

[01:17:32] shit and I also just want to state while we wrap it up that there is another YouTuber called DJ Rafi who wears a shitty pork pie hat that says that these are instructional videos I do prefer a pork pie to a fedora though no no the trillby

[01:17:50] you mean pork pie hat and I think I mean trillby the little one that white ladies wear not to festivals but like old white ladies wear and they call it a fedora but it's smaller and it's not has anybody ever eaten a pork pie yes I haven't

[01:18:06] sounds good instructional videos on not the chicken dance but all the rest of them where he basically just like flashes across the screen the instruction of the dance and like does a little computer like animated blast when his foot hits the floor they're really bad

[01:18:22] again there's a lot of entertainment to be had on the internet for these I what else do I have anything to say on the dance of the cha cha just that I hate it like I have I have I have sat

[01:18:36] I have sat out the cha cha slide and people have been like oh my god is the cha cha slide Lindsay come to the dance floor and I'm like no will not I will go to the bathroom during the cha cha slide

[01:18:48] and I can't stay in the bathroom for long enough because then someone thinks that you're actually sick because the cha cha slide is so fucking long like the chicken dance is only like two minutes long Macarena is a little too long I feel like

[01:19:02] these are all songs are all a little too long so you'll do the chicken dance but you won't do the cha cha slide I will do the chicken dance if there are very young children because it is entertaining to them okay

[01:19:14] I will not do the cha cha slide and much like the cha cha slide this podcast is going on wait a minute he's gonna edit stuff let's see what Hayden has on the youtube comments on this bad boy

[01:19:28] oh the boo doo doo don't care none for the youtube the song is from Chicago not New Orleans I just need a ribbit sound now oh the boo doo doo Cajun frog I guess that's what we decided it is right Cajun frog on a lily pad

[01:19:44] talking to someone on the back of the way the frog is wearing a helmet in the video that I found I guess like somebody if you go down to the right bog in between here and Baton Rouge you may encounter the boo doo doo

[01:19:56] yeah it's on I-10 all the time he's right off I-10 always he's waiting to talk to you anyway youtube whatever unknown life says you know your PE class was lit they played this song hahahahahahahaha for us says this has been stuck in my head

[01:20:16] for two weeks now and I can feel no emotion other than pain and Julian P will take us home with oh god I'm French that's it oh god I'm French and in 2014 the summer are working for Disney World in Orlando they literally

[01:20:40] forced us to dance the cha-cha slide in front of guests I remember hiding in the food store sometimes to avoid the pain Jesus Christ a small little window into the misery of working for Disney there I just put a picture of Crazy Frog aka the boo doo doo

[01:21:00] in our chat that's pretty close to the boo doo doo on the website for like the main title of the episode yes do it I don't know nothing about Chicago but I do know something about lily pads oh my god oh my god

[01:21:18] oh man this is like the dumbest episode we've ever done I think yeah it's aka the best episode well it makes sense cause all these all these songs all these things are extremely fucking stupid so if that's it on the youtube stuff we'll wrap it up

[01:21:38] Lindsay thank you for joining us and lending us your expertise on bar and botmits of trauma associated with these songs Hayden I think we have our official season 3 mascot for the show now the boo doo doo let's get started on that thanks everybody for listening

[01:21:58] we'll see you next time music