Category Archives: Daily Reason to Dance

Daily Reason to Dance

Reason to Dance: Mr Tambourine Man

Mr. Tambourine Man (Live at the Newport Folk Festival. 1964)
Bob Dylan

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Full lyrics: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/mr-tambourine-man#ixzz2GTpoIMZB

I was inspired to look up the video while reading the OpenCulture abstract about a video of Johnny Depp reading letters of Hunter S Thompson. Read the OpenCulture page about it, but here’s the first video:

I found the Johnny Depp video while watching OpenCulture’s video of a “Jerry Springer-esque clip” of Hunter S Thompson being confronted by a Hell’s Angel on Canadian television. During the confrontation, the audience seems completely comfortable with the assertion that beating your spouse is necessary while beating a dog is wrong.

Again, I recommend reading the OpenCulture page about it, but here’s the video.

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Daily Reason to Dance

daily reason to dance: Baianá

Baianá
Barbatuques

This one’s a bit different.  Listen to this first (better audio) then watch the video to see how they perform it.

I stumbled across this track in 2006 on a mix of samba music in a podcast called Samba do Crioulo Doido.  The podcast didn’t have any information about the tracks and after a few months the podcast didn’t exist any more.  For years, with only the audio to run on, I periodically scoured the web for hints of who had recorded the track.  I played it for audiophile friends and even tried using shazam to recognize it when the app first launched.  No bones.

For obvious reasons, this song is permanently ensconced in my mind’s list of the top 5 most danceable tracks.  When I started assembling the list of reasons to dance, it was one of the first I wrote down, but I wasn’t sure how to share it.  At first, I sliced out the bit from the podcast mix and uploaded it to grooveshark, but then I figured it was worth giving Shazam another try.  After all, their catalog has improved over the years.  I played the track, pointed my phone at it, and to my disbelief some track details came up.  The group is called Barbatuques.  Ah!  After nearly 6 years, I finally knew the name of one of my favorite bands.

 

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