True story: I thought “Cottoneye Joe” was a Mormon phenomenon until I got to college and heard it in the real world. WHY couldn’t it have been a Mormon phenomenon?

Yep, the last church dance I attended was in 2006, and the dresses-for-ladies code was definitely still in place.

OH MAN for some reason our “DJ” (a deeply uncool kid who thought that being half-British made him cool) liked to play “Everybody Hurts” for slow songs. Even then I wanted to be like IT’S ABOUT SUICIDE YOU DUMBASS. My friends and I were obsessed with P.Funk and always tried to get some George Clintony goodness played at dances. Needless to say, that never materialized. Neither did “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Plenty of Creed, though.

You see, as long as I lived in Southern California, stake dances were one of the cool things about the church. Because it was SoCal, and because there was a wonderful diversity of talent, our stake dances always had live bands playing. Of course, this was back in the 1970s, and things have probably changed. Even better, I suspect that most of the bands were not made up of church members, and so the music was pretty normal. There was one band I especially remember, whose lead singer apparently was convinced he was Robert Plant and acted accordingly. Probably wouldn’t have gotten away with that anywhere else.

Oh, and a story, not about a stake dance, but a dance the one semester (well, less than a semester, actually, since I couldn’t stand it) I was at BYU, in Spring 1975. That dance featured a live band as well, and I found it so refreshing that when they played Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back”, they actually used the real words and didn’t substitute something tamer.

And one other story, about a young adult dance I went to after moving to Central California. That dance did have a DJ, one of the young adult men in the stake. About halfway through the dance, he put on “Time Warp”, from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” soundtrack. It was hilarious, some of the reactions that got. Lots of deer-in-the-headlights looks. I laughed my ass off.

I loved going to the Stake Dances during the early 80′s… I always got a kick when they played “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Fems. Seriously? Didn’t anyone listen to the lyrics.

Don’t forget the electric slide and cha cha slide. Pretty much anything that made awkward body movements look “cool.” I will always remember my first time at EFY when over 2,000 kids all elctric slid at the same time. I didn’t know it yet so I was almost trampled to death. I thought it was a fitting symbol of my church life to that point.

I went to stake dances in Northern CA in the 70s and the playlist included music by Chicago and Bread. There was always Free Bird and Stairway to Heaven. One of those (or possibly both) starts of as a slow dance and then inexplicably changes into an awkward faster beat that is impossible to dance to.

I now live in New England and have been to a number of “DJ’d” events. Cotton Eyed Joe, Electric Slide, Bunny Hop, Chicken Dance, Macarena, YMCA etc. are all songs DJs use to get everyone onto the dance floor and start dancing. Sorry, but these numbers aren’t just Mormon staples.

My stake played Cottoneye Joe every single time. Line dances were really popular, actually; they did Electric Slide, Men in Black, and some others that I can’t remember… someone in the stake made up a really stupid dance for the Ice Cream and Cake song. And then that got played every time, too.

What else did they always play? Hmm…

Skater Boi

Collide

Clocks

God Bless the Broken Road

Not a whole lot different from what they played on the radio, honestly. I actually had fun at stake dances for the first couple years I went; getting asked to dance more than once was a huge deal. Then they got rid of the dance committee, people stopped coming, and the dances got really lame. I think the last dance I went to was a couple months before I graduated, and it was a flop. I remember the kids whose parents *made* them go to church dances. That always struck me as weird. Still does, but then, everything about Mormonism strikes me as weird now.

Oh sweet and fluffy lord we had the worst music. Being in Texas we always had a few line dances: usually “Man I Feel like a Woman” and I can’t remember the other one. We frequently had Stairway to Heaven inevitably started after I had been asked by the single most awkward conversationalist in the room, who usually was 14 and hadn’t hit his growth spurt meaning he would be exactly at face-in-boob level. On the plus side, one week the DJ played “I want your sex” by George Michael. I don’t think he was ever invited back.