This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Songs that got me on the Dancefloor in my Youth

I was recently at a friends sons 21s birthday bash … and yes I was in the quiet corner with the aunties, uncles, grandparents and luckily we were well away from the music. Still the music was loud enough for the odd “thats awful noise” , “terrible racket” and so on to be pleasantly exchanged between tales of family weddings, recent emmigration and copious other topics. Needless to say we didn’t stay til the bitter end , with a babysitter sitting at home and my drinking threshold lowered with age. One of the things I noticed about the night and some other nights out over the last while was the lack of “lads set” in the music.

In my day youd go to the disco, there’d be all the usual stuff played and any lad worth his salt wouldn’t be seen dead on the dancefloor. There were the slow sets and Then like a musical oasis the tracks that got the lads on the dancefloor came on. These were standards “A whole lot of Rosie”, “Love Cats” (or “Boys Don’t Cry”), “This Charming Man”, “Black Betty” and sometimes a bit of Madness with “Our House”.
In my disco going days I would have been away with friends family all over the country various hotspots in Laois, Waterford, Wexford , Kildare and of course Dublin and without fail some of these standard tracks would have come on. I gather that later on “Wheres My Jumper” got added to the standard track list.
There were songs too that were on the borderline of acceptability, the likes of “The Final Countdown” or a Bon Jovi tune.
Anyway I’m sure I missed a few.