Jolt Country

My 20-something niece asked me if I would DJ her wedding this weekend. There are two types or calibers of wedding DJs: the kind that both DJs and MCs the entire wedding reception, and the kind that hook up their laptops and play some mp3s for people to dance to. The former costs $500-$1,000 while the latter is usually done for free by family members who know how broke their nieces are. You can guess which tier my niece has ordered.

After attending graduate school for two semesters now with students literally half my age, it has been made painfully aware to me that I am out of touch with people in their 20s. My Star Wars is their Harry Potter. They think black and white television was just a myth. They wax nostalgic about their first video game system, the Nintendo 64. Their favorite version of "I Love Rock and Roll" is the one by Britney Spears.

Knowing that I have no idea what kind of music my niece enjoys, I asked her to provide me a playlist of suggested songs. I have spent the past several days obtaining these songs, and the past 24 hours "screening" them. Screening them sounds like a very old fuddy-duddy thing to do (even to me, a very old fuddy-duddy), but some of the songs set my alarm bells off. For example:

[youtube][/youtube]

I wouldn't call this song "offensive" per se, but all I can see in my mind is a room full of old people sitting around listening to some guy singing about strokin' it to the east and strokin' it to the west and asking people when's the last time they made love, and having everyone look at me and wonder why the hell I would play that at a wedding.

Here is what she has picked for the "Daddy/Daughter" dance:

[youtube][/youtube]

Maybe I am too used to this politically correct world, but I will crawl under the table if there are any Native Americans in the room when this song is playing.

And then there's this gem:

[youtube][/youtube]

Again, call me old fashioned, but I just can't imagine seeing the mother of the bride (or groom) out on the floor while I play this song about girls popping their pussies out on the dance floor and how the rapper is going to fuck them all because their pussies are wet. Mazel tov!!

So here I am, the day before the wedding, going through 80 songs, dumping a few, and replacing them with ones that at least aren't offensive.

Britney Spears' version of "I Love Rock and Roll" never sounded so good.

I'm so sorry.

Earlier this morning they sent me another request: The Carlton Dance. I've spent a few hours trying to track down "The Carlton Dance." It turns out they wanted Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual," which is the song Carlton danced to in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

[youtube][/youtube]

"The Carlton Dance."

The wedding starts in 5 hours and my mp3 dj software has stopped working. Also, the wedding cake fell off the table this morning.

She's only in her twenties, you'll probably get a few more cracks at it.

"Cake?" - Hyman Roth

pinback wrote:"Cake?" - Hyman Roth

No, leave the guns, take the Cannoli.

As for the guy complaining about the songs, be glad she didn't pick "I'll Make Love To You" by Boyz 2 Men as the Father-Daughter dance.

But there have always been songs that were somewhat suggestive.

Well, all I want is a party doll
To come along with me when I'm feelin' wild...
Come along and be my party doll
I'll make love to you, to you
- Buddy Knox - Party Doll (1957)

When I heard Clarence Carter's "Strokin'" I was thinking, this was the guy who gave us one of the schmaltziest songs of all time, "Patches," that manages to do a major country-and-western-level "the family is coming apart and the farm is going to be lost," in a song that's a ballad rather than C&W?

When I heard the Sugarhill Gang's song here I started to have the same reaction with respect to their most famous song, when I realized this was really the ancestor to "Rapper's Delight."

But would you grant them the right to play them?