Flashback: "Dance Hall Days" by Wang Chung

While shopping for a client at a kitchen and bath showroom yesterday, this 1984 song came on and I had to smile. I always forget how lovely "Dance Hall Days" by the band Wang Chung is: dance-y and upbeat but with a definite undercurrent of a kind of delicate, nostalgic melancholia.

Founding member of Wang Chung, Jack Hues told Eric Greenberg on the "Just My Show" podcast, "It begins quite innocent: 'take your baby by the hand,' and then the last verse with 'take your baby by the wrists, and in her mouth an amethyst,' it's all a bit more hallucinogenic in a way, how things that start off simple get complex.

My dad was a musician, and he had a band that played in an old-fashioned dance hall. I used to play with him in that band, so maybe there's sort of the nostalgia that's in the track. It's all quite real, actually, as far as experiences that I had when I was first starting out playing, and playing in public.

Musically, it's that sort of rhythm and that kind of shuffly beat. Technically it's sort of like 3 against 2 (laughs), but we're not gonna talk about all that. It's a particular feel that was sort of unusual at the time, I suppose."

Take your baby by the hand
And make her do a high hand stand
And take your baby by the heel
And do the next thing that you feel

We were so in phase
In our dance hall days
We were cool on craze
When I, you and everyone we knew
Could believe, do, and share in what was true

I said, “Dance hall days love”

Take your baby by the hair
And pull her close and there, there, there
And take your baby by the ears
And play upon her darkest fears

I said, “Dance hall days love”
Dance hall days
Dance hall days love

Take your baby by the wrist
And in her mouth an amethyst
And in her eye two sapphires blue
And you need her and she needs you

And you need her and she needs you
And you need her and she needs you
And you need her and she needs you
And you need her and she needs you

Oh, I said, “Dance hall days love”

Dance hall days love
Dance hall days
Dance hall days love
Dance hall days

And I am absolutely thrilled to have discovered that, just a few months ago, Wang Chung recorded an updated version of "Dance Hall Days" supported by the lush sounds of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Please do give a listen and compare. And maybe it's just me, remembering my life and the texture of living in 1984, time passing, the subject of nostalgia in the song, and so many things gone or lost,...but this version is making me a little misty.

And in a final bit of synchronicity, Wang Chung will be in concert in a few days practically in my backyard here in Northern Calfornia.
http://www.wangchung.org/