The View from the Dance Floor
by Bob Chamberlain

""... it's-the-on-ly-ra-dio-sta-tion/
that's-ne-ver-off-the-air... "

on the way in there's of course all the usual hangup inside the door with tickets and things and people all crowded up on the stairs and slowly meshing through the boxoffice bottleneck... groovy little girls bouncing up and down without really knowing bursting out with short little motions of sensual impatience as waveless of electronic sound teasingly spill rolling down the stairs promising everything... I want want want want want it/now now now now now/I want it/now... our eyes meet and we both share a loud silent laugh at ourselves as her boyfriend stolid and unmoved as yet buys tickets while she moves and flows in and out and back and forth, excited, knowing she's excited, trying to cool it, excited again...

two Washingtons and a Kennedy become a gray fortune-cookie with a little handwritten message "we love you" on the back in ball-point with a little heart which we give to the man at the top of the stairs... and this is it, this is San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom where they used to come dance to 1930's swing bands... mirrors, carpeted lounges, chandeliers, draperies on the ceilings, and a dance floor on springs... buzzing buzzing buzzing buzzing electric music buzzing through the airwaves, flickflickflickflickflickflick strobe light flicking energy quanta into the dancers and bouncing back out of the mirrors, ultraviolet tubes floating in space overhead making fuzzy double images when you look into them, finally coming down to a focus somewhere back inside behind the retina, somewhere you don't ordinarily see from, and at the far end the transistorized band of electric speakers swimming in a protoplasmic swirling bath of colors that rolls and surges with the music and spills over onto the floor and the spongelike listenwatchers...

I move around looking for the right spot, the best spot, the place where you can best see and hear and feel everything... then I see that what people are doing is just sitting right down anywhere right out in the middle of the wild exploding dance floor and digging it from there... but as I weave molecularly through the dancers into the center I see that as long as I keep moving with the music and the lights there is no collision-danger, only a soft touching and rolling, which is why we can sit here on the floor in perfect peace with all this going on all around us and over our heads, because we are a part of what's going on as much as the lights and dancing, just as we feel what is happening, so we are felt by those above us and around us... just as we feel, so we are felt...

then there's this little tiny kid, what, eight maybe, totally freaking out to the music, completely engulfed by it all, dancing with one person after another after another after another, and each time instantly able to mirror their personal rhythms and motions, no matter how basic, no matter how far out... a guy falls down on the floor -- the kid falls down; the guy falls down and rolls around--the kid falls down and rolls around and writhes in time to the music; they fall down together and writhe around like epileptics; then the kid is up and dancing with some sensuous thing who's maybe even his mother... "Donald Duck Electric Orange Juice, yeah, I remember, and then Mom used to take us someplace like the Avalon so we could freak out with the big kids, yeah, I remember, that used to be a gas!"...

that kid's got to be turned on, everybody's got to be... but you can't really tell, it really doesn't make any difference who is and who isn't because those who are take those who aren't along with them anyway, and they get high just by doing things and moving little ways they've maybe never moved before, or thought that they could or should, but the best thing is that they find out IT'S ALL OKAY... this super-ripe perfect Mod teeenie-bopper is just wailing away in the typical basic adolescent sex-machine mode but you can see that she's beginning to feel herself, beginning to feel herself move and

getting fascinated, fascinated by the fact that she feels good to herself just moving, rolling a little at the end of the mechanical movements, and the deep ache coming on from somewhere... and a little further in a thin blonde is just pumping away as fast as she can, harder and harder, backbone arching, grit your teeth, it's ok, squint your eyes, it's ok, shake your head, it's ok, scratch, bite, it's ok, it's all right, it's all right, it's all right!... and a girl with long black hair from modern dance class working through all the movements, pushing up against the limits of each one, testing, testing, what will my body do, how will it move, where can it go that it has not yet been, how can it get outside the control of learned movements...

and under the ultraviolet lights people dance with their fluorescent clothes, or with their waving hands and bare feet painted with fluorescent paint, or splashed in their hair or all over everything and eyes and teeth that glow naturally... and this mysto little African student wearing unthinkable combinations of European clothes with stuff hanging out of the pockets and dangling around his neck like some Pop voodoo doctor, dancing out some interminable tribal epic, punctuated with little mincing courtly swirls... and this big Negro in a white-striped T-shirt doing a bounding, springing, chorus kicking thing, touching ground as softly and as little as possible...

but the best is in the strobelight beam, where if you watch your hand move it's a multiple image descending the staircase, and as you dance, first your girl is over here doing this and then suddenly over there doing that and then down there doing something else and then up there doing another thing... your eye stops-down to take care of the brightness of the flash but doesn't have time to dilate in between, so it all becomes a sequence of still photos and you're inside the world's fastest motorized Nikon, a primeval movie, slowed way down so you can see one frame at a time... actions around you seem to UN-FO-O-O-LD in slow motion and you see that the couple next to you is part of the picture, and your shadow and their shadows, and that you are all making a picture together, and you begin dancing with them and they with you and you see that it's possible to open up the space between you a little and see that other people are doing the same thing and that other people are just dancing around through the whole thing, visiting one group after another, girls together, all combinations, or simply by themselves, everybody dancing together at once, the whole dance floor dancing together.

AND IT'S ALL OKAY... even when it begins to accelerate, led by the band, who are now suddenly into a screaming electronic Raga that makes everyone want to keep their feet from touching the floor, but still the rhythm accelerates until the notes pile up on each other in a painful dissonant chaos and people feel it but urge it on and on with shaking heads and pounding feet and suddenly they shake it all loose into a whole new idea, a faster, higher level rhythm... and still the rhythm gets faster and faster and again the notes begin to pile up and as they merge, the drone, the steady continuous electronic scream of one note, takes over more and more until finally everyone is dancing to a single unbroken tone, whose only possible rhythm is the absolutely pure oscillation which IS the electric sound wave of that frequency then suddenly it's over, and in the hardbreathing pause of recuperation and exclama tion, the only sound is a great sweating animal sighing in the wonder of release...

then maybe as the band tunes up again you hear a voice, a new one, speaking in incredibly clear tones through one of the mikes, saying, "...hey, all you people out there, I love all you people out there...", and as you turn and listen you hear how utterly relaxed and unhurried the voice is and how it seems to come right from the vocal chords without any attempt at modulation, and it's saying,"...it happened this afternoon out on Muir Beach and in the surf, and it happened earlier tonight at the Fillmore... ",, it's dead quiet now and everybody is listening, "...so I know we can do it here, tonight, right now...", and as the band starts out quiet and slow, " . . . it's so easy, all you have to do is just reach out, just reach out in any direction, it doesn't make any difference...", people are doing it, the band is picking it up, "...all you've gotta do is just re-e-a-ch o-u-t

and t-a-k-e t-h-e h-a-n-d t-h-a-t's c-l-o-s-e-s-t to y-o-u-rs, it doesn't make any difference whose it is, it doesn't make a-n-y difference...", it's happening, people are doing it, other people are doing it, joining up slowly, hesitating, long chains stretch out a hand to the uncertain as the sound becomes music, "just reach out and take that hand...", and it really is happening, the chains are link ing up everyone, everyone in the whole place into one giant skipping leaping dancing snake whirling in and out through itself, surging, rushing, contracting, stretching, faster and faster but never breaking, never colliding, hundreds of people together in an ecstatic crescendo of whooping laughter...

set break, just in time, god I'm thirsty, let's get something to drink, I'm dyin'... the bar is serving 7-UP, Orange, or Coke, wouldn't you know, and 7-UP never tasted so good, I have three in a row and watch the confusion of the Mr. Jones's when they find out there isn't any booze at this bar, "not even beer?" "Well, they've got Butter finger bars, and they're even better, you oughta try one," I tell him, "Myself, I'd kill for an apple," and leave him there to work it out for himself...

things are beginning to build up again with an electric tension of anticipation, this is the big one, The Blues Project... everyone slowly drawn toward the bandstand as they set up, down close to where it's at, the source... I guess the only place to be, though, is right down front on the floor at the foot of the bandstand, with the giant globs of the light show right in front of you like enormous amoeba floating in some colossal test tube... kind of scary, though, everybody is so opened up and sensitive and really defenseless, this thing could take us anywhere it wants to... you've really gotta have a lot of trust in these Tambourine Men...

just like that little kid, here he is again, right down in front of everybody, so close his shadow is part of the light show... playing with a flower, burying his nose in it again and again, then his eye, then his other eye, now turning around to play with his shadow among the amoeba, now over touching people, feeling them, rubbing their legs, their hair, their faces, while random notes of piercing clarity ring out from deep inside the huge speakers... god, when all those instruments start playing at once and the light thing starts moving, it's just going to blow that little kid clear out of the ballroom, let alone the rest of us!... funny, but he doesn't seem to feel that way... just wait and see whet his reaction is, if he can make it so can I, if it's going to be too much he'll be the first to feel it, so just cool it and watch Al Kooper setting up his organ in his new brown velour cape with the yellow polka dot lining and one of his 40 new L.A. shirts... long neck bony face black curly hair... he's some kind of mystic prince of the black arts...

a simple little run on the organ sends shivering echoes through my head and he's ready... Danny Kalb turns cautiously to the mike, and for a minute there it must seem to him like there's nothing but ears out there, wide open ears with straight channels into a thousand heads, and he says, almost under his breath, "...uh, good evening, ah, all you, uh, lysergic people... and suddenly it's exploding all over us, a thundering shock wave of sound, so strong, but so crisp, so clean so clear so electric and the colors are working and the kid is digging it and IT'S ALL OKAY...

the giant amoeba are surging back and forth all over the walls in rhythm, about to burst their membranes and spray everything with protoplasm... then across the green and white amoebic scene comes a sudden thick splash of blood red, splut!, from some ruptured artery, all over the band and everything and it starts to roll around and start mixing with the green amoeba, and soon it's in the center going schlupp, schlupp, schlupp, schlupp, in one big mess of dark dirty red-green bile in some pumping aorta... then as Kooper's organ pierces through the heavy layers of sound, a spray of hundreds of tiny transparent liquid globules splashes into the emulsion like needlepoints of life in the murky soup of disaster...

then the band is returning for another number and everything is still and quiet and somehow miraculously back to the green and white amoeba again

out of the stillness comes "Catch the Wind"..."...In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty..." echoes through the ballroom and the minds of people around me with faces buried in folded arms swaying back and forth backbones shivering, soft rolling agony...then a high piercing single electric organ note held on and on and on breaks loose the words into music...Kooper making quick wide-eyed glances of amazement into the crowd as he touches the keys and people respond, open-mouthed amazement at the fact of communication, turned-on and tuned-in...

a girl with a harmonica next to me is blowing everything to keep up with Kooper, I am taking a picture of a guy sitting in front of me with his back to the bandstand and head resting on a balloon staring up into the light projectors with colored prism glasses and jiggling them with the music, other people have sketchpads and ink, magazines, and suddenly this girl begins writing away like crazy on a torn piece of wrapping paper, writing letters to herself, notes to herself from her mind, thoughts that might be forgotten, thoughts like "memory is self-communication"; recording of messages for later playback, and you can never tell when you might think something like, "the world's first dictionary was not in alphabetical order...

out on the dancefloor there's a guy painting designs on people's faces with fluorescent paint, people are dancing with tambourines, portable radios, one guy with a thing that just gives out electronic beeps...electric clothes that send messages about their wearers...the band plays, the sound man amplifies and sends it out through an oscilloscope to watch, stereo earphones you can take turns getting inside, and the speakers for everyone, the light man sends it back as color, shapes and motion, people watch, listen, think, write, draw, photograph, paint, dance, play instruments and radios and each other and themselves; we are all one media, each a different way of engaging the electromagnetic spectrum, all channels, all frequencies at once...

""this is her first trip," and as she comes toward us I see her so relaxed that the excess flesh that she has probably been worrying and self-conscious about for years is just somehow forgotten and falling away with no attempt to keep it all in place with nervous muscle-tension, and I get a quick glimpse of a beautiful girl emerging to herself and to us as if for the first time... "Her first trip, Here? "Sure, my friends brought me here for my first trip"... "how's things, kiddo, walls kinda goin' like this?"... well, why not, I guess, after all it could be a pretty reassuring setting in lots of ways, everybody's in it together, nobody trying to get one-up by putting-down, nobody's setting themselves up as the enemy...

even the cops... going around shining flashlights on everybody's cigarettes... they're private cops, rent-a-cops, inside cops, exposed to the whole scene bit by bit just by being there, so there won't be any hysterical busts from terrified city police crashing in from the sidewalk saying what's going on here, stop that, you're under arrest... no, just a few harm less uniforms enforcing fire regulations and alert to bounce hostility or purse snatchers and tipped off by some naive FDA man to look out for pot... pretty soon they're eating apples and talking to people and just another part of the scene, another element to be integrated into awareness so the next time you see one on the street there'll be no need for panic reaction or bring down, just, ah, oh yeah, that's a cop, I know about them, that's cool...

somebody gives me a card saying there's another thing next weekend out at Muir Beach with eight bands; I see, it's already beginning to happen... about time they got it outside these arbitrary walls...wouldn't you know "Wake Me, Shake Me" would be the last dance for the night... then the manager-cat comes on and announces things like where you can go this time of night if you want something to eat, or another dance that's still going on if you're not ready to quit yet, and a coffee house that's open all night if you just don't want to go home...nice that for once somebody is concerned about what happens to you after you leave, they don't just dump you in the street and slam the door, even the cops smile and say goodnight...no wonder everybody's walking around with a couple of-transistor radios...gotta stay tuned in... "...it's-the-on-ly-ra-dio sta-tion / that's-ne-ver-off-the-air-rrrrrrrr... "

© Section 5, Aspen Magazine Vol. 1, No. 3