Shine On Moonshine
let me teach ya how to jive & wail.
My mom and dad used to dance all the time. I remember it real clearly too, because sometimes I’d join in on their dancing and ask them how to do it. It’s kinda funny how I ended up being such an awful dancer later on in life considering I had two parents who would dance circles around anybody who dared to challenge them.
But I never noticed a pattern in their dancing, either. It’d just be that some certain nights, they’d flip on the stereo and rockabilly and swing music would start playing, big bands bumping with trumpets and drums and guitars, and my mom and dad would be throwing each other around in rhythm to the sounds, my mom’s dark and wavy hair tossing behind her while my dad laughed and held her.
When I was really little, hardly even five or six, I sometimes tried to dance alongside them, but I’d end up tripping over my own feet that were too big for me, and my parents would laugh some more and help me back up on my feet.
My mom would bend over to be at my eye level and hold my hands, telling me stuff about feeling the music within you in order to fully enjoy it, and I guess that’s one of the things that I took to heart and carried with me all my life.
“Luke, darling,” she’d say, “just have fun, that’s all that matters.”
And for a year or so, I’d dance with my mom or my dad, depending on whoever was in the mood to dance with me that night, and even when my mom was pregnant with my brother, she’d still sometimes get on her feet and groove. After Aaron came to be, I sat next to him in his crib and I’d sing out the notes of a bunch of instrumental jigs that I’d memorized over those months and he’d laugh until he cried, and then at that point I called Mom or Dad in to calm him down.
When he got old enough to at least act like he could understand some things, sometimes I’d stand him up and dance with him the way that Mom and Dad danced and taught me. And we’d all be together in the living room with the coffee table moved out of the way like normal, rock n’ roll clashing through the house with enough vibrato to power a chorus, and I remember being so dang happy I can’t even remember all of this without smiling.
Mom and Dad always had stars in their eyes when they looked at me and Aaron, and those stars seemed to shine a little bit brighter when it was all four of us having the times of our lives together.
So now let’s fast forward ten years later, and I’ll set the scene in 2011 as opposed to 2001, and I’m 16 now. Mom and Dad just aren’t around anymore, and my baby brother Aaron is a few hours south in Miami kickin’ it with his foster folks, and I’m up in Claymore at a gig with my best friends and bandmates, Plaster Caster.
Like I said before, I have awful dance moves. They point it out to me at every moment they can, but they don’t say it with vitriol – they say it with a smile and even try to mock my moves, but none of them ever come close to capturing my little essence. (I don’t know whether to be proud of that part.)
But sometimes when there’s a nice bass line that I can feel myself becoming nostalgic over, I just have to wiggle a little bit, even if it means totally screwing up the balance of the band, what with Soria hanging her head over the neck of her guitar and spinning around, and Ren letting his guitar fall limp on the parts he doesn’t play and instead grasping the microphone like his life depended on it, and Brendan just being a general madman and bobbing his head along with the beat he’s improvising.
And I’m doing this awkward little dance where I’ve got a halfway-hula going on with a big old smile on my face, and it totally doesn’t go along with “Sunglasses Are so California” but I don’t really care, and neither does the nice crowd we’ve attracted at the house party we’re playing. So I keep doing it. I keep trying to shine like my mom and dad did when they danced, not thinking about tomorrow.
But I never noticed a pattern in their dancing, either. It’d just be that some certain nights, they’d flip on the stereo and rockabilly and swing music would start playing, big bands bumping with trumpets and drums and guitars, and my mom and dad would be throwing each other around in rhythm to the sounds, my mom’s dark and wavy hair tossing behind her while my dad laughed and held her.
When I was really little, hardly even five or six, I sometimes tried to dance alongside them, but I’d end up tripping over my own feet that were too big for me, and my parents would laugh some more and help me back up on my feet.
My mom would bend over to be at my eye level and hold my hands, telling me stuff about feeling the music within you in order to fully enjoy it, and I guess that’s one of the things that I took to heart and carried with me all my life.
“Luke, darling,” she’d say, “just have fun, that’s all that matters.”
And for a year or so, I’d dance with my mom or my dad, depending on whoever was in the mood to dance with me that night, and even when my mom was pregnant with my brother, she’d still sometimes get on her feet and groove. After Aaron came to be, I sat next to him in his crib and I’d sing out the notes of a bunch of instrumental jigs that I’d memorized over those months and he’d laugh until he cried, and then at that point I called Mom or Dad in to calm him down.
When he got old enough to at least act like he could understand some things, sometimes I’d stand him up and dance with him the way that Mom and Dad danced and taught me. And we’d all be together in the living room with the coffee table moved out of the way like normal, rock n’ roll clashing through the house with enough vibrato to power a chorus, and I remember being so dang happy I can’t even remember all of this without smiling.
Mom and Dad always had stars in their eyes when they looked at me and Aaron, and those stars seemed to shine a little bit brighter when it was all four of us having the times of our lives together.
So now let’s fast forward ten years later, and I’ll set the scene in 2011 as opposed to 2001, and I’m 16 now. Mom and Dad just aren’t around anymore, and my baby brother Aaron is a few hours south in Miami kickin’ it with his foster folks, and I’m up in Claymore at a gig with my best friends and bandmates, Plaster Caster.
Like I said before, I have awful dance moves. They point it out to me at every moment they can, but they don’t say it with vitriol – they say it with a smile and even try to mock my moves, but none of them ever come close to capturing my little essence. (I don’t know whether to be proud of that part.)
But sometimes when there’s a nice bass line that I can feel myself becoming nostalgic over, I just have to wiggle a little bit, even if it means totally screwing up the balance of the band, what with Soria hanging her head over the neck of her guitar and spinning around, and Ren letting his guitar fall limp on the parts he doesn’t play and instead grasping the microphone like his life depended on it, and Brendan just being a general madman and bobbing his head along with the beat he’s improvising.
And I’m doing this awkward little dance where I’ve got a halfway-hula going on with a big old smile on my face, and it totally doesn’t go along with “Sunglasses Are so California” but I don’t really care, and neither does the nice crowd we’ve attracted at the house party we’re playing. So I keep doing it. I keep trying to shine like my mom and dad did when they danced, not thinking about tomorrow.
♠ ♠ ♠
:)