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My friend Bob had a Labor Day Party and he was determined it would be a lively one, cavorting like a sprite cajoling everyone to join his bacchanalia of gyration. It doesn’t take much to get me on the dance floor, especially when there’s a beautiful Colombian woman offering to teach me how to salsa. She grabbed my hands and pulled me in front of her.
“Watch my feet.” She commanded.
“1 – 2 – 3 – 1 – 2 – 3, watch my feet, you must come back to the same place with your feet – you see 1 – 2 – 3. Now you try.” I tried, but the wild man in me just didn’t like the counting or the prerequisite for a modicum of self-control. “Oh – you are too wild for this dance, you need to be free – you must go and be free!”
This was probably just a nice way of telling me to piss off out of it before I trod on one of her feet. So, off I went prancing and twirling like Ghengis Khan’s version of The Nutcracker Sweet – dancing the only way I know how which I guess might be described as wild abandon. That might have been the end of it, except I got the bright idea of showing the Senora a dance of my own.
I’d just been to Boston to see The English Beat with my wife and Pino (the BBB’s guitarist) and his wife. My head had been filled with the sounds of their fantastically brilliant show ever since, so I asked the D.J. if he had any English Beat…“Of course I do – which song do you want?” Seconds later I was doing some deep Skankin’ to the amphetamine beat…
Something shows in your face
Aren’t you forgetting yourself?
Nearly let your mask slip
Twist and crawl, twist and crawl, twist and crawl,
twist and crawl, twist and crawl, twist and crawl…
I was showing off, thinking something like… Hey I might not know how to follow the rules of salsa, but look at me skankin’! Suddenly I felt a sensation like a baseball bat thump into the back of my leg. Until that moment I felt like I was nineteen again pumping round the dance floors of Liverpool. But the truth was a shocker, I was crumpled in a heap on a dance floor (lawn) in Florence being asked by a well meaning partygoer – “Are you over 40?”
If Achilles was anything he was a man who believed his own press releases, so I’m truly sorry that I can’t be with you at The Iron Horse this Saturday, but we’ll make up for it at the St Patrick’s gig, and maybe we’ll even add ‘Twist and Crawl’ to our repertoire. I’ll be singing it, that is, supported by the best Jiggabilly Punk band in the world and my newly attached Achilles tendon.
So until St. Pat’s, this is John Allen saying – “Ahh, Ooh,Ouch!
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Wipe away your tears you legions of Bollocks fans for we have taken this twist in stride and rescheduled the Big Bad Bollocks Halfway to St. Patrick's day show for St. Patrick's Day proper, Thursday, March 17th, 2011, 7PM at the Iron Horse. Tickets go on sale shortly.
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