The Steel Guitar Forum

I think there are a lot of line dancers who are into it just because it's a pop-culture fad. I hate to say it but it seems that maybe most people who follow fads and pop culture are exactly the kind of line-dancer the "posters" despise. Bob's also correct that some people just like to line dance. My wife is a good example, she accompanies me to all my gigs and will occaisionally join in on a line dance. She doesn't give a hoot about pop-culture or fads and I've never heard her say a rude word to anyone.

I don't think that line dancing is a fad. I remember teenagers doing it when I was in school in the 60's, and I remember playing "tush push", "electric slide" and "four corners" tunes for dancers in 80's.


It was never "cool" among the counter-culture set, though. I don't think that people line dance to be cool. I think they do it because they enjoy it.

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<small><img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b.gif" width="64" height="64">Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
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Bob, you’re not alone, I agree with you on this. When I was first starting out on psg about 8 years ago in S. CA, many of the gigs I did were at clubs where line dancing was very popular. I believe that if it weren’t for the popularity of line dancing I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play as many gigs and gain as much experience as I did at that time. My wife and I used to go out and take line-dancing lessons once or twice a week. My wife, who by the way is opposite of fat and ugly, really enjoyed it and was so glad that we shared the experience. And it also taught me some helpful things, like learning what the new popular songs were that people would appreciate hearing a band play. At that time when bandleaders would make up the set lists, they would quite often have the type of dance(s) that each song would lend themselves too, along side of the title of the song. It also gave the lead singer a built in dialogue with the audience by talking about the dances and counting them off. I’ve played gigs where there was a great deal of line dancing, also ones where there was many styles of various dancing, and concerts where there was no dancing what-so-ever. I enjoy playing for the line dancers as much as any of the other audiences and am not able to detect a lack of respect for the live band from audiences of line-dancers, or any lesser degree of knowledge or appreciation about music. I’m not saying these are hard cold facts, but I believe it to be a true representation of my experiences. -- Marc