It's Electric!
by Sean Carolan

June brings with it better weather, all the more reason to procrastinate on the yardwork. ("I couldn't possibly fertilize the lawn - it's too nice!") One doesn't have to invent new excuses to put off much-needed chores; often, they arrive in the mailbox.

Wedding invitations.

Within the spectrum of weddings, June weddings are a special breed. From the near anonymity of October weddings to the more genuine variety held in April and May, the month a wedding ceremony occurs in can say as much about the potential for the marriage's success as, say, the actual amount of compatibility between the future spouses. In the case of June weddings, the degree to which the ceremony is actually about the two people at its center, is probably at an annual low. If one were to take the heavily reported statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce and weight it by the month in which the marriages took place, one would find that June is the month that screws it up for the rest of us.

That sound you hear is my name being simultaneously crossed off the "A" list of a nation of brides.

Weddings, or more specifically, wedding receptions, are exercises in maximizing profit through guilt; if it's not the the bride's grab for a righteous dividend on the "how much do you really love me, mummy and daddy?" front, it's mummy and daddy's own need for peer validation that'll send the final tally for this over the U.S's average annual salary.

It's in the midst of this volatile mix that we find two oddities: the wedding DJ, and the music in their collection. For reasons far beyond anyone's ken, the songs in a wedding DJ's collection are unique in that (a.) they are only heard at wedding receptions, (b.) they are only tolerated at wedding receptions, and (c.) everyone there, from age 5 to age 105, knows them intimately.

Take the "Electric Slide". (Please.) This collection of island rhythms and horns that, if not actually synthesized, sound like they should be, combined with a cloying vocal, is below insipid. Sorry, it is. It makes "The Macarena" sound like "Yellow Ledbetter".

So what is it about this particular piece of music that makes the reception hall look like the street dance from "Fame"? Every unrealistic music video where dozens of hitherto unmotivated people suddenly begin to move as one, is suddenly rendered into the realm of the documentary; people really do this! (Though I doubt a group of put-upon women, inspired by Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield" video, have ever overcome a male agitator as Pat and he pals do, with the sheer power of their oscillating breasts ... but I suppose I just haven't been to those kinds of receptions.)

There's an elder-god-grade level of power that has been granted to that forsaken record, by dint of the fact that everyone at the reception not only knows it, but knows they must dance, under penalty of punishments unknown. Possibly they dance simply to make it go away. No matter. If one-tenth of that power could be invested in, say, "Shiver" by Coldplay, the world might suddenly become a better place. (That is, after the world got over the sudden demise of Coldplay, overcome by a lethal dose of surprise at the wedding reception that proved to be their last.)

And don't get me started on the Hokey-Pokey.

©2001 Sean Carolan