Author Archives: Kris

20 Nov

Go for a Ride Day

I have no idea what the point of this day is: maybe to encourage people to use gasoline? Of course, one could go for a ride all kinds of ways.

Possible songs:

  • Transportation Medley (includes Merry Oldsmobile)
  • Pink Cadillac
  • Ride, Ride, Ride
  • Charlie and the MTA (“He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston”)
  • …I’m sure there are more

Relevant Records

  • Transportation Medley (ESP 902)
  • Pink Cadillac (Red Boot 3017)
  • Charlie and the M.T.A. (Silver Sounds 206)
20 Nov

Top Songs

These are songs that I know have singing call versions that were at the top of the charts on November 22:

  • 1945: Sioux City Sue – Dick Thomas
  • 1954: Mr. Sandman – The Chordettes
  • 1961: Runaround Sue – Dion
  • 1963: Dominique – The Singing Nun

Relevant Records

  • Runaround Sue (Ocean 68)
  • Sioux City Sue (Dance Ranch 667)
  • Dominique (Pioneer 113)
20 Nov

Contras and MWSD

I talk a lot about contras, even through I’m a MWSD caller. I enjoy an evening of contras and traditional squares, and appreciate the skills of contra callers. If you’re interested in the differences between contra/traditional and MWSD, check out Explaining Traditional Squares and Contras to MWSD folks by Clark Baker, a C4 caller who also enjoys contras. Last year at the CALLERLAB convention, I had the pleasure of dancing a nice, flowing, contra style dance that Clark wrote. It incorporated a partner swing, a neighbor swing, and a relay the deucey…all in 64 counts, with a progression. It was great!

19 Nov

Online Encyclopedias

The world of online, free-for-all encyclopedias is very strange. A few days ago, I mentioned Wikipedia, where anybody (even non-registered folks) can edit anyone’s articles. As one might expect, there are problems caused by anti-social people, people with agendas, etc. Some authors have to spend a lot of time undoing spurious changes. On the other hand, for a group of serious, community-minded folks, the whole wiki thing is cool. I could see it used for a collaborative square dance teaching tips site, for example.

Another on-line encyclopedia-like community is Everything2. which describes itself as “grown from being a very simple user-written encyclopedia to a very complex online community with a focus to write, publish and edit a quality database of information, insight and humor.” Everything2 has an entry on square dance, with a fairly detailed write-up by “elflad” (who I think I know). Elflad has also written an entry on square dance formations, which is very detailed. Unfortunately, you won’t find Everything2 entries by googling; Everything2 keeps search engine spiders out of its databases. Also, you won’t find external links in Everything2; all links are to other existing or non-existing Everything2 nodes.

17 Nov

More fun with Google

If you want to see how big a semantic mindshare (at least on the web) you have with respect to a particular word, check out Googleshare. I did it with myself (of course), and Vic Ceder. Here’s how we rate:

  • Kris Jensen has a 0.39% googleshare of “”square dance””
  • Vic Ceder has a 7.06% googleshare of “”square dance””
  • Kris Jensen has a 0.72% googleshare of “”square dancing””
  • Vic Ceder has a 2.21% googleshare of “”square dancing””

Think about that: Vic’s name appears on over 7% of the pages that also mention square dance. And that’s just his name; I’ll bet it would be higher if we looked at pages that link to his site.

Here’s another way to have fun with Google: Googlefight. Stick in two rival keywords and see which has the most references in Google. Example: “square dance” gets 152,000 results, while “contra dance” gets 17,100 results.

16 Nov

Yodeling

Bill Peters made a gag out of never yodeling. Dee Dee Dougherty-Lottie always does at least one yodeling singer. Daryl Clendenin recorded a singing call, Good Callers Don’t Have To Yodel. Supreme Audio has a whole list of yodeling singing calls.

Can you learn to yodel over the internet? Try this course. And you can practice, along with Tarzan, Goofy, and a coyote, here. For lots of other links on yodeling (Country-Western and Alpine style), see Yodel Central. My new favorite place, Wikipedia, doesn’t (yet) have an article on yodeling.

Now, how did I get on yodeling today? Jeff Garbutt, an Australian caller, announced on the sd-callers email list that he was going to take down his web site (will be a dead link fairly soon), but that he was making the content available for anyone who’s interested. So I went exploring. I’d been to his site before, and liked some of his promotional writing about square dancing. He had a couple of links on yodeling, googling took over, and here you have it.