A dance happy interlude

A criticism that has been levelled at this dance happy girl, is that I'm too nice about bands and music that I write about (with notable exception award going to Steve Strange RIP and Marti Pellow) but to say that would be to misunderstand the Dance Happy vibe.  And the clue, really is, in the title.

When Janie and I emerged blinking into the sunlight from the crazy 'early motherhood' years we wanted to remember who we were besides mummy.  A shared love of live music was the thing that initially gave us some time out and soon became a passion.

We played it safe for awhile, revisiting the bands of our misspent youth - 80s festivals, reunion tours etc and had a bloody good time.  

The blog was initially just our own record - we didn't publicise it in any way, it was just a way to look back and remember that we really did go out looking like that, and I did swap my hat for beers at a madness gig and that we were more than the sum of school gate and staff room small talk. 

And then, largely through twitter, we began discovering new bands.  Who knew?  Whilst I was learning Spanish with Dora and singing with Gymbo the clown, the rest of the world was still doing stuff: new, creative, fresh and exciting stuff.  We began listening to music that was sent to us and SOME of it we liked, a lot.  We started getting out to see some of these exciting new and heart breakingly young bands.  I kept writing in those small, dark, stolen times between work and being 'Mummy' but it was the publication of this research  You stop listening to new music at 33 that made us share the blog, initially amongst friends and family and then with the bands that we write about and more widely

But the blog is about music that makes us happy, good times, not being dead when you're older than 35.  We want to share the fantastic new bands that we find and hope that some of you like them too.  We want to shout out the bands that play for peanuts in sticky floored bars and fledging festivals and we want to feel good about doing it.

We do see bands that are frankly not good enough or are too generic, we saw plenty of 'MEH' at Livestock festival but we chose not to write about those.  Why would I want to piss on the bonfire of 20 year old dreams.  I would rather choose 3 or 4 that we thought were BRILLIANT and write with passion about those.  We want to share the music that we care about.

I write it as I see/hear it, so reviews are rarely entirely without criticism but it's just my own view.  

The thoughts of one utterly insignificant but very dance happy girl.