Ignored             Obscured              Restored

Back in the ’80s, I was a terrible club DJ — mainly because I didn’t really like dance music.  That’s not to say I didn’t like dancing, or that I couldn’t enjoy a song with a good beat.  I just didn’t have much love for what was then considered “dance music”: Madonna, Michael Jackson, Taylor Dayne, Paula Abdul, and Wham!, along with a steady stream of one-hit wonders like MARRS and Technotronic.

The music I enjoyed spinning leaned more toward New Wave — bands like New Order, The Cure, and The Human League — or Urban Contemporary acts like Salt-N-Pepa, Neneh Cherry, and Keith Sweat.  I also couldn’t resist throwing in some classic rock staples like John Mellencamp and AC/DC.

Then there were the really offbeat tracks — the ones that made no sense for a dance floor, which is probably why I loved them.  One of my favorites was “Peek-A-Boo” by Siouxsie + The Banshees.

I gravitated to “Peek-A-Boo” because it didn’t sound like anything else at the time.  A review on postpunkmonk.com perfectly captures its essence:

“… a succinct 3:10 mix of reversed percussion loops, accordion, sampled piccolos, and almost binaural hard-gated panning of sound in the stereo field. The embittered look at a stripper’s lot became a psychedelic hip-hop freakout in the band’s hands. Even today, I marvel that something this left-field became The Banshees calling card in America…”

That kind of kooky, off-the-wall cut was exactly what could pull me onto the dance floor back in my twenties.

Siouxsie Sioux was married to her bandmate Budgie for about 15 years — a famously tumultuous relationship.  Budgie recently wrote a memoir titled The Absence: Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer, set for release this October.  I recently read an excerpt, and now I can’t wait to devour the entire book when it’s out.

Enjoy… until next week.