Swing Music from Dublin

There's nothing to connect these two songs except that I first heard them when I went swing dancing in Dublin last year. I was editing the first one this morning and it made me think of the second.

• Lisa Stansfield - Why Do We Call It Love? (180 bpm) (Amazon CD)
  My favorite part of this one has got to be the horns popping in mid-chorus. I also heard this one last week played as a quickstep for a ballroom competition on PBS.
• Eileen Ivers - The Rights of Man (128 bpm) (Amazon MP3)
  Leave it to Eileen Ivers to turn an Irish hornpipe into something you can swing to. Maybe more of a bluesy swing, but still.

West Coast Swing Favorites

Speaking of the Stanford Dance Weekend, I made a point of taking all of Michelle Kinkaid's West Coast Swing classes there. I didn't pick up any specific new songs to dance to, but it's as good an excuse as any to post a few of my favorites I've had waiting around for a while in a draft. These are all ones I first encountered when I took some WCS classes at the Dance Spectrum several years ago.

• Robben Ford & the Blue Line - Start It Up (126 bpm) - Amazon
  I remember Richard Kear teaching a whole class on different things to do to the breaks in this song. (Previously seen on Rowyn's Leap Day set list.) Update: Here's a video of Richard dancing to this song. Well worth watching, in addition to letting you hear the whole thing.
  
• Cake - Short Skirt, Long Jacket (122 bpm) - Amazon
  This one is interesting because the timing of the "short skirt and a long jacket" line is different every time around. Really keeps you on your toes.
• Chris Anderson and DJ Robbie - Last Night (122 bpm) - Yahoo, Amazon, video
  If you like wacky, unintelligible vocals -- and I do -- this song has 'em. (At least on DJ Robbie's portion of it.)

Stanford Dance Weekend

This past weekend was the 2008 Stanford Dance Weekend, a total immersion in social dance — "waltz, swing, salsa, vintage dances, club dances and more." In addition to learning new moves and dancing with nice people, we also picked up some new songs to waltz to!

• Tsuumi Sound System - Tuulin ja Hannun häävalssi (Wedding waltz) (140 bpm) This is a lovely Finnish waltz which Lilli Ann Carey played in her class on musicality. It has some nice syncopations which I imagine would work well for canter pivots.
• Peter Gabriel - Down to Earth (117 bpm) (Amazon | imeem) This new cross-step waltz comes fresh off the soundtrack of Pixar's new film Wall-E, which opened last Friday. Richard Powers played it for the first time this weekend in his cross-step classes. There's a few bars in 4/4 time in the middle which need to be edited out, and it's too long to play as is, but otherwise it's a fun new song to dance to.
• Kepa Junkera - Santimamiñeko Fandangoa & Ioaeoe (130 bpm before editing) (Amazon | last.fm) New to my collection, though Richard's been playing this lively, cheerful waltz for a while. He speeds it up and plays it as a rotary waltz which also works for redowa. I haven't tried it editing the song yet, but it probably needs to be shortened even after increasing the tempo.