Is your week off to a slow and sluggish start? Well, snap out of those Monday doldrums, because The Nest is about to give you a virtual shot of Red Bull in the form of another track that time forgot on the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy loves to rock the beats that will make the world wanna get up and dance, and the record her and the Sponkies unearthed this week is straight up 80’s fun! So hold on to your grasshopper hats, folks…
When me and my sisters were growing up, we didn’t have smartphones and the internet to keep us occupied on the days we didn’t want to go out and play in the street… but we did have a VCR and got HBO on cable, so we used the handful of blank tapes we were allowed to record whatever stupid movies came on back in the day when cable movie channels actually showed movies. And we’d watch those movies we recorded over and over… making them internal cult classics that we can still quote among ourselves for a laugh today.
One dollar! Trust me, it never gets old…
Unfortunately for me….. one of those movies that got played and replayed by my sisters until I sold the cassette to a skeet club (No, I didn’t… but I tried) was the 1985 dance film “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” I may have warmed up to incessant viewings of “The Care Bears Movie II,” but this piece of chick dreck needed to be buried out back with all the dead bodies. I will give “Girls” this, though… it had one single solitary redeeming quality. And that was the fact that it not only had the greatest dance song among the entire litany of 80’s dance movies, but maybe the best dance song EVER… “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be Bop)”
Despite what the YouTube video says, either the tape still isn’t in proper sync, or maybe the band never was…
NTTAWWT
Q-Feel was a British synth pop act that came up with this catchy little dance number for the Eurovision song contest in 1982, and the performance above is from the BBC show “A Song For Europe” which decided what song the UK would send to the continental music Olympics. Apparently, Q-Feel was too far ahead of its time since most British music fans of the day were still wearing combat boots and thought Johnny Rotten could actually sing. The song finished 6th out of the 8 entries that year, so Q-Feel and their spandex clad dancers went back to their day jobs directing air traffic at Heathrow Airport…
Hey, might as well make all that time sitting on the tarmac entertaining…
But the band caught a huge break when the song was picked up for the soundtrack of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” a few years later, which not only got the dance anthem international exposure, but even allowed “Dancing in Heaven” to become a big hit in Los Angeles for a time. Unfortunately, since “Girls” was a third rate dance film (Cyndi Lauper wouldn’t even license her well-known version of the hit of the same name for the soundtrack) in a decade when Hollywood was obsessed with movies set around cutting a rug, the film quietly went away once all of the old VHS tapes were destroyed, and the song went back to being a forgotten earworm of the totally tubular generation. At least we can thank my sisters and their cruel torture for ensuring that this song would once again get the spotlight it so richly deserves…
Happy dancing, everyone!
I’ll be back next week with another song that’ll break off a little something something…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I loved the movie… I was Janey that time and I wished we would move to chicago too….. but we landed in a small mountain-village in bavaria where tupper parties were THE event of the year … uuuuuh :o(((( I remember this eurovision song contest, they picked a duo named Bardo instead…it was a weird performance and a sh*tty song… a shame for the land of the beatles :o)
I’ll bet they don’t play this kind of music at Tupperware parties. And a group named Bardo is too close to Barfo to be any good…
I remember liking the song and hating the movie. Never seen the music video before now. My eyes are hating me, right now.
As cheesy as it looks now, I could totally see something like that on Solid Gold or Dance Fever or one of those other ubiquitous 80’s dancing shows. The tape is very strange though… I just noticed that it looks like it was spliced together from stock footage with several clips used repeatedly…
I know! The faces look Max Headroomish and the movements are choppy. I had this song stuck in my head all day so thanks! Slow, slow, quick quick, slow.
Hilarious! I so remember the song. The movie not so much. Rather glad I didn’t see it at this point – snorts with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
Trust me, you aren’t missing a thing! Unless you like unrealistic underdog movies about a girl and her dreams…
Oohh no. That has cooties written all over it. XOXO – Bacon
That’s a good dance song alright but I have to say my FAVORITE dance-to song of the mid-80s was Lionel Richie’s “Dancing On The Ceiling”………..it still makes me wanna dance and if I tried to at my age I’d break something. HAHA
Pam
Especially if you tried to get down on the ceiling! Not recommended for those who don’t want to break their necks…
I remember the video for that song was a real hoot too……………
The song sounds familiar. The chicks with the big hair and pointy white things in their hands are scary. The 80’s were so weird!
They remind me of the girls in the trash bags from A Flock of Seagulls’ video for “I Ran.” They look too creepy to be background dancers!
ody & biskit….de food servizz gurl doez not rememburr thiz vid… ore de moovee……. but now de Cyndi Lauper songz sticked in her head…….uhhhhhhh
🙂
They just wanna…. they just waaaaannnnaaaaaa!!!!
I love that drawing of ES and MBRS dancing!
Taken straight from Season 69 of Dancing With The Squirrels…
You have a pictures from “Trading Places,” but nothing else about it! Oh shame! That is one of my favorite ever funny movies, when Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy were new kids in town and it was SO funny. Add that to “Airplane,” “Hot Shots Deux,” “Blazing Saddles” (and a few other Mel Brooks and Zucker Bros. faves) and you have Garry and my entire humorous movie library 🙂
It is my second favorite movie ever, and a treasure trove of great humorous references. I had the picture already on file and I know I’ve used it in posts before. I was able to purchase it thanks to a hot tip about investing in blog futures…
I don’t remember the movie or the song which is odd but maybe it just didn’t get here. I also liked loved ES dancing with MBRS in his dancing gear and low buttoned shirt. 😀
There is nothing more handsome than a squirrel’s hairy chest! 😉
I agree!
That song just SCREAMS ’80s movie. I can’t imagine it existing outside of that context.
It would certainly belong in any time capsule from the decade. The video too, since it would be cool if future generations really thought we all dressed like that in the late 20th century…
Um…didn’t we?
Aargh! No-one should be that chirpy and energetic, let alone a whole band. And from your title I was all ready and excited for some Cyndi Lauper. I feel cheated 🙂 I’ll have to go find my CD of “Twelve Deadly Cyns” now.
I’ve got a Cyndi song on the list for this feature at some point in time, but it certainly won’t be the title song… I can’t go a week without hearing it either at work or on the radio!
BTW, I just looked up your CD, and the song I plan to feature is one of the twelve. I won’t say which one, though… 😛
Cool 🙂
I only listened to the opening, and I was right back to being a kid again. Oh the joys of having been born in 1980!!
The dancing baby…now that gave me an Ally McBeal flashback!
I love it when someone actually clicks on a link to one of my retro posts. That makes me want to do the baby dance…
I know you’ll reward the click with some very ‘interesting’ content that should not be avoided.