One of the fun things I used to do during the late 80’s and early 90’s was to DJ for the dances at church. Once a month, we would have what we called “Super Saturday” when all of the stake would get together and have meetings. The meetings lasted most of the day and then in the evening, we would have a dance. I’m not sure if doing the dances was an actual calling or if we just agreed to do it, but Mike and I worked hard on having a nice dance and playing music that the kids would like but was still music that was appropriate to be played at church.
Mike and I would have meetings with Brian Cragun who was over the dances on the stake level. We would discuss certain songs and decide if it could be played or not. If it had any swear words or explicit sex, it was out or sometimes a song would be banned because it was just so horrible. The question we asked was what would the dancers be thinking when they heard this song. Would it be uplifting and good thoughts or dark and/or evil thoughts. Some songs were banned just for the message they carried even though they weren’t bad in and of themselves.
As Hip-Hop got more and more of a hold on American pop music in the Nineties, the job got harder and harder. I was worried that we would get to a point where we wouldn’t be able to play any of the new stuff and the dances would become “oldies” dances.
But, being the rebel that I was, every once in a while, I would have a song that I liked so much that I would violate the rules and play it anyway. One that I really remember was “Money For Nothing” by Dire Sraits. It is one of my all time favorite songs but some of the words are just not appropriate for a church dance. But one week, I played it anyway, just to see what would happen. Wouldn’t you know, a girl (not an adult) came up the stage where I was seated playing the music and asked me if I thought that was a good song for church dances. I told her to go away and stop bothering me. But, I never played it again.
Doing the dances was great. I had all the music and I think the kids liked it. When I quit doing it in the 90’s, Mike took over for awhile. One time after I had left Rochester to move west, Mike told me someone had broken into the closet where we kept the music and had stolen all of the equipment and all of the tapes that we had spent years compiling. I was just sick. All that work, gone. Mike started building it up again, but it would never be the same. I would love to meet the person who took all our stuff. They would have to drag me off of him.
Dad