| Oh baby I think you are lost in the seventies,
The music, she ain’t what she used to be….
-Billy Joel, All She Wants to Do Is Dance
Fall 1976. I have sustained a major knee injury because the AstroTurf on Memorial Field in Champaign, Illinois – cutting-edge for the times but soon to be recognized as a danger to athletes and wannabes (me) - would not let me pivot and my leg was stuck as someone threw a block into my hip.
My knee came apart. Ligaments, cartilage, the whole thing… decimated.
I tried to ignore it, play on it, pretend it was just a tweak. I was a walk-on, always trying to “prove myself” and I didn’t want the coaching staff to think I wasn’t “tough.” But I couldn’t put any pressure on it. No pain but no stability.
I fell in a heap.
I heard teammates:
“Uh-Oh.”
“That looks really bad, man.”
“We need a trainer!”
My parents came to see me in the hospital. My mother cried, my father said, “Maybe you should give up football, buddy….” A couple of teammates came by and laughed and told me the season wouldn’t be the same, etc., etc., etc.
I was put in an ankle-to-hip cast. I spent four months in that cast - the entire football season and fall semester. Today? Today there would be laser surgery, four weeks of rehab and I’d be back on the field. In 1976? It took months of intense running and weight training to overcome and strengthen what had been repaired and put back together.
But…
I had joined a fraternity, Sigma Chi, where the weekend nights, especially Saturday, were home to huge dances. The house, a large three-story Tudor right on campus, just blocks from the popular bars and hangouts, was host to something called “After-Hours Parties.”
I had just joined this group the spring before. We defined “the luckiest of fellows living the jolliest of times,” and my first After-Hours Party was definitive. The 1970s disco music phenomenon was in full swing. The ‘dining hall’ was cleared of all tables and chairs, morphed into a giant dance floor.
It was PACKED with young men and women, most of whom I didn’t recognize (the entire university was, apparently, invited). There was an INCREDIBLE sound system, two giant speakers hanging from the wall, a turntable and a control board any state-of-the-art music studio would salivate over.
One of the Sigma Chi members would play a song (today it’s called “a track”), let it end, take the record off the turntable while everyone waited, and replace it with another record, hit “play” and the dancing would begin again: the Bee Gees “You Should Be Dancing,” KC & The Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” and “Play That Funky Music” by something called Wild Cherry were big hits that jammed the dance floor.
So. A random Saturday, September ‘76, there was an After-Hours Party. I couldn’t dance in my cast - so I just stood behind the guy who was acting as an ersatz disc jockey and took in the event. It was mesmerizing. Everyone looked like a movie star, smiling, dancing, laughing, defining the word party.
Until the music stopped. Then there was a lull… sometimes a couple of minutes (seemed like a lot more) as the person changing records tried to pick out the right song for the moment. If it didn’t please everyone, there were catcalls and insults and shouts of “Who’s picking the music?!”
I was standing behind the acting DJ – a frustrated fraternity brother nicknamed ‘Curly’ who said, “I don’t have to deal with this. Bye.” He left. There were a couple of hundred frustrated dancers – men and women – waiting for the next dance song.
I was standing there, a lug, the worst player on the worst team in the history of Big Ten football with nothing to do but watch and see what might happen. Maybe a riot? Is everyone gonna leave? Is this how it ends?
A fraternity brother walked over to the console and shouted to no one in particular, “This is the most boring party I have ever been to!” Then he looked right at me. “MASON, DO SOMETHING!”
“Huh?”
The fraternity brother, someone I admired (and still do) was a varsity wrestler for the U of Illinois, a true athlete, good student, and very respected member of the house. His name is Mick Roth. He looked right at me.
“You’re just standing there. Do something!”
Pressure.
I said, “Uh.. give me a microphone and I will” - thinking that would end this awkward moment. “Hey, if you want me to DJ, then I need a mic.”
Roth said, “You want a microphone? OK.”
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I watched as he took a pair of headphones, the big over-the-ear headphones with the padded edges and quarter-inch plug, and instead of plugging the headphones into the headphone “jack,” he popped them into the jack that read “MIC.”
He handed them to me. “Talk into the ear hole,” he said.
I did.
“Gimme a minute.”
My voice boomed out over the loudspeakers.
The place went SILENT. Everyone looked at me.
Mick Roth smiled and left. I was alone, with everyone staring at me, the guy with the cast holding a set of headphones by his mouth.
Showtime.
“YOU PEOPLE LOOK LIKE STATUES! LET’S ROCK!”
I grabbed a giant disc from the supply of big vinyl LP’s sitting on the floor by the turntable. I will never forget it. The song was a popular dance hit all over the USA called “Turn The Beat Around,”
As if I was a live DJ in a disco in New York or Chicago or LA, I said into the headphone speaker, “Time to make this a DANCE party! Here is Vicki Sue Robinson!” The track started right on time and the energy in the room exploded.
Instead of waiting for the song to end, I searched for the next tune to put on the turntable. Got it: “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by the Rolling Stones. The disco song ended and, holding the earphones against my mouth with one hand, and a record in the other, I said something to the effect of, “The women look great tonight, thanks for coming… some of my Sigma Chi brothers need dance lessons… I can’t tell if you’re having an epileptic fit or spasming from electro-shock therapy… either way….”
Buckets of laughter. Everyone smiling as I slip Vicki Sue off the turntable with one hand (mighta scratched it a bit), put the Stones platter on, dropped the needle on the groove leading to the opening riff of the “Let’s Spend” and the party picked up.
An hour later, the place buzzing with excitement and an incredible vibe, I was thinking of jokes and funny things to say (making fun of our football team, the dormitories, other fraternities, my friends, whatever came into my head) while finding the next song.
People were coming up to me: “Can you play KC & the Sunshine Band again?”
Or, “You gotta make fun of Donnelly… he’s been making fun of you all night!”
Someone I didn’t recognize came up to me. “Hey. Nice job.”
“Thanks,” I said, multi-tasking the next dance song and the next jokes, every endorphin in my body on full-alert and my synapses firing like never before.
“How much?”
“Huh?”
“How much would you charge to do this at my fraternity next week?”
And with that, as my career as a football player was ending, a new one was calling. ---------------------
My book, IRREVERSIBLE, is available at amazon.com HERE. If you’d like a personalized comedy video, please find me HERE on Cameo and I’ll create something for you and your people. Thanks for reading,
Taylor
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