last night katsumi and i met up with two of our friends and headed over to the paradise club for some beat beat beats. i was a little nervous. i had never been to a hip hop show before and my dancing, well…

let’s put it this way. When I was 19 I went to a club in NYC. They were playing hip hop and that kind of stuff and my roommate, who grew up with beats and dated a jungle DJ throughout high school, was so mortified by my groove that she physically grabbed my hips with both hands and was like “THESE. MOVE THEM.” After years of practice, I think I finally got it down. Maybe. Or, you know, maybe not.

thankfully, the Paradise was packed with the usual crowd of hipster BU undergrads, complete with requisite thick-rimmed glasses and 80s earrings. Surrounded by that slavish devotion to indie fashion, how could I NOT feel just a tiny bit superior? In the end, I needn’t have worried at all, I suppose. The music was so kickin’ that I almost forgot I’m a lily-white phishead who had to be taught how to shake her ass in the basement of an alphabet city club. Plus the set was heavy on funk, familiar territory to me, what with the phish and the soulive stemming from my hippie college years.

But I never did get the whole “put your hands in the air” part of the equation. I guess I can’t concentrate on my ass and my arms at the same time 🙂