Scientific Principles of the Party Tape

Making a party tape is, first of all, only for the stronghearted. Those who dare small deeds and live small lives should content themselves with white-wine spritzers, Cheez Whiz, Triscuits, discussion of office politics and everyone home in time for Letterman. But for those who would risk all to win all, there can be no higher calling than the successful party tape. To see joy in the faces of your friends, to profess humility as they slaver their gratitude at the end of the evening, to infuse your enemies with envy so heavy they'll have to walk on their kneecaps, to have beauteous women wonder what you would play during sex (that's another essay)--these are the rewards of a good party tape. Why? Because people want to dance, want to stomp Death itself into your linoleum.

And the risk? To see hatred in the faces of your friends, to grovel before the cries of "Turn that shit off!," to hear your enemies suggest early retirement to the local disco, to have beauteous women know that your flaccid record collection is a direct reflection of your manhood--these are the consequences of a bad party tape. Why? Because people who are primed to dance and cannot dance to your bad party tape will stomp you into your very linoleum.

Let us now define our terms: A party tape shall henceforth mean a cassette tape scientifically formulated to induce humans in attendance at a particular party to engage in dancing behavior. Only science can save us from the bad party tape, and by science I mean the selection of songs that you know by empirical observation will cause dancing behavior. Unfortunately, humans vary widely in the songs they prefer for dancing behavior, so the nascent partyologist must therefore start here:

1. Do a demographic study of the humans who will be in attendance.

Music appreciators fall into four personality types: Extroverted Traditional, Extroverted Avant-Garde, Introverted Traditional and Introverted Avant-Garde.

ExTrads are the most numerous group in America. For them, music is a communal experience, and they derive comfort from turning on the radio and knowing that many thousands of other ExTrads are listening to the same song. ExTrads believe a popular song is a good song.

ExAvants are the most influential group in that magazine editors look at their behavior, declare it a trend, and pretty soon ExTrads are engaging in that behavior without knowing why. For ExAvants, music is also a communal experience, but it is defined by its separateness; that is, ExAvants don't care what they are dancing to as long as people with less status are dancing to something else.

InTrads experience music in a deeply personal way. At some point in their lives, usually during pubescence, they discover Truth listening to a particular artist or type of music and then spend the rest of their lives trying to re-experience that Truth. InTrad taste is distinguished by its narrowness; only mid-period Uriah Heep (or early Merle Haggard or doo-wop or Miles Davis or anything) is Truth.

InAvants live by this dictum from the Danish theologian S¶ren Kierkegaard: "When truth conquers with the help of 10,000 yelling men--even supposing that that which is victorious is a truth--with the from and manner of the victory a far greater untruth is victorious." InAvants, in other words, like bands only when they are the first to discover them and distrust those same bands when ExTrads start filling up football stadiums to see them.

Several psychologists at the New York Institute of Dance have recently started work on the Playboy Multiphasic Music Appreciation Test, which should be administered by the lay partyologist to his guests before (continued on page 172) The Party Tape (continued from page 112) the party to avoid tragedy later; but it will be several years before results are ready for publication. In the meantime, the lay partyologist must do some serious thinking based on my preliminary findings to determine which personality type characterizes the majority of his friends. This is crucial, because each type hates the three others. Viewed by the others as an unwashed herd whose taste stinks up the charts, ExTrads are mystified by music they haven't heard recently on the radio. Viewed by the others as twits, ExAvants think music that has made it to the radio is already passé. Viewed as geek ayatollahs, InTrads despise radio except for the one hour a month that the local listener-supported station does its mid--period--Uriah Heep show. Viewed as half-baked reformers with a minimal grasp of reality, InAvants don't have enough money to own a radio and envy those who do.

The situation is complicated by two important subgroups: ExAvant Politically Correctoids and ExTrad Ignoramuses. Correctoids are white people who refuse to dance to anything that is not currently popular among black people, while Ignoramuses are familiar with no popular music since they moved out of the dorm.

In any case, majority rules.

2. Invite every human you know.

All of them. No kidding. No matter which personality type predominates, they will not dance unless you create an intimate space, which means more people than you have room for. If there really is an excess, your acquaintances will leave and your friends will stay. You can also count on ExAvants not to show up unless the invitation looks very exclusive. And the InTrads will stay home with Uriah Heep, unless you're throwing a Uriah Heep party, in which case three InTrads who share your taste and one InTrad who wants to argue will show up (InTrads feel more comfortable at panel discussions than at parties).

3. Get a good stereo.

If you turn up a lame sound system, you get distortion, and that has a subliminal effect on the crowd. They will want you to turn it down and get back to office politics. Clear sound at high volume, by contrast, has an exhilarating effect. Your system must also include a cassette deck. If you rely on a turntable to program your party, your records will get scratched and covered with dip. Furthermore, if you succeed in getting your friends to dance, the vibration will make the needle jump, another powerfully negative subliminal.

4. To make your tapes, allow a full day or several hours a night over a week.

When there is potential to dance until dawn, you will need four to six hours of music. Depending on your attention to detail, you will need two to four times as much recording time as the length of the tape itself.

5. Program in segments.

When people hear music they want to dance to, they immediately want more of the same. If they do not hear more of the same, they get angry. But if they hear too much of the same, they get bored. Your tapes should therefore be arranged in ten-to-30-minute segments of songs related by genre, theme or feel. Which genre, theme or feel is determined primarily by your guests and, to a much lesser extent, by you. The serious partyologist does not use his party to educate his friends. You want to educate, go teach music appreciation. Musicology is not partyology. For example, I once had a friend (basically an InTrad) who felt it a terrible injustice that Lynyrd Skynyrd and Wet Willie didn't have more fans in Manhattan. Maybe this was a terrible injustice, but nobody wanted to know about it at his parties, which were so boring I'm falling asleep just remembering them. Most of the time, people will dance only to music with which they are familiar.

I prefer my cassettes at 45 minutes per side, though I know serious partyologists who go for 30 per side. The advantage of 45 is that if it's a good tape, you get a chance to build maximum momentum, because you are switching less. Longer tapes fewer in number mean less confusion, as all cassettes look alike in the dark. Less switching makes it easier to get people tired enough to appreciate a slow song, always a consideration when dealing with an out-of-shape crowd or a bunch of singles who want to rub their bodies together. The sole advantage to 30 per side is that you spend less time on fast forward and reverse when searching for a particular song.

6. Gear the segments to the predominant personality type.

A friend of mine once asked me to program her party, and from her description of the invitees, I deduced that they would be ExTrad Ignoramuses in their 30s. This would be a snap, I thought, showing up with three hours of late-Sixties dance music of the sort used in the sound track for The Big Chill. It turned out that the crowd was mostly ExAvant Politically Correctoids and--Lord God in heaven-- did they get ugly upon the discovery that I had only 20 minutes of rap and reggae. Sorta takes the shine off the shindig when people are calling you a racist. Hey, half the music was black; it was just old black. But they wouldn't listen to reason. So I cranked the volume with the bass boost up, blew my friend's speakers and left. Brute force is all Correctoids understand.

Fortunately, my friend's speakers were still under warranty, and she was able to return them as defective the next day. And instead of trashing the stereo at parties attended by large numbers of people in disagreement with my programing, I now take a cassette cued to the singer of the Naked Lady Wrestlers (available on the Not So Quiet on the Western Front punk compilation from Alternative Tentacles) denouncing his audience: "We know we present the quality music! And we don't give a shit who likes it [or] doesn't like it! It's just that you people are gonna hear the music that I deem necessary for however fuckin' long I feel like it!" That shuts 'em up every time.

The matter of race and party tapes is nonetheless delicate. As a practical matter, party tapes of all one race get boring rather quickly, even if your invitees are all of one race. Getting the right mixture of black and white on your tape can help lead to that joyous we-are-all-one feeling that will move your party from the OK to the legendary blowout category. The problem at a predominantly white party with a median age over 28 is figuring out which black music to go with. ExTrads, ExTrad Ignoramuses, InTrads and many InAvants know hip-hop and most current funk only through being awakened at three A.M. by black teenagers with boxes on the street corner. They will not dance to it, because they don't understand it; they associate it with rage and insomnia. On the other hand, ExAvants, Correctoids and some InAvants associate it with revolution and/or fun at the local dance club.

Depending, then, on the age, race, geographical origin, political leaning, economic status, religious belief and personality type of your invitees, you will want to select segments that appeal alternately to each group within your party and, within each segment, to pick songs that have the best chance of connecting with the other personality types. A typical 45-minute side might start with Girl Rock That Recently Dented the Charts: Eurythmics' Would I Lie to You'?, the Pointer Sisters' Neutron Dance, Katrina and the Waves' Walking on Sunshine, Pat Benatar's Ooh Ooh Song. This is pure ExTrad music. Each song has a driving, relentless beat and conveys joy. Each song has killer hooks familiar to anyone who listens to radio or watches MTV. Note that the first song in particular kicks ass (the first song of all segments must kick ass). Note also that none of these female singers acts like a wimp, which will have a salutary effect on any women who feel like wallflowers.

If you're planning to use this tape late in the party, now is the time to drop in a slow song such as Sade's Smooth Operator, which makes ExTrads feel like Miami Vice characters. If you're planning to use the tape early in the party, when dancing momentum is just being established, don't play this; your invitees will get mad at you for putting in a slow song. Give them a fast segment, sung by males for contrast.

If your party is heavy on ExAvants and Correctoids, you might want to lay in that rap segment. I'd suggest Run-DMC's King of Rock, because the heavy-metal guitar makes it more accessible to ExTrads. Then you might want to try something slightly more exotic, such as Doug E. Fresh's The Show. I would then close the set with Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight, a dance-club instrumental with a hypnotic melody over the usual synthesized drums.

But if your party is heavier on ExTrad Ignoramuses and InTrads, you might want to give them a flash from the past: a set from Otis Redding's Live in Europe or maybe three or four of the Dave Clark Five's greatest hits. For a final segment, you might bring it back to the present with Currently Popular Older White Guys (Phil Collins, John Parr, Huey Lewis).

Other possible segments: Early Beatles Cover Tunes, Phil Spector Girl Rock, Middle-Period Rolling Stones, Current Stones, Modern American Roots Rock (Los Lobos, R.E.M., Jason and the Scorchers), Jangly Guitars from the Sixties (Byrds, Bobby Fuller Four, Hollies), Protopunks with Guitars (Barbarians, The Leaves), Current Blue-Eyed Soul from Britain (Culture Club, Paul Young), Greatest Hits of Anyone from Motown, Black Guys Who Have Crossed Over (Prince, Michael Jackson), Black Guys Who Have Not Crossed Over (George Clinton, Rick James), Dementia from the Fifties (Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard) and dozens more.

Segments to avoid: Paul McCartney's Greatest Hits as a Solo, Disco Nostalgia, Almost Everything That Sold Over a Million Copies in the Seventies, Art Rock Except for Talking Heads, Stuff with a Lot of Tempo Changes, Helen Reddy's Comeback Try, Punk Rock Unless Your Invitees Are Punks, Songs That Mention Jesus.

Once the partyologist has mastered the genre segment, he may want to try a set organized by theme and feel. This is dangerous and is not recommended for unskilled hands. You might, for example, get inspired late one evening and decide to do a Small Hot-Rod segment consisting of Little Deuce Coupe, by the Beach Boys, Little Red Corvette, by Prince, and Little GTO, by Ronny & the Daytonas. This music does not contrast; it grates. It is further hindered by the high percentage of women who think that hotrod music is for dickheads. On the other hand, I am very fond of a Knock segment I once programed, particularly a segue from Little Richard's Keep a Knockin' to Amii Stewart's psychedelic disco cover of Knock on Wood. The production couldn't have been more different, but the insanity and crashing high hats in both songs made them an inspired pairing.

7. Experiment judiciously.

A party tape that is too familiar is boring, and occasional experimental songs must be worked in for novelty and for the sake of scientific research on future tapes. New songs should be placed late in segments so that they benefit from momentum established by more familiar songs. Suppose, for example, you did a Contemporary-Guitar-Based-Rock segment that started with Don't Worry Baby, by Los Lobos, and What I Like About You, by The Romantics. Both songs have been proved effective at inducing dancing behavior, and you'd have enough momentum to drop in something like Livin' on Love, by the Del Lords. This song has an extremely infectious beat and melody but is sung by a band that, through no fault of its own, didn't sell enough albums the first time around to become a household word. If the tune works, you will have another empirically proved song for your next party tape and your friends will be subliminally conditioned to a worthy new band. If it doesn't work, you conclude either that your friends are tired and need to sit one out or that the song simply doesn't induce dancing behavior and you must throw it onto the ash heap of musical history.

8. End with something surprising.

When you're down to the last 30 seconds of tape, do not start another song. Premature truncation will cause irritation among your invitees. Instead, put on some nondance music (such as Beethoven) or spoken word (Nixon's drooling resignation speech when he was pumped on Valium) to signal that the tape is over.

9. Write down the contents of each tape and put the list in your pocket.

Inevitably, some segments will fail. Your duty as a partyologist is to press Fast Forward and find something that does work. This is much easier when you know where to search.

Segment failure can be quite traumatic when some asshole tries to take over the stereo with his lousy idea of a party tape. Although I have been tempted to punch guys like this out, it is best to let them have the stereo. Unless they have read this essay, they will quickly screw up, and your return will be much more triumphant.

10. Mollify the nabes.

After all this thought and effort, your party tape stands in terrible danger of being ruined by a neighbor demanding that you shut up so he can sleep. Party tapes must be played loud, so there can be no compromise. The only way out is to invite the guy to your party up front. If he doesn't want to come, slip him a few bucks for a hotel room. If he's a salesman, buy something so he looks on you as a valued customer. Or give him a sleeping pill. Do anything. But get rid of him.

11. Remember the partyologist's code of ethics.

The point at which your invitees achieve joy through dancing behavior is the point at which your collection of invitees becomes a crowd. A crowd is a separate organism, single-minded and stupid. Ever see a standing wave at a football game? That's as smart as crowds get. This is OK, because being stupid is fun. Madison Avenue, however, has in the past year discovered the value of ExTrad Ignoramus music (it's all over television) for creating this crowd psychology. If you play a popular song from someone's youth, that person will enter a "state of heightened suggestibility," or a state of semitrance in which you can make him buy or vote for something as well as dance. This works essentially through false nostalgia; that is, a great old song creates the delusion that a person had fun in high school. The moral partyologist will not take advantage of this delusion by selling his invitees life insurance. The principles of partyology should be used only for the promotion of fun.

12. Make an announcement.

Keep the volume down when your friends arrive, so they can talk and get comfortable. Sometime around midnight, the partyologist will sense a point at which things must escalate to the wild and crazy (crowd ignition) or remain forever at the level of cocktail chat. Turn the stereo off and tell the invitees who want to talk to go into your bedroom. Then turn the stereo back on and crank the volume up all the way with the most empirically kick-ass song you have.

It is now time to forget this essay and dance.

track one

45 minutes of ExTrad music.

Operative Principle: If you're sick of it, they'll dance to it. On the other hand, no one should have to listen to Beat It again until 1993.

St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion), by John Parr. Bad movie but great tune to open four-song Inspirational Anthem segment. Very sincere, bordering on schmaltz--the correct atmosphere if you're looking to get laid by an ExTrad woman.

Small Town, by John Cougar Mellencamp. Lyric makes the ExTrad feel righteous, because he grew up somewhere. Other types may get hooked by insistent backbeat on the snare.

Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen. See above.

Rock & Roll Girls, by John Fogerty. Continued stoic philosophy but greater emphasis on the possibility of present tense joy.

Let's Go Crazy, by Prince. Pure present-tense joy. A world in which there is no venereal disease.

Delirious, by Prince. Let's stay crazy. Possibly a mistake with ExTrads, because this got less air play than some other cuts on 1999. High adrenaline should compensate.

Raspberry Beret, by Prince. More moderate tempo for dancers less aerobically inclined.

Start Me Up, by The Rolling Stones. Their best rock-'n'-roll dance song in this decade. Riff never fails to get everyone moving.

My City Was Gone, by the Pretenders. If everyone is moving, you've got momentum, and you can drop in something less obvious. Breathy Chrissie Hynde vocal and relentless bass sustain the Stones mood.

Shout, by Tears for Fears. Hypnodirge here recorded for purely scientific reasons: I have seen girls dance to it.

Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb, by Lowell Blanchard and the Valley Boys (from the Atomic Café sound track). Time to signal the end of the tape with something that sounds different. This sounds very different.

(Note: For older or especially horny ExTrad crowd, place slow songs before and after the Prince segment.)

track two

45 minutes of ExAvant music.

Operative Principle: If ExTrads have heard it, it's vulgar.

Jam-Master Jammin', by Run-DMC. Use the 12-inch single remix, not the album cut. The catchy metal guitar added to the single can trick resistant white people into dancing to unfamiliar black music.

The Show, by Doug E. Fresh. Has been known to induce brawls and furniture destruction, as well as dancing, in New York City clubs.

Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight, by Dominatrix. A couple of years old but one of the most hypnotic dance-club hits ever. Even people who've never heard it will dance to it, which is ultimate partyology.

King David's Melody, by Augustus Pablo. Slow, hypnotic instrumental on melodica for reggae fans. Particularly effective if your attendees are more stoned than drunk.

I & I Survive, by the Bad Brains. Political reggae, especially satisfying for Correctoids.

Chant Down Babylon, by Bob Marley. See above, plus some nostalgia value.

I Got You Babe, by UB40 and Chrissie Hynde. Familiar cover with reggae beat. May fool some non--reggae aficionados back onto the dance floor.

Take Me to the River, by Talking Heads. Semifamiliar cover by white guys who don't screw up black music. Try to get opening cymbal crash on last beat of I Got You Babe.

Double Oh-Oh, by George Clinton. Very intense funk with good melody line after gradual pickup from reggae segment.

Drop the Bomb, by Trouble Funk. Washington's go-go movement was much influenced by Clinton's various Parliament/Funkadelic aggregations in sound and satirical humor.

Bicycle Built for Two, by John Fahey. Ancient oldy on solo guitar says it's time to flip the tape.

(Note: Being a mass taste, Talking Heads create the illusion of being avant-garde, which is immensely satisfying to college students. The partyologist always goes for mass taste, even when he's trying to be ahead of it. Actually, the real trick with ExAvants is to put a guy at the door who'll tell them they aren't hip enough to come in and must wait on the porch with the Japanese tourists. Then play anything you feel like and they'll think it's fashionable.)

track three

45 minutes of InTrad music.

Operative Principle: Your InTrads must be homogeneous (e.g., Springsteen InTrads will not get along with Zeppelin InTrads). Arbitrarily, we are here programing for glitter InTrads.

Suffragette City, by David Bowie. Anyone as distanced from his emotions as Bowie is can be dangerous at a party where you want people to gator in their own vomit. This song, however, is so adrenalized that Bowie's chronic irony doesn't fuck it up.

Rebel Rebel, by David Bowie. A high percentage of women in their 20s lost their virginity to Bowie, so you can never have enough of him.

Sorrow, by David Bowie. New mood for contrast. Even people who are annoyed by his normal quaver (like me) think it's nifty here.

Rock and Roll Part 2, by Gary Glitter. Trance-dance chant-along.

Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah), by Joan Jett. Trance-dance chant-along cover. Adrenaline up a notch, maintaining high hormone level.

I Love Rock 'n' Roll, by Joan Jett. Adrenaline down one, hormones up one. Air-guitar classic for guys who would rather flail than dance.

Jeepster, by T. Rex. Bang a Gong (Get It On) is too obvious after egregious cover by renegade Durans. Besides being irresistibly catchy, riff is silly.

Mama Weer All Crazee Now, by Slade. More silliness, of which there is never enough on the dance floor.

Rock and Roll, by Led Zeppelin. Adrenaline can rise no further. One of Zeppelin's few danceable songs and then only by those who want to dance extremely fast.

All Right Now, by Free. Adrenaline way down, compensatory hormones way up.

You Shook Me All Night Long, by AC/DC. One of the very few metal bands that are at all danceable, AC/DC therefore rates with people who cut their musical teeth on glitter.

Highway to Hell, by AC/DC. Bon Scott's finest moment before he took the highway himself. Great sing-along.

All People That on Earth Do Dwell, by Kenneth McKellar at Paisley Abbey. Church music signals highway back from hell and time to flip tape.

track four

45 minutes of ExTrad Ignoramus music.

Operative Principle: If you were sick of it back then, it'll sound good now.

Brown Sugar, by The Rolling Stones. The rock-'n'-roll dance song of the Seventies. Even ExAvants who roll their eyes at the opening chords will dance to it.

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, by The Rolling Stones. The rock-'n'-roll dance song of the Sixties.

Street Fighting Man, by The Rolling Stones. Creates the illusion among older Yups that they weren't sellout wimps in their youth.

Bring It on Home to Me, by Sam Cooke. ExTrad Ignoramuses are entering the heart-attack years; a slow song after the Stones is a public service.

Can I Get a Witness, by Marvin Gaye. Gaye's voice has an amazing effect on women of all ages.

Baby Love, by The Supremes. Gentle sing-along of moderate tempo for those who distrust too much adrenaline.

Reach Out, I'll Be There, by The Four Tops. Now that the shy and retiring have entered the dance floor, we crank the adrenaline to a more intense level.

Think, by Aretha Franklin. This song never fails to pick up the momentum. The partyologist should have a tape cued to this song at all times so that when another segment fails, he can turn to this immediately

Do the Funky Chicken, by Rufus Thomas. I am the only person I know who is nostalgic for this song. But when I get drunk, I enjoy flapping my elbows, scratching my feet and clucking.

Stand By Me, by Ben E. King. A ballad--when I'm done dancing the funky chicken. I'm in the mood to rub my body against any available woman.

Shout, by The Isley Brothers. So fast, it coulda been thrash. Time for gator or superintense jitterbug.

Keep a Knockin', by Little Richard. So fast, the faint of heart will leave the entire dance floor to you.

At the Hop, by Danny and the Juniors. So fast it's too bad it was prep rock.

A Teenager in Love, by Dion and the Belmonts. Unrequited love is never simple. If you're 85 and have a case of the unrequiteds, you're a teenager in love.

In the Midnight Hour, by The Rascals. The back beat is just about the greatest ever recorded.

Symphony Number Nine, by Beethoven. Time to flip the tape.

track five

45 minutes of InAvant music.

Operative Principle: InAvants don't want other people to dance to their tape, because they're all a bunch of assholes.

The Collected Works of Yoko Ono, by Yoko Ono. No one can clear a room faster.

(Final note: Don't be intimidated by the number of songs you will need. If you research your demographics properly, you can get by with a few judicious purchases that belong in your record collection anyway. Much of the best dance music of the Fifties and Sixties is available on a wide variety of compilations that will provide several worthy cuts per usually discounted album. For newer stuff, buy singles unless you're in love with the artist. Your other option is to pay a d.j. to come to your home with his two turntables and several boxes of records. This can save you some time, maybe some trauma and probably not any money. You must also research the d.j. to make sure you're not hiring an inveterate InAvant for an ExTrad crowd. If he's a bad d.j., the risk is pretty much the same: Your friends will leave early. If he's a good d.j., the payoff is much lower: Your friends are going to congratulate him on his good taste, not you. In party tapes, as in life, we may conclude that if you invest no guts, you glean no glory.)