COLUMN: Silent Disco

I recently had an unsettling high school flashback.

Last weekend was Davenport's Alternating Currents, a marathon of music and art and theatre and one of the best festivals I've experienced in the Quad Cities. The organizers should be commended, and I swear I'm not just saying that because I was a part of it.

One of the features this year was a silent disco on the downtown Skybridge. It's a trendy new fad: a dance night soundtracked to absolute silence. Instead of being greeted by thumping bass beats, attendees are given a pair of headphones. Three DJs blare jams simultaneously through a wireless transmitter, and you tune your headphones to the DJ of your choice.

It's a novel way to enjoy dancing with your friends without having to scream over the music, plus it's kinda fun to see dozens of people dancing in a silent room. Gratefully, I was asked to be one of the tunesmiths this past weekend.

Each DJ could pick a different genre. They already had one guy mixing uptempo house music, and Planet 93.9 was there to provide alternative rock. I decided to throw caution to the wind and come armed with a set of 80's pop and new wave nostalgia. It's the music I grew up with, so why not? We had NO idea who was going to show up. We had no idea if ANYONE was going to show up.

It ended up being fairly packed, which was fantastic. EXCEPT it was packed with younger folks who mostly gravitated to the other DJs and looked at me with disdain like I was DJ Grandpa from Planet Yesteryear. Honestly, though, who could blame them? It's been FORTY YEARS since new wave was even a thing. When I was in high school, if I'd have gone to a dance and the DJ was bumping Glenn Miller, I'd have looked at him with disdain, too. There's just as much time difference between me and Glenn Miller as there is between today's kids and Cyndi Lauper. Time is a weird thing.

Thankfully, though, I had a small but magnificent crowd of 80s fans rocking out with me to New Kids on the Block and Duran Duran, and it ended up the most fun gig I've had in a long time. But the whole thing definitely made me laugh. Every time some kid walked by sneering at me, I felt like I was right back in high school (and the fact that it was being soundtracked to The Safety Dance and Electric Avenue probably didn't help matters.)

It made me think about those awkward days -- being SO desperate to fit in, SO careful to listen to the right music, SO concerned with wearing the right clothes. If I had to re-live those days, I'd either lose my mind or become the weirdo loner in the corner, doing my own thing and not caring one iota about what anyone else thought. If it were The Breakfast Club, I'd totally be Ally Sheedy.

Do kids today have the same sort of cliques we used to have? I'm inclined to think it MUST be different.

When I was in high school, cliques were everything. Even something as simple as your taste in music could define an entire caste system in our cafeteria. There was a table full of metalheads, a table of wannabe rappers, a table full of goth and punk kids. There was a jock table, a cheerleader table, a table full of nerds and a table full of theater kids. Navigating the social hierarchy practically required a map.

Then there was me. I was desperate to fit in with ALL of them, which thusly meant I fit in with NONE of them. I loved theatre, but I wasn't a great actor. I was a huge nerd, but I was terrible at video games. I loved goth music, but I also loved The Beatles and Run-DMC. And let's be honest, my mom pretty much dictated all my fashion choices, which was probably a good thing considering some of the choices in my present-day wardrobe. 

In the least creepy way possible, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a high school cafeteria today just to see what it's like. While I'm sure there are still cliques, I don't think they're as defined as they were back in my day. I spend an unhealthy amount of my free time in record stores, and I see what kids bring to the counter. Just today, I saw a school-aged kid buy 3 albums: Judas Priest, Billie Eilish, and ABBA. Where were these people when I was in high school? 

My guess is it's all thanks to the internet. With the advent of the information superhighway, you don't need to carefully choose what album to spend your allowance on. For a monthly fee, you can now have access to nearly every song, movie, and TV show ever made. You don't have to drive to Chicago to experience goth culture. You can just say, "Hey Siri, play Bauhaus." Kids today have it easy.

I'm the last person to give advice to today's youth. For the most part, I sucked at it. But if I had a do-over, I wouldn't change a thing. There's nothing better than finding like-minded people who dig the same stuff as you -- but you shouldn't ever like something just because you want to fit in. Listen and watch whatever you want. Trust me, when you get older, NONE of it will matter. 

In the meantime, there's already rumors we haven't seen the last silent Skybridge dance party. Hopefully they invite me back. Maybe next time I'll dust off some disco records and get even weirder looks.