I think it’s the greatest pop track ever bit each to their own.

Can anyone shed any light on why this wasn’t a 10?

Alison Limerick!? as someone said “WTF?!” – is it a coincidence that this figured high in the appalling ‘Mixmag”s top dance tracks from the mid-90s which they had temerity to bar readers from voting on. As I think I might have said before I can only think that a couple of their editorial staff came up on their first pills whilst this mediocre rubbish was being played one night as there’s no other reason for remembering it years later.

And I agree with the bewilderment about the Northern Soul track (owing to some friends who were Scooter Boys/Mods I like to think I have a pretty broad knowledge of NS and I’ve never even knowingly heard this track…did they pick it because in their ill-informed way they thought NS was ALL about obscurity so they went and picked a track that was pretty obscure even on the NS scene?

And why no hardcore/rave…?

well at least we should have been thankul for small mercies- I’d half thought that knowing the kind of people who come up with these things it’d be full of ‘student techno’ eg Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, Underworld, post-Firestarter Prodigy etc…

emotional connections to “Dance” Music come all too easily for some of us

Of course, it depends on what kind of dance you plan to do, how good a track is for dancing to. The top track in that list is a fabulous track for the leroc[*] dancing that was my chosen style before arthritic knees made it difficult. Tracks like I’m Not In Love or If You Leave Me Now are hopeless for leroc but great for smooching and that is also dancing. You can do a terrificly sexy salsa to Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares For Me. My absolute favourite track for lerocing to is was always Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark.

You can tell what a numpty I was when went into Virgin in Bristol in the early 90s looking for music to practice leroc to, and naively went to the section labelled ‘Dance’!

[*] Leroc is French jiving, that is 50s jiving modified for the less frenetic pop music of the sixties when partner dancing remained dominant while the anglo-saxon world moved away from it. Less flamboyant footwork, more sensuous arm and body movement. I for one regret the passing of partner dancing. It’s almost as if the world became afraid of intimacy.

uh, what?

As for Radio 2 listeners – isn’t democracy a tad overrated (as great a record as the winner is, is it really a “dance” record?)? I don’t approve of the idea of a preordained shortlist but presumably that was a safeguard to ensure that something like “The Birdie Song” or “Agadoo” didn’t come top.

Re: Chris Spedding – still touring with Roxy Music & Bryan Ferry (it all fits !) – he also featured on Ferry’s 1976 version of ‘Let’s Stick Together’.