The Song Remembers

On my way to the gym, a radio station played Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam's song 'All Cried Out.' This song is 20 something years old and reminds me of when I moved to Charlotte with my parents and sisters. We lived in an apartment in East Charlotte (an area I now know to avoid) and a little girl at the apartment complex could sing this song better than Lisa Lisa. She had a beautiful voice and every time she was around we asked her to sing this song.

For some reason this memory led to another memory about another song that in 1992 was every other song on radio station Gorilla 95.1 (now known as Kiss 95.1, but still just as cheesy); 'Freak Me' by Silk. In the Spring of 1992, I was in my second semester of my freshman year at UNCC and all my close friends were at other colleges. So one weekend I drove to Greensboro to visit my friend Crystal at UNCG. Saturday night we went to a dance club called Daddy-Os, which was probably the only club in Greensboro at the time. We were having a great time, the DJ was playing great dance hits and then suddenly we were all asked to clear the dance floor. The dance floor was dark with a mirrored disco ball spinning star shaped light on the floor and the back wall. Three male figures walk onto the dance floor. Two guys are dressed in black pants, black button-down shirts and thin black ties (all ties were thin back then). One guy was dressed in a purple suit with a black button-down shirt and a thin, purple tie (if you can recall the outfits Color Me Badd wore circa 1991, he looked like that). When the music began to play 'Freak Me' the three figures began to dance slowly, smoothly and lip-sync (YES! LIP-SYNC!) the words "Freak Me Baby, ah yeah, Freak Me Baby..." The ladies in the club began shrieking in delight (yeah, DELIGHT?!). As I stood there with my eyes wide-open and my hand covering my gaping mouth, my friend excitedly said 'OH! I'm so glad he's doing this while you're here! It's so awesome!' I might not have blinked the entire time because the image of a guy with a long, curly mullet and his two skinny 'back up dancers' gyrating seductively while lip-syncing into fake microphones is still burned into my brain. At some point I think I overcame my shock and cracked up. Towards the end of the song I remember my friend saying something like 'Now, normally I wouldn't find him attractive, but when he does this I think he is so sexy!'

I remember thinking 'Ah, so that's why there's so many lesbians in Greensboro!'