The Diet

Diets? Who needs ’em? Well, if you’re like Buddy Hackett, or us… you do. A few years ago, I came across a 45-second monologue about trying to lose weight, performed by the comedian Buddy Hackett. It was on a 78 RPM record on the Coral Records imprint. It occurred to me that it could make an interesting dance recording given the right situation and circumstance. Equally inspirational was the book Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture 1970–1979 by Tim Lawrence. In reading it, I saw parallels between the dance culture of that era and the indie-rock/punk/experimental music culture. It unlocked in my mind a genre of music long dormant in memory yet an influence so prevailing in a variety of current musical genres.