The week started badly when Mitch Ryder, visiting to distract us from deadline, opined over his beer that James Brown had created disco years ago. Now, I can take bad news as well as anybody; when I'd picked the last particle of glass out of his face I begged to differ.

James Brown may attempt disco, I replied calmly ; he may assemble disco musicians to play disco for the benefit of disco dancers but he is incapable of disco becaused he is James Brown. So he recorded a song where he chanted "Jam" over and over with a lot of hihatting, thumping and small animal abuse in the background. He did the same thing ten years before disco, singing "Popcorn" instead.

It seems there's never been more of a cultural war going on, dance-wise. Half the nation are pogoing themselves senseless, and the other half are wearing their polyester suits out years ahead of schedule, following in the Neanderthal footsteps of their hoofing herb, John Travolta. Is there any sight more awe-inspiring than that of a 35-year-old dipping and swirling oblivious to the laughter of his children, a legend in his own mind, stayin' alive in the suburbs?

The very word disco is unspeakable, smelling of melted synthetics and evoking its man-made kin dacron,

* Author Whitall was recently designated one of the 1 % of rock critics who can dance by Billy "Pogo" Altman. orlon, and moped. But let us turn to history for consolation.

While we were all in the embryonic ozone, people were dancing. Sometimes very well, but consider this: it took 2000 years of civilization to produce the Freddy.

You and I are lucky enough to live in an age that produced other fine dances: since, Elvis's first pelvis thrust brought forth rock dancing, people have jitterbugged, strolled, twisted, p hilly-dogged, limboed, locomotioned, mashed potatoed, swam, popcorned* monkeyed, jerked, dogged, boogalooed, funky chickened, frugged, etc. with no apparent regard for their marriage prospects. Of course, there were moments of relative calm historically, like the soporific dance craze inspired by the Allman Brothers in 1969: thousands of freeze-dried hippies could be observed nodding silently to themselves in perfect unison. This dance was deceptively easy—it actually took years of genetic mutation and 'lude ingestion (not 'necessarily in that order) to achieve.

It is only right that disco happened when it did, so that the rest of us could pogo on unmolested. Kind of a survival of the fittest of the dance floor. Hbw many of your disco friends could safely pogo? There is a reason for this.

Pogoing is a dance the human body really would be incapable of if it wasn't for the frenzy the appropriate music inspires. Since the ideal female pogo clothes include spike heels and pegged pants, a girl's pogo life could be brief indeed until a back brace variation is introduced. All the better, though— otherwise mom and dad would be teaching it to their friends, and who needs a mother with a green bubble cut?

In Detroit the place to go to observe 1978 dancing of the hondisco kind is either the Aorta on Thursday nights (vintage Motown) or Bookie's, where the Astaire of the scene is Pogo Ray. Pogo is perhaps best known for pogoing on his head; a friend obliges by holding him upside down by his sneakers and banging his shower'-; capped noggin on the floor. Other PR originals: the Worm (self-explanatory) and the Crab (for more athletic types).. And although he's a modem guy, Pogo does a mean tango to "Love You To Death".

Well, I'm preparing for the Rock Critic Dance-Off, and I have to admit I'm pretty confident. Several of my colleagues have already bitten the dust: Rick "Love Roller Coaster" Johnson polished his stairs the hard way attempting a James Brown spin at the top of the stairway. Robert Duncan is being sent to Cedar City Iowa, he thinks for an Aerosmith interview (Duncan's a sucker for lips). Simon Frith cbnfessed before witnesses to being 31 and good for only a 15-minute pogo. Lester Bangs I remember dancing with at our friend Esther's once ... I recall a broken table, several bodies on top of me, the feel of wet skin against concrete and being asked to leave. More than a few others—you know who you are—haven't gotten up to replace their typewriter ribbons since Altamont.

I did acquire a pirated video cassette of Robert Christgau pogoing at a Ramones concert which I confess made uneasy. I have upped my daily pogo sprint to two hours.

But, being several half-lives away irom 30 (sorry, guys) has its advantages; no tell-tale red face, no huffing and puffing, dragging around a carcass with 30-odd years of heavy Romilar abuse on it. Which reminds me to set aside my bottle of "RII" for the night as it's time to practice iguana crawling down Woodward . . . and ponder: will there be Iggy Pop School of Dance franchises in 1984? Will I get one?