14 December 2016, No. 222, The Meters, ‘Stretch Your Rubber Band’

In addition to the “disco jams” crate I’m drawing from here, I have another Serato crate labeled “stuff not to forget about,” and that’s maybe where No. 222 should have wound up. There’s nothing bad about “Stretch Your Rubber Band” from The Meters, but there’s nothing particularly remarkable about it either, and the tunes in the disco jams crate are meant to be remarkable.

I compiled said crate over a period of ten years, so it’s only in retrospect I’m noticing things like maybe there are too many Meters songs on the list, or Todd Terje edits, etc. Ah well. Luther Vandross would say there’s never too much, though the song in which he says it is not on this list.

“Stretch Your Rubber Band” has a somewhat remarkable fuzz guitar tone that gives it a more rockin’ edge than other Meters songs that spring immediately to mind, so maybe that’s why it’s on the list. I’m always on the lookout for funky tunes with a rock feel to appease the “punk rock or it’s not music” attitude of my 13-year-old self.

Musically at least, No. 222 seems to have nothing to do with the much slower No. 28, “The Rubber Band” from Eddie Bo and the Soulfinders. Lyrically they share “stretch your rubber band,” and I’m not the first person to connect The Meters’ lyrics about a dance craze with the Eddie Bo record and conclude that there must have been a dance called “the rubber band” going around New Orleans at the start of the 1970s. 

Go ahead, stretch it out.