Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So
Speaker 1: it's just moon walks right in this joint. Can you moonwalk? Now?
Speaker 1: I think everybody at the Bellhouse on Junet knows I
Speaker 1: can moonwalk. Okay, I didn't moonwalk, but I think you
Speaker 1: could just based based on my moves, you could. You
Speaker 1: could make the assumption that I'm an awesome moonwalker. I've
Speaker 1: seen your moonwalk. It's you know, herky jerky. You know,
Speaker 1: it's that kind of moonwalk that guys like us do.
Speaker 1: I don't understand, you know you kind of it kind
Speaker 1: of simulates the moonwalk. I see, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's a it's an echo of a moonwalk. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call it smooth and floaty, oh I would. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: I know it's not a great moonwalks, right. I never
Speaker 1: learned the moonwalk because I didn't try to practice the
Speaker 1: moonwalk more than like once, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: can't do that. Oh yeah. I just bailed on it
Speaker 1: like my brother practiced and got okay at it. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised he didn't like teach it as a class for
Speaker 1: free to children in need. Now he got uh, he
Speaker 1: got okay at it? Um, But I just I don't
Speaker 1: know if I I think I bail on things that
Speaker 1: aren't easy for me. Well, that's definitely a candidate for that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a trait I have. I don't like
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time on something that I
Speaker 1: don't think i'm good at. I'm not one of those like, no, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try the moonwalk until I learn it. I see.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe I just im not a moonwalker,
Speaker 1: don't you? Didn't you say you bail on books too
Speaker 1: that don't like capture your attention at this point in
Speaker 1: your life? Was that you? I don't think I said that,
Speaker 1: but I I didn't say that. But I will you
Speaker 1: work your way through a book? Well, I'll give it
Speaker 1: a fair shot. It's been a while since I've bailed
Speaker 1: on a book, though, because I usually just pick good
Speaker 1: books like that. I know we're really good. Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't know how long I give a book. How long
Speaker 1: do you give a book? I will give a book
Speaker 1: two pages, yeah, but like three or four times? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: what am I missing? Let me try that again. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. I just write a book called Head Full
Speaker 1: of Ghosts, which is pretty neat. It's like a psychological thriller. Huh.
Speaker 1: I haven't read a fiction booking forever, and then right
Speaker 1: now either I'm reading the right stuff, Wolf Classic, and
Speaker 1: it's that. I think Tom Wolf might be the greatest
Speaker 1: reporter of all time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anybody better. Our buddy Joe Randazzoh oh yeah.
Speaker 1: At midnight fame people are quaite. A minute, I thought
Speaker 1: he was at the Onion. Now he said at midnight.
Speaker 1: He used to work at the Onion. Uh. He just
Speaker 1: recommended a book which I'm really interested in that I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you about because it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: right up your one alley called Sapiens A Brief History
Speaker 1: of Humankind by You've All Noah Harari and the It
Speaker 1: had has a pretty remarkable thesis, which is that humans
Speaker 1: can Humans didn't kill each other off because they can
Speaker 1: cooperate in large numbers, because we have an ability, a
Speaker 1: unique ability. Animals don't have two believe in things that
Speaker 1: exist only in our imagination. Huh, Like government and money
Speaker 1: and God. And he said, all of these things allow
Speaker 1: us to cooperate. Like we talked about in our money episode.
Speaker 1: It's like money has that paper has no value. We
Speaker 1: just all agreed. So it's essentially fiction, the cool concept
Speaker 1: of money. It's just something we've all agreed on. And
Speaker 1: he said, is it's this cooperation by believing in these
Speaker 1: fictional things that is the only reason that humans didn't
Speaker 1: kill each other off, like you know, any other weird species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got to check that out. Said it sounds super interesting.
Speaker 1: He said it was amazing, so and thank you for
Speaker 1: relating that. Yeah, I want to Maybe you should read
Speaker 1: it and just tell me about it, because I'm still
Speaker 1: have never read four Man. I'm a fiction reader. I
Speaker 1: try to I try to read nonfiction, and this I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just like a good fictional yarn more.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm quite the opposite. Like I told you, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a Civil War buff. I got one
Speaker 1: of those huge books that's supposed to be great, and
Speaker 1: I just can't do it. Like The Moonwalk, you don't
Speaker 1: like fiction, I do like it, it's just for the
Speaker 1: so much of the time I'm reading for work that
Speaker 1: see I think he would enjoy fiction as a break. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why I read head Fellow Ghosts. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm reading a fiction book. I need to just like
Speaker 1: read something different and use my imagination again. And um
Speaker 1: it worked. It was like it had an effect on
Speaker 1: me that what was it? Yeah? What was it about?
Speaker 1: It was about a girl who may or may not
Speaker 1: be possessed and like how her family unravels around her.
Speaker 1: Is it like poplit? I don't know that. It's you know,
Speaker 1: like easy to read. Dean Coontzon, Oh no, no, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a little more literary than that, and I
Speaker 1: wish I'm sorry to the author who who wrote the book.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the dude's name, but he does a
Speaker 1: good job. I'm sorry to Dean Counts and John Grisham
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Uh, they know, they know what
Speaker 1: they are. Let guys know what they are. Although Dean
Speaker 1: Coutz man, that guy's imagination is fantastic. Man, I always
Speaker 1: assumed that he was better than Stephen King because he
Speaker 1: could finish the story. I've never read a Stephen King book. What,
Speaker 1: I don't read a lot of that stuff. Okay, I
Speaker 1: read one Dean Kuntz Book in my early twenties and
Speaker 1: one night. That's the only time I've ever done that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good thing about it Kuntz Book because
Speaker 1: you can go through it like crazy. Started reading it
Speaker 1: like eight or nine and I stopped at like five
Speaker 1: in the morning. But each one is way different than
Speaker 1: the others, I mean really differently. The guy's got a
Speaker 1: great imagination. You should read some of Stephen King's work
Speaker 1: like he is. He's he's so unfairly I was actually
Speaker 1: talking to Hodgman about this the other day. He's like,
Speaker 1: very unfairly criticized as a hack, but he's actually, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are doing couldn't sucks. But if
Speaker 1: you just because he's so prolific and because he very
Speaker 1: famously has trouble finishing a story, Yeah, but he's like
Speaker 1: nobody can get inside the mind, like the dark side
Speaker 1: of a person's the average person's mind better than Stephen King.
Speaker 1: He's just a he's a great storyteller. Aside from the
Speaker 1: ending part. So what's the Shining? It is probably the
Speaker 1: one I should read, Probably not because you're so used
Speaker 1: to Kubrick's Shining and it's just so radically. That's the one. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. I've never read the stand I
Speaker 1: would start with the short stories. They're fantastic, right, those
Speaker 1: he can finish. It's the largest What do you mean
Speaker 1: not finish like this amazing build up and then the resolutions, like,
Speaker 1: so he finishes you just mean it's okay, right, it's
Speaker 1: it's not left unfinished. It's the resolution is um The
Speaker 1: payoff is not so great. Yeah, interesting, and it's still fine,
Speaker 1: but it's he's so good at building things up that
Speaker 1: it's almost it would be almost impossible to finish it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should call this beginning book
Speaker 1: talk with Josh and Chuck or patting the episode. You
Speaker 1: want to talk moon walk? Yeah, we needed a little something.
Speaker 1: This is a short one. Well, you were saying that,
Speaker 1: you're like you just couldn't do it. This is Let me.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how I approached the moonwalk. All right.
Speaker 1: My left hand was covered in a white glove with
Speaker 1: sequence sewn on that my mom made for me. Did
Speaker 1: you really wearing the thriller jacket a little black pants? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how my moon walked. I was still not that
Speaker 1: great at it. You were, you were in man, this
Speaker 1: is so in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: mean I listened to pop music. But I was also
Speaker 1: the influenced by my well he's now my brother in law,
Speaker 1: but the General. The General started dating my sister when
Speaker 1: I was twelve, Okay, so like he was always around
Speaker 1: and he was like, you're twelve years old. You need
Speaker 1: to listen to the Almond Brothers and Leonard Skinnered and
Speaker 1: Molly Hatchett and Blackfoot in the Atlanta Rhythm section, the
Speaker 1: Doobie Brothers, like heck yeah. But I also listened to
Speaker 1: the American Top forty every week. So, I mean I
Speaker 1: was an MTV. I was glued to so you can't
Speaker 1: be glued to MTV and not like digest ing some
Speaker 1: of that stuff. But I was never never owned parachute
Speaker 1: pants or but so that was the only sequence thing
Speaker 1: I eve w owed. But that's very sweet that your
Speaker 1: mom did that. I think so too, and it was
Speaker 1: a very sweet gesture. Um. But I think one of
Speaker 1: the other reasons the Moonwalk spoke to me and I
Speaker 1: didn't realize it until researching this article, Chuck that I
Speaker 1: was also super into break dancing at the time, and
Speaker 1: the moonwalk is actually not a breaking move. It's a
Speaker 1: popping move. But for all but actual breaking and popping dancers,
Speaker 1: it was the same thing. Yeah, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: see how it's a popping move. I saw that in
Speaker 1: the article and I couldn't put it together because thing
Speaker 1: is so herky jerky, and a good moonwalk is so
Speaker 1: smooth and buttery. Well, so lockin is herky jerky, right, Well,
Speaker 1: no popping is too popping? Is that? Like? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's also I wish this is really not good for audio,
Speaker 1: but it's also so you know, the one where you
Speaker 1: hold out one hand and make a wave, the wave
Speaker 1: goes through your body to the other hand, the classic
Speaker 1: popping is it? Yeah? And I was like, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: bet the worms popping wrong. The worms are breaking move.
Speaker 1: I clearly don't know, but the average person who's who's
Speaker 1: doing these dances is probably popping, locking and breaking it
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah. And and I know we
Speaker 1: covered breakdancing some in the hip hop episode, but we
Speaker 1: should do it total breakdance, like give it its full do, Okay,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna call it the total breakdance episode. But
Speaker 1: we I mean, we've got to cover some of it here,
Speaker 1: because there's there's there's such a basis of it in
Speaker 1: the moonwalk. The moonwalk castletch a basis in it. But
Speaker 1: the moonwalk goes even further back than popping and lock in,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a minute. It goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to the thirties. Should we take a break?
Speaker 1: Oh man, yes, stop, all right. Josh just taught me
Speaker 1: how a moon walking. Now I'm great at it. And
Speaker 1: this I can't remember what that's called. The wave the
Speaker 1: waves where you stand up at a baseball game. So
Speaker 1: what is this? I don't know. I mean, people that
Speaker 1: don't know what Josh is doing right now are probably frustrated.
Speaker 1: But it's that you know that move you do where
Speaker 1: you wave the one arm and it goes to your
Speaker 1: body and the other arm waves and then you pass
Speaker 1: it to your friend. Yes, that's a popping move, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Body popping clearly doesn't. I don't know what popping means.
Speaker 1: I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably all right. And by the way, people, you might
Speaker 1: as well get to this. I'm not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to gush much about Michael Jackson because I'm one of
Speaker 1: the people who thinks he did bad things in his
Speaker 1: private life. So if you don't hear me talking about
Speaker 1: how awesome he is, that's why I have a hard
Speaker 1: time separating the art from the artist. Well you want
Speaker 1: to throw it out there, man, if you believe that,
Speaker 1: how could you? Yeah, I'm unconvinced at this point, all right,
Speaker 1: But I mean seeing my own a. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good one, good one. A bunch of people are like,
Speaker 1: that's what c o amy covering my own a. Speaking
Speaker 1: for myself anyway, if you hear a little bit of
Speaker 1: like callousness in my voice, that's that's why. So, uh,
Speaker 1: going back in time, Uh, it was not invented by
Speaker 1: that man. It was like you said, it goes back
Speaker 1: to the nineties. If you look on the YouTube's they're
Speaker 1: like history of the Moonwalk, you will see a nice video.
Speaker 1: It shows the evolution of this dance, starting with Cab
Speaker 1: Callaway in the nineteen thirties doing something called the Buzz.
Speaker 1: The Great band Leader Jazz big band leader. He remains
Speaker 1: unaccused of anything. He was also awesome in the Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wow, he was still around for that. That's right.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that about fifty years on. Yeah. Uh
Speaker 1: so in the nineteen thirties he did something called the
Speaker 1: Buzz and it was a little more herky jerky and
Speaker 1: not as smooth. Then there was something that this article
Speaker 1: mentions called the camel Walk, which I looked into, or
Speaker 1: the collegiate walk that like Sammy Davis Jr. Did in
Speaker 1: this video. I don't think it looks anything like the moonwalk,
Speaker 1: not really. I think they're going forward first of all, right,
Speaker 1: which is a big one, and it's cool. It's a
Speaker 1: cool move. Sure, James Brown dares Sammy to do it.
Speaker 1: Sammy's like, all right, I'll do it. So, boy, could
Speaker 1: you imagine being in that audience, Man, Sammy Davis Junior
Speaker 1: and James Brown on the same stage. Who do we
Speaker 1: have now? Bieber and whoever else? I don't even know him,
Speaker 1: Bieber and Bieber. It's a nightmare group. Yeah. So uh sorry, man,
Speaker 1: it's not old. You're not old because you're trash and
Speaker 1: justin Bieber you're just saying it's a jerk. You know.
Speaker 1: He really has done a lot of stuff to say
Speaker 1: to earn that. Yeah, it's not like he's some like
Speaker 1: super nice guy. People are just unfair to like look
Speaker 1: at some of the videos and like pan in a
Speaker 1: bucket in a restaurant. Did you ever see that one? No?
Speaker 1: I heard about that one, though. Well, I think he's
Speaker 1: just too much wealth and not enough guidance and probably
Speaker 1: too much booze and stuff. I think maybe he might
Speaker 1: be somewhat reformed now, but really I think he's grown
Speaker 1: up a little bit, but I don't follow it that closely.
Speaker 1: Just the p in the bucket thing, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that was enough to turn me off forever. Win him back,
Speaker 1: justin win back, good luck. So we were talking about
Speaker 1: the walk or the camel walk, right, so, um, you
Speaker 1: were saying it doesn't look like a moonwalk. In fact,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a reverse moonwalk sort of.
Speaker 1: But the point is it was it's somebody Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: Floating Their feet are floating a little bit. They appear
Speaker 1: to be floating while they move, al Right, So it's
Speaker 1: related to the moonwalk, right, I'll give you that. The
Speaker 1: one that's like dead on though is Bill Bailey in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five full on moonwalks off the stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in nineteen at the Apollo. Yeah, and there's a great
Speaker 1: video and it's at the very end of the video,
Speaker 1: but I urge you to not just skip to the end,
Speaker 1: because you've got two or three minutes of some sweet,
Speaker 1: sweet tap dancing. Yeah, which I didn't realize how much
Speaker 1: I loved until I saw this guy and he was
Speaker 1: supposedly trained by Mr bo Jangles himself. Really Ye, that
Speaker 1: was a real person. Yeah, I don't remember his name,
Speaker 1: but Bojangles. Yeah. I love tap dancing. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it and I watched this sound was like, man, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: You should go see Gregory Hines. Is he still doing it?
Speaker 1: Probably there's no way he's just like I'm done tapping.
Speaker 1: Yeah it tap was life for that guy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that stuff is amazing. And what's the guy's name?
Speaker 1: I can't remember, Well, I did see that movie. Um
Speaker 1: there was a guy, uh savyon Glover. Oh I know
Speaker 1: who you're talking about, like much more recent Yeah, like
Speaker 1: mean mean tap dancer, Like he just shouting insults while
Speaker 1: he was you. He looks stupid, but watch me dance.
Speaker 1: So Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five, like legit moonwalked
Speaker 1: and um, it's hard to say, like he's the guy
Speaker 1: that invented it, because dance, like any art form, is
Speaker 1: just borrowed and changed and morphs along the years to
Speaker 1: where I don't know that anyone can specifically say, like
Speaker 1: Bill Bailey might have seen it from someone else and
Speaker 1: then like that's a hot move. Yeah, he seems like
Speaker 1: the type of um talent that he could have come
Speaker 1: up with it himself. Yeah. But what's weird, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: that that's apparently where it went and died, Like he
Speaker 1: created the moonwalk and it's stopped with him for a while. No,
Speaker 1: if you go back in the history of it, the
Speaker 1: people who popularized the moonwalk didn't know that he had
Speaker 1: done that. Oh yeah, yeah, I see what you means.
Speaker 1: So simultaneously, there's also some movement that's similar called the
Speaker 1: air walk, but it's mine. Yea like Marcel Marcel's walking
Speaker 1: against the wind, very famous routine where his feet are floating.
Speaker 1: It's called air walking and it's strictly mine, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The difference between that and the moonwalk is that they're
Speaker 1: stationary and acting like they're walking forward and the wind
Speaker 1: is blowing them, but they're not going backwards. It's but
Speaker 1: it's also not part of a dance either. Correct, some
Speaker 1: this is but this is a weird little thing that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize. There was apparently a mime. There's a
Speaker 1: period of the seventies where mimes were cool. Did you
Speaker 1: know that? Yeah? I mean that was I remember watching
Speaker 1: Shields and Yarnell as a kid on television on major
Speaker 1: network TV. I was all brainstem at the time because
Speaker 1: I was totally unaware of that. Yeah, miming was a
Speaker 1: big deal and that like I would practice that, Okay,
Speaker 1: okay a little bit, not for years, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: practice miming. What a bizarre period of American pop culture.
Speaker 1: Shields and Yarnell. This mime couple had a were they
Speaker 1: two dudes or a man and a woman? You were married? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: That they They had their own TV show, Shields and
Speaker 1: Yarnell was watched apparently by a lot of people, including you.
Speaker 1: It was also watched by a dude named Jeffrey Daniel. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: Frey Daniel was a great dancer, probably still is he is? Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only was he on Solid Gold, he was in
Speaker 1: the band Shalomar with Jody Whatley. Yeah, Jody Whatley and um.
Speaker 1: Shalimar was created by the great Don Cornelius of soul
Speaker 1: train R I P I believe did he die a
Speaker 1: few years ago? And uh, Gary Mumford was the original singer.
Speaker 1: And then on album number two, Gerald Brown took over,
Speaker 1: like you said, with Jody Whatley of Shallomar Fame, I
Speaker 1: guess and then later on her own fame. Yeah she
Speaker 1: was she had her own solo career, right and uh
Speaker 1: and this guy Jeffrey Daniel, Right, So Jeffrey Daniel was
Speaker 1: dancing in the sheets. Remember that hit. Yes, it's great
Speaker 1: Footloose soundtrack song Dancing and the Sheets, dude, dude, and
Speaker 1: that that was the eighties. The eighties stuff they you know,
Speaker 1: came around in the seventies with more disco. It was
Speaker 1: super disco. We to start with. Um. But this dude,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Daniels who was in Shalimar, who's also a solid
Speaker 1: gold dancer. He had a pretty awesome move called the backslide.
Speaker 1: And when you watch him backslide, uh, he's he's moonwalking,
Speaker 1: total total moonwalk. It totally is and um. Later on
Speaker 1: he was interviewed like where did you get this? Where
Speaker 1: you know where? Where you know? Where did you come
Speaker 1: up with the idea? He was like, I was super
Speaker 1: into Shields and Yarnelle at the time. So miming influenced
Speaker 1: the backslide, which, as we'll find out in a second,
Speaker 1: directly led to the moonwalk. And we'll get to that
Speaker 1: finally after this. You alright, Chuck, we're back. Yes, Jeffrey Daniel.
Speaker 1: I watched that interview that's on the YouTube. It was
Speaker 1: on a British talk show called soccer a m of
Speaker 1: the two thousand seven things. They had him on Soccer Am.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's not just about sports, but they have like
Speaker 1: comedy bits and pop culture stuff. Uh So he was
Speaker 1: surprised on that show. They showed the clip of of
Speaker 1: Bailey in the in the fifties and he was like,
Speaker 1: what's that. He's like, I've never even seen that. He
Speaker 1: was surprised to see that someone was legit moonwalking, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, fifties something years earlier, the same move. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, that's kind of close, like maybe the
Speaker 1: camel walk or um the buzz like Cab calloway. It
Speaker 1: was a moonwalk. It was the moonwalk. But that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, that's what's so bizarre is that this guy
Speaker 1: invented the moonwalk in ve and it began and ended
Speaker 1: with him, and it took mimes getting a TV show
Speaker 1: to create the moonwalk as we understand it today. Talk
Speaker 1: about chaos theory, you know what I'm saying, though, like
Speaker 1: other people could have influenced the mimes that knew about
Speaker 1: Bill Bailey, like it could guess, guess, that's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: But Marcel Marceau was doing the air walk as far
Speaker 1: back as the thirties before Bill Bailey. Was he around
Speaker 1: in the thirties from what I understand, Okay, which is
Speaker 1: weird because well he was pretty old when in the
Speaker 1: seventies when he hit it big. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: then he was doing it in the thirties, because that's
Speaker 1: what this article says in it. I didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: I didn't find any footage of him from the thirties,
Speaker 1: like all of it seemed to be from the seventies
Speaker 1: or early eighties. Well, the heyday of mimes also looked.
Speaker 1: I was curious why people hate mimes and did little research,
Speaker 1: and of course there's no no like definitive thing. It's
Speaker 1: not like a phobia, no. But everything I saw I
Speaker 1: came down to a few things. They look like clowns
Speaker 1: in clowns. We did a whole episode on that, and uh,
Speaker 1: the silent thing seems to bug people. And then just
Speaker 1: the notion that there, you know, they'll get up all
Speaker 1: in your face in the part you're out just enjoying
Speaker 1: your day and a mime will come up and be like,
Speaker 1: you know, to start doing their like intruding upon you
Speaker 1: to do their act, which I don't even know is
Speaker 1: I don't even know if that's the case over there.
Speaker 1: Oh it is, believe me, mine very interestive like to
Speaker 1: start static and I finish it. Uh So back to
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Daniel. He's dancing on Soul Train, He's dancing on
Speaker 1: Solid Gold. There's another couple of dancers name Jeron Casper
Speaker 1: candidate great name, and Derek Cooley Jackson j A X
Speaker 1: s O N. Another cool name, and they were moonwalking
Speaker 1: around or backsliding around, and so all these dudes were
Speaker 1: basically kind of laying the foundation for what the moonwalk
Speaker 1: would come to be. It got real, like even if
Speaker 1: you watch Bailey's it's a legit moonwalk, but it's not
Speaker 1: as smooth as Daniel ended up doing it. You know,
Speaker 1: like when you see him on solid Gold, he like
Speaker 1: that's one of the smoother moonwalks you'll ever see, and
Speaker 1: he probably debuted it for the first time in American
Speaker 1: history on TV on Top of the Pops. Was talking
Speaker 1: about yeah, smooth, so um, people thought he was cheating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're like, this is the floor oils or something like
Speaker 1: what is that we watching? Right? It blew everybody away, right,
Speaker 1: but everybody's no one knew who this guy was. Really,
Speaker 1: it was a solid gold answer at the time, everybody
Speaker 1: knew who Michael Jackson was. So in about a year later,
Speaker 1: almost exactly a year later, UM, NBC broadcast this special
Speaker 1: called Motown Retrospective and it was a huge, huge thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Diana Ross did her first appearance with the Supreme since
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Marvin Gaye played, Um. There was a
Speaker 1: battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four
Speaker 1: Tops Stevie Wonder Um, I'm sure everybody when it was
Speaker 1: like a soccer game. UM, and Michael Jackson comes out right,
Speaker 1: and people like, who's he? I mean he was pretty
Speaker 1: big at the time. Now, of course he was. He
Speaker 1: was huge, but so was Marvin Gaye in the Four
Speaker 1: Tops and Stevie Wonder, Right, Michael Jackson comes out and
Speaker 1: brings the house down. And one of the reasons he
Speaker 1: brought the house sound was because he's doing Billy Jean,
Speaker 1: which when the thing came out was the number one
Speaker 1: song in America. But during the dance he did the moonwalk,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time basically anybody who had
Speaker 1: seen uh had ever seen the moonwalk. Yeah, like, like
Speaker 1: no one in America watching this NBC special had been
Speaker 1: watching Top of the Pops stuff on solid gold here
Speaker 1: and there. But it was definitely like a mind blower
Speaker 1: for because it was such a widely watched special for sure. Um, well,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. He was taught the moonwalk depends on
Speaker 1: who right. Some people say he sought out Daniel said,
Speaker 1: you teach me. Other people say no, it was Casper
Speaker 1: Candidate or Coolie Jackson. But from what I gather it,
Speaker 1: it sounds like all those guys eventually worked with him
Speaker 1: over the years. Is like either choreographers or choreographers slash
Speaker 1: backup dancers. So he he learned it from some or
Speaker 1: all of those people. Yeah, Like, um, Daniel choreographed like
Speaker 1: his smooth Criminal video, and Coolie and Casper are the
Speaker 1: dudes who like lean with him on other that very famous,
Speaker 1: like crazy side lane that he did in the video.
Speaker 1: Does he do one of those de lean move? The
Speaker 1: crazy side lean, I think is what it's called. Can
Speaker 1: I say what happened to me yesterday? What did you
Speaker 1: do a lean? Well? I was looking at videos on
Speaker 1: how to moonwalk tutorials okay, uh, to see if I
Speaker 1: could get it. And when you watch it slowed down
Speaker 1: and broken down, it's like, oh, well, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's not that complex, but it's hard to master. And
Speaker 1: we'll get to all that coming up, Like I'm sure
Speaker 1: we're gonna bumble our way through a description about the moonwalk,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna try. But then I started following into
Speaker 1: that little YouTube vortex of videos and I saw this
Speaker 1: guy saying, here's how you do the lean, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I want to know how to do that
Speaker 1: because it's cool. It is it's like an illusion. It
Speaker 1: is well, it's not, it's real. And there's a guy, well,
Speaker 1: I don't and there's a guy named Robert Hoffman who
Speaker 1: It turns out this guy is great. He does he's
Speaker 1: dance tutorials and he's kind of funny and and does
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it's interesting to watch,
Speaker 1: and so I encourage everyone to go watch Robert Hoffman's
Speaker 1: tutori on how to do the lean, and he kind
Speaker 1: of explains, He fully explains the illusion and how to
Speaker 1: how to do it well. And I look at it
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh man, you're about to follow over right,
Speaker 1: And then he pulls it back, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna practice the lean because that will be like I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to know how to dance, but I'm just
Speaker 1: not good at it. But I want to get like
Speaker 1: the lean down at least so I can bust that out.
Speaker 1: It's just like standing in place, Yeah, but you know
Speaker 1: you shouldn't even do it on a dance floors while
Speaker 1: you're having a conversation with somebody, like slowly, slowly, just
Speaker 1: start to leave, so they're about to go over, snap
Speaker 1: back into place and be like, what if You're totally right?
Speaker 1: Because I don't go to dance parties anymore anyway, What
Speaker 1: am I talking about? Regular parties? Yeah? I would just
Speaker 1: be in the office one day in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: I'll he's gonna go, oh my god, I didn't go
Speaker 1: over Oh man, um, all right, so where are we?
Speaker 1: So we're talking about how there's a there's a discrepancy
Speaker 1: over who taught Michael Jackson the moonwalk. Correct. The thing
Speaker 1: is is, Michael Jackson never claimed to have invented the moonwalk.
Speaker 1: People just assumed he had because he was huge at
Speaker 1: the time. And he also later said that he didn't
Speaker 1: know what he what his dance routine was gonna be
Speaker 1: for Billy Jean for this motown special. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, well, obviously he just did the spur
Speaker 1: of the moment or whatever. No, totally untrue. He employed
Speaker 1: choreographers and including those three guys like you said, all
Speaker 1: three of them worked with him as choreographers. And he also,
Speaker 1: as far as his sister Janet I think, says, they
Speaker 1: went to see Shalamar at Disneyland before this and saw
Speaker 1: um Jeffrey Daniel doing the backslide and said, dude, you
Speaker 1: gotta teach me that. Here's some money, teach me the moonwalk.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, it's not called the moonwalk yet. And he
Speaker 1: also said that he never called it the moonwalk, that
Speaker 1: it was actually the media that came up with that,
Speaker 1: but he adopted it for surely some I mean obviously
Speaker 1: someone named it some Yeah, some ap reporters like named
Speaker 1: there's me. Uh for what it's worth, Daniel said, besides,
Speaker 1: she shields and Yard now that the the Electric boogaloosy
Speaker 1: is who inspired him as well. And I looked up
Speaker 1: those guys. They're the ones who originated body popping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were a dance group and I was looking
Speaker 1: at one of them and I was like, let's rerun. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're talking about locking. Yes, it is Rerun. Yes, he
Speaker 1: was huge, and he was a member of the Lockers,
Speaker 1: which was at one point the Electric Boogaloos. You know
Speaker 1: those are two different Well, no, at one point they were.
Speaker 1: They were merged, okay, and then then that's where popping
Speaker 1: and locking came from, because popping and lock and are
Speaker 1: two different types of day. Originally they were the Electric
Speaker 1: Boogaloo Lockers, and then I guess they diverged at one point. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe they were like I want to lock, I want
Speaker 1: to pop. Well, the dude who invented locking, it was
Speaker 1: good friends with Rerun and like, if you think of
Speaker 1: Rerun dancing, like those wrist twists and the jumps and
Speaker 1: the suspender stuff, that's lock and totally. And they were
Speaker 1: on that dance squad the Lockers. It was Don Campbell
Speaker 1: who invented locking. Rerun and then Tony Basil, the girl
Speaker 1: who sang mickey. Yeah. So if you don't know who reruns,
Speaker 1: you're like, what in the world are you guys talking about?
Speaker 1: What you oldsters? Um? Oh yeah, it's a It was
Speaker 1: a TV show called What's Happening about these three friends
Speaker 1: in South central l A in the seventies. Very funny. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Rerun was one of the characters played by the
Speaker 1: great Fred Barry who was in the Lockers in the
Speaker 1: electric Googlue Lockers and just go watch go type rerun
Speaker 1: dancing What's happening and uh, what you're watching is pure locking.
Speaker 1: One of the great TV theme songs of all time too. Now,
Speaker 1: if you throw what he's it really is. What instrument
Speaker 1: was that like a klezmer or something. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: It's weird, but it's a great one. Um. The if
Speaker 1: you throw in that, that our movement, that wave and
Speaker 1: the worm, you've got Papa and walking and breaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what people think of as breakdancing. That's pretty amazing. Like
Speaker 1: we've I was thinking the other day about how in
Speaker 1: our lifetime is people our age and there's a range.
Speaker 1: But we've seen like a complete, like two complete at
Speaker 1: least two new complete art forms created in hip hop
Speaker 1: music and that and breakdancing created out of whole cloth.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And the new sports like what like you know,
Speaker 1: X games and snowboarding and skateboarding, like we've like seen
Speaker 1: these new things created. And you always think that, well,
Speaker 1: music is, what else can you do? I guess chechnow
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that was created as well, Um, jazz,
Speaker 1: well that was before us a little, but no, it's true.
Speaker 1: I just think it's pretty neat to look you know,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. Two you you're like, well,
Speaker 1: there's grunge. Well grunge is an offshoot of like rock
Speaker 1: and roll or whatever. But yeah, no, I mean these
Speaker 1: were completely new art forms that some people still think
Speaker 1: are a fad, which is funny. Really well, you know
Speaker 1: you hear like older Mudgeons like rap is gonna be
Speaker 1: a fad. No, wrap is brand new art form here forever,
Speaker 1: and it changes in morphs and is you know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's neat. So we did a hip hop episode. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that, Yeah, it was good. I thought for you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of shamos like us. I think we did
Speaker 1: a pretty decent job, agreed. Um, alright, So do we
Speaker 1: need to explain how to break dance? I want to
Speaker 1: hear you explain it. No, I can't. You mean moonwalk? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What to say? Break dance? Break? Yeah? Yeah, we need
Speaker 1: to say how to moonwalk? Okay, so go ahead, take
Speaker 1: it away. Well you're the one who does it so well,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, are you ready? So you start?
Speaker 1: First of all, you want to take off your shoes
Speaker 1: and put on some socks on a nice slick floor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't try to do it on like um uh pine bark. No.
Speaker 1: Maybe pour yourself a vodka gimlet. Yeah, well that's the
Speaker 1: that's the drink of the moonwalker. So um. You you
Speaker 1: are on a slick floor, wearing socks, and you stand
Speaker 1: straight up and down right, and you take your right
Speaker 1: foot and you put it out in front of you
Speaker 1: with your foot flat on the floor. Okay, bend your
Speaker 1: left knee and go up on the ball of your
Speaker 1: left foot. Okay, now holding yourself in place with just
Speaker 1: your the ball of your foot. All of everything is
Speaker 1: on whatever foot you have up, the ball of whatever
Speaker 1: foot you have up. Take a sip of that gimlet, right,
Speaker 1: maybe another one too, I need one now, And then
Speaker 1: you drag your foot back the foot that's on the floor,
Speaker 1: and as you drag your right foot back past your left,
Speaker 1: you drop your left and you drop your left heel
Speaker 1: and raise your right and then you repeat the same
Speaker 1: process and you're floating. There's the moonwalk, a k. The backslide.
Speaker 1: You're pretty square if you call it the moonwalk. These days,
Speaker 1: we had to title this episode moonwalk because we wanted
Speaker 1: everybody to know what we were talking about. But it's
Speaker 1: called the backslide. Okay, that is correct. And I watched
Speaker 1: the tutorial, which the guy who did the tutorial actually
Speaker 1: wasn't great at it. Um like he he had it
Speaker 1: down like how to teach you. But when he did it,
Speaker 1: I was going, yeah, it's not great. Was Steve Brule? No, God,
Speaker 1: that would be great. I just think the guy had
Speaker 1: the wrong shoes on personally, But I'll bet that's what
Speaker 1: he blames it onto. The thing he stressed for a
Speaker 1: good moonwalk is a long stride, which is where you're lacking.
Speaker 1: If I can be honest. Oh am, I doing it
Speaker 1: too too short? Yeah, okay, long stride Josh Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize you've had so many formed opinions about my moonwalk. Uh.
Speaker 1: That foot that you're keeping flat needs to be so
Speaker 1: so flat to create the illusion. What what am I doing?
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about you know, your foot was pretty
Speaker 1: good and flat. That's your stride. I pretend like it's dead,
Speaker 1: like my foot is dead when I drag it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then when you when you go to switch feet,
Speaker 1: he said, you really just snap them both real hard
Speaker 1: to create that illusion like a good completely synchronized simultaneous
Speaker 1: snap up and down with those two feet, your long stride,
Speaker 1: keep that foot flat, keep that vodka gimlet flowing, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be moonwalking in no time. And then you
Speaker 1: can also because what you're doing is it's supposed to
Speaker 1: look like you're walking while you're moving backward. You're walking
Speaker 1: forward but moving backwards, and that's the definition of the
Speaker 1: moonwal So you can, um, you can like add your
Speaker 1: arms swinging, lean like your till till your body forward
Speaker 1: a little bit if you're real good. Michael Jackson used
Speaker 1: to like move his head up and down in rhythm
Speaker 1: to his walking or whatever, and it adds to the effect.
Speaker 1: Totes Shalamar. I feel like I kind of should try it,
Speaker 1: try it right now. Well, I'm not gonna do it now.
Speaker 1: You don't have a vodka gimlet, Nope? Are you got
Speaker 1: anything else? And you go get some cocktail onions. Those
Speaker 1: are great Gibson onions. Oh is that it Gibson and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of yeah, but that's sim It is the
Speaker 1: lime juice roses lime, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about vodka gimlets, you can type
Speaker 1: that word in the search part how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I's a gimlet, it's time for listener now
Speaker 1: before listener mail. This is ah, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: correction time. Okay, we need like Lola Vie music. We
Speaker 1: do so you know, we have corrections on the show
Speaker 1: from time to time. This was sort of a big
Speaker 1: one because we really goofed on the Gettysburg Address episode. Um,
Speaker 1: and boy did we hear about it. Remember how I
Speaker 1: said I wanted to be a Civil war buff. I
Speaker 1: don't anymore. You know, you have a rough start to
Speaker 1: your career as a Civil war buff. They're not nice people.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, no one on the internet's a
Speaker 1: nice person. No, I was. I was just very surprised
Speaker 1: if people got angry that we messed something up, just like, so,
Speaker 1: what did we mess up? We said fifty thou dead,
Speaker 1: It was fifty total casualties. Is that what it was?
Speaker 1: So we messed up and said mistaked casualties for dead
Speaker 1: when in fact casualties is dead, missing or wounded. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we also said that while we were talking
Speaker 1: about the percentage of the army, like it was this
Speaker 1: much a percentage of of the Union army and a
Speaker 1: third of Lee's army. But it was just for the
Speaker 1: army fighting in that battle, not the total Union army
Speaker 1: and the total Confederate army. And we very specifically were like,
Speaker 1: this is for the entire army. So we got a
Speaker 1: little excited and a little ahead of ourselves. Well, clearly
Speaker 1: we're the most evil people of the century. So very
Speaker 1: sorry about that. Civil War Buffs you know now, don't
Speaker 1: have a contact Chuck again. Please all right, listener mail
Speaker 1: now yeah, um, I'm just gonna read this one. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: great podcast, especially like how you pointed out, Uh, but
Speaker 1: here's some of the bogus studies how to do good research,
Speaker 1: especially like how you guys pointed out the pressure when
Speaker 1: you're an understudy to do studies that support the current
Speaker 1: theories of your employer, without getting into a ton of detail.
Speaker 1: I've been there, and I left research altogether because I
Speaker 1: became pretty disillusioned with it all. One thing you did
Speaker 1: not mention is that entire industries get erected based on
Speaker 1: the results of a few initial studies. Uh, the sexiness
Speaker 1: of the studies. Aside, which is what you talked about.
Speaker 1: The research or does a good job and does not
Speaker 1: show anything, or has a negative study, their funding is
Speaker 1: often at stake. For my personal experiences, is the largest
Speaker 1: basis for bias. WHOA, that was a mouthful. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say when you're missing the tooth um research. Researchers
Speaker 1: become heavily vested and being right from a face perspective,
Speaker 1: if a c in a monetary perspective, we don't really
Speaker 1: recognize realize this because the scope of the impact of
Speaker 1: the studies are usually small. But that researcher who suddenly
Speaker 1: lost all their grants, it's a pretty high price to
Speaker 1: pay for being ethical. I don't really have any answers
Speaker 1: to how to clean it up. But science is contrarian
Speaker 1: and by nature anti consensus. Instead, we have a system
Speaker 1: that rewards only rewards reinforcement. Good researchers have to be
Speaker 1: allowed to say, if you did this great study and
Speaker 1: found nothing without the fear of losing grant money. Amen,
Speaker 1: that's from Trevor. Thanks Trevor. That was very illuminating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an enlightening, very very adit. Yeah did you say that? Yeah, Rudy, really,
Speaker 1: I don't. Okay. Uh. If you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, like Trevor did, you can tweak to
Speaker 1: us that. That's why sk podcast. You can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you should know. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast. The work
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