Chapter 3 - Dirty Dancing V Grease 01/02/25
- Charlie Russell
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
Back in May 2024, I played at Spalding Festival. While I was there, I met Bethanie Newman, who is a fantastic singer and performer. We chatted on the day between our sets, while it was either bright sunshine, or chucking it down with rain. We’ve stayed in contact ever since, and towards the end of last year she sent me a message. She asked if wanted to do a shared gig with in 2025, singing songs from Dirty Dancing and Grease. Absolutely I did!
It turns out, I didn’t know half the songs as well as I thought I did. When listening to the Grease soundtrack, I realised that I know the all the usual choruses like, “Go Grease coasting through the heat lap trials” and “Grease is the word” or “summer Lovin’ had me a blast” etc. But it turns out I didn’t actually know many of the words to the verses, just the melodies of them! So, I got studying, and I think I got the words right on the night… well… most of them (I may have changed a couple small bits of melodies in the verse, but we’ll call that artist interpretation).
It also turns out that I knew very little of the songs that were actually in Dirty Dancing. Obviously, there’s the one everyone knows, “Time of Your Life”. If you don’t know that song you probably need to go outside a bit more. But I’d forgotten about songs like Hungry Eyes and She’s Like the Wind. So along with learning all words to Grease, I was now cramming my head full of the words to songs in Dirty Dancing. Again, I got them all learnt… well... most of them anyway.
Bethanie and I got to the venue – The Wildflower in Terrington Saint Clement. A lovely pub, with a really lovely staff and crowd. We set up the PA and some lights to set the scene, and by 8pm we were off. We started with a Dirty Dancing set to warm the crowd up. (It was clear this crowd were there mainly Grease as the pink ladies were sat at one table with their jackets on!). We finished the Dirty Dancing set with Time of Your Life, someone attempted the lift, it didn’t work, but it also didn’t fail liked you’d see on TikTok or You’ve Been Framed (is that still a show, or am I showing my age?).
After a 30-minute break, we were back to do another hour of Grease, and maybe some extras after to round of the night. We played through the songs, mostly in film order. Starting with Grease is the Word and Finishing with Shamalama Cadingy…. ding... you know the one. My personal favourite songs to sing were Sandy and Grease Lightning. For some reason, I made my version of Danny as if from Texas… Check out the clip here:
As we finished Grease, we still had about 20/25 minutes to fill. So, between Bethanie and I we created an impromptu set of classis songs, including Mr Brightside, Shut Up and Dance, Year 3000 and Teenage Dirtbag (which definitely had a bar of music missing as we both somehow got lost). Bethanie threw in a random song I wasn’t expecting – S Club 7 – Bring it All Back. I’d forgotten this song existed, but what a banger! As we finished, we got asked for one more and so very quickly we sang Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now.
And that was it, we started to pack away and then we got a request for something…
“Can you do some from Grease 2”
Before we even had a chance to say no, half the crowd were already saying it for us. Do we acknowledge Grease 2 exists? I thought it was a bit like Bruno from Disney’s Encanto… we don’t talk about Grease 2. So safe to say we definitely did not do any songs from Grease 2. I don’t think I could even tell you how any of the songs go!
Eventually we were packed up and on our way home! It was such a fun gig, and very different not be holding a guitar and actually have my hands free to perform more! Something I always like to do!
Thank you, Bethanie Newman, for letting me sing with you! Please go check her out, she’s fantastic!! Find more from here:
Thanks again for reading The Chronicles of Cardiac Carl, see you next time!
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