"The Grooveline" - Heat Wave (1978)

It's funny, the mental associations that pop songs evoke. I associate this song with desperate, doomed efforts to stay independent. Plus Ancient Greece. Yet the song itself is about the freedom of the dance floor.

When the song first came out, in 1978, I was at UNM in Albuquerque, studying Ancient Greek History, and the doomed efforts of city-states like Thebes to balance themselves between Sparta and Athens. On 9/11, my Ancient Greek history professor, Richard Berthold, made a tactless joke regarding the desirability of bombing the Pentagon, which would have been taken as merely cheeky in Vietnam days, but in the space of just several hours, was now considered intolerable by the authorities. Conservative thugs in the NM State legislature hounded him for years before finally forcing him out. So much for academic freedom! It was the ugly dawn of the 9/11 tyranny we suffer under to this day.

Yet the lyrics speak of escape:

So grab your friends
Get the train comin' through
Climb on board
Where you leave's up to you

Leave your worries behind (Leave your worries behind)
"Cause rain, shine
Won't mind
We're ridin' on the groove line tonight