Dancing Days

"Dancing Days" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It appears on their 1973 album, Houses of the Holy, and was released as a single in the US. It was recorded at Stargroves, England in 1972. It was inspired by an Indian tune that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant heard while traveling in Bombay. This was the first track from the album to be offered for radio play by Atlantic Records. It was premiered on 24 March 1973 on the BBC Radio One Rosko lunch time show.

As with the single's A-side, "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Dancing Days" was introduced by the band in concert well ahead of its commercial release. Although a bootleg tape purports to prove it was first played at the Wembley Empire Pool in November 1971, evidence suggests its inclusion on this tape was a hoax. The earliest live documented reference is in Seattle on 19 June 1972 where the song was performed twice: once during the main set and again as an encore; it was then performed frequently during the rest of this tour, with a version appearing on the live album, How the West Was Won. With the release of Houses of the Holy, however, "Dancing Days" was largely dropped from concerts, although an abridged, acoustic version was occasionally performed during the 1977 U.S. tour. A full electric version was played as an encore on 13 July 1973 at Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan as featured on the "Monsters of Rock" bootleg.

Dancing Days (album)

Dancing Days is an album by Chris Leslie, released in 2004.

Compared to Chris Leslie's earlier album The Flow, this is much more of a recognisable instrumental folk-rock effort. Occasionally Chris drifts off into a reverie that sounds like a monastery in Tibet, but this is less obvious than before. He gives a sprightly performance of many morris dance tunes, then adds the oriental effects as a variation at the end of some tracks, punctuated by finger cymbals.

Track listing

Chain gang

A chain gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. This system existed primarily in the southern parts of the United States, and by 1955 had been phased out nationwide, with Georgia the last state to abandon the practice. Chain gangs were reintroduced by a few states during the "get tough on crime" 1990s, with Alabama being the first state to revive them in 1995. The experiment ended after about one year in all states except Arizona, where in Maricopa County inmates can still volunteer for a chain gang to earn credit toward a high school diploma or avoid disciplinary lockdowns for rule infractions. The introduction of chain gangs into the United States began shortly after the Civil War. The southern states needed finances and public works to be performed. Prisoners were a free way for these works to be achieved.

Synonyms and disambiguation

Chain gang (disambiguation)

A chain gang is a system of labor (usually forced) that involves groups of prisoners, chained together, doing menial labor.

Chain gang may also refer to:

Chain gang (cycling)

In the sport of cycling, a chain gang is a group of cyclists in a close knit formation usually of two parallel lines.

The formation comes from the fact that it is harder to cycle at the front of a group than in the shelter of another rider. The rider behind enjoys the slipstream of the rider in front. If one rider were to stay at the front all the time, he would tire and the whole group would slow down. If the lead is rotated, the effort is distributed across the group and the speed can be higher or the individual effort less.

This effect is very significant - up to a 40% reduction in effort for the slip-streaming riders while the lead rider also benefits from reduced drag (somewhat under 10%) due to the air not closing up after him.

The name chain gang is an allusion to the formation that riders adopt. The rider in the front of the group will take their share of the lead, then swing to the side and let the rest of the line come through, led by a new leader. The first rider then eases up and drops in behind the last rider in the line, staying in their slipstream until once again their turn comes to ride at the front.