Where were you on a summer evening in the early `90's? I was at an Urban Shakedancers show. If only you could've been there.

By 1992 I was convinced "local band" was a euphemism for "sucks." Without exception every band I had encountered in three years of hanging around Atlanta music bars had sounded like a mess of solid state amp distortion and off-key vocals; C-grade, Jonesboro imitations of whatever was on MTV that week. But I had heard a band called Oliver Tricks dragged around their own pyrotechnics, so I decided to see them at the Masquerade.

While Oliver Tricks set up their sparklers in Heaven I decided to see what was going on in the lower level, called Purgatory. Some scruffy-looking guys in plain white T's were setting up their gear. They looked like they had walked straight out of a Louisiana swamp, and their battered old Fender amps looked like they had been in the swamp. The singer was a 7-foot-tall guy who I guessed moonshined for a living. Boy, this was gonna be the biggest pile of shit ever! I could hardly wait to laugh!

They hit the first chords, and within 10 seconds...I was over the moon. Four Leslie speakers had my head spinning. Slide guitar was gliding up and down the cortex of my brain. Booming bass lines bounced me around the room like a moon walk. I asked a lady at the next table who was with the band, who was this? "The Urban Shakedancers."

I never made it upstairs to see Oliver Tricks, but within two weeks I was seeing the Urban Shakedancers again at the Star Bar. Scott was in tow to make sure I hadn't been hallucinating. Girls danced on tabletops and beer bottles were kicked about the floor as the packed-to-the-max Star Bar got down to the Shakedancers in a big way.

I attended Urban Shakedancers shows religiously for years. At the biggest gig they opened for The Black Crowes at the Fox Theatre on the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion tour. There was another memorable show where the second band, Follow for Now, didn't show up, and the Dancers played every song they knew twice, and I listened to them all twice.

By 1995 they finally got a CD out on a Marietta-based independent label, but by then 3/5 of the lineup had changed and the CD didn't represent them properly. By the end of the decade The Urban Shakedancers broke up.

Along the way, though, singer Robert Paige rattled off some of the best lines I've ever heard out of a front man, the best being,"Does anyone else find you're getting classier as you get older? I know I am. These days I drink my Blue Ribbon with my pinky extended."

In Cartersville when I put on my blues block party I had The Breeze Kings play. I'd never heard them but knew they had to be great because Jim Ransone, the Shakedancer's old lead guitarist, was in the band. Even having just 1/5 of the Shakedancers at my event thrilled me to death.

Since the dawn of the Internet I've been trying to find any remnants of those days, but only last month did I find a single You Tube clip of the Shakedancers doing their standard show-closer, "Got My Mojo Workin'" (below). Ransone continues to play with The Breeze Kings and I see Paige has a new band in Charleston called The Holy City Sinners. Awhile back I was watching a home renovation show on TV and when they got custom cabinets, who walked out of the shop with the cabinets but Robert Paige?! Did those people have any idea a great entertainer was making their furniture?

At least we've got the clip below, but if anyone out there has any old soundboards or video they could share, I'd really, really appreciate it!