DJ CASPER – "Cha Cha Slide"

Wasn’t the most notable thing about this the fact that – unlike every other 21st Century Number One up to this point – it didn’t go straight in at the top?

Other than that it’s just..there, isn’t it? Neither as irksome as The Time Warp, nor as delightfully silly as The Bump.

“This is something new”. But nope, it’s yet another number one with origins in 1996. If my chronology is right – it has a confusing history – he wrote it that year, then first recorded it in 1998 (this version appears to just be – of all things – Plastic Dreams, with his instructions jotted live) and then re-recorded it in 2000. It even made the Billboard Hot 100 shortly afterwards. I’m not sure why it took several years for it to spread to Europe, though, but by 2004 it had been snapped up by Universal to become the UK’s second All Around the World number one.

(Incidentally, this is where I get muddled. The UK hit exemplifies – in an admittedly basic way* – the housier side of AATW’s output in this period just fine, with Casper’s tutorial sounding like a sample. So I assume it’s a fresh remix, but some ostensible uploads of the 2000 version to YouTube use this version. Yet others use a slower, more stripped-back arrangement I’ve also seen described as “Part 2”, which would seem to be the version on the actual 2000 single, except not labelled as such).

“Gym Tonic” is an obvious Popular precedent but a closer, even less illustrious one might be fellow Chicagoans the Outhere Brothers due to the similarity with the “Don’t Stop” situation – i.e. the version that “Cha Cha Slide” which reached number one was a Eurodance-type recasting but there was also the alternate mix (in this case that apparent “Part 2”) that prioritises minimalistic, 80s hip-house beats. Indeed, that alternate mix seemed to be the version covered (nay, recreated wholesale) by one ‘MC Jig’, which had even reached the No. 37 in late 2003 but was re-released to compete with DJ Casper. Alas, in the event it only managed No. 33. I can’t think of a later instance of rival recordings of the same novelty club hit doing chart battle like this.

*Clears throat* I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the only person who finds any of that interesting, but it feels oddly appropriate that such a formless record should have a few question marks and arrows sticking out of it (the 90s links continue! “Cha Cha Slide” is I think the first no. 1 with flamenco palmas since “Innuendo”, to be a line dance since “Cotton Eyed Joe”, and to be by someone calling themselves ‘Mr. C’ – Casper’s other alias – since “Ebeneezer Goode”). This was the deathless toast of school discos and children’s parties from 2004 until – and probably beyond – the end of my childhood. I find it enjoyable and agreeable, even quite compelling during the more misshapen parts (i.e. the odd placements of ‘hop’ sfx, tape rewinds et al). A 7 from me.

*But if it wasn’t for the crashes and washes throughout, this could easily pass for something from 1995, back when first week peaks were being phased in – Cha Cha Slide was the first record to climb to number one in forever.

Freudian slip at #4 of course. I *wish* it had been Bob Sinclar over Spacedust (forgot scrubbing the chart feat after #1 as well but as The Millennium Prayer was the last proper climber, there’s another ‘the first No. 1 since x 90s hit’).

I’ve never been much of a clubber as an adult. Bit sweaty. But “Cha Cha Slide” is every party and every holiday camp disco I went to as a kid. It was a real event and the instructions made it much more fun than “Macarena” for me (for my sins, I did like “Superman”). It was also a bit easier, I think, and the “Charlie Brown” bit was an excuse to make something up.
For the kind of record it is, it’s a sorta sparse thing isn’t it? There’s no real melody and no chords being filled in. The hook is two notes. It is more or less a monophonic arrangement. That, and its long rise to the top, interests me as an adult. I don’t think you could get me to dance to it any more though. 5.

OK, so I was out of the country when this hit big – and would remain so for the next year – and I honestly think this is the first time I’ve heard it.

I have nothing interesting to say about it beyond the fact that I always thought “Superman” was the inspiration for the bizarre “Do Dah Doo Doo” Tim & Eric sketch, but I now suspect it might have been this. I think I prefer the sketch, to be honest. https://youtu.be/1g_UHV42jOA

“Cha Cha Slide” is inoffensive and impossible to get irritated by, and I’m sure I might get into it on a whole new level if I was slightly drunk at a party with friends, but as that’s literally never happened to me in my entire life and I’ve never heard it in a club, I have no way in here.

You wouldn’t listen to it on its own, but if it ever comes on at a family gathering (the Black side of my family, that is) we’re guaranteed to be up hopping and criss-crossing. I sort of think the absurdity in following the endless list of instructions, getting moved around the room like a chess piece, is half the entertainment value.

Looking back, #7 and #8 have basically nailed it for me; it’s holiday camp fare. Hunstanton was a town where the chariman of one of the main caravan sites was awarded an MBE for services to the tourism industry, so I grew up with Superman and Agadoo and The Birdie Song and their ilk basically rammed into my head like a brick.

So by the time I was 23, this song came across as a bludgeon. It’s not that the song is evil, it’s that everybody else on the dancefloor thinks you’re a heel if you don’t join in.

There’s a reason I moved away from Sunny Hunny when I was 18.

#8 “the “Charlie Brown” bit was an excuse to make something up.”

Spot on. My memory is everyone flopping themselves and especially their arms about (isn’t/wasn’t this called ‘the jellyfish’?)

#15 I can credit Stacey’s Mom for teaching me how some words were spelt differently in American English. I still hear that, and Blink’s I Miss You, a lot more than most hits from around this time. This is something in common with a lot of other 00s Kerrang! favourites that were US hits.

Been reading this site for a couple years, first time commenter, really glad it seems to be picking up again, genuinely one of my favourite things to scroll through and read while bored or needing to avoid talking to people in public.
My interest in pop music and paying attention to the charts began somewhere near this point in history, our family first got freeview in late 2003 when I was 10 years old and a (probably un)healthy amount of the next few years was spent wide eyed in front of The Hits or TMF, so I’m particularly excited for these entries coming through right now as a lot of them shaped my formative concept of what pop music is and how it functions.
This song in particular however I don’t have tons to say about, mostly for the reasons Tom has outlined above, it’s just dance instructions over a basic and minimal house beat. It makes sense that this was actually recorded years before it reached number 1 over here, to me it’s always retroactively felt musically a lot more of a piece with late 80’s/90’s hip house than much else that was happening in mainstream rap or dance music in the early-mid 2000’s. I do remember my ten year old brain lumping it in with another trend from this (and the next) popular year though, there were a number of successful throwback rap hits hitting big in the UK around this time, either as re releases of years old songs having a moment, or “new” tracks from long dead artists having bigger chart moments than happened when they were alive. Not that in retrospect this goofy aerobics workout could possibly be conflated with Ice Cube or the bunnied deceased rappers, obviously, and there will obviously be chance to talk about this in later entries, but my head sorta still sees it as a precursor to that due to how long it took to hit number 1. Interesting to know whether there was a genuine cultural nostalgia moment for 90’s hip hop in 2004 or just commercial coincidence combined with this music finally getting its due in the UK after underperforming in the charts the first go round (I was not at all clued into music past the radio and music TV channels at this point).

So minimal. I remember trying to recall how it went a number of years after the fact, and my brain refusing to accept that there wasn’t a secret other bit of melody somewhere I was just forgetting about.

It’s the sort of thing you’d call “aggressively minimal” in a different record, except there’s nothing even remotely aggressive about “Cha Cha Slide”. The guy’s not even forcefully jovial, he sounds like a supply teacher. I wouldn’t be surprised if “I’m out of here y’all – peace!” is preceded by, buried deep in the mix, the bell going for hometime.

I agree that I wouldn’t know where to begin with rating it out of 10, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Part of that has indeed come from exposure at weddings and the like, but I think even in 2004 I thought it was amusingly odd.

I was pretty big into The Hits and TMF this year too (more so a couple of months later as I remember it), though sadly for me it was less a case of “being 10” and “being 17 and getting two weeks of study leave for the first time going straight to my head”, at the expense of, you know, doing any AS level revision. Which, incidentally, I was not aware at the time would also count toward my final A2 level results; still not sure how much of that bit was my fault and how much was the school’s, but I will say I wasn’t the only one.

#3- I don’t recall and believe I have not until this very day heard or heard of the MC JIG version, but rival versions becomes something of a theme in the charts this year and into the next. Elaboration will become pertinent with a few forthcoming bunnies (*very* relevant in one case), and it may have actually been in 2005 (I’m not sure from memory) but there’s a particularly weird and (to me) amusing example which will best be discussed when we come across a very influential bunny from the last third of this year.

The US got this one a few years earlier, but the version that charted (#83 on the Hot 100) wasn’t this one, it was a cover by “Mr. C the Slide Man”. The low peak is probably because not many people were buying physical singles in 2001, leaving the chart to be mostly radio, and this isn’t exactly a song meant to be played on the radio. I’m thinking the original version must have not gotten a single release over here, leaving a void for the mysterious Mr. C to fill (see also: “Torn” by Natalie **Browne**). But these days, it’s always DJ Casper’s original that gets played at schools, parties, etc.

Mr. C was his name before he became a ghost

#27 – fair dos re: “Rock the Boat”. Coincidentally enough, like every great novelty dance hit before it, the follow up to this from DJ Casper was a cover (featuring the actual Gap Band) of “Oops Upside Your Head”. Somewhat predictably, it was a flop, making #16 in October.

The first dance instruction record to top the chart since Lou Bega’s “Mambo No 5” (because Bob the Builder’s “Mambo No 5” was an arguably far more helpful guide to carrying out major structural repairs to buildings) and I must admit that I miss the dance craze hits; all those Turkeys and Madisons and Mashed Potatoes which spiralled out into pop after the Twist, not to mention the brief resurgence in the seventies with Kenny’s “The Bump” and the double-headed hydra of Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” and “The Shuffle” which were adored and absorbed by card sharps everywhere (sadly Biddu’s “The Pontoon (Of Course You Can Stick At 12)” failed to replicate the formula in Britain, although Hi-Tension’s “British Hustle” did provide an eleventh hour rescue, and let’s not forget Max Bygraves’ heartrending 1973 reworking of “Deck Of Cards” – “There are four suits, which make me think of Norman Vaughan’s wardrobe”).

Chicago’s DJ Casper (with his “Platinum Band”) was the chief bearer of that unlikeliest of specimens, post-House line dancing. “Cha Cha Slide” is the missing link between Joe Loss’ “Must Be Madison” and Jason Nevins’ “Should Be Run-DMC,” between Jane Fonda’s Workout Record and Marshall Jefferson’s “Move Your Body,” between Spacedust and Billy Ray Cyrus. And dance callers are a cornerstone of all worthwhile pop; the world would have been demonstrably poorer without “Tighten Up” or “Double Dutch” or “Do The Teasy,” and DJ Casper does demonstrate a touch more musical invention than the crass Spacedust or the otiose DJ Otzi managed with Acieedy squiggles mutating into Todd Terry punch-in horns, 1982 Sugarhill cowbells and odd raspberries which at times almost bury his announcements altogether. Midway through he exclaims “Kris Kross! Kris Kross!,” clearly an instruction for the dancefloor to take off its trousers and put them back on the wrong way round. While jumping. Even with repeated experiments on Club Poptimism dancefloors, however, I have remained none the wiser with regard to how I should “Charlie Brown.”

The first time I heard this in house music form was a mashup with a looped chunk of Sandy B’s “Make The World Go Round” (the Deep Dish mix of course). The version which charted here – the Hardino remix – is basically a remake of that with the bassline changed.
As you say, it’s hard to really rate this because it is what it is – a party record. It was always good fun to play at parties in the age of Virtual DJ though as we used to loop bits like “slide to the left” several times and watch all the dancing drunks fall into each other against the wall.

DJ Casper has passed away. Probably one of the most danced to songs in history, that brought the most joy, a life well lived I’d say.