In the doleful mark of pre-dawn, with my Vietnamese-made earbuds anchored in, I lick my lips in delightful recognition. DJ Nate D. Skate is reminiscing dual visions of F Street NW’s kandy-lined sidewalk romeos coupled with the rhythmic framework of Motown Record Studios, a.k.a The Funk Brothers.
“Lil’ fly stingy-brim [hat] raked slightly south, buckled bucks or pointed brogans. And yeah, they even wore silk socks — I know, ‘cause I love ‘em, too!” Nate D. concludes his airy blast of the past with his usual sign off from WPFW 89.3 FM. “See you next Wed-nes-day”, he says, in the phonetically correct cadence of a Foggy Bottom school teacher he had way back in the day. At 5:01 a.m. the genial program director takes the microphone, invariably saluting Mr. Skate as an “always welcoming sport who lights our way to the dawn.”
I lie back in my improvised “barriere” of Turkish throw pillows and zippered “Bucky” sawdust pouchs (imported from Puget Sound) and zone out on hand-dances past, swingin’ and swayin’ to easy rhythms from Ruby & the Romantics’s “Our Day Will Come” (1963), Fontella Bass’s “Rescue Me” (1965) and Martha and the Vandellas’s “Dancing in the Street” (1964) — all in the dreamscape of my lonely room, hand dancing the Sacrament!
