Marvin Gaye – I Heard it Through the Grapevine (aka In the Groove, 1968, Tamla Motown)
The title track was the first one I couldn’t dance to with real abandon, in public, at a party. It was during my brief but profoundly traumatic attendance at Bedales, a progressive co-ed boarding school that still services the British and expat elites and creative classes (of which, it was quickly established, I was not a member). I can still feel the crushing self-consciousness (and disturbing sexiness of James Jamerson’s bass line and that thudding drumbeat), as I stood, back pressed against a wall at my first school dance, desperately seeking invisibility.
Thank heavens for Sydney in the early 1980s – otherwise this Jewish freak of nature (the nickname bestowed on me at said boarding school) might still be standing with her back against the wall.