If Marty McFly went back in time thirty years ago today, what song does he play at the dance to blow everyone's mind?

I think this nails it - the timeline is right, the progression of the scene is right, the idea of the hip band being able to play it is right...this is exactly what it should be. Not sure about Freek-A-Leek, mind you. How about "Wait"? Love to hear that over a Kurtis Blow beat...

"Ok guys, play some double-time in 7/8 with every fourth bar in 4/4, watch me for the changes."

He's playing to a bunch of square middle-class high-school kids so anything too alien e.g. hip-hop is just gonna get him kicked off the stage and beaten up by the football team. My Sharona works in that it feeds off (or in the context of this discussion, anticipates) punk and disco, and condenses them into a safe pop song for cheerleaders everywhere. Also, it's simple and repetitive so would have been easy to pick up by the band.

Or Squarepusher's "My Red Hot Car"

For hip-hop - "play the drum intro to Bowie's "Five Years."

it would blow everybody's mind to the moon

"And you, the bass player. Take a lap."

Reviving this thread is the inevitable intersection of the Chuck Berry poll and the revival of the "1984-1994 time travel" poll.

All great threads!

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/oi5gmw.jpg

nobody would time travel to 1978.

anyway though the 1978 options that wouldn't really break for another three years: kraftwerk, speed metal and grandmaster flash

Kings of Leon are from the US?

Question answered!

I love this: "Not many of the rock answers on here would sound unprecedented in '76, if you had any knowledge of Krautrock, the VU, contemporary Classical, avant-garde etc. So the real answer pretty much has to be Hip Hop."

I love it because it's like, yeah, totally, prom bands in '76 would totally be into krautrock, contemporary classical and the VU.

I mean, fuck, Chuck Berry wasn't even unprecedented in '55—there's jump blues, Rocket 88, etc.

"Kick Out The Jams"

Hmm. I realise we are speaking 1978 here, not 1968.

Well, make that "Don't You Want Me" instead then.

The Run-DMC version of "Walk This Way." A familiar song in 1978 given a twist that absolutely nobody would expect, yet might actually work in a school dance setting.

Either that or the intro from Gang of Four's "Love Like Anthrax."

UPTOWN TOP RANKING

pass the dutchie

Has to be hip-hop, still. This question will be a lot harder in 2010.

had "Ace of Spades" been released?

Mark OTM with this really. Has a drastically different general genre like hip hop and other electronically based genres come along since 1980? I can't really think of one...

Chuck Berry was about to become one of the biggest musical acts in the world - much bigger than any hip-hop artists until the late-80s (or any electronic-a/ally/etc. artists to this day).

If you stretch the time out, "Walk This Way" might work. (Also mirrors the movie in use of familiar elements in a new setting)

MATTHEW WILDER BREAK MY STRIDE

oops wrong thread

...or is it?

nah i was just kidding. right thread, wrong time, SUNG TO TUNE OF RIGHT PLACE right oooof. boring self. high. leaving.

first of all - brilliant thread. king james and i have come up with a lot of them (i'll let him post his), but i think that "don't stop believin'" would pretty much kill.

Mark OTM with this really. Has a drastically different general genre like hip hop and other electronically based genres come along since 1980? I can't really think of one...

House was only in its proto stages in 1980, techno would take 5-6 more years to emerge, and even electro was still a couple of years ahead. There was synth pop, of course, but the coming electronic genres would be quite different to it formally. So I guess the Marty McFly of 2010 could easily confuse people with house or techno. The question becomes more difficult if we move 10 years ahead, though - I can't think of any radically new genres to have been born since the late 80s.