At a Willamsburg house show last night, I learned three things. The first two are that Grass Widow is my new favorite live band, and that their drummer Lillian Maring is my new favorite drummer. That’s incidental to what I want to talk about today, but seriously, you should check them out—and if you’re  in the New York area this weekend, you should go see them play.

Grass Widow, “To Where” (Grass Widow LP, 2009)

[See post to listen to audio]

The third thing I learned came after the live music was over, when promoter extraordinaire Todd P stepped into his secondary role: iPod DJ. Here’s what I imagine he was thinking: if you’ve got a bunch of young, beer-soaked Brooklynites in a room and they’ve just seen an incredible show, their emotions are as putty in your hands. So play Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” and they’ll be flushed with nostalgia and immediately revert to a middle school dance party-mode. Follow that up with Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and you’ll see them turn ecstatic with local pride, wailing along with Alicia Keys on the chorus. At this point they’ll dance to whatever you want, and that’s when you whip out this classic:

Real McCoy, “Another Night” (Another Night, 1995)

Suddenly it’s not just a dance party—it’s an Ultimate Dance Party. Music, as we well know and yet so often forget, is inextricably bound to context. Walk into a bar that’s blasting Real McCoy and you might roll your eyes and flee in disgust. But when it’s the cap on an already joyous evening, you may find, to your surprise, that it makes an awful lot of sense to you.