What the fandango!

I am sure we all have that moment, when a seemingly unfamiliar word or phrase crops up and triggers something from our memory that screams out, "It's from somewhere!". It happened to me today with this word, "fandango".

Mathew Lynn's very interesting commentary in TODAY (9 March, page 18), "Charlie Sheen could teach Wall Street a lesson," had this part, "What is fascinating about this whole fandango is not Sheen's public dramas. It is the way he has given us a master-class in modern media promotion...".

That word "fandango" sounded familiar. Then I recalled that it was in the opening line of British rock group Procol Harum's classic 1967 song, "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Here are its opening lines:

We skipped a light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

It's a lovely, hauntingly enigmatic song... a Baby Boomer's song. But what is fandango? I never knew! A check with Wikipedia revealed it as a flamenco dance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandango

Ah so. Now I know. Thanks, Mathew Lynn -- and Procol Harum.