MsRobyn and I were discussing our wedding this evening, and I was steadfast in my insistence that we play the Chicken Song at the reception.
To my horror, she had NO idea what the chicken song is.
Pleeease, please tell me that the rest of you know what the Chicken Song is and the dance that goes with it.
That is all.
I know what it is, but I don’t know why you’d want to played at the reception. Well, I guess if everyone gets drunk first.
Do tell. At this point, I’m dying to know.
Robin
Oh I think it’s de rigueur to have the chicken dance, or chicken polka played at wedding receptions. Especially in Iowa. At least, that’s where it was played at a reception I attended (as Maid of Honor!), where the entertainment was the polka band of which the bride was a member. There was much polkaing that night, the likes of which I had no idea people actually did on a regular basis – and liked!
Here’s a page with a Chicken Polka midi! Accordion Man’s Scandinavian page
Someone hasn’t heard of the chicken song?? Haven’t you ever been to a baseball game (or just about any other sporting event)? They ALWAYS play it.
To get an idea of the song, think of the macerena with more energy and chickens. Perhaps one of my least favorite songs. It’s up there with “If your happy and you know it…” and “The Hokey Pokey.”
MsRobyn, the song is basically a very simple polka-type song. I think that it was used once in a commercial for something like Shake and Bake. The dance involves bending your arms, bending your knees up and down, clapping, and (sometimes) making chicken-like motions with your head and neck.
They used to play it at our junior high school dances. I didn’t do it then, and I won’t do it now. But I’m really weird that way.
I beg your pardon, mes enfants, but back in the 1970s, that dance was more properly known as the Funky Chicken.
How to do the Funky Chicken.
http://www.zuidwijk.nl/fun/funky/
I love the Internet.
No no no it’s not the funky chicken. This is a different chicken dance, and there isn’t anything remotely funky about it (to say the least), although I think it too emerged in the 70’s. Back then it was called the bird dance, IIRC.
I always thought the song was just known as “The Chicken Dance”.
Much the same way the Patsy Cline song was called “The Tennessee Waltz,” instead of “The Tennessee Song.”
Although I have danced the Chicken Dance and enjoyed it, most of the receptions I go to have their guest do the more funky Electric Slide.
You savages, it’s the “Chicken Polka.” Being a Wisconsinite, it’s quite big here, though polkas in general are quite the thing. I’ve seen it at numerous wedding receptions, and it’s an integral part of “The Fifth Quarter” that the Wisconsin band puts on after football games. Or during the second intermission of hockey games.
I’ve always associated the Chicken Dance (I believe the real title is “Dance Little Bird”) with Oktoberfest.
How much beer you going to serve at this wedding?
Are you sure it’s not The Birdy Song you’re thinking of? Sounds like it to me.
The Chicken Song, incidentally, is much more famous in the UK for being a chart-topping spoof by the satire puppet show ‘Spitting Image’.
Is this the same Chicken Dance that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were doing in the movie, Ed TV ?
Here’s a description. I couldn’t find a wav file, darn it.
Nothing’s more attractive than seeing Aunt Claudia shaking her birdie booty after 6 or 7 jinnan tonix.
Is this the one that goes “Yadda dadda dadda da (Yadda dadda dadda da) Ya da diddi diddi du (Cluck Cluck Cluck Cluck)”, etc? How could you contemplate a wedding reception without it?
And where I come from, a couple isn’t officially married unless there’s at least one polka danced at the reception.
Yes, I can. 
Ya know, it’s a good thing I’m madly in love with Airman, because after reading about this, ummm, “dance”, I think the only way I’d do it is if I were drinking.
Robin
The Chicken Dance has words??? The Chicken Dance has words!!!
Nah, you’ll love it. The Chicken Dance rocks. Waddle on down to Gingy and my’s wedding for a preview.
Allllll together now…
**Hold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose
Buy a jumbo jet, and then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green, then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet, and pretend your name is Keith
Skin yourself alive, learn to speak Arapahoe
Climb inside a dog, and behead an Eskimo
Eat a Renault four, wear salami in your ears
Casserole your gran, disembowel yourself with spears**…
They don’t write 'em like that anymore!