Entertainment For Lively Minds
What on Earth was I thinking about?
Posted by Steve Turner on 2 June 2009 - 7:08pm.
In the mid to late 90's on a business trip to the USA I was lead to believe that swing was the new musical phenomenon sweeping the world. I was seduced by a radio play of a single into buying The Cherry Poppin Daddies latest cd. Have played it once, maybe twice and it has languished on my cd shelves ever since. Questions arise out of this - whatever happened to this swing movement?, what was I thinking about? and has anyone else jumped onto a bandwagon that never happened?
By the way said cd is now available on Amazon for £1.99 - I think the hit in question was Zoot Suit Riot. Don't be misled by the 5 star reviews by the way - they were all written about 8 or 9 years ago and we know better now.
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Dare I say...
Drum 'n' Bass? A friend once persuaded me to spring for a Lt Bukem album. Hoping to impress a club-going girlfriend, I duly invested. It has lain unlistened to and unloved on my shelf for over a decade now.
There's more to D&B than Lt
There's more to D&B than Lt Bukem (the Daniel O'Donnell of drum and bass).
I enjoyed
the Joe Jackson album in that vein, but that was a long time before any 90s swing movement.
The Joe Jackson
stuff was actually very good and not at all like the Swing I referred to. Think more a Manhattan Transfer on acid. Truly ghastly.
Saw them live
In L.A and they were good. I quite like Zoot Suit Riot.
Bossanova?
Didn't Robert Palmer do a LP of this at one stage? Any good?
Bossanova? (Slight return)
As someone who bows to no-one in his admiration of Todd Rundgren as a writer/performer of beautiful pop songs, I'd have to say that "With A Twist...", his 1997 album of bossanova versions of some of his classics, is for completeists only.
The brave can check it out on Spotify, or here:
Robbie Williams hijacked it
then Louis Walsh and Westlife hammered some more nails into the coffin, while The X Factor's swing week finally nailed it shut.
Viz on Robbie Williams, Cod Swing, Class Swing
Viz does these things so well: Gilbert Ratchet contrives an emergency electricity supply by playing Robbie Williams's swing album, and hooking Sinatra's corpse up to a generator, thus harnessing the energy produced as Frank spins in his grave.
Swing is a feel rather than a genre, and such is pervasive, appearing in such diverse places as:
- The Beatles' Honey Pie (among others)
- The Cure's Love Cats
- (to some ears) OMD's Saliing On the Seven Seas
Because the feel is so infectious, it creates a desire to copy in some musicians and the results can be really cod, based as they are on little depth of understanding.
But it's not dead. There are musicians around who are not only keeping it going but taking it forward. Hear Paul Anka's "Rock Swings" which passes the ultimate test of making classic rock songs sound as if they had been originally written that way (the most extreme example being Van Halen's 'Jump').
And here's more class modern swing, much aided by instrumental virtuosity - don't miss the slap bass break at about 2:50...