You'd be this happy too if you were playing at Lindy Focus.
Jonathan Stout's Lindy Focus All Star Orchestra is delivering the goods, and people are taking note with more and more people crowding around the bandstand each night to bask in the aural glory. Here are a few things to watch and listen for over the next remaining nights of unprecedented musical goodness.
What follows is probably the least technical illustration of what makes classic jazz great for dancing as well a behind the scenes look at the behind the scenes video about Lindy Focus and A Word on Swing.
Frankie100 is a year away and so goes the wild speculation about what it will be like. A recent comment on Facebook got me to thinking about the possible live music for this thing
BMJB Mobtown 061
Since the dance videos will take awhile, I’ll start off by giving you a little mix tape for 2012. In picking out these performances I realized that I am heavily biased towards those I experienced in person. Video isn’t a completely fair representation of a performance, especially since live audio recording has yet to catch up with the leaps and bounds that video recording has made in the last few years. However, it’s still good enough to relive moments, or at least get a taste for those that you missed.
Presenting the wildly anticipated second episode of A Word on Swing.
This has been a pretty fun project for us. As you’ll see, it’s still a little rough around the edges (and a little bit on the inside). What you see here, is the sum total of my video editing experience as I’m treating this video blog as a learning opportunity.
I thought I'd keep with the drumming theme from last week and spotlight my favorite swing drummers of today.
I still don’t have a lot of time to do a longer blog, but I thought I’d share a few videos in addition to the pictures I took in Atlantic City this past weekend. I don’t make it a secret that I’m a big fan of The Boilermaker Jazz Band, and one of the many reasons is bassist Ernest McCarty. I’ve talked about him before, (there’s a lot to talk about this super interesting guy) but he’s also the main reason for these videos. He was On from the very beginning. Within a minute of their first song, he caused me to go grab my camera to capture the funk he was laying down.
One of the best line up of swing dance musicians of our generation will be playing at the DC Lindy Exchange this year. I tried thinking of different ways of writing this up without being as hyperbolic, but this is about as plain as I can make it.
It’s not too often that you get to hear the same band with the same personnel play the same song on the same recording date and give it two entirely different feels. The band I’m referring to is basically a one time deal called “The Chocolate Dandies.” This particular aggregation recorded for Commodore Records in New York City over 60 years ago on May 25, 1940. They made six recordings that day including two versions of “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me.”
Social networking. It works bitches. Especially when you’re friends with people who really know their stuff. Case in point, Rob Moreland, a Lindy DJ from North Carolina, posted one of my favorite Billie Holiday songs, "No Regrets" on his Facebook profile. Rob said he heard it from Michael Gamble, a fellow southern DJ. I first heard it played by Mike Marcotte here at a dance in DC.
