Electro-Swing or: How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love Modernity

[mummyjohn]

Gramophonedzie is frequently cited up there as an originator to the style, even "proto electro-swing" if you will. The whole popularity that it's now getting wouldn't be there if it hadn't been for the Nu-Jazz movement. All very good stuff.

I'd unwittingly stumbled across several of the Verve Remixes long before knowing what they were (and long before being a member here), such as the deep vocals and gentle phasing in California Soul (Marlena Shaw) from the fourth album (it was used in a television advert a few years ago but I cannot remember which) and the endless classic Summertime (Sarah Vaughan in this version).

[VintageBaroness]

I LOVE Electroswing. Good news for those in LA, a new club has opened up. Here's their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/electroswing...ref=ts&fref=ts. As an aside, it's interesting how many of our reactions against electroswing as a loud and new fangled music genre probably ironically echoes the responses some had to "jazz" and "jitterbugging'" music when they first gained traction in the 20s, 30s, and 40s!!

[VintageBaroness]

Know what I love even more than electroswing? Electroswing mashed up with vintage film! This one is genius, IMHO!



At certain moments, I SWEAR I see moves done by Laurel and Hardy that performers like M.C. Hammer and others brought to the dance floors in the 80s!!

[VintageBaroness]

Another brilliant electroswing mash-up. I defy you not to dance!

[VintageBaroness]

This band is pretty swingin'!

[vitanola]

I LOVE Electroswing. Good news for those in LA, a new club has opened up. Here's their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/electroswing...ref=ts&fref=ts. As an aside, it's interesting how many of our reactions against electroswing as a loud and new fangled music genre probably ironically echoes the responses some had to "jazz" and "jitterbugging'" music when they first gained traction in the 20s, 30s, and 40s!!

You make a point, but not a very strong one, I fear.

Posting this electronic stuff here is akin to reviewing "Ulysses" in "The Christian Century", or substituting a copy of "Livery Stable Blues"

for a copy of "Congratulations, Waltz Hesitation"

in a record buyer's order.


What, exactly is the point? Why not post this tuff on a forum for electronic music enthusiasts?

The imagery is loosely (very loosely based upon "vintage" themes, perhaps, but the music is just a re-hashing of the thumpus uninterruptus which has passed for dance music lo these past thirty-five years.

Sort of an Electro-House with added fantasies of chandeliers, ties, gowns and hats.







Lovely.

[VintageBaroness]

Electroswing is interpreted in various different ways, depending on the band and the song. Some are more electro- and some are more 'swing.' Caravan Swing, which I've linked to below, includes some great Django Reinhardt 'gyspy' jazz samples and so forth. While musical purists may not love this genre, it is definitely appealing to many of those in the swing dance scene, both in places like LA and Paris, but here in Canada, too. As is evident both in terms of sound and in terms of accompanying videos, in my opinion, it is not trying to re-enact past sounds or styles in a straight-forward or unironic way. It is a kind of post-modern pastiche, which is pretty much an accurate reflection of the way I, as a woman living in 2012, experience my passion for the 1930s in relation to my everyday digitized life. As an aside, I still stand behind my idea that some of the rebellion against this style echoes similar responses people had to kids doing the "Charleston" or other 'manic' dances to 'wild and fast' music. You 'get' and 'feel' it or you don't, and that's OK!

As for the above comment about the inappropriateness of "posting electromusic HERE." With all due respect, where is HERE? In a thread dedicated to Electro-swing? Is this not exactly where one would be posting about it? If you allow for the idea that FL does have room for threads like this, then, perhaps YOUR videos of phonographs spinning scratchy old records are best posted in threads for musical purists LOL!!!

Seriously, though, if you mean The Fedora Lounge, then I am sorry you feel that vintage-inspired things do not have a place here. I love the past (I'm a vintage clothing wearer and seller, and I have a Ph D in Victorian Literature, History, and Culture), but am also a 21st century woman who is open to discussing, exploring, and enjoying various ways in which people of the present have revisited, re-viewed, and re-imagined various elements of the past. IN reality, that is all any of us who were not alive during the Golden Age can ever do anyway. Our access to the past is always mediated by/through our own present (not to mention our own false nostalgia). What is evident from your Ulysses analogy is that you like your historical music straight up for listening and dancing. Anything other than the original sound on a record on an early device will do. I do, too, SOMETIMES, but I also like to be a part of the zeitgeist of my own historical-cultural moment now and then, and for me, electro-swing is part of that sporadic enjoyment. Now, then, who wants to see a Robot Charleston?



My last thought: disliking Electro-swing because it is not straight up swing is like hating the movie The Artist because it is not Wings or some other early silent film. Apples and oranges, in a way?

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed, apples and oranges. I've stayed out of this thread because it's nothing that particularly interests me, but I've allowed it here because there is at least a tenuous connection to some aspect of the Era. Those of us who don't care for this type of stuff should just leave the thread alone, and let the people who do enjoy it have their conversation. (A lot of us here want as little to do with the Contemporary Zeitgeist as possible, so you can understand there might be some strong views -- that's why it's best for the two sides to just leave each other alone. Nobody's going to change anyone else's mind.) The Bartender Has Spoken.

[VintageBaroness]

Indeed, apples and oranges. I've stayed out of this thread because it's nothing that particularly interests me, but I've allowed it here because there is at least a tenuous connection to some aspect of the Era. Those of us who don't care for this type of stuff should just leave the thread alone, and let the people who do enjoy it have their conversation. (A lot of us here want as little to do with the Contemporary Zeitgeist as possible, so you can understand there might be some strong views -- that's why it's best for the two sides to just leave each other alone. Nobody's going to change anyone else's mind.) The Bartender Has Spoken.

Thanks for this! I'm sort of on both sides in a way. I enjoy straight up vintage music and happily discuss it in relevant threads, and I also enjoy Electro-swing in certain moods. The same is with vintage vs. vintage-inspired fashion. I appreciate that FL concedes room for inclusion of discussions of both!

[Flat Foot Floey]

I will go to an electro swing party tonight. Will report if there are technoheads on pills, mindless slackers, lindy hoppers or other people. I try to avoid having fun but I can't promise.