Remember, TBOE lovers: April is The Coolness Continuum Month here on The Best of Everything. I first mentioned The Coolness Continuum when talking about giant superstrong rabbits, but I've kept at it a bit after that. And this entry will celebrate:
The Best Music Craze That's So Lame It's Cool.
I mentioned in the last post that there are rules to cool, and one rule of cool is that cool stays around. No music craze has shown more of an ability to stay around than The Best one, and that music craze is Swing Music.
Don't groan. You know you love it.
Swing Music has such staying power that it's gone around the Coolness Continuum twice already and is on its way back for a third trip around. Swing music first popped up, according to my usual exhaustive research methods of trying to remember when I think things occurred, in the 1940s.
Don't think I just relied on my memory, though. I also checked on Youtube by searching for "1940s swing music." As I suspected, I was right because that turned up this as the top result:
All right, so that was not necessarily swing, but it was still pretty cool, right? I'd like to know that guy.
I did find this, too:
No, I don't know why there's no music. But that's proof that Swing existed in the 1940s, a time when the world had invented dancing but not yet music or color.
Then, Swing fell out of favor, became lame because of that newfangled "Rock'n'Roll" that all the kids were loving and the parents were hating. Like all truly cool things, though, Swing could not be kept down. Bringing Swing back, cool as it was, was not easy; it required the combined efforts of the world's two greatest forces for social change: The Gap and Brian Setzer.
And admit it, like I keep saying: You loved it then and you love it now. You're tapping your toe and bopping your head to that snippet. And also thinking "So is Khaki a color, or a style of pants?"
And I am not to proud to recycle a joke. I looked it up for you on Wikipedia, and they say Khaki is the sound a duck makes.
And if you're wondering how many times I can use a variation of that joke, my answer is just you wait and see.
Swing music was so awesome the first time around that it easily caught on the second time around and we were all swept up in the Swing Craze of the probably-late-90s, to the best of my memory, and we bought all the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Brian Setzer Orchestra Albums and Squirrel Nut Zipper CDs we could, because the songs were cool and the dancing was cooler:
And what kind of government registry do you think you end up in when you do a search for "Squirrel Nut Zippers Hell?" I'll let you know.
Swing music just gets you going, doesn't it? It seems to get right into your veins and push the blood along, making you move. I can't think of any kind of music that does that quite so well.
But it's undeniably lame. It's the music your grandparents listened to and danced to on Venice Beach in pants that were too short and skirts that were too long. It's got weird faces involved. When you sing along with it, your spouse (if you are married, like I am, to Sweetie) will tell you that you sound like Ricky Ricardo. And you do.
But then there's that dancing:
I think the ability to swing dance should be classified as a superpower. And I would love to have that power. I would take swing dancing lessons in a heartbeat, except that when I took regular dancing lessons I could barely master the cha cha and the tango, and except that I get out of breath walking into my garage. But I want to be able to swing dance, so that when I go to weddings I could get out on the dance floor with Sweetie and dance like that and people would be in awe.
I mentioned that to Sweetie, by the way, and she said "But you don't like to go to weddings." And I responded that I would if I could swing dance. So you can see the awesome powers of Swing.
The awesome powers of Swing are demonstrated not just by how cool the dancing is and that it would make me go to weddings, either. They are demonstrated by the fact that, like I said, Swing just keeps coming back and back and back. Because after it left and then was rescued it disappeared again, leaving those "Zoot Suit Riot" cassingles rotting away... until a new generation discovered Swing. That video above was a 2006 competition -- so it's recent. And lest you think Swing is not actually back but just being celebrated by me and some high school nerds, chew on this:
That video was posted in May, 2007. (I had to use that video for two reasons: One, Xtina herself won't let you repost videos because, apparently, she's against people listening to her music, and Two, who has the kind of time to make their Sims recreate a video?)(People who are bowled over by the Awesome power of Swing, that's who!)
And it's not just the teenyboppers and Top-40s crowd that is loving Swing. Indie darling Madaleine Peyroux has revitalized swing for those of you who prefer to drink your coffee at shops that don't serve frappucinos but still want to pay a lot for what is, after all, still just coffee:
That's a remake of a Leonard Cohen song; The Dresden Dolls have also remade it.
Why does Swing keep coming back? Why was it popular for Grandpa, and then for Mom and Dad, and then for me, and now for my kids? Why can Xtina, Brian Setzer, Leonard Cohen, Madaleine Peyroux, hipsters, teens, and The Gap all agree on something?
Because that thing is cool. Once you get past the high-water pants, episodes of King of the Hill that feature the music in a story on Luann's revirginization, the Gap ads, silly faces and hairdos, underneath all those layers of lame, Swing is a propulsive, driving force of coolness that will never be down for too long.
What else is so lame it's cool? The Atom, and Longitude.
The Best Music Craze That's So Lame It's Cool.
I mentioned in the last post that there are rules to cool, and one rule of cool is that cool stays around. No music craze has shown more of an ability to stay around than The Best one, and that music craze is Swing Music.
Don't groan. You know you love it.
Swing Music has such staying power that it's gone around the Coolness Continuum twice already and is on its way back for a third trip around. Swing music first popped up, according to my usual exhaustive research methods of trying to remember when I think things occurred, in the 1940s.
Don't think I just relied on my memory, though. I also checked on Youtube by searching for "1940s swing music." As I suspected, I was right because that turned up this as the top result:
All right, so that was not necessarily swing, but it was still pretty cool, right? I'd like to know that guy.
I did find this, too:
No, I don't know why there's no music. But that's proof that Swing existed in the 1940s, a time when the world had invented dancing but not yet music or color.
Then, Swing fell out of favor, became lame because of that newfangled "Rock'n'Roll" that all the kids were loving and the parents were hating. Like all truly cool things, though, Swing could not be kept down. Bringing Swing back, cool as it was, was not easy; it required the combined efforts of the world's two greatest forces for social change: The Gap and Brian Setzer.
And admit it, like I keep saying: You loved it then and you love it now. You're tapping your toe and bopping your head to that snippet. And also thinking "So is Khaki a color, or a style of pants?"
And I am not to proud to recycle a joke. I looked it up for you on Wikipedia, and they say Khaki is the sound a duck makes.
And if you're wondering how many times I can use a variation of that joke, my answer is just you wait and see.
Swing music was so awesome the first time around that it easily caught on the second time around and we were all swept up in the Swing Craze of the probably-late-90s, to the best of my memory, and we bought all the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Brian Setzer Orchestra Albums and Squirrel Nut Zipper CDs we could, because the songs were cool and the dancing was cooler:
And what kind of government registry do you think you end up in when you do a search for "Squirrel Nut Zippers Hell?" I'll let you know.
Swing music just gets you going, doesn't it? It seems to get right into your veins and push the blood along, making you move. I can't think of any kind of music that does that quite so well.
But it's undeniably lame. It's the music your grandparents listened to and danced to on Venice Beach in pants that were too short and skirts that were too long. It's got weird faces involved. When you sing along with it, your spouse (if you are married, like I am, to Sweetie) will tell you that you sound like Ricky Ricardo. And you do.
But then there's that dancing:
I think the ability to swing dance should be classified as a superpower. And I would love to have that power. I would take swing dancing lessons in a heartbeat, except that when I took regular dancing lessons I could barely master the cha cha and the tango, and except that I get out of breath walking into my garage. But I want to be able to swing dance, so that when I go to weddings I could get out on the dance floor with Sweetie and dance like that and people would be in awe.
I mentioned that to Sweetie, by the way, and she said "But you don't like to go to weddings." And I responded that I would if I could swing dance. So you can see the awesome powers of Swing.
The awesome powers of Swing are demonstrated not just by how cool the dancing is and that it would make me go to weddings, either. They are demonstrated by the fact that, like I said, Swing just keeps coming back and back and back. Because after it left and then was rescued it disappeared again, leaving those "Zoot Suit Riot" cassingles rotting away... until a new generation discovered Swing. That video above was a 2006 competition -- so it's recent. And lest you think Swing is not actually back but just being celebrated by me and some high school nerds, chew on this:
That video was posted in May, 2007. (I had to use that video for two reasons: One, Xtina herself won't let you repost videos because, apparently, she's against people listening to her music, and Two, who has the kind of time to make their Sims recreate a video?)(People who are bowled over by the Awesome power of Swing, that's who!)
And it's not just the teenyboppers and Top-40s crowd that is loving Swing. Indie darling Madaleine Peyroux has revitalized swing for those of you who prefer to drink your coffee at shops that don't serve frappucinos but still want to pay a lot for what is, after all, still just coffee:
That's a remake of a Leonard Cohen song; The Dresden Dolls have also remade it.
Why does Swing keep coming back? Why was it popular for Grandpa, and then for Mom and Dad, and then for me, and now for my kids? Why can Xtina, Brian Setzer, Leonard Cohen, Madaleine Peyroux, hipsters, teens, and The Gap all agree on something?
Because that thing is cool. Once you get past the high-water pants, episodes of King of the Hill that feature the music in a story on Luann's revirginization, the Gap ads, silly faces and hairdos, underneath all those layers of lame, Swing is a propulsive, driving force of coolness that will never be down for too long.
What else is so lame it's cool? The Atom, and Longitude.
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