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(I've bolded the important bits.)
Simple, and effective. In both scenarios I dance with women and I side step the broader challenges of men-leading-women on the social dance floor. It makes me feel good to develop new skills, and it makes me feel good to simply step out of that unhealthy cycle of self-blame (aren't I a good enough dancer/pretty enough/young enough/cool enough) and rage (wtf is wrong with you?!). I've also found that setting an example to other women is important. Because I'm not the only one standing there, bored, I find that other women are just as keen to get dancing - with me, alone, with each other. And I'm also very willing and keen to follow the example of other women leading or dancing alone.
One of the most important parts of this process is stepping out of the silent to-ing and fro-ing of unspoken competition between women. I think the unspokenness is significant, just as with the bra colour thing. As soon as you simply stop participating in a silent cycle that disadvantages women, you break it.
...or something to that effect. You can listen to the podcast for their answer. Mine is as follows.
In terms of the songs that are already in my 'maybe' list - the music that I actually own - I personally:
Generally, I think a song's a 'blues dancing song' when I listen and think 'this makes me want to dance slowly and it doesn't make me want to lindy hop.' I really like to 'solo blues dance' (whatever that fucking means), so I like that stuff.
No exceptions. I want 100% strike rate. Anything less, and I'm not working it hard enough.
I might approach sets for different events in different ways - lots of energy and higher tempos for exchanges; mellower stuff with a sparser sound for a smaller gig; a few more 'simpler' structured songs for a beginner-heavy gig - but this stuff will really vary with my mood. And I try not to pre-plan. Because it's bad news.
Gussow discusses the fact that black responses to white violence (in southern America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) were limited by necessity. In the simplest terms, if you fought back, if you responded to white violence, then white retaliation would come ten-fold. Without this 'right of response' (legal or otherwise), music offered a way of dealing, publicly with violence. Albert Murray talks about singing the blues as a way of 'stomping' the blues - of sharing woe and therefore easing its burdensome weight. The idea with singing a song that implies lynching or violence (ie you might simply sing 'I have the blues, my body is broken') is that you share your pain and frustration without directly inviting white censure. Singing and music allow you to sneakily respond, but without risking violent retribution.
The trad jazz movement - or 'moldy figs' pushing for the preservation of an 'authentic' jazz from New Orleans - effectively pushes Armstrong to continue as Uncle Tom - unthreatening black man clowning for white audiences. A narrative history of jazz which emphasises a beginning in New Orleans and a consistent, clearly defined lineage of musicians and styles also, more subtly, relies on an idea of the black musician as powerless or unthreatening. DeVeaux makes the point that positioning jazz (and jazz musicians) as artistic loners who do not 'sell out' with commercial success:
Billie Holiday becomes a particularly attractive representation for this idea of the 'jazz musician': poor, black, addled by drugs and alcohol, a history of prostitution, yet nonetheless, a creative genius pouring out, untainted in recording sessions (and I'm reminded of the 'one take' stories) and tragically cut short.
You can see a clip from Paris Blues here.
Armstrong's performance is more than simply its surface. As with any clown, the meanings are more complex than a little light entertainment. Gabbard continues his point:
And I replied
For women, cultural and social context was absolutely clear and absolutely present in everything they did. While jazz historians can imagine a Sidney Bechet leaving New Orleans and gadding off to Chicago, New York, Paris, a free agent following his art, it is a little more difficult for them to write the stories of women who played and sang music from the home or the family or their (less romantic) place of work. There are many stories of the 'whore house pianists' but far fewer stories of the whores, who were occasionally musicians in their own rights.
That point, of course, leads us to a discussion of black women blues singers in the 20s. But I don't have the time now, and I haven't read the books I have here. But I was very interested in this link between 'jazz history' and race and class and gender. I need more information, though.
And Haydn replied:
trev
"trev
I like 'onety-one' - the first year. It makes me giggle.
And then I thought about 20s charleston today and how the people who get out there and do it are generally the more advanced dancers (in 'mixed company' that is - when I'm at Funbags or other beginner-dominated gigs the noober dancers do all kinds of crazy shit without worrying that some frickin' rockstar is watching). It seems social 20s charleston is not the People's Dance as I had imagined it in two or three years ago.
That's about sixty years before NWA and Ice-T came along.
???
I like that idea - thinking like a child. This is play. But it also involes a creative and unconscious approach to physical activity. One of the things I've noticed about swing dancers - they're particularly keen to try new things, particularly sports, physical activities, games, tricks and 'stunts'. I think it's because they've discovered that you have to just try things (as Sugar Sullivan would shout at us in class - "If you don't try to dance it, you will never dance it!"), throw yourself into activities, even if you're likely to look foolish or fall over. When you know the limits of your body, you can trust yourself to do things which appear physically difficult. And when you're used to experimenting physically, you stop worrying about looking foolish or being embarassed.
Sounds a lot like cake walk to me. And of course, there is a long history of derision in African dance. Sometimes immitation is not the highest form of flattery. I know that it's certainly proved a valuable discursive tool for me in the past.
Do you like the way McKee lists some of my most favourite things there? And how, for me, these are the cultural practices in the forefront of my mind? Will I dance? Will I stay home and watch telly? Will I talk with friends while watching telly? Will I read? Oh, dilemma, dilemma.
I especially like this bit:
(NB the setlist he's referring to is here, though I'm not sure which setlist he means)). For a description of 'the wave' check out this thread on swingdjs.
September 4, 2010
8track: Teddy Wilson plays piano
Posted by dogpossum on September 4, 2010 12:29 AM | Comments (0)
I've made a new 8track.
Here's a direct link to the mix.
I stole the photo for this mix from here, the Life Magazine site. The photo is actually taken from one of the Benny Goodman Madhattan Room gigs, and I've included one of the live recordings from that gig in this mix.
Ok, so this 8track is Teddy Wilson themed. I love this man. He played in so many bands, doing all sorts of stuff from hot New Orleans revivalist action to scorching 1930s big bands. He was also the king of precise, beautifully delicate solo work, and of course, his work with Billie Holiday is beyond compare. I've chosen a few songs from 1932 to 1946, with a range of bands. Here's the track list:
(title band album bpm year song length)
I've Found A New Baby New Orleans Feetwarmers (Tommy Ladnier, Teddy Nixon, Sidney Bechet, Hank Duncan, Wilson Myers, Morris Morand) The Young Bechet 269 1932 3:14
High Society Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Teddy Wilson) Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra 1932-1933 250 1933 3:27
Swingin' With Mez Max Kaminsky, Freddy Goodman, Ben Gusick, Floyd O'Brien, Milton 'Mezz' Mezzrow, Benny Carter, Johnny Russell, Teddy Wilson, Pops Foster Mezz Mezzrow: Complete Jazz Series 1928 - 1936 139 6th November 1933 3:05
Easy Like (Take B) Wingy Manone and his Orchestra (Dicky Wells, Artie Shaw, Bud Freeman, Jelly Roll Morton, Teddy Wilson, John Kirby, Kaiser Marshall) The Wingy Manone Collection Vol. 2 1934 2:38
In The Slot (Take A) Wingy Manone and his Orchestra (Dicky Wells, Artie Shaw, Bud Freeman, Jelly Roll Morton, Teddy Wilson, John Kirby, Kaiser Marshall) The Wingy Manone Collection Vol. 2 243 1934 2:50
Jungle Love Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra (Bobby Hackett, Pee Wee Russel, Johnny Hodges, Allan Reuss, Al Hall, Johnny Blowers, Nan Wynn) Teddy Wilson (disc 2) 190 1935 2:50
Chimes At The Meeting Willie Bryant and his Orchestra (Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole) Willie Bryant 1935-1936 245 1935 3:01
Long Gone From Bowling Green Willie Bryant and his Orchestra (Teddy Wilson) Willie Bryant 1935-1936 201 1935 2:51
Warmin' Up Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra (Roy Eldridge, Buster Bailey, Chu Berry) Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 2) 241 1936 3:20
Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Part 1 Benny Goodman Quartet (Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Martha Tilton) RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (Disc 2) 176 1937 3:27
Avalon Benny Goodman Quartet (Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton) Benny Goodman: The Complete Madhattan Room Broadcasts (vol 1: Satan Takes a Holiday) 258 1937 2:47
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off Billie Holiday and her Orchestra (Buster Bailey, Teddy Wilson, John Kirby) Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia (1933-1944) (Disc 03) 124 1937 2:38
Honeysuckle Rose Teddy Wilson Quartet All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 1) 168 1937 3:13
Just A Mood (Blue Mood) Parts 1 & 2 Teddy Wilson Quartet All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 1) 88 1937 6:48
Practice Makes Perfect Billie Holiday and her Orchestra (Roy Eldridge, Don Redman, Georgie Auld, Don Byas, Jimmy Hamilton, Teddy Wilson, John Collins, Al Hall, Kenny Clarke) Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia (1933-1944) (Disc 06) 153 1940 2:37
Gloomy Sunday Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra (Billie Holiday) The Lady Of The Blues 1941 3:12
Flying Home Teddy Wilson Sextet (Emmett Berry, Benny Morton, Edmond Hall, Slam Stewart, Big Sid Catlett) The Complete Associated Transcriptions 1944 198 New York, 15th June 1944 4:56
Indiana Teddy Wilson Sextet (Emmett Berry, Benny Morton, Edmond Hall, Slam Stewart, Big Sid Catlett) The Complete Associated Transcriptions 1944 217 New York, 15th June 1944 3:11
Cheek To Cheek Teddy Wilson Teddy Wilson (disc 5) 1946 2:25
The New Orleans Feetwarmers stuff is interesting, but it's not my super favourite. And that Louis Armstrong Orchestra track is a bit ordinary. But - Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong!
'Swinging with Mezz' is a cool one - Wilson is playing with a bunch of Chicago doods.
The Wingy Manones are good ones, and it's a mixed race band - check out the lineup!
I quite like the Teddy Wilson Orchestra 'Jungle Love', though I think 'Warmin' Up' is better.
The Willie Bryant stuff is rocking, and of course Wilson is responsible for the gorgeous introduction to 'Viper's Moan', a song that's overplayed (to wonderful effect) in lindy hopping circles, but which I haven't included here, because I actually prefer 'Chimes at the Meeting'. I once played that song for a crowd of beginners. I remember the expression on the face of one of the few experienced dancers (and DJs) in the room that night. And I _really_ remember the way the dancers (who were pretty much all noobs) went NUTS for this song.
(that's a pic of the Goodman Quartet - Wilson on piano, Goodman on clarinet, Hamp on vibes, Krupa on drums. I'm not sure who took that pic, but it gets used a LOT and is on the RCA small groups CD cover... It's actually a still from this amazing clip).
After 'Warmin' Up', things change a little because I visit some of the Goodman small group action. I adore this version of 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen' with Martha Tilton's gloriously laid back vocals. This is one seriously awesome song. It's really tight, precise, perfect (in typically Goodman style), but it's also swinging like the proverbial.
I followed this with another song by this group (minus Tilton), because it's a live recording from the Madhattan Room. These gigs were important because they were the first time Goodman took his mixed race small group on the stage, admittedly for a white crowd, but still. This was 1937, and that was some crazy arse shit to pull in segregated America. But this was Benny Goodman, a super extremely major rock star. And this band was phenomenally popular. Not to mention rockhardawesome. I adore the Lionel Hampton (vibes) and Gene Krupa (drums) combination. They were pretty badass percussionists, often known for a kind of blunt object approach. But Wilson and Goodman had a sort of powerful precision that seems to temper them. I adore this group and I think I have everything they did (not counting the harder to find live ones).
A note about those Madhattan gigs: apparently the crowd of star-struck teenagers kind of mobbed the stage, not really dancing, but kind of going ape shit. There are, however, some pics of kids dancing the Big Apple at this gig in the Life Magazine collection on Google.
From here, of course, I slide over to the QUEEN of everything, Billie Holiday. I love love love her work with the Teddy Wilson Orchestra. The songs they did together were attributed either to his band, or to a band under her name. Either way, the musicians they worked with were wonderful, and this combination of Wilson's wonderful precision and gorgeously delicate piano matched with Holiday's amazing delivery (the timing! the delays! the phrasing!) is beyond amazing. I'm also interested in John Kirby's presence in some of these sessions. He also did some pretty nifty small group stuff, in a similarly precise 'chamber jazz' style - he, Goodman and Wilson had much in common in their small group recordings.
I haven't got the details for the 'Teddy Wilson quartet' recordings in there, but I'm not sure that's Hampton in there on vibes. I'll have to look it up. I do like that song 'Just a Mood', and I suspect the trumpeter is Buck Clayton (who did so much work with Count Basie, with Billie Holiday and with Benny Goodman's small groups, in the same year these were recorded.
Then I squeeze in some more Billie Holiday. Because I can. I do like 'Gloomy Sunday', in part because I first heard it on Sinead O'Connor's album Am I Not Your Girl? which introduced me to jazz in 1992. That wasn't a terribly great album, but I bought it because I was into Sinead, and that's (partly) how I got into jazz, though I didn't start dancing until 1998.
(this image is from the Life collection and features Sid Catlett, but isn't the band I've included here... but the pic is GREAT, right?)
The Teddy Wilson Sextet stuff from 1944 is my current favourite band. Hot diggedy. Slam Stewart! That is some extremely hot shit, right there. I love that entire album and I thoroughly recommend it. It's a bit fiddly and probably in the chamber jazz category, but it's hotter than the Goodman stuff, and that version of 'Flying Home' shits all over the Goodman one that has a similar small group feel but is perhaps a bit too mannered to really pwn all. I love the song 'Indiana', though I most like the 1935 Mound City Blue Blowers version with the lyrics... gee, to think that that version was recorded only 2 years before Goodman did his Madhattan stuff... I think of the Mound City Blue Blowers as kind of the punkers of jazz - white boys with attitude, stuffing about with hot jazz (there are some good clips on Youtube which are really fun).
And then the last song is a solo piano piece. The song is one we tend to associate with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and other vocalists, particularly from the 50s. So it's kind of nice to hear Wilson do a fun, jumpy version. It's not the best quality, though, as it came from a cheap 4CD set. But it's definitely worth a listen. I think it best shows Wilson's style, so completely different from people like Fats Waller or Count Basie or Duke Ellington... I tend to associate Wilson with Woody Allen films, though he's not over-represented in the soundtracks.
I love Teddy Wilson. And I adore the variety of bands he's been in.
"8track: Teddy Wilson plays piano" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 3, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on September 3, 2010 6:21 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 1:00
Too much DJing, not enough dancing. Boo.
But felt ridiculously tired - think I'm _still_ (despite earlier evidence to the contrary) fighting the last grains of that cold.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
September 1, 2010
fitness: dance work
Posted by dogpossum on September 1, 2010 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
feeling: good, duration: :00,
Steady, solid work. Still have crappy cold and blocked ears, so breathing got a bit difficult. But the rest of me is ready to get running again!
"fitness: dance work" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
August 26, 2010
fitness: dance work
Posted by dogpossum on August 26, 2010 4:06 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 01:45, feeling: great, effort: 3/5
I've come down with a crappy cold, but it didn't stop me doing dance work. Which is either a sad indication of how little effort I put into it, or a glorious testament to my awesomeness. Or the awesomeness of cold and flu tablets.
Also: hamstrings. Sore in so many ways.
"fitness: dance work" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
August 22, 2010
fitness: dance work
Posted by dogpossum on August 22, 2010 1:54 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 2:00, feeling: good
Slow, steady, nothing exciting. Developed knot in left calf at end of session
"fitness: dance work" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
August 21, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on August 21, 2010 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 1:30, feeling: good
Social dancing. More vigorous at the beginning, less exciting as things progress.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
August 16, 2010
djing for noobs
Posted by dogpossum on August 16, 2010 4:51 PM | Comments (0)
Tim has asked about DJing for beginners, so I'm going to talk about the set I did last Friday at the Swingpit here in Sydney. Once again I'll disclaim: this is just my opinion, not gospel, people will disagree and that's a good thing, etc etc etc.
DJing for new dancers: my approach, and a case study
Firstly, my general rule for DJing, for anyone, is "everyone should dance, and everyone should have a really good time." There are other rules: "make it easy to have fun" and "don't try to 'teach' anyone anything or 'test' dancers". Just get up there and DJ that badass shit, motherfucker.
I find that DJing for new dancers is a bit like leading a new dancer. Do your very best work. And make it easy for everyone to have fun. So avoid the stunts, avoid the tricks, play good songs, do nice stuff and enjoy yourself. There's a reason we have favourite songs, and a reason we have 'basic' or foundational or fundamental steps. The swingout is generally considered the 'foundational' step for lindy hop (this is of course debateable, but let's talk about that another time, huh?), and I take it as a model for my DJing.
It should swing.
I wouldn't play neo for advanced dancers, so why would I play it for new dancers? It's shit. Don't play it. Same goes for rock and roll, slow groovy blues and so on. Play good, solid swinging jazz. Because it's both awesome and also challenging and interesting. It's also new to new dancers, for the most part, so introduce them to your very best friends. Your best friends are the ones you like the most, the most forgiving, the kindest and the funnest. You have other friends, but these are the ones you'll take to this particular party.
There are no rules about tempo.
Some people think you should only play slow songs for new dancers. I think that's bullshit. You wouldn't play only fast songs for experienced dancers, so don't insult your noobs. But this does highlight an important point: new dancers don't have good lindy hop fitness. Even if they're super fit athletes already. Lindy hop kicks your arse and requires good motor skills, balance and coordination. All with a strange person. So it's quite tiring when you're just beginning. So remember when you're DJing for new dancers, that they'll get tired quickly. This brings me to the next important point...
Work that goddamn wave.
Move through the tempos (120-140-160-180-200 and down again) quickly and efficiently. Don't do crazy jumps (120-200), but don't linger at a particular tempo. You can do a bit more time in the < 160 territory if people are especially tired, but don't sit down there too long. You might want to restrict your highest tempo if you're DJing a particularly tired group of new dancers, but do NOT assume that they don't want to dance fast. No one's told them a song is 'too fast' yet, so they'll have a go at anything. Which is WONDERFUL and something experienced dancers don't do any more.
All this is really just good DJing practice. Working the tempos helps you work the energy in the room, and also the emotions in the room. I like to build to a crescendo (to a climax, or to the punchline of a good joke), where half the pleasure lies in the expectation. So building up is as important as arriving.
Work with emotions and energy.
I do tend to avoid the overly sexy songs or songs that feel sexy, mostly because new dancers are often uncomfortable dancing close to strangers and sexy songs adds to that discomfort. Especially in mixed age groups. I also lean a bit on the cheery songs (rather than the moodier stuff), but then, that's lindy hop. It's meant to be a big, fat kick of adrenaline and happyjoyjoy. It could be manic or kind of arsekicking happyjoyjoy, but it's still a good feeling. I take Frankie as a model: he used to aim to make a woman laugh when he danced with her. And I reckon it's a good approach. He might've been doing it to get laid, but I'm doing it to have a good time for a more ordinary sort. I want to see dancers on the floor and sidelines laughing and smiling. Not cranky.
Play your best songs.
Not your newest, strangest songs or songs you're not really sure of. Play your best songs. This can be a hard one, especially if you're a new DJ and not really sure what constitutes 'best'. For my money, the 'best' songs are often the favourites. The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra playing 'C Jam Blues' is a best song. It's a bloody good band recorded live, playing a bloody good song at an accessible tempo. It has lots of energy. It has fun breaks. It's good. It's ok to old, overplayed favourites for new dancers. They're favourites for a reason. And they're not 'old' to new dancers - they're new. You're introducing new dancers to your best friends, right? So introduce them to the songs people love. As The Squeeze says "I'm here to have a good time. Play good songs, and play some songs I know."
I'm not saying don't ever play a new or untested song to new dancers. I found, DJing the Funpit in Melbourne, that I'd often test my newer stuff on those guys because they were up for ANYTHING, so long as it was fun. But I try to cushion the songs I'm not sure of. Build up with a safe song, follow up with a safe song. So I'd prepare the crowd for something new and strange with 'C Jam Blues' and have something like 'Apollo Jump' on hand in case it bombed. If it went well, I'd follow up with something else, perhaps go in a new direction stylistically or otherwise take another risk. Try to figure out what they liked in the song.
Try to go easy on song length.
This isn't a hard and fast rule. But newer dancers do tend to lack stamina, and new leads can get a bit sick of their same 3 moves, and new follows can suddenly figure out 1 minute into a song why no other woman will dance with that unpleasant older man. So cut them some slack and play shorter songs.
Live bands.
I do not, however, support the suggestion that live bands should follow any of these rules (except for the neo one - don't play that shit. It's nasty. Unless you are actually a neo band. Then I probably won't be at your gig). Long songs = important for bands because they give musicians a chance to improvise and shine. I tend to drop the 2-dance rule when I'm dancing to really long songs.
What else? Hmmm. Be prepared for new dancers to come running up to say "What was that song?!" and then to have to explain who Ella Fitzgerald is.
oh.
Be aware of the music in the class before the social dancing, if you're DJing after a class.
This is a big one. I try to give half an ear to what they're teaching in the class, and what music they're using. This can be hard if they're using neo to teach dodgy stuff. But what I might think is 'oh, I'll play hi-fi stuff with lots of energy and probably vocals'. Because that's what people like about neo. They also tend to like its non-swingingness because it's familiar (and more like rock n roll or punk or whatever). But I won't pander to that. I will perhaps play some upenergy jump blues, but I won't play neo. Yucky.
If they're teaching with really really really slooooow music, then you're going to have some trouble getting the tempos up later on. If you come in with something at 160 after they've been learning at 112 (welcome to recent life), you're going to scare them. So come in a bit slower. But get the tempos up. Don't sit down there on 112. That's bad news. Because you're introducing new dancers to your best friends, remember? And you have more friends than just 'Night Train', right? RIGHT?
I try to match the feel and the energy and the style of the last song they play in class. Which is where I segue to my last set....
First set @ Swingpit, Friday 13th August 2010
title - artist - album - bpm - year - song length
My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone The Great Nina Simone 120 3:38
Let's Do It Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey, Marty Grosz, Dan Levinson, Vince Giordano) Anybody's Baby 126 2004 4:28
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan With Buster Bailey, Milt Hinton, Jerome Richardson, Osie Johnson, Dick Hyman, Wendell Marshall A Tribute To Andy Razaf 147 1956 3:19
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 148 1937 2:41
Walk 'Em Buddy Johnson and his Orchestra Walk 'Em 131 1946 2:53
Cole Slaw Jesse Stone and His Orchestra Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 145 2:57
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra (Zutty Singleton) After You've Gone 154 1943 2:42
Big Fat Mama Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra (Trevor Bacon, Buster Bailey) Apollo Jump 135 1941 3:09
Leap Frog Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Luis Russell) The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (disc 7) 159 1941 3:00
Stuffy Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five Jammin' the Blues 153 2003 3:46
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie and his Orchestra Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 144 1958 3:13
Blue Monday Jay McShann and his Band (Jimmy Witherspoon) Goin' To Kansas City Blues 125 1957 3:40
Gimme A Pigfoot Lavern Baker La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith 120 1958 3:11
The Spinach Song Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards) Anybody's Baby 165 2004 4:57
San Francisco Bay Blues Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band with Barbara Dane Blues Over Bodega 160 1964 3:42
You Can Have My Husband Tuba Skinny (Erika Lewis, Todd, Kiowa, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus, Alynda Lee, Robin) Tuba Skinny 144 2010 3:49
Bizet Has His Day The Solomon Douglas Swingtet Ain't No School Like the Old School 155 2010 3:44
Twenty Four Robbers Gordon Webster (with Brianna Thomas, Jesse Selengut, Matt Musselman, Adrian Cunningham, Cassidy Holden, Rod Adkins, Jeremy Noller) Happy When I'm With You 209 2009 2:39
Yacht Club Swing Echoes of Swing Harlem Joys 164 2008 3:20
Be Careful (If You Can't Be Good) Buddy Johnson and his Orchestra Walk 'Em 121 1951 3:09
Long Gone John Gordon Webster (with Brianna Thomas, Jesse Selengut, Matt Musselman, Adrian Cunningham, Cassidy Holden, Rod Adkins, Jeremy Noller) Happy When I'm With You 140 2009 3:57
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 140 1950 3:04
The teachers had been using CW Stoneking's 'Don't Go Dancin' (from King Hokum) which I initially thought was a bad idea, until I saw the routine. It was Friday 13th and they were doing a 'spooky' routine which was actually quite fun. The students were _really_ enjoying it, and would go from quiet and attentive during demonstrations to raucous and rowdy during rotations to new partners.
So I began with 'My Baby Just Cares For Me' because 'Don't go Dancin'' is just vocals + a bit of rinky tink uke action. Difficult dancing. I chose 'My Baby Just Cares For Me' because it's also sparse instrumentation. The piano dominates, with a nice, simple walking bass line and the vocals are delivered quite simply and plainly. It's a mood change, but it still works in much the same ways as 'Don't Go Dancin''. I wanted to change the mood because I couldn't stay down there in moody land. But I did want to use the clutch while changing gears. 'My Baby Just Cares For Me' about the same speed, but it builds in energy. It's an old favourite. It's fun to dance to because of the breaks, and because the piano is actually quite clever (go Nina, Go!) and allows room for jokes. I like it. It's overplayed because it's good. New dancers love it. They also recognise it because of the claymation video clip that used to get played on Rage a lot.
I played 'Let's Do it' because it's another iconic jazz song. Most people know it. It's saucy, but not in an up-in-your-grill way. This version is hi-fi and fun. Same slow tempo, because I'm still prepping the room. I'm playing nice, to get everyone up and feeling good and comfortable. This song went down really really well.
'Massachusetts' is another overplayed gem. It's good. It starts simply, but it has a lovely, chunky rhythm that's easy to dance to. It's a little faster, but not crazily so. It's funness and easiness actually makes people dance, even though it is faster. With bubs, at this point, I want to convince them to try to dance, to get some endorphines, and then to decide they like dancing. So I play nice at this early point.
All three of these have lyrics. Which is good for people who never listen to jazz. They're all women, so they link. They all have quite conventional deliveries, which is also useful (no Cangelosi Cards just yet). All this action is safe. But there's no fucking Buble here. This is good stuff. I'm warming the room.
'For Dancers Only' is a switch to a big band, because I wanted a bigger sound. It's another old favourite. It's also overplayed. It went well. It also worked as a trigger for the social dancers who'd arrived (and I noticed there were quite a few there that night - far more than the students from the class).
I wanted to play nice, so I went down a few bpm to 'Walk em', which is a song I think of as a 'beginner song', partly because of Johnson's comments in the liner notes of that album about playing slower songs for inexperienced dancers. It worked, and filled the flor a little more.
'Cole Slaw' - more overplayedness. But clapping. At an easy tempo, but a little higher than 'Walk em'.
'Jump Through the Window'. Yes, just assume that I'm playing all overplayed favourites unless I say othewise, ok? This had mixed results. The squawky trumpet kind of blew up the sound quality and this song really demonstrated the limitations of the sound gear at that venue. Boo. It sounded squawky and without enough sound in the mid range. I fiddled with the equaliser, but it wasn't really going to do much good. I resisted the urge to pump the volume so I could 'hear' the mids, because that doesn't actually work.
Back down the tempos again, but playing 'Big Fat Mama' because it has vocals and is fun and accessible. Still a big band.
....I'm losing interest in this post, actually, so I can't really be bothered writing any more. The only thing worth pointing out is that I should have skipped that version of 'Yacht Club Swing' (or replaced '24 Robbers' with it) and gone straight to the lower tempoed Fats version of 'All That Meat and No Potatoes' I'd intended, instead of pushing a smart arse Fats theme (they're all Fats Waller songs). Too fast.
Also, that version of 'Bizet has his day' bombed. I thought it might work because it has clapping. And I remembered it as being the most appropriate from Sol's new album for this crowd. I was wrong. I had set it up properly with the upenergy 'San Francisco Bay Blues' and then the mellower 'You Can Have My Husband', as 'Bizet Has his Day' starts mellow and then builds. But it just bombed. Listening, I thought 'oo, this isn't that good a song'. I find the solos a bit intrusive and annoying and the transitions between solos are a little clunky. It's a bit of an unusual song, but I had set it up properly. I'll try it again, but not soon (sorry Sol).
The second half of the set was mostly newer or less familiar songs, and they had mixed results with the new dancers. But by that point there was a more mixed crowd, so I wanted to change things. the Terra Hazelton and Tuba Skinny are going down really well (both here and at Canberrang) and they're a nice combination.
We ended on a birthday/farewell jam and then I danced a couple of songs before suddenly discovering I had A SICK STOMACH and having to rush home to bed. That sucked ARSE and was entirely unexpected. I was feeling fine and wanted to DANCE. A big BOO to that.
"djing for noobs" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie and music
August 12, 2010
my concerns about burlesque
Posted by dogpossum on August 12, 2010 10:32 PM | Comments (1)
I've written about this before, but not in a proper post. In this post I try to articulate some of the reasons why burlesque performances at swing dance events (lindy hop and blues) make me feel uncomfortable. This isn't the end of my thinking, and I do want to make the point, first, that badass burlesque performers are seriously badass.
Burlesque has been having something of a surge in popularity within swing dancing scenes in Australia (and overseas I suppose) for a few years now. Burlesque is actually quite a big scene in Sydney, and there're a range of regular events featuring burlesque shows (including Black Cherry and Gurlesque) as well as a stream of workshops, classes and so on. There are a number of burlesque performers who are also lindy hoppers, but they tend to be people who came to lindy _after_ burlesque (or carny stuff). There are more 'swing' dancers into burlesque, but when I say 'swing', I'm mostly referring to the neo-swing/rockabilly/rock n roll/goth crossover scene which is larger and more firmly established than the lindy scene.
So I've seen a range of burlesque acts, with a range of politics and presentation and framing styles. I'm by no means an aficionado and I've never taken a burlesque class of any type. But I have seen acts that range from your standard tits-out (eventually) tease show to more sophisticated (politically speaking) cabaret and circus-skills type performance.
But I want to talk about is burlesque within the context of a swing or lindy hop scene. When I say 'swing or lindy hop' I'm talking about the dancers who're into recreating 1920s, 30s and 40s dances rather than neo swing/rockabilly cross over stuff. Though it's a little difficult to do that in Sydney where there's so much cross-polination. With the hardcore lindy/swing scene, though, the emphasis is more on dancing that costume, and the standard of dancing tends to be much higher.
I am often unsure of the burlesque shows I see at a swing events. I want to cheer and be appreciative, I want to celebrate women learning mad skillz, choreographing routines, running businesses and celebrating the sheer orsm of the female form (and sexuality). But I'm not entirely convinced by the majority of shows that I see. For the most part, when I see a burlesque show at a swing event (and there're more and more these days), I see women who aren't exactly super-skilled, and whose shows aren't exactly unique or professionally choreographed. This often means that they don't quite manage the properly professional performance that burlesque requires. I mean, if I'm going to buy the argument that burlesque is empowering or a celebration of women's sexuality, I need to see confident, polished acts and performances. Performances that function on more levels than just 'here, get off on this'.
In the more sophisticated acts the tension is established not solely through anticipation (the 'tease') but through the presentation of a performance of sexuality, where it is quite clear that we are invited to suspend belief, or to adopt a role as 'audience' in what is, essentially, a performance of gendered, sexual relations. I mean, I'm not at all cool with the idea of a bunch of men going along to watch a woman or two getting their gear off and flaunt their bits, simply for the audience's pleasure. Not if that's all there is to the story.
Because that's not feminist. Not at all. Not even in a post-second wave feminist social context. Because, of course, we're not living in a post-patriarchy. Images of women in mainstream culture - fuck, in subcultures too - still tend to favour Mulvey's male gaze, and we see women's bodies almost always in reference to a sexualised ideal. In this context, a dodgy, single-layered (and unprofessional) burlesque act is really just an extension of an ordinary strip show, just with shittier pay, crapper performance skills and some bullshit line that this is somehow 'empowering' the performers. I'm also a little fucking reluctant to accept that - by extension - this performance is somehow empowering me. Because it's fucking not.
I go to a great deal of trouble on the social dance floor, in lindy hop and other jazz dances, to establish my public persona, or to perform a gendered identity that deviates from, that totally fucks up the idea that I am most fulfilled or powerful or beautiful or desirable when I'm admired and desired as an object by a man.
... I guess I'm not as cool and calm about this issue as I'd thought...
I think that this is the root of my frustration: poorly realised burlesque, in a swing setting, reminds us that women are sexualised by our society, and that our bodies are continually presented and represented as objects to be consumed by a male gaze.
(picture stoled from here but of course an iconic photo of Bessie Smith).
As I said, I do a lot of discursive, practical and thinking work to find myself role models - ways of being a woman - that do not work this way. I seek out women like Bessie Smith who made it clear that heterosexuality was dull, that physical strength was powerful, and that musical and creative independence was an essential part of womanhood. I also look to women like Josephine Baker, who may have performed in a garland of bananas, but who also tipped conventional ideas about women on their head. She used comedy and a hyper-sexualised, bizarre presentation of race and gender to fuck up gender norms of her day. And film footage of her dancing is still provocative and unsettling to the status quo (you can check her out in this bit of a documentary). I've written about this a bunch of times before, including in this post.
So when I see women getting up in front of a crowd of mildly embarrassed swing dancers, wearing a few spangles and then proceeding to conceal-and-reveal them with varying degrees of proficiency, I think 'what the fuck?! Imma gonna have to work extra hard to wipe that image out of the minds of this crowd after this. Everything I'm going to do on the dance floor (and as a DJ and event manager) is once again going to be in reference to this fucked up, commodified, sexualised, disempowering image'. And for the good Goddess's sake, I'd much rather work to produce a new set of genders and gender roles, ones which might include sexualised bodies, but which are not set up in opposition to (or marginalised by) an idealised sexualised female body. Which is - in these particular shows - white, young, hetero, etc etc etc.
I also have trouble with these dodgy burlesque shows because I see the way they make men in the audience feel uncomfortable. They might very well find these women attractive (because they are), but they've also spent the last few years being re-socialised by the heteronormativity of lindy hop which suggests that women aren't just there to be looked at. The men in these audiences are also products of a 21st century culture which asks men to position this sort of sexualised display-and-consumption within all-male spaces. So I suppose, on the one hand, these shows approach some sort of empowerment by inviting men to openly acknowledge their desire for sexually confident women. But in reality, these aren't actually sexually confident women. They're women trying to present a sexually confident facade. And not quite bringing it off. And at any rate, there's not exactly a shortage of spaces in which men can acknowledge their sexual desire for women.
There's also the fact that these women performers are not really in a position to play with the queer (and necessarily transgressive) gaze presented by performing to a crowd of men and women. The Australian swing scene is quite homophobic, and while women dancers are quite good at cheering on their sisters on stage, they're not comfortable with expressing sexual desire/titillation/whatevs for another woman. Not even in a performance or 'made up' setting. I think that these shows, particularly in regards to male audiences, ask men (and not women) to adopt a role as desiring subject for a powerless object. Quite a lot of men don't really like the idea that they're participating in the objectification of women's bodies, and quite a few men would really rather support and participate in feminist projects which do the opposite.
In contrast, there're very good burlesque shows which do all the tricky, slippery stuff that make burlesque (potentially) a site for gender play and subversion. Gurlesque, with its women-only crowds immediately tips over the heteronormativity necessitated by patriarchy. Shows that involve acrobatics or serious skills (hoops, knives, rope work, etc), are also undoing the idea of passive-woman as desirable-woman. And a clever returned-gaze or audience participation is equally powerful.
So I think what I'm saying is that I'm not ok with burlesque at lindy hop events. Or blues dancing events. Unless it is that second sort of show. But it's difficult to distinguish between the two; do you ask to preview the performance before you put it in your program?
There's also a tradition in Australian lindy hop of accepting and encouraging performances by dancers during your weekend. Including visiting or local dancers demonstrates welcomingness, and it also works quite nicely in a weekend's program to have the odd performance to break up the social dancing. And, in the final analysis, most dancers really enjoying watching performances. Particularly because they really enjoy the interaction of a performance - clapping, cheering, shouting - and enjoy seeing dancing from other communities. This pleasure, though, is usually tempered during a burlesque performance. The room is often uncomfortably quiet, the setting large, open, airy and inappropriate for burlesque (which often plays with line-of-sight and the fourth wall of the conventional stage). The audience is unsure of when to cheer, how to cheer, and even if they should cheer.
I think that if I was running a weekend event and approached by a burlesque performer interested in doing a show during the weekend, I would be very careful in including them in my program. I'd preview their show first, and I'd only include acts which were both professional and also very clearly subversive or transgressive. I'd be this picky because I think that feminism is something that we do everyday, in ordinary, everyday settings. It's not (just) about marches and protests and legislation. It's also about how you style your swivel, whether you dance alone or not, how you get to and from events, and how you manage the program of your event. I have found that there are lots and lots of little ways to do good, solid community work in running dance events, and I see feminist work as community work - good for women, good for men, good for all of us. Or else it's not feminist, not in my mind.
I think I have more to say about this, but I want to think a bit more and perhaps post again later. At the moment, I'm torn between wanting to support women performers unequivocably, and wanting to actually further the cause of feminism. And, in the end, I sure as fuck don't want to support activities that undermine all the stuff I - and other women and men - have worked to achieve in gender performance in contemporary swing dance culture.
"my concerns about burlesque" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and wimminz
new orleans jazz?
Posted by dogpossum on August 12, 2010 12:28 AM | Comments (1)
I'm interested in the way dancers and DJs use the term 'New Orleans' when they're talking about music. Different dancers use the term in different ways. There, are, for example, a number of dancers who've moved to New Orleans itself, and use the term 'New Orleans music' (or NOLA music or whatever) to refer to all the bands currently playing in that city. The expression is used to refer to a geographic and cultural grouping of bands and musicians. Not all of these are jazz bands. In this post I'm going to try to explore some of the ways 'New Orleans' is used in swing dance discourse, and how it carries so many different connotations and functions in so many ways.
Last year the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown, one of the highest profile and most influential events in the lindy community, was held in New Orleans, and it will be again this year. It's interesting to see how the promotion for Showdown has expanded from an exclusive focus on dancing itself to a broader promotion of New Orleans as a cultural mecca for jazz dancers and musicians. The food and weather and architecture are as important to the event as the social dancing.
(NOLA map of jazz neighbourhoods from here)
This idea of New Orleans as musically and culturally unique is not new - the HBO series Treme makes that point (rather aggressively) throughout its first season. In this program the music anchors the narrative, both in terms of setting scenes, but also in terms of structuring the lives of some of the main characters who happen to be musicians or music-lovers. Food, however, is just as important, with one main character running a restaurant that later becomes a pivot point for a key plot point, as well as a meeting place for a series of otherwise unrelated characters.
I'm not entirely convinced Treme is the best program out there (though at least this time the characters manage to pass the Bechdel test... just... almost), but it certainly hit the international swing community with a degree of serendipity. Though it isn't widely watched in Australia (not broadcast here, and really only available through... shall we say, by way of the jolly roger), the music has been trickling down to various DJs and dancers in Australia, coinciding with a growing interest in New Orleans as the home (or at least most recent resting place) of Showdown.
My key source for music from Treme, beyond the program itself, has been the Songs from Treme blog, which I learnt about via twitter and other music and Wire loving friends.
I liked the way the music was largely by independent or by lesser known artists (and so available from my preferred indy sources - CDBaby, emusic and so on), and one of the pleasures of watching the program was identifying artists in the background of scenes. I think, perhaps, that this might be one of the more difficult parts of the program - without these musicians and music to spot, the story line and dialogue are far less complex and interesting than those of the Wire. But then, it's also interesting to see a program using music in this way.
I think it's worth pausing to watch the opening credits of Treme (which you can watch on youtube here).
Ken Burns Jazz series spent an inordinate amount of time in New Orleans, and that itself was more than a little problematic. While the city was absolutely central to the development of American jazz, for so many reasons (and we have to mention its role as a sea port and consequent role as a gathering point for musicians of so many international cultures and traditions), it was not and is not the only place in that country (or others) contributing to the development of jazz. I mention this program because it is so iconic, and because it plays such a key role in Australian swing dance culture. It saw the release of a series of very useful CDs, a fascinating book, and of course, a range of DVDs which even mention lindy hop at one point.
But I think John Goodman's ill-fated character makes the best point of all in Treme when he reminds his Youtube audience that the city is more than the picturesque French quarter and live jazz. It is also political corruption, a disturbing crime problem, grinding poverty and burning racial tensions. Many Australian or international dancers, I think, would be surprised to see not only the devastation still remaining from Katrina, but also the ground-in social difficulties beyond the wrought-iron and narrow streets of the tourist quarter. A jazz fan might argue that it is out of these conditions that jazz was born, but I'm fairly sure a New Orleans local might also like (or even prefer) reliable electricity and political ethics.
This brings me (in a roundabout way) to my original point. The way dancers use 'New Orleans' when they're discussing music for dancing. I've heard it used in a number of ways, including contexts where I've thought 'hey, that's just wrong'. But then, language is flexible and jazz dance reminds us every single day that there's no right or wrong, just the way that you do it.
When I say 'New Orleans' jazz, I'm referring to one (or a number of) these:
Music or musicians currently working in the city itself.
So I might be talking about various parts of the Loose Marbles or other 'street bands' working in or hailing from New Orleans. Not all of these are jazz or in the jazz tradition. But the bands dancers in Australia tend to be most interested in are.
One of my favourite songs from the Treme soundtrack is 'Shallow Water' by Donald Harrison (which you can listen to here. I love this song for running, and I also love it for the way it ties into the story arc considering the New Orleans indians and Big Chiefs (who fascinate and delight me with their costumes, posing and strutting and cultural appropriation of native American imagery in combination with very African practices and rhythms). But I wouldn't play this song at a swing dance, even though the complicated rhythms work perfectly with the complicated rhythms we dance and hear in jazz.
So when most dancers talk about the great bands that they saw in New Orleans, or the great CDs they've just bought or the songs they're playing for dancers, most of them aren't talking about Donald Harrison, they're talking about the younger street bands, recreationist bands like the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, The Palmetto Bug Stompers, Tuba Skinny, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns or perhaps (at a pinch) not-quite-street-band-people like Kermit Ruffins or the (incomparable) Preservation Hall Jazz band. I often find that a lot of dancers conflate all the recent round of street jazz bands as 'New Orleans', even if they're not from New Orleans. This might include bands like the Cangelosi Cards, Tin Pan or Baby Soda.
Music or musicians of the 'jazz' era who hailed from New Orleans.
(pic of the King Oliver Jazz Band stoled from here)
This includes people like Louis Armstrong, Lil Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton and so on. While their earlier stuff is definitely 'New Orleans', and artists like Armstrong made great mileage from New Orleans revival type music in the 40s and 50s, these guys didn't stand still, musically speaking. Armstrong (who is the most obvious, but certainly not the only example) developed from his work as a musician in King Oliver's band to doing hardcore big band swing, and then ballads, torch songs and a whole range of other things. So simply identifying a musician as 'New Orleans' might give you an idea of their history or their influences, but really isn't enough to describe their entire career or every song they played.
Music of the 'New Orleans' style.
Now this is where I've seen the greatest range of opinions. I heard a dancer the other night describe a song by Artie Shaw that I was playing as 'New Orleans'. This surprised me as Shaw was white, born in New York, grew up in Connecticut and isn't known as a New Orleans style musician at all. I think, in that case, the dancer meant that this song wasn't groove, or was earlier, or classic jazz.
I could imagine a difference of opinion about whether a musician was 'New Orleans' or 'Chicago', particularly as many jazz musicians left New Orleans for Chicago in the 20s, and you can hear the music shifting as it moved between cities. But even then, there's quite clear distinctions...
What I think a lot of dancers mean, when they say a song is 'New Orleans' is that it has a sort of raucous collective instrumentation (as opposed to the tightly arranged big bands of the 30s and later), where musicians improvise within the structure of an arrangement. Most of these band have about eight or fewer musicians, as this sort of musicality is difficult to hold together with bigger bands. I seem to remember Gunther Schuller talking about this, but I'd have to look it up, and the book's downstairs.
This type of band really tended to dominate the 20s, but was later 'revived' in the 30s and 40s by the 'moldy figs' and others who held that swing was modern and not really 'true' jazz at all - a highly contentious argument that particularly shat the bebop jazz musicians.
Instrumentation tended to include a tuba player (to replace the bass player), a drummer who played a sparser, pared back kit (or who was even replaced by a washboard player or other type of rhythm instrumentalist - playing a suitcase or other simple rhythm instrument), some brass (trumpet or cornet, a trombonist...) and perhaps a pianist, if a piano was to be had. There were often lyrics, provided either by a guest vocalist, by one of the band, or by the band ensemble.
Blues-structured songs would often dominate the repertoire of these bands, but not necessarily so. Singers were not amplified, and it's not surprising that shouters are associated with these bands, even though they might not necessarily have begun with these bands at all. The singing style of musicians like Meschiya Lake certainly encourage this association.
Timing-wise, the rhythm was often 2/4, or felt like 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 rather than 1-2-3-4 of later swing (and of course there's the Basie quote: "I can't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play; cause my boys and I got to have four heavy beats to a bar and no cheating"). This is a tricky thing to talk about, and I don't really have the language for it. It's not right to say that all New Orleans jazz (then or now) was 2/4 or even that it all had that uppy-downy feeling rather than the flatter, 4/4 time swing does. But if I hear a song with that sort of instrumentation, in 2/4 time or with that really uppy-downy rhythm that makes me want to do 20s charleston rather than low, flat out lindy hop, I tend to think 'New Orleans', even though it's not strictly accurate.
I use 'New Orleans' in my music collection to identify a particular type of music or sound. I distinguish between 20s society jazz, 20s big band jazz, 20s hot big bands and New Orleans jazz. If it gets the New Orleans tag from me, it's hot (as opposed to sweet), it's a smaller band, it has that collective improvisation (which often sounds like a bunch of pots being thrown around) and it doesn't have a shuffle rhythm in the drum section. But I wouldn't use this definition to discuss or describe the music to another person in conversation. I feel a bit strange writing it here.
But I also want to note one other type of music which falls under the New Orleans umbrella, but which I don't think is quite the same:
New Orleans revival.
(Sidney Bechet with Bob Wilbur, as stoled from Riverwalk Jazz)
There was, literally, something of a New Orleans revival in the 30s and 40s. I've read a bit about it, but from what I can gather from some really unreliable sources (and I just don't know if it's a true story or not), this revival was prompted by white music fans, including those writing jazz magazines (I'd have to check the titles I'm afraid, but I have made a list of my posts approaching this topic here), and eventually running jazz festivals. These guys felt that the 'modern' jazz of the day (swing and later bebop) wasn't 'real' jazz, and so they sought out surviving musicians (like Bunk Johnson) and got them to record.
Other musicians rerecorded or revisited their stuff from the 20s as well, so you get people like Sidney Bechet recording New Orleans standards in the 40s and 50s. They're great songs, it's great stuff. But it often has some different stuff going on in the rhythm section (the drums is where I hear it most - a shuffle rhythm rather than cooking pots clashing and bashing or steady thump). It also often feels as though the uppy downy beat is smoothed out a bit, swung a bit. For me, this often leaves me thinking 'should I charleston or lindy hop to this?'
Interestingly, I've noticed that a lot of Australian jazz clubs (in both Sydney and Melbourne anyway) favour this sound. I think this is because the New Orleans revival sound was very popular in Australia in the 40s and 50s. Which is interesting as well because black American musicians were not allowed into Australia from about 1928 until the mid 1950s (I track my (limited) research into this topic in this post, which includes a pic of the American band that prompted the ban). The ban was initiated for a number of (racist) reasons, but also because of pressure from the Australian musicians union. So the Australian jazz musicians and scene gained their influence not from seeing and jamming with African American musicians, but from records, visiting white musicians, magazines from the United States and their occasional trips overseas. Needless to say, most Australian jazz musicians were (and are) white. So the sound that dominates much of Australian jazz is what I'd think of as 'New Orleans revival'. Even though it's probably not really accurate.
...concluding....
Ok, so this post is really just an overview of some of the things I've noticed about the way people use the term 'New Orleans' in discussions about music for dancing. It's probably very inaccurate, and I'll probably disagree with it myself in a little while. But I wanted to write this because the street bands of New Orleans are very popular at the moment with more experienced Australian dancers. The 20s sound generally is very popular, in part because it's chic with America's experienced dancers (who teach here in Australia) and at the highest profile American events (which we experience via Youtube, Facebook and stories from returning travellers).
I also want to state that though I'm very fond of these bands, and some are extraordinarily good, I do have reservations about their dominance. I've started pushing for solid, big band swing in my sets, and I've really started missing this stuff in other DJs' sets. In Sydney we hear all sorts of music, so I'm ok here. But I do hear a lot of that other stuff in other cities. While I do love the smaller bands, there's nothing quite like a big band in full flight. And I do miss the flattened out feeling of a really good, swinging rhythm. I do have some concerns about what I see in some dancers dancing - lots of flattened feet, a flatter, unbouncy lindy hop and a general economy of movement which suits the scorching tempos and unpredictable nature of the collective improvisation of this stuff. While there's amazing stuff going on, sometimes I worry that the more interesting stuff - the greater range of arm movements, feet way off the ground, the triple steps and so on - are neglected.
But then, really, who the fuck am I to pass judgement on this stuff? It's all dancing, and dancing is a Good Thing. And, to be honest, I really like to see dancers experimenting with form and style and musicality. And it's a very wonderful thing to see young musicians working with this music and dancers supporting new bands by buying their CDs and booking them for gigs.
"new orleans jazz?" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
August 10, 2010
fitness: dance practice
Posted by dogpossum on August 10, 2010 9:04 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 00:45, feeling: good
Not really much of a workout, but I want to keep track of the stuff I do that puts pressure on my knee/foot. And dance practice on a concrete floor does that.
"fitness: dance practice" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
Canberräng report and djing
Posted by dogpossum on August 10, 2010 1:11 AM | Comments (0)
Well, it's been a bit of a long time since I've written anything here. Boo to me. I'm really not sure why. I think it's a matter of being busy with other things, and with simply not writing a lot _generally_. Which is a Bad Thing. But this is a post about Canberräng, the DJing I did there, and the dancing I almost did.
(That's Terra Hazelton in the pic)
Anyways, Canberräng was on this weekend just past, and it was good. I didn't actually dance very much, which surprised me, especially after going so nuts at MSF. I think I've been nursing some sort of bug or cold or something for a while. Or else I've just been feeling a bit depressed or kind of mopey, and nothing makes it harder to get creative on the dance floor like feeling anxious and unhappy. But I've not been feeling all that miserable lately, and I did have a lot of nice chats and laughs and hanging-outs with good folk, so.... I'm just going to blame it on a bit of low-level germiness, a bit of pre-semester anxiety (which is largely resolved now by the happy news that I have only Excellent Teacher for both subjects), a lack of badass running (which I'll fix this week with a return to c25k with the arse-kicking week 5), and a lack of general inspiration.
That paragraph of self-inspection is a bit relevant to a talk about my DJing at Canberräng. I didn't actually dance very much at all, and that meant that I wasn't really plugged into the music for dancing, or to what other people were feeling while they were dancing. I did my first set at the welcome dance at Tilly's, and that was ok. The second set I did at the late night on Friday, which was harder, and which I don't feel was all that strong.
Basically, I think I proved my own theory that I don't DJ very well when I'm not dancing much. I do my best work when I've been dancing a bit, when I dance a bit over the weekend, and when I'm generally a bit more plugged into what other dancers and DJs are into all over the country. I dunno if this applies to other DJs, but I suspect so. I generally feel that if you're not dancing lindy hop (or bal or whatever), you're not really going to do as good a job DJing it.
I had a bit of a case of the shitty pants in the evening on Friday, which was largely related to costuming, but probably just some free-floating menstrual rage and pre-semester anxiety settling on the most obvious target - what I looked like. It took me a while to shake that shit off. I should have just jumped into the dancing and sought out some adrenaline, but I really wasn't feeling physically amazing either. Snot. I live with it every fucking day at the moment.
By the time the late night came around, I was better company, but I was feeling a bit tired. I ended up dancing the first part of the night in the 'party room' which really was. It was warmer in there, the sound wasn't so loud, and the music was fun, funky stuff. Dave and I spent a couple of hours just mucking about in there, beginning with some cuddle dancing and then progressing to no-holds-barred silly dancing on our own, which actually just became straight out dancing-on-our-own fun dancing. I blame Jase for making me move from just a bit of quiet cuddle dancing with my squeeze to dancing like a crazy fool fer serious.
I had a lot of trouble with volume over the weekend. My ears are getting really sore these days when the sound is too loud, and I found I'd get a massive headache if I spent too long in the main room with the horrid volume. I ended up putting in ear plugs and found that even then the sound was too loud.
This is a bad thing, and partly the result of many DJs a) having shithouse hearing themselves; b) just pushing the volume so high it distorts the sound; and c) loudness being too much for nanna. I'm going to start getting serious about volume from now on, I think. Especially in my own sets.
My problem is that the sound system often isn't powerful enough for the space (100watt will not fill a hall, I'm afraid), so DJs pump up the volume. The volume is then so loud that a) the amp or speakers can't really hack it and the sound fucks up; b) the quality of the shitty mp3s becomes extra shitty, and the music stops being a song and just ends up being a bunch of screaming noise. That makes me especially shitty because you end up dancing to _nothing_ but screamy noise, and can't hear any of the more interesting rhythms and instrumentation.
I'm not suggesting that Canberräng was a particularly bad event for this, but I am stating that most DJs don't pay enough attention to managing volume, and that most events don't actually use the right sound set up for their spaces. I am also stating that I can't hack the pain in my ears from too-loud volume any more. And I know that I can be a shocker for too much volume while I'm DJing. I think it's just that you start adding volume as your ears adjust. You want to get 'more' into your songs, and you do that by adding volume. When what you should be doing is reducing treble or adding mids or whatever.
Anyways, Saturday night I was less of a shitty pants, and had a lovely time at the winery during the day (as per usual). I quite liked the ball - there is no way any other Australian event can top using the Great Hall at the Australian Parliament House. It is the most impressive venue ever. Of all time. I was a bit meh about the band, but then that could just have been a bit of residual shittypants. I am also now firmly committed only to wearing comfortable dresses that make me feel good to Balls. No more fancy, uncomfortable costumes.
The late night was nice. I liked that party room again. It was quieter, warmer, smaller and _felt_ nicer. I did, however, still have a shit headache boiling, and spending any time in the main room (where I really wanted to lindy hop) with the bad volume really hurt. The second DJ was particularly bad for excessive volume, so I ended up hanging about talking to people, eating stuff and apologising or making up for being unexcellent the night before. That last part was ok, because it meant that I really just asked a bunch of nice ladies to dance and then had a nice chat with them. Win-win, really.
I did hear some nice DJing over the weekend. I heard Drew DJ for the first time, and that was nice. I also got to follow Andy DJing on the Friday, which is a) a challenge, and b) excellent. He's a bit of a badass DJ, and whips the dancers into a frenzy with his high-energy party music. He literally had dancers delirious with adrenaline, yelling and throwing themselves about the floor in a frenzy. I was following him, and had the last set of the night. I found that at the end of his set half the room suddenly realised they couldn't walk any more, and had to go home. It took me a little while to figure out the room and I'm not entirely sure I rocked it.
I enjoyed DJing on the Saturday, partly because I was in a better mood, but also because I was sharing the table with an old friend and got to chat a bit, and also because I was a bit more together and had a better grasp of the vibe in the room. But I had made a minor technical error a little earlier. I'd been chasing that headache with a painkiller, and then thought a plate of blue-green jelly would be nice. I was wrong. Oh, my guts. Painkiller + headache + jelly nausea + a sugar rush so mighty I felt faint. But eventually they settled down. And then I went and DJed and it was ok.
A note about Canberräng: it's well run. It really is.
Anyways, here's the set I did on Thursday night. I was second on (9-10pm), and the venue was Tilly's, a restaurant/cafe joint with lots of normal punters eating and drinking. They brought in a temporary dance floor and it was positioned right in front of the DJ booth, which was good.
Title - artist - album - bpm - year - length
Blue Monday Jay McShann and his Band (Jimmy Witherspoon) Goin' To Kansas City Blues 125 1957 3:40
Gimme A Pigfoot Lavern Baker La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith 120 1958 3:11
Sugar Blues Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards) Anybody's Baby 113 2004 3:44
My Man Stands Out Di Anne Price Barrel House Queen 145 2010 2:54
You Got to Give Me Some Midnight Serenaders Magnolia 187 2007 4:02
San Francisco Bay Blues Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band with Barbara Dane Blues Over Bodega 160 1964 3:42
Yacht Club Swing Echoes of Swing Harlem Joys 164 2008 3:20
When I Get Low I Get High Linnzi Zaorski and Delta Royale (Charlie Fardella, Robert Snow, Matt Rhody, Seva Venet, Chaz Leary) Hotsy-Totsy 165 2004 2:36
Just Because You Can Catherine Russell Inside This Heart of Mine 136 2010 4:10
Do Your Duty Tuba Skinny (Erika Lewis, Todd, Kiowa, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus, Alynda Lee, Robin) Tuba Skinny 122 2010 3:47
Long Gone John Gordon Webster (with Brianna Thomas, Jesse Selengut, Matt Musselman, Adrian Cunningham, Cassidy Holden, Rod Adkins, Jeremy Noller) Happy When I'm With You 140 2009 3:57
Flat Foot Floogie Carol Ralph Swinging Jazz Portrait 186 2005 3:44
Now Or Never Katharine Whalen Jazz Squad 167 1999 2:14
Knock Myself Out Asylum Street Spankers Spanker Madness 126 2000 2:48
The Spinach Song Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards) Anybody's Baby 165 2004 4:57
Half Tight Boogie Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five Jammin' the Blues 150 2003 3:13
I began with Jay McShann because I know Russel always thinks 'oh man, Sam's DJing again' when I start with a song from that album. It was also a good transition from the previous DJ. I played 'Pigfoot' because I wanted to play a bunch of beer-drinking songs with dirty lyrics and a party feel. I also wanted to play all hi-fi or modern versions of good songs, by good modern bands.
Terra Hazelton is a singer I've only just discovered. She doesn't have the best voice, but she does some great songs. Including this fun version of 'Sugar Blues' which I played with Tim in mind, because he loves the Preservation Hall's version of this songs.
Di Anne Price is someone I've just bought a lot of for blues dancers. Best voice.
You know how I feel about the Midnight Serenaders. They are still my FAVOURITE modern band. They have two good albums, but I overplay this particular song. I love it's light, fun feeling, and the way its lovely, light, sprightly feel contrasts with the dirty lyrics. Best trumpet solos.
I then played a bunch of songs I play all the time in Sydney. They all work really well with a crowd, and they're all accessible tempos... well, for the Roxbury in Sydney, where we tend to sit on 180bpm as an average these days.
Tuba Skinny is a new band for me. I like their street-jazz-band sound, but that that aren't all up your face with massive loud intensity. I like the vocalist. I fucking love Bessie Smith's version of 'Do Your Duty', but figured the hi-fi modern version was the best for this gang.
The restaurant manager kept telling me how much she liked my music. I figured the saucy woman singer stuff worked pretty well for an arsekicking feminist playing a dykalicious venue.
There's not a lot else to say about this set. It's pretty samey, really. I was happy with Katharine Whalen, the singer from the Squirrel Nut Zippers who I used to DJ ages ago, but have recently revisited as part of this sort of nu-skool versions of old-school set. All female vocals. Lots of food/sex/drug references. Smaller bands. Novelty vocal sounds.
By the end of this set I was _totally_ over this style of music. And craving some big band. But I have to go catch a bus now, so I'll post the other two set lists later on.
[edit: below is the stuff I added when I got home]
Second set of the Canberräng, 2-3am Friday night.
Title artist album bpm year length
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 164 1950 2:15
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra (Jack Teagarden) Father Of Jazz Trombone 136 1934 3:14
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 176 1933 2:56
I'se A Muggin' Stuff Smith and his Onyx Club Boys (Jonah Jones, Raymond Smith, Bobby Bennett, Mack Walker, John Washington) Stuff Smith: Complete Jazz Series 1936 - 1939 161 1936 3:14
[Gettin' Much Lately?] Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller, his Rhythm and his Orchestra (John Hamilton, Bob Williams, Herman Autrey, Geoge Wilson, Ray Hogan, Jimmy Powell, Dave McRae, Gene Sedric, Bob Carroll, Al Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones) Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 134 1941 3:10
Sweet Nothin's Midnight Serenaders Sweet Nothin's 154 2009 3:14
On Revival Day Terra Hazelton (feat. Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards) Anybody's Baby 219 2004 3:41
Dinah Preservation Hall Preservation Hall Hot 4 With Duke Dejan 154 2004 5:01
You Can Have My Husband Tuba Skinny (Erika Lewis, Todd, Kiowa, Shaye Cohn, Barnabus, Alynda Lee, Robin) Tuba Skinny 144 2010 3:49
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and his Orchestra Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 146 1949 3:01
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 140 1950 3:04
C Jam Blues Duke Ellington and his Orchestra At The Hollywood Empire 185 1949 3:23
Mop Mop Teddy Wilson Sextet (Emmett Berry, Benny Morton, Edmond Hall, Slam Stewart, Big Sid Catlett) The Complete Associated Transcriptions 1944 144 1944 4:58
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra (Cootie Williams, Barney Bigard, Otto Hardwick, Harry Carney, Duke Ellington, Fred Guy, Hayes Alvis, Sonny Greer, Buddy Clark) The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 165 1937 3:10
Turn It Over Bus Moten and his Men Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) 148 1949 2:38
Sweet Patootie Noble Sissle's Swingsters (Sidney Bechet) Shake 'Em Up 117 1938 3:16
Chasing Shadows (-1) Putney Dandridge and his Orchestra (Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry, Nappy Lamare) Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 1) 137 1935 2:40
Do Your Duty Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor) Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 1) 121 1933 3:31
Blues For Smedley Clark Terry, Ed Thigpen, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown Oscar Peterson Trio + One: Clark Terry 137 1964 6:57
It Takes Two to Tango Lester Young and Oscar Peterson Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio 104 6:09
The previous DJ (Andy) had been playing massively high-energy stuff all set, and people were kind of insane. The change over of DJs is usually a natural break, and you often lose the crowd at that point of a late night when people suddenly have a chance to stop and think. I didn't do the best job ever, either, so I lost people there. I really didn't know what I should be doing, and just didn't feel confident. Whereas I feel I had something going on the previous night, this night I was a bit up in the air. It really makes a difference if you're not feeling the lindy hop (and I wasn't). But it wasn't as shit as it could have been. A few people said they liked the set, but I expect more of myself.
I began with 'Rag Mop' as I know it's a good energy song. But by the end, people were a bit buggered and even I was feeling a bit over the 'big' sound. 'Davenport Blues' is my good easing-back song, but it actually builds energy towards the end, so it's a good way to get back to high energy again. I played it as a mellowing-out song, and as a transition to some older stuff I wanted to play.
I overplay 'Madame Dynamite' at home. I wonder, now if we should worry about playing stuff we overplay at home when we DJ at exchanges, or if this is the sort of stuff we should play, because it's representative of our style? I think, in my own brainz, and in regards to my own DJing, that I'll play some stuff I know works (especially if I have a crowd with plenty of my local dancers in it, as Canberräng did - 76 Sydney people, and only 86 locals + assorted others). I'll also play stuff that I haven't tried at home, but only if I'm reasonably sure it'll work (eg it's good sound quality, it feels really good, it has the usual markers of a 'good' song, etc). I tend to play higher tempo, more complex songs when I'm doing larger events like MLX, or events like MSF with a crowd of more experienced dancers. Canberräng was a decent sized crowd (about 200 at late nights, perhaps a few less), but I wasn't entirely sure it was the right place for really unusual stuff. But that didn't make me stop and second guess myself.
Then I played 'I'se a Muggin'' by Stuff Smith etc, but not the 'musical numbers' version that was a bit chic in Herräng/the US recently, because that version shits me. But this version is cool because it end with the suggestion that listeners flip over the record to hear the musical numbers game. I like this song (and other Stuff Smith stuff) because it's a good transition to other vocal-heavy, quirky/funny stuff like Fats Waller.
So I played some slower Fats Waller that I know people like. It has a lovely shouty shout chorus at the end.
More Midnight Serenaders. Sell out.
The Hazelton version of 'Revival Day' was a mistake. Why? It was too late at night, and people were too tired. I didn't build up to it with something slower tempoed, but higher energy. I was definitely pushing an agenda - I wanted to play that specific song to show it off. But I mistimed it's position in the set, it cleared the floor, and generally fucked up. That'll teach me. I knew it was a risk, I knew it probably wouldn't work, but my judgement was off.
So I played that version of 'Dinah', even though it's a bit long, because it's really good. I've played it before as a 'recovery' song, and it works well. It feels gentle (rather than in your face), and I use it for running and find it a good, consistent, 'encouraging' song that keeps me going with its lighter, gentler sound. It's a very familiar, iconic melody, but played at a much slower tempo than usual. It's hi-fi. It has some excellent solos, but no lyrics. It can sound a bit samey, but it's a good samey. You'd have a nice, safe dance to it. It did the job.
By this point I finally figured out that people were tired. It was about 2.30 and people were really feeling Andy's arse kicking. So I played this mellow Tuba Skinny song. I'm not entirely sure of the vocal style of the singer (she sounds a bit too soul for this stuff), but it's a nice, easy tempo and another good recovery song. But it also has some nice breaks, and builds a little towards the end.
'Joog Joog' is one of my go-to songs. It has an odd intro (Ivie Anderson I think?), which usually has dancers turning up their noses. But it also has a really good, solid, driving thumping beat that's not too intense. It's a real 'joog joog' rhythm. Which is just what the lyrics are all about. It also builds and builds. At this point I was also thinking 'what the fuck am I doing with this small group bullshit? We are ready for some proper big band action. Four on the floor and no cheating!
I often play the 'Joog Joog'/'Solid as a Rock' combination. 'Solid as a Rock' is a solid favourite, and the clapping and familiar rhythm always get people up and moving. It was a nice step up in energy from 'Joog Joog' and worked just as I'd intended. I had the floor totally full with 'Joog Joog' then I was a winner with 'Solid as a Rock'.
Now, from here, there were a number of things I could do. In a usual setting, earlier in the night, when dancers have lots of energy, I'd step it up, tempo and energy wise. I'd go up from the easypeasy 140bpm to 180 without a qualm. So I took a punt with 'C Jam Blues', thinking I'd safely built then energy up to the point I needed. But I underestimated the lateness of the night and also the effect the hard floor was having on dancers' bodies. If I'd actually been dancing more I'd have realised just how tiring that floor was. That version of 'C-Jam Blues' is another new one for me, and a little lump of gold from a collection of transcripts. I love that action: broadcast and recorded 'live'. It's 1949, so it's the same 12 month period as the last two songs, and really meshed well with their late swing era style. It's still solid, chunking Ellington (rather than wacky doo later Ellington), it's a very familiar song and melody, it has some extremely badass solos, and it really rocks along. Great dancing. And people dug it. It just slowly killed them until only a few strong couples were left.
So I decided to recover with some more solid swing (smaller group, though), and another new purchase. It's a very good song, it just doesn't quite rock for dancing in this setting, as the small group experimentation with repeating (and repeating and repeating) the riff got a bit dull after a while.
I figured 'ok' and followed up with another favourite, but also a song that starts mellow and then builds. But it annoyed me a bit with its earlier sound. I decided to just stop fucking about and go back to playing the favourite/solid later swing era stuff. And to ease off the bastard tempos. 'Turn It Over' is a song I used to play a _lot_ in Melbourne, but which I hardly ever play in Sydney. Mostly because it doesn't work on the shitty, under-powered Swingpit sound system. But it's such a good, fun song. And it worked perfectly. Crowd returns to floor. I promise to be kind.
'Sweet Patootie' is a lovely song, and not one I've played for dancers before, though I play it a lot at home. It's slow. It's very slow for lindy hop. And as I put it on I said to myself "right, you lindy hoppers, you can dance fast, but can you dance slow?" and they could. It's such a good little melody, such lovely, drawly lyrics, such dirty dirty entendre... _And_ it's Bechet with Noble Sissle, which is my favourite Bechet. It has the sort of rolly rhythm of a later swing era song of the 40s, but it's actually only late 30s. It feels like it's going to become some good, solid Kansas early rnb, but it doesn't quite. The dancers really liked it. Which was a big relief.
So I followed up with 'Chasing Shadows', which is a song Trev put me onto aaaages ago (he played it to very good effect one MLX yonks ago), and which I adore. I have a faster, fun version by Louis Prima in the 20s, but this one is perfect for a mellower crowd who still want interesting rhythms and melodies. I love the vocals. The Roy Eldridge/Chu Berry combo is unstoppable. Putney Dandridge is kind of nothing (I looked him up in the discographies, and he's only done a few recordings, really, in the vein we like), but it's a nice, chunky slower song just right for a late night lindy crowd who aren't really up for extreme lindy hop any more.
'Do Your Duty' is my favourite Bessie Smith song. That's her and a stellar cast of musicians. Truly amazing. I also had to make up for playing the modern version the night before. I often play this song late at night at exchanges, and I find that dancers really like Bessie Smith's delivery. I'm always surprised by the way people respond to her singing, even through the static and shitty recordings. I always get comments from dancers, and it's not that common to see dancers respond that way to a vocalist. I see Billie Holiday get the same response in blues rooms, but it's a rare thing to hear dancers really _feeling_ the singer's delivery in the way they feel another musician. I think Smith is underrated by a lot of lindy hop DJs, and I always try to play more of her in blues rooms. I think she (and Billie) are very important in the history of jazz and blues. I think Smith is super important in jazz and swing history because so many musicians played with her earlier in their careers as accompanists (Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, Buster Bailey, Louis Armstrong, Don Redman, Jack Teagarden, Chu Berry, Benny Goodman(!), Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge), and I'm sure her indomitable style shaped their music.
Then it was time to go home, and I was feeling a bit badly behaved. So I just changed style without the clutch. I love 'Blues for Smedley' and often play it late at night. Best solos ever. Then another Oscar Peterson, but this one has the best lyrics by Lester Young. There's nothing quite an elderly man of indeterminate sexuality and certain inebriety asking you to take your knickers off.
It's late, now, so I'll have a look at the third set tomorrow. If I can be bothered.
[edit: the Saturday set]
This is the set I played on the Saturday night, doing the second last set and starting at 2am. I began with James Brown because they needed a song to play while people bashed at the piñata. If ever there was a time to need the Mexican Hat Dance song... but I'm not sure the level of craziness that song induces is really a good thing when blind folded people are wielding a giant stick in a crowded room.
title artist album bpm year song length
Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine James Brown Sex Machine 110 1991 5:17
Every Day I Have The Blues Count Basie and his Orchestra (Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams) Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings [Disc 8] 110 1956 5:12
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie and his Orchestra Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 144 1958 3:13
The Jumpin' Blues Jay McShann and his Band (Jimmy Witherspoon) Goin' To Kansas City Blues 155 1957 3:04
I Diddle Dinah Washington Dinah Washington with Quincy Jones 153 3:05
On Revival Day Carrie Smith acc. by George Kelly, Ram Ramirez, Billy Butler When You're Down and Out 189 1977 3:49
I Ain't Mad At You Mildred Anderson No More In Life 158 1960 3:04
Gimme A Pigfoot Lavern Baker La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith 120 1958 3:11
Lemonade Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 5) 117 1950 3:17
Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra with Sonny Parker Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 134 1949 3:24
Savoy Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra (Trevor Bacon) Anthology Of Big Band Swing (Disc 2) 166 1942 3:05
Leap Frog Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Luis Russell) The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (disc 7) 159 1941 3:00
Don't Be That Way Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 2) 136 1938 2:36
Alligator Meat (B / R Vox Only) - Joe Swift, Johnny Otis Ban Joe Swift, Johnny Otis Band Studio Cuts 122 2:56
My Blue Heaven The Cangelosi Cards Clinton Street Recordings, I 145 4:12
You Got to Give Me Some Midnight Serenaders Magnolia 187 2007 4:02
I could do anything I liked, really, because the piñata thing kind of interrupted the flow. When I first started DJing I used to start with the Breakfast Dance and Barbeque version of 'Every Day I Have The Blues' because it's slow and lets me build the room up from nothing. I started with this version because I hear it so rarely. It's from the Mosaic Basie set, and is a really good duet. I decided I wanted to play some hi-fi big band action, in part because I was sick of small groups, and also because I wanted to play 'easy' stuff that everyone would like. It worked well.
'Blues In Hoss's Flat' just because.
'The Jumpin' Blues' because it continues the theme. I wanted to echo the shouty male vocals and keep to the hi-fi big band action.
'I Diddle' because I was sick of the in-your-face wall-of-sound, both emotionally (it's pretty intense) and volume-wise (the previous DJ had really overdone the volume in a bad way). It's a total sell-out song, but then I still like it. It's fun to dance to. And sometimes it's just nice to play songs everyone knows, so everyone can have some fun.
I was watching a dancer on the floor and thought 'imma gonna play this song for her' and that's why I played 'On Revival Day'. It's not the version most people play - it's faster and a stack of fun. It went down well, and that particular dancer ran up to me in a froth saying "I love this blah blah blah!!!" in a kind of delirious crazy-person shout. So I figured that was a win.
I've promised myself I wouldn't play 'I Ain't Mad At You' again, but it's a fun song. I love Anderson's voice. The breaks always go down well.
But by then I was all up in people's grills with the energy and big sound, so I mellowed it out with _another_ overplayed favourite. But 'Gimme a Pigfoot' is a good song.
Then I wanted to get a bit more old school, and 'Lemonade' (overplayed song no.6 599 000) is a good transition.
Then another overplayed party song. But people enjoyed it. I was thinking of building things up with some old school big band, and 'Savoy' is a good tool for that job (another overplayed one). But people were looking a bit arse-kicked, so I played 'Leap Frog', which is kind of mellow, but builds up. It's great lindy hoppping. They looked tired, and I felt a bit tired, so I mellowed it out again with 'Don't Be That Way', which is a supergreat song. 'Alligator Meat' isn't that great, but it's easy and fun.
Then I was sick of all that rubbish and decided to play something more interesting. That version of 'My Blue Heaven' is a good one for rebuilding a floor, as it's kind of light and easy-going, but it builds up. And it's a really good song.
I finished with another one of my overplayed favourites. It's the only one song I played twice over the weekend. I think it's also the only song that I'd heard played before over the weekend, which I then played. I tried my best to avoid re-playing songs I heard other DJs play, but I could have missed one as I wasn't really paying attention to other DJs all that much. But I'm really sick of going to exchanges and hearing the same songs over and over again, in every DJ's set. I figure, if we're not good enough to make a set work without revisiting the same old shit, we're not good enough to play an exchange.
Righto, that's it for my Canberrang DJing. Not as exciting as I'd hoped. But I didn't suck arse. The first set was the best one, I think. Though I enjoyed doing the last one the most, and people really enjoyed that one the most.
"Canberräng report and djing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
July 28, 2010
good hair, that man
Posted by dogpossum on July 28, 2010 6:00 AM | Comments (0)
This is Josh Billings from this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5QFR4whDdoo.
The band is of course the Mound CIty Blue Blowers. This type of music is v popular with dancer-musicians atm. But no one is as fun as these blokes were.
This hair inspired my hair.
"good hair, that man" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
July 23, 2010
picnic wear
Posted by dogpossum on July 23, 2010 3:24 AM | Comments (0)
Every year dancers go to the Governor's picnic, and to the Gatsby picnic, wearing late 20s/early 30s clobber and having a lovely time dancing to a live band, picnicing, chatting and so on. This year and last the Sartorialist took some lovely photos.
There's also a story on Citizen Couture about one of the dancers. I like the pics, there, but it bothers me that he used staples to keep his vintage trousers' hems up - the damage they'd have done to the fabric under those conditions!
Rick has also posted a story about the day.
I like the summer fashion of these events, and wish we had that sort of thing here. I can never decide what I'd wear, though. I like the light summer dresses of the period, but they do NOT suit my body shape. I do, however, also like the men's fashions - straw boater's, strongly coloured striped jackets, linen trousers, bow ties... It's all good.
Garance Dore made a comment a little while ago about plus sized models being 'unhealthy'. I can't remember what happened with that story, but it caused a bit of a flurry. I liked the way it highlighted the hypocrisy of the Sartorialist's commitment to 'everyday' fashion on 'ordinary' people but only shooting the same old body types.
"picnic wear" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and old sew and sew
July 21, 2010
sinister blues
Posted by dogpossum on July 21, 2010 9:38 PM | Comments (0)
I just want to keep a copy of this comment from faceplant, because I think it's interesting.
I've been thinking about and playing some music that I think of as 'sinister blues'. I call it that mostly because I remember seeing the Belle and Sebastian CD If you're feeling sinister on the coffee table when I was talking about it with someone. I like the way B&S, with their kind of sulky, hip aesthetic use the term 'sinister', and I like the way their use contrasts with the sort of show these 'sinister blues' people do (which is excessive, flamboyant, over the top and everything being hip is not).
Basically, when I think 'sinister blues', I'm thinking about bands who use acoustic instrumentation, often borrowed from jazz, blues or folk traditions (gypsy, yiddish, tango, etc), sing songs that are often quite bloody or hypersexualised, dress up in quite flamboyant, carnivale type gear, and do live shows that are really dramatic and fun. Some of them take themselves really seriously, some (most) have a bit of a sense of humour about it. They really do feel a bit Carnival, in that they are about excess, and often sing or perform stories which are deliberately 'shocking' or 'forbidden' or otherwise nasty. It's the excess - of emotion, costume, performing style, etc - which makes them super fun. They tend to dovetail with the goth/rockabilly scene in Sydney, where there's already a high-costume aesthetic. And some pretty heinous gender fail (do not let me get on my burlesque rant again). But as I point out, there's room for queering this shit up. Just like in True Blood, which takes all that excessive drama and sinister performance and twists it just a little (I wrote about that a little bit here).
So, Keith asked:
Keith Shapiro:
Meant to take notes on what we were talking about a month ago re: "despicable" blues or something like that, but didn't write it down and twitter lost it all. Can you remind me about the bands you were talking so I can investigate for this month's podcast? :)
Keith produces Confessin' the Blues, which is an interesting podcast discussing music for blues dancing.
I wrote this response:
Hmmm... I think it was 'Sinister blues' akshully (just a name to sum up these bands' kind of dark, broody style).
Tim Jones had some good names as well.
Ones I can think of:
Tiger Lillies
The Tiger Lillies, 'world's foremost death oompah band' (http://www.tigerlillies.com/; video: http://vimeo.com/10442987). Probably more in the cabaret/gothic glam camp, but still...
[edit: I have written about them here before]
CW Stoneking
CW Stoneking, who you know (http://cwstoneking.com/ ; video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgncwm9cMio reminds me of the Tiger Lillies). Definitely danceable songs on his cds, and has links with Melbourne's hot jazz scene and bands/musicians who play regularly for lindy hoppers.
Tom Waits. Nuff said.
I'm kinda thinking some Nick Cave should be in this list...
Mojo Juju and the Snake Oil Merchants
Mojo Juju and the Snake oil merchants' 'dusty gin-house cavalcade' (http://www.myspace.com/mojojujuvoodoo): finally, a woman! And fairly queer...
[edit: associated with Hoodoo Emporium]
Brothers Grim
[edit: Gunther's great pic from BBS this year]
Brothers Grim: 'sex voodoo delta blues-a-billy' (http://www.myspace.com/brothersgrimblues; Gunther's great pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/swingpatrol/4421548489/in/set-72157623461398043/). Did a really GREAT set at Blues Before Sunrise this year - great performers.
Snow Droppers
Brothers Grim remind me of some bands which are popular in Sydney (where there's a greater cross-over with rock n roll and rockabilly), including the Snow Droppers (http://www.snowdroppers.com/) who aren't necessarily 'blues dancing' bands, but are in that sort of newer or retro-type rockabilly/jump blues/rhythm n blues (whatevs) vein.
I like the term 'sinister blues' because it implies the nasty, morbid, goth edge. It's also super-serious, which makes me giggle. Reminds me of True Blood, in the BEST possible way. In fact, there's probably good stuff on the TB soundtrack, and I've found good stuff on the Deadwood and Carnivàle soundtracks as well.
I'm not entirely comfortable with all these bands because some of them (esp at the rockabilly end of the spectrum) tend to be GENDER FAIL. But then, all that work they do is intended to 'shock' (including via dodgy gender politics, violent or bloody themes, etc), which is kinda immature, but also part of their shtick. And it can be kinda fun, what with the dressing up and all, especially when it gets _so_ serious it becomes ridiculous.
I can't think of any female groups who do this stuff (beyond Mojo Juju) And I'd _really_ like to see some queer artists getting in there and screwing with the heteronormativity and rampant blokeism (something for the http://www.redrattler.org/ I think...)
...but then, I don't really know this music very well.
If I'm DJing these guys, I often add in some super old school stuff with dark or darkly funny lyrics (eg Rosetta Howard singing about how she'll 'cut him if he stands still, shoot him if he runs'; Irma Thomas doing 'Soul of a Man'; Bessie Jones singing 'O Death' on the Alan Lomax recordings) - stuff that says bayou, voodoo, etc.
"sinister blues" was posted in the category clicky and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and television and true blood
July 17, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on July 17, 2010 2:48 AM | Comments (0)
duration: 00:02:00
Still feeling the lack of fitness. Wonder if I have been battling a cold or something as I still feel a bit flat. Boo. In other news, the knees are rockhardawesome and I continue with the sixtyfivezillion strengthening exercises. I can safely say that I owe any mobility at all to the millions of exercises I do every day for my foot and knees.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
July 15, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on July 15, 2010 2:50 AM | Comments (0)
duration: 02:00, feeling: great
Really felt the lack of exercise during the week. :(
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
July 9, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on July 9, 2010 7:57 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 2:00, feeling: great
Lots of fun, lots of intense dancing. Sore knees the next day, but not in a major way. We'll see how thing shape up on Monday.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
July 3, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on July 3, 2010 9:53 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 02:00, effort: 4/5, feeling: great
Dancing! Adrenaline! YEAH!
I am still really enjoying the increased control running gives me when I dance. And the energy!
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
June 29, 2010
balboa DJing
Posted by dogpossum on June 29, 2010 3:42 AM | Comments (0)
So this past weekend we had the Sydney Balboa Weekend, and my recent flush of dance-love (as prompted by MSF) helped me decide that I might like to do workshops. I've very glad I did. I've done some balboa DJing in the past, but not a whole lot, and I'm not hugely confident about it. The problem, really, is that I don't dance the dance, so I can't read the crowd terribly well, and I can't translate musical figures to dancing figures - I'm not entirely sure what will work and what won't.
Nick and Laura are top notch teachers, and their classes were lovely. Most of the stuff I knew about balboa was wrong, and most of the classes I've ... hellz, every clas I've had in bal before has been wrong. It was a delight to learn that balboa is just like lindy hop, technically speaking, just with a higher 'embrace' in closed position, and a smaller frame.
In other words, you don't get down low to the floor (the way you do in lindy), but you do keep nice posture, strengthen up your core (ie all the muscles and stuff in your abdomen, but also into your hips and the tops of your legs and in your arse), relax your shoulders and bounce. That last bit made me so very happy. Bounce is what makes it possible to keep time, to follow, and for leads to release their shoulders and relax. Dancing without bounce is really hard. Much harder than with bounce, because you have to restrict the natural movement of your body. We were also instructed not to stand on tippy toes (as follows), which is another bullshitty bit of teaching I'd had trouble with in the past. It was nice to ease off and relax down into my gutses so I could follow properly.
I had a jolly time.
It's not lindy hop, though, and that's sad. But it is nice. In a tightywhitey way. I definitely feel as though I have a much better idea of how balboa works in regards to music, and I'm definitely relieved to discover that most of the things I'd been taught in the past were wrong. Balboa really is a swing dance, in that you do it to swing music, and it has a lovely swinging timing with lots of syncopation and lovely playing with timing and delay. There the things that make swing dances swing, to me - the swinging timing. Bounce is absolutely central to that, so I say No Thankyou to dances without them. Except tango. Actually, the workshops really felt like a workshop in tango - fascinating, fun, but actually not my proper cup of tea.
I think, mostly, I just like the energy, the frenetic in-your-faceness of lindy, and the chance for visual play and jokes. Bal is a bit straighter. It's not uptight (well, not all the time), jokes do work, but the closed position means that there's less scope for badass in your face jokes. It is fun to experiment with the limits of the embrace (which is what tango doods call closed position), so far as mucking about goes. But I'm not actually good enough at the dance to really experiment properly. I mostly just concentrate on following.
Anyways, I did some DJing. Below is my first set. It was bad. Bad. Bad. Because:
- I had technical problems and freaked out a bit
- I had no idea what normal tempos were for bal
- I had to lean on the hi-fi stuff at first because the sound system couldn't hack the scratchies. Which sucked, as I hadn't planned any hi-fi stuff, and had to scramble to reassess this part of my collection for 'balboa-ableness'.
- I leaned too heavily on the faster tempos. Because I feel ok following at 200bpm. And I don't actually lead (very much beyond the basic steps) balboa, I had no clue about leading bal at higher tempos. In retrospect, a lot of the bad habits people had (relying very heavily on triples rather than a range of half time or other steps; being too stiff and upright; not bouncing) make it really hard to dance fast balboa (or anything really).
- I played too many small groups, and songs which were a bit samey, stylistically
- I didn't know what 'favourites' worked with bal doods - I had no 'safety' songs... besides 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen', 'Minor Swing' and a couple of others. So when I fucked up, I had no safety song to rebuild the floor with. ARGH.
- I couldn't read the crowd. Bal is quite contained, so I found it harder to read the dancers' emotions. I was also too panicky to even attempt reading them. Bal is also low-impact, so dancers don't get physically exhausted the way lindy hoppers do. So you can dance every single song. This makes it harder to figure out how to build energy, and then to discover the point of 'climax' where you kick arses and then start building again.
First Set (Friday 25th June 2010), actually playing the second set of the night.
title artist bpm year length last played
Swingin' On That Famous Door Delta four (Roy Eldridge, Joe Marsala, Carmen Mastren, Sid Weiss) All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 190 1935 3:00 27/06/10 11:55 AM
Scram! Echoes of Swing Harlem Joys 193 2008 3:21 4/03/10 1:17 PM
Harlem Joys Echoes of Swing Harlem Joys 230 2008 3:37 25/06/10 9:25 PM
Seven Come Eleven Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five Jammin' the Blues 227 2003 2:53 25/06/10 9:28 PM
Squatty Roo Frank Ropberscheuten/ Dan Barett A Portrait Of Duke 203 2001 3:22 25/06/10 9:32 PM
Minor Swing Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five Jammin' the Blues 202 2003 3:24 25/06/10 9:35 PM
Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Dicky Wells, Django Reinhardt, Bill Coleman, Bill Dillard, Shad Collins, Dick Fullbright, Bill Beason 40 Titres d'anthologie (disc 1) 190 1937 2:55 25/06/10 9:38 PM
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 176 1933 2:56 25/06/10 9:41 PM
Royal Garden Blues Wingy Manone Complete Jazz Series 1934 - 1935 215 1934 2:49 25/06/10 9:44 PM
Everybody Rock Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra Live At The Savoy - 1939-40 187 1939 3:19 25/06/10 9:47 PM
Let's Get Together Chick Webb and his Orchestra Stomping At The Savoy (disc 1): Don't Be That Way 209 1934 3:05 25/06/10 9:50 PM
Algiers Stomp Mills Blue Rhythm Band (Lucky Millinder, Henry 'Red' Allen, J.C. Higgenbotham, George Washington, Edgar Hayes) Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Harlem Heat 219 1936 3:08 25/06/10 9:53 PM
Chimes At The Meeting Willie Bryant and his Orchestra (Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole) Willie Bryant 1935-1936 245 1935 3:01 25/06/10 9:56 PM
Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Part 1 [alt take] Benny Goodman Quartet (Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Martha Tilton) RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (Disc 2) 195 1937 3:23 25/06/10 10:00 PM
Diga Diga Doo Cootie Williams and his Rug Cutters The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 1) 227 1937 2:52 25/06/10 10:03 PM
You Got to Give Me Some Midnight Serenaders Magnolia 187 2007 4:02 26/06/10 5:43 PM
This is the second set I did, on the second night, doing some warm up for the band, and then the band breaks.
title artist album bpm year length
Charlie the Chulo - Take 1 Duke Ellington The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) 225 1940 3:04
Texas Chatter Harry James Life Goes To A Party 178 2:54
A Mug Of Ale Joe Venuti's Blue Four All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 3) 220 1927 3:07
I'se A Muggin' Le Quintette du Hot Club de France (Stéphane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt, Pierre Ferret, Lucien Simoens, Freddy Taylor) The Complete Django Reinhardt And Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936-1948 (disc 1) 176 1936 3:08
Don't Tetch It! Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer Una Mae Carlisle: Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944 191 1942 2:21
My Window Faces The South Fats Waller and his Rhythm (Paul Campbell, Caughey Roberts, Ceele Burke, Al Morgan, Lee Young) The Middle Years - Part 1 (1936-1938) (disc 3) 215 1937 3:14
You'll Wind Up On Top Bus Moten and his Men Kansas City - Jumping The Blues From 6 To 6 182 1949 2:47
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 190 1934 3:09
Joe Louis Stomp Bill Coleman, Edgar Currance, Jean Ferrier, Oscar Aleman, Eugene d'Hellemes, Hurley Diemer Bill Coleman In Paris 1936-1938 213 1936 3:14
Blue Drag New Orleans Jazz Vipers The New Orleans Jazz Vipers 181 2002 4:23
I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby Midnight Serenaders Sweet Nothin's 206 2009 3:32
Swingin' On That Famous Door Delta four (Roy Eldridge, Joe Marsala, Carmen Mastren, Sid Weiss) All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 190 1935 3:00
Whoa Babe Bob Wills legends of country music cd2 214 2:36
St. Louis Blues Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra Ella Fitzgerald In The Groove 183 1939 4:46
Seven Come Eleven Benny Goodman Sextet (Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Christian, Artie Bernstein, Nick Fatool, Lionel Hampton) Charlie Christian: The Genius of The Electric Guitar (disc 1) 234 1939 2:47
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 164 1950 2:15
We the People Catherine Russell Inside This Heart of Mine 200 2010 2:52
Putting On The Ritz The Cangelosi Cards Clinton Street Recordings, I 195 3:38
I played 'Charlie the Chulo' because I love it. I walked away while it was playing to check the sound in the room, and while I was gone the band (who'd just done their sound checks) turned it off because they didn't like the hissing. I had a discussion with the trumpeter about remastering that he had a lot more invested in than I did. I just have a higher scratch threshold I think. At any rate, he preferred the Harry James. That particular period of Ellington is a bit shit, quality-wise. I have a few different versions of those years' songs, and they're all pretty shitty and hissy. Oh well.
'Texas Chatter' is on my 'should play lindy hop' list, and it went down nicely with the (super tiny) crowd. 'A Mug of Ale' is another of my favourites. There really wasn't anyone there (beyond people setting up), so I could experiment. I like this song, but the smaller group is a bit difficult for building energy. 'I'se A Muggin' was popular, and we had a real crowd happening then.
I was really playing mellower stuff to sort of warm the room. I wanted to avoid the mega tempos, and I put a lot more work into the wave. Which (unsurprisingly) gave me better results than just randomly throwing 240bpm songs at the dancers. Duh.
'Don't Tetch It' is a really nice song, and I want to play it for lindy hoppers, but it's a bit fast and also a bit complex. But it was a nice song for bal. Nice chunky beat, but also a nice swinging lyric. I was surprised by the success of the Fats Waller, but I'd deliberately chosen some Fats with a different sound. A bit of steel guitar. A different, chunking rhythm, a stronger trumpet solo, less mucking about on the vocals. This is a good song because it builds up.
'You'll wind up on top' was a real punt. I wanted to see how that style went with balboa kids - late 40s, more shuffley rhythm. People liked it (someone came to tell me so), and the floor was full. It's a fun, energetic song, but I wasn't entirely sure this was what I should be doing with balboa. It felt a bit like the moments in my lindy sets when I play Louis Jordan and other Kansas guys who lead into jump blues.
So I went to a song I knew would work, because I've seen it work before for bal kids. 'Stomp it off' has a big band sound, it's a familiar artist with a familiar set of instrumentation, but it's lighter and tinklier, less in-your-face than a lot of Lunceford. The tempo was perfect for balboa, and it really worked as a nice, welcome-to-the-dance song.
'Joe Louis Stomp' was a bit of a punt, and kind of a strange way of referencing both Django (and his Hot Club doods), as well as the smaller hot combos. Bill Coleman recorded this in France, and he was in Fats' recordings as well. This is a good song, not one I've played before (many of these were first-timers for me - hence some of my panic). I know them well from home, but I've not played them for dancers. But this Coleman song worked well. It has a good, swinging style (nice trumpet!), it chunks along, it feels like a slightly larger band (even though there are only six of them), but it also has a sort of French/Django type feel. Something about the timing? I dunno.
The point of that Django referencing was to take advantage of the popularity of Django with bal dancers who'd been to ABW this year and were in attendance. The ABW comp DJ had given a talk about Django (which you can read about on his blog in this post) and the kids were digging him.
Anyways, then the band came on. Who weren't rocking it. They played a set that would work for lindy, but not for bal. Some rock n roll cross overs. And tempos that were far too slow. Faaar too slow. They cleared the floor a few times, which is difficult to do as a live band.
When I came on in the next break, I figured my job was to rebuild the room for the band.That meant
- getting people feeling good again,
- getting them back on the floor,
- playing easy songs which people would like,
- and demonstrating the tempos and style that might work for the band.
So I started with 'Blue Drag' which is popular with bal dancers someone told me during the break. I played a hi-fi version to complement the band (who had a male vocalist like the Vipers). It's in a minor key, which kind of complement the band's last superslow song, and also kind of made a joke of the way the floor was utterly dead and people were feeling a bit unhappy. The song builds, though, quite slowly, so people had time to decide they wanted to dance after all, to get a partner, to get on the floor, and then to actually dance. By the last minute, when it starts to get a little more energetic, the dancers were feeling cheerier, and it was working out ok.
'I'm Crazy 'bout my baby' is a very familiar jazz standard. The Midnight Serenaders had gone down very well the night before. They're fun, they're a small combo who sound a little New Orleansy (though they aren't), and they're fun. This song had male vocals as well. I figured the cheery sound would capitalise on the dancers' renewed interest, and that I could use this song to make them feel even better. Because it's a lovely song. The trumpeter is quite excellent, and his work with the clarinet really make you feel good - it's good music. That all worked as I'd hoped, so by the end of the song the floor was full and I figured it was time to get a bit more serious.
'Swinging on that famous Door' was a punt because I'd played it the night before, but the sound quality had been so bad the night before it hadn't really worked out. So I used it the second time to build the energy, to use the 'familiar' card, and to transition to old school rather than hi-fi. That comb is really bloody good - more big band names (Eldridge), but also a sound that echoed my earlier work (with Joe Marsala who did all that work in Chicago with guys like Condon, Mound City Blue Blower doods, etc). I tossed up between the hi-fi Duke Heitger version and this older one, but I followed the usual rule: if either old or hi-fi will work, go with old, because it's better. They were better musicians. And they were.
By the end I had them really cooking. They were digging it. So I took the tempos up. Not the biggest band in the world, and a departure to western swing. But this song rocks. The Lionel Hampton version is popular with lindy hop, I play the Leo Mathisen one a bit, and I know it rocks. I'd actually just been put onto this song by Keith at MSF in Melbourne, who used it for his team's performance. So it was a sneaky job on my part. But it's a great song. And it went off.
I then thought I'd really start to kick their arses. And here is where my inexperience with balboa kids hit me. 'St Louis Blues' is perfect: big band, live recording, at the Savoy, best band. But it's only 180bpm. This longer, high energy song has been a go-to for my lindy DJing if I've wanted to kick their arses. But even lindy hoppers are happier with higher tempos these days. Balboa kids loved it, but it just wasn't fast enough. I had hesitated, wondering if I should have played a faster track from that same band/recording session, but I played it safe instead. It didn't fail, it went well, but I could have made it awesome by taking it up a little.
'Seven Come Eleven' was my taking it up a little song. I love this. It is another small group (can you see how I'm really favouring small groups, when I shouldn't have? That's more evidence of my inexperience), but it fucking COOKS. It's faster, it's energetic, but it's also complicated. The sort of stuff that balboa kids can do really really well - where lindy hop doesn't really work quite as well. That's where I learnt something about balboa: those guys can hack any tempo, so they need some other challenge. A complicated arrangement, a challenging set of improvisations within a tight composition, some interesting breaks... that's what they like. With energy and possibly high tempos. It was successful.
So then I dropped it down with another of my overplayed lindy hop favourites. But where I'd use 'Rag Mop' to build energy towards a climax for lindy, I used it to cool them down a bit from a faster, crazier song, but still kept the energy. I also shifted from a smaller sound to the bigger sound of this recording. It's a later recording, but the style is kind of New Orleans revival, so it works. It did the job.
Then the band came on with the perfect transition song. I think they're pretty clued in, and figured out what was working for this crowd, and could adapt to suit them. The tempos went up, and they played faster, brighter, less shuffley stuff after that.
I felt bad about doing a better job than they did in their set - I don't like to show off when a band is on - but we really needed a change. I need to think about this more.
I played just two more songs after that before a jack and jill. Catherine Russell is still very popular with lindy hoppers (that song 'Just because you can' is anyway), so I figured I'd play this fun little song. It's kind of in the same vein as everything else I'd played. Another fucking small band. But it worked. People dug it.
I played 'Putting on the Ritz' for Kira who was standing next to me, and because it feels like the balboa I'd like to do. Sort of hoity toity, but tongue in cheek. Hot. Fun. Another fucking small fucking band.
All this made me realise just how many small bands I play. I think it's because I like a lot of new bands, most of whom can't afford lots of musicians (for the same reason they couldn't in the late 40s in the US in the post-war period). I also like the New Orleans sound, which didn't often feature more than about 8 players, mostly because they used a lot of organised improvisation, and when you get to 8 musicians, you've kind of reached the limit of group playing without tighter arrangements. I think I'm going to focus more on bigger bands from now on. Nothing gives you that wall of sound experience like the big band, with a bunch of brass honking in concert over a chunky, badass engine of a rhythm section.
Anyways, it was all fun. I felt much better about this second set than I did about the first. Phew. But I have a long way to go. The best thing I could have done for my bal DJing was actually do some bal workshops. Duh.
Things I learnt:
I discovered (mostly after doing classes the next day, and after listening to the in-class music, which was just what I'd think of as 'good lindy hopping action'):
- that 'Swingin on that Famous Door' (a song I've long loved and used for lindy) is a winner for balboa dancers. So is 'Algier's Stomp'. And 'Diga Diga Doo'. As wel as 'Minor Swing', 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen' and other Django songs. In fact, if I love dancing lindy to it, I love balboa to it.
- balboa dancers like the same chunky four-on-the-floor rhythm that I do for lindy hop. They're not keen on shufflely rhythms of the late 40s and early 50s. Mostly because they're a bit too behind the beat, and the bal doods like it a bit more on the beat.
- Bal doods like big band music. Because it's big. Nick made that point in a conversation we had (I confess: I asked him to dance just so I could then stand and chat with him about DJing. Laaaaame), and I think it's an interesting one, as small groups (Goodman's small bands, Django's, some smaller Ellington, etc) are DJed a lot for bal dancers. I like that stuff, and I do DJ it for lindy hoppers. I had assumed that that was what bal dancers liked. I think, in retrospect, that bal dancers can do a lot with that smaller, complicated 'chamber' jazz. But that big bands are just more fun.
- Hot 20s stuff is not good for bal. It was very popular with some Australian bal DJs and teachers, but I didn't feel comfortable DJing it for bal - it's too 1/2 time. Too uppy downy. I was relieved to hear Nick make similar comments. I like that action for charleston or other uppy-downy dances. But I think bal - as with lindy - works better with the more 'horizontal' or swinging timing - 'four on the floor and no cheating' as Basie said. The increased swinginess simply feels better for a dance that's using lots of syncopated delays and gooshy down-bounce. This issue is one I'd like to return to, in relation to lindy hop. And how I'm increasingly uncomfortable with DJs who load their lindy sets down with hotter 20s stuff (and recreationist stuff in that style). It's superfun music, but unless the crowd are into that earlier style lindy, it's not going to rock. Personally, I like a big band from the early to mid 30s. Heck, the 30s. I like the swing. I like the greater range in tempos. I also like the hotter earlier stuff a LOT, but not for my lindy. That's for other dances.
- Peter Loggins is right: if it feels good for lindy, it'll feel better for balboa.
"balboa DJing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 26, 2010
fitness: workshops
Posted by dogpossum on June 26, 2010 3:37 AM | Comments (0)
duration: 5 hours, effort: 2/5, feeling: good
Balboa again - not the biggest aerobic challenge, but good for the posture, etc etc.
Left me feeling a bit achey in the joints, though.
"fitness: workshops" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
June 25, 2010
the highest joy
Posted by dogpossum on June 25, 2010 9:27 PM | Comments (0)
(a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax1L56LzPU0&">linky
"the highest joy" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on June 25, 2010 3:38 AM | Comments (0)
duration: 2 hours, feeling: good, effort: 2/5
More balboa. The achiness isn't too bad, but I chose not to do the workshops the next day, just in case.
Went to podiatrist and got exercises for my knees. Nothing dire and knee problems will be fixed by hardcore strength training. No running for 4 weeks, or until my knees are stronger.
We'll see.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
June 22, 2010
8track: songs that might work for balboa
Posted by dogpossum on June 22, 2010 4:29 PM | Comments (1)
Or check it out here.
Image stoled from Shorpy.
I'm trying to get my brain around some balboa music. Buggered if I know what I'm doing. All this stuff is songs that I love, but which don't really always work for flatout badass lindy hop. What the hey - maybe they'd be good for bal? Who can say.
title artist album bpm year length
Chris And His Gang The Cairo Club Orchestra Sunday 180 2004 2:40
Swingin' On The Campus Cootie Williams and his Rug Cutters The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 2 (Disc 2) 196 1939 2:42
Stompy Jones Duke Ellington The Very Best Of Duke Ellington 199 3:04
Stealin' Smack's Apples Glenn Miller's G.I.s (Peanuts Hucko, Mel Powell, Bernie Priven, Joe Schulman, Ray McKinley, Django Reinhardt) Glenn Miller's G.I.s in Paris 1945 175 1945 2:36
Boo-Woo Harry James and his Boogie Woogie Trio (Pete Johnson) Pete Johnson 1938-1939 209 1939 2:59
Zonky McKinney's Cotton Pickers (Don Redman) Zonky 226 1930 3:03
Sugar (That Sugar Baby O' Mine) Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra (Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, Milt Hinton, Cozy Cole) Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia (1933-1944) (Disc 05) 170 1939 2:48
I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider Una Mae Carlisle: Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941 201 1938 2:41
"8track: songs that might work for balboa" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 18, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on June 18, 2010 8:14 PM | Comments (0)
Thursday 10th June: 8-midnight
Friday 11th June: midnight-3am
Saturday 12th June: 8-4am (minus 2 hours)
Sunday 13th June: 8-4am
Monday 14th June: 8-midnight
Obviously not dancing every single one of those hours, but plenty of dancing. Ended up with really sore knees. The following Friday I was still feeling pretty fatigued. I'm pretty fit these days, but this much dancing and so little sleep left a mark.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
June 13, 2010
MSF set 2.5 + fan-gush for falty's djing
Posted by dogpossum on June 13, 2010 5:07 PM | Comments (0)
Ok, so when I heard Falty was teaching at MSF, my first thought was not 'oh, wonderful - nice classes' or even 'hellz yes; yr gender norms, we will fuck them up' but 'oo! can haz DJ?!' I'm organising the DJs this year for the event, so I just dropped an email off to the man, and - ta da! - we had DJ.
Mike very kindly did a set at the late night last night, and it was (and here, you must understand, I am understating the case) frickin neat. He did a really fucking great set. The sort of stuff that I'm really loving at the moment; lots of energy, grunt, dirty rhythms, etc etc etc.
I was doing the set before him, to warm the room, and I did an ok set - nothing too exciting, mostly things people'd heard before, etc. I was really trying to just get things cooking a little, and not to kill people after their night with the tempo-ly challenging Red Hot Rhythmakers and before Falty introduced them to the Kicking Of Arse.
After he was done with that (and after he exposed his person to a room full of appreciative dancers of all genders), I kind of chilled things off a little with a lo-fi, medium-slow tempo set of stuff I adore, but which I rarely play for dancers. By this point people were a) pissed as newts, b) absolutely knackered, c) drained like sinks, d) mixed like dodgy metaphors. So I kind of mellowed it. This weekend I'd been asked to go easy on blues with DJs, and really to offer a program packed with lindy hop. So I didn't want to go solid blues, but I did want to ease off the tempos.
side note:
It's been really fun, actually, to work with the DJs this year. They're all really capable and together, AND they're all really good DJs. I've been super happy with their work so far. I hope I don't jinx things, but they've done just the right stuff all weekend. The band breaks have been DJed masterfully (Loz warmed the room perfectly on Thursday, Keiran did a lovely 'sophisticated swing' introduction to the 20s society band style of the Rhythmakers in the fancy Fitzroy Town Hall (which he then shifted over into more raggedy lindy hopping action). Lexi did a fucking scorching set at the late night on Friday, which made me dance and dance and dance til I thought I might pass out (I'm spinning around!). I didn't hear all Sharon's set, but she was moving nicely from Lexi badassery to more mixed lindy hopping goodness when I left. Last night Falty was superfine, and I was actually pretty happy with the set I did after him. I started at 3 (with workshops the next day), so the room did empty out a bit, but the numbers stayed, and I was glad I didn't go down into blues or keep trying to push the tempos. I really wanted to play seriously scratchy, lo-fi stuff with silly lyrics, dirty lyrics and familiar lyrics done a little wackier.
Tonight the band is the Sweet Lowdowns, who I do love. They're a smaller subset of Rhythmaker folk, but they do hot combo style rather than a bigger, more society type 20s sound. The brief for the late night (which is at the same venue as the band) is for 'blues/lindy combo', which is going to be a bit challenging. I have Keith doing the first set, so I'm hoping he'll do a straight lindy transition from the band. Then Manon is booked to do a lindy-blues mix. Her style is a little different - she's really the only hi-fi/heading-towards-groove DJ on the program, and to be honest, even I'm ready for something a little slicker and saucier. I'm closing the night after her, and I'll probably do the same sort of stuff... or whatever the crowd are digging. It's going to be lots of fun.
That's my last set for the weekend. I've been doing all the little fill in jobs over the weekend, the ones that I don't like giving other DJs because they're little and a bit shitty. So I've done the social breaks during the comp (that was boring. Watching comps is boring, I'm afraid), I did 4 songs for the charleston comp on Friday, I did a real set last night to warm for Falty, and I did a small closer set after him. And I suspect tonight's set will be a littlie as well. I did have some reservations about putting myself on all those sets, but the only one that actually really felt like a good, solid DJing gig was the one before Falty. I have also tried hard to put the other DJs on good, solid gigs as well as any band breaks. But there's not a lot of solid DJing this weekend, because of the bands, so it's been hard. There've been hour long blocks before the bands, then 30 or 15 minute breaks during the bands, so those band break DJs are getting some solid action, I hope. The bands are, though, really really GREAT.
These are issues I struggle with when I coordinate DJs. I pick DJs I think are great. And then I want to show them off. But it's hard to flaunt a badass DJ when they're supporting a band - the band is the main attraction after all. I'm beginning to feel that it'd be easier to just put a CD on in band breaks. I mean, it's not like the olden days in lindy hop, when the bands were so bad you really _needed_ a good band break DJ. But then there are lots of annoying jobs during band gigs that require a real DJ - playing music for performances, welcome dances, etc - so you actually need a DJ who's really responsible and together...
It's a hard set of decisions, really. I think it's a better idea to keep the number of DJs at a gig low, and then to use them in a few settings. So long as they're cool with that. But then you get other problems: DJs who aren't involved feel left out; the DJs who're working a lot get a bit tired; if you've blundered and misjudged the type of DJs you'v chosen, the crowd are stuck with them all weekend. The last one isn't really a big problem, I don't think. I put a lot of effort into finding out exactly what the organisers want from the music - old school? A mixed platter? What's their creative 'goal' for the event? Do they want 'all really experienced DJs'? A mix of old and new so as to do some community development with encouraging new DJs? All local? A mix of interstate/overseas and local?
These can sound like wanky questions, but it really helps to talk to the organiser and find out what they want the final event to be like. Then I make suggestions and try to put together a list of people I think will work for the event. And then I get the organiser to check that list and give me the nod. It can get tricky if the organiser isn't a DJ or doesn't really get into music in a big way. In those cases I try to be a bit more active in my thinking, and to ask questions about their ideas for the event in a more general way. Then I try to come up with DJs who'll help make the event work that way.
The next step is, of course, to invite the DJs you want. It can be hard to persuade DJs from out of town to come to an event where they'll only get free entry, and then be paid $20 or $30 per hour, and without any meal or flight payments. I'm also thinking that it might be a worthwhile investment paying DJs more and giving them better packages, just so we can guarantee their presence and work. They certainly do that in America at the bigger events.
This issue is really indicative of a transitional moment in Australian swing dance culture - we just don't seem to value DJs that highly. Which of course suggests that social dancing isn't that important. I think this is changing, though. But we are beginning (as a scene - there are individual exceptions of course) to see broader cultural shifts in how we value DJs and music. But the sheer fact of geography has meant that dancers are unlikely to travel _just_ for a social dancing event, unless it's guaranteed badass, has a good reputation or offers something else along the way (eg the Hellzapoppin' comp).
These are all issues I have to think my way through. I'm still not entirely sure how I'd plan my 'ideal' event. Would I get in just a handful (as in 4 or 5 maximum) DJs, pay them really well, and give them great deals, then use them quite thoroughly on the program, promoting them heavily as a key feature of the event? What would this do to the status of the bands, though? Bands are, really, the best fun and the best part of a weekend. If they're good bands. Do I really think it's a good idea to create a sort of hierarchy of knowledge and status with DJs somewhere higher up? I mean, isn't this a bit self-serving, speaking as a DJ? Why should DJs be more important than the people who clean up after the dance?
Part of me argues that DJing requires a significant investment of time and money, and the development of skills and professional contacts and networks, so really it is more value-laden than cleaning up after the dance. But then there are clear gender divides happening here. DJs are usually men, and the cleaner-uppers and volunteers generally, are usually women. It's actually been nice to see in the last few years, that this gendering is shifting. Women are over represented in volunteer labour (as they are in the broader community), but they are steadily creeping into the DJing ranks. MSF features five women DJs and three men. This has to be a first in Australian DJ terms. I've never been at an event with more women than men DJs. And I have to say, they've been absolute GEMS.
I've _never_ had such a professional, capable team of DJs. No one's been late to a set, no one's lost anything essential, no one's missed a set (!!), no one's failed to bring the right gear. Everyone's been really keen to pull out their best work, everyone's been really conscientious, everyone's done really top quality sets, everyone's been an absolute pleasure to work with. It's been a really wonderful experience working with this group. This isn't to say that I haven't also had good experiences with other DJs at other events, but this one just seems to be working really well. AND I've had some really good dances.
My one concern, though, is that the heavy emphasis on music from the 20s, 30s and 40s has alienated some of the punters, especially the ones who're new to the dance, or aren't actually into old school music. This type of music is quite chic with the Melbourne teachers at the moment, but it hasn't always been. Some of this stuff can be a bit challenging if you're not used to the low audio quality, the musical structures, or if your dancing is really limited to just a few basic steps. The more dancing skills you have, the more experience with historic dance forms you have, the more accessible you find this stuff. It's helped that the teachers for the weekend are into this action, so they're teaching with this type of music. But part of me is thinking 'isn't it time we went hi-fi here?' All of the DJs (pretty much) have dropped contemporary recordings into their sets, but the music these modern bands are playing is still pretty old school.
On the other hand, I think that Australia is approaching the point (finally) where we can actually specialise musically at each event. I think it's a shame not to produce events with particular musical or stylistic focuses. I like to see events that have a consistency in the branding (logos, PR material, individual event PR), bands, DJs, competition structures, performances and classes. So Soul Glo is successful in part because it presents a soul-focussed event for swing dancers, with a strong blues sub-focus. Hullabaloo in Perth has always had an old-school focus, but that event is more of a complete package, and they offer such a quality event the music is really only one component of a very solid program. I think MLX could actually do with stronger branding on this front. It's been 'solid swinging jazz' since 2005 when it went all-social, but I think this branding needs updating and strengthening. I can see why some events wouldn't want to take the risk of alienating potential punters with such specific branding, but then, I wonder if it's not worth taking a risk? As a dancer, I'm certainly looking for a particular experience when I go to an event. And a 'good weekend of dancing' isn't really enough any more - I want something a little different. But still within the vernacular jazz discourse, though... unless I am at Soul Glo, and I know what I'm getting.
Ok, so that's enough of that.
Here's the set I did after Falty last night.
title band album bpm year length
It's Your Last Chance To Dance Preservation Hall The Hurricane Sessions 179 2007 4:31
Georgia Grind Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (Trummy Young, Edmund Hall, Billy Kyle, George Barnes, Squire Gersh, Barrett Deems, Bob Haggart, Velma Middleton, Yank Lawson) The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 05) 124 1957 3:23
Deep Trouble Les Red Hot Reedwarmers King Joe 179 2006 2:55
Blue Leaf Clover Firecracker Jazz Band The Firecracker Jazz Band 111 2005 4:59
Do Your Duty Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor) Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 1) 121 1933 3:31
Wipe It Off Lonnie Johnson and Clarence Williams acc. by James P. Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Spencer Williams Raunchy Business: Hot Nuts and Lollypops 122 1930 3:20
I Like Pie I Like Cake (but I like you best of all) The Goofus Five (Bill Moore, Adrian Rollini, Irving Brodsky, Tommy Felline, Stan King) Goofus Five 1924-1925 188 1924 3:15
Don't You Leave Me Here Jelly Roll Morton's New Orleans Jazzmen (Zutty Singleton) Jelly Roll Morton 1930-1939 143 1939 2:23
It's Tight Like That Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra The Jimmie Noone Collection 144 1928 2:49
Downright Disgusted Blues Wingy Manone and his Orchestra (Chu Berry) Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 5) 129 1939 2:31
How Do They Do It That Way? Henry 'Red' Allen and his Orchestra (JC Higgenbotham, Albert Nicholas, Charlie Holmes, Luis Russell, Will Johnson, Pops Foster, Paul Barabarin), Victoria Spivey and the Four Wanderers Henry Red Allen And His New York Orchestra (disc 2) 139 1929 3:20
On Revival Day (A Rhythmic Spiritual) (06-09-30) Bessie Smith acc by James P. Johnson, Bessemer Singers Jazz Cats - Jazz to Wake Up to 163 1930 2:58
That Too, Do Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing) Moten Swing 123 1930 3:20
That's What I Like About You Jack Teagarden and his Orchestra (Charlie Teagarden, Stirling Bose, Pee Wee Russell, Joe Catalyne, Max Farley, Adrian Rollini, Fats Waller, Nappy Lamare, Artie Bernstein, Stan King) The Complete Okeh and Brunswick Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden Sessions (1924-1936) (disc 6) 166 1931 3:27
The Blues A Artie Shaw and his New Music Self Portrait (Disc 1) 123 1937 2:52
The Right Key But the Wrong Keyhole Clarence Williams and his Orchestra Clarence Williams and His Orchestra Vol. 1, 1933-1934 103 1933 2:36
Falty had played a set with quite a few contemporary New Orleans bands (Jazz Vipers, Preservation Hall, etc), and a lot of bands quite like the ones I usually play. In fact, we had a few of the same songs on our short lists when we compared our sets just before we swapped over. This was really exciting - I got a chance to dance to stuff I adore, but don't DJ very often. Then Mike's status allowed him to take risks I couldn't, and his actual DJing _skillz_ made it work for him. From here, I could take more risks with the music I played. That's why I went old school. I didn't try to make people crazy and upenergy the way I usually do, as people were shagged, and Mike had really done that action quite thoroughly already.
I played the first Pres Hall song as a way of moving from Falty to something else. I was feeling a little emotionally battered myself, so I thought I might ease it off afterwards. I think that song was a bit in your face for a first song, though. I had kind of tossed up between that and their version of 'Sugar Blues', so as to completely change things up, but I chickened out on such a bold move. I also didn't want to signal 'this is where the blues begins!' so clearly and risk losing half my (dwindling) crowd.
I played 'Georgia Grind' because I love it. Falty had played a way up-tempo, scratchy version earlier, and I thought it'd be cute to signal my change in vibe by playing a hi-fi version by Armstrong. It's a little twee in parts, but the band is so good it really overcomes that later on in some of the choruses.
I <3 Les Red Hot Reedwarmers. Make sure you search for them on youtube - they're a great little French band who do wonderful, wonderful Jimmie Noone stuff. This song is kind of cute and mellow, but also musically amazing, and recorded live. Props to them.
'Blue Leaf Clover' always goes down well, if I prepare the set for it properly first. It's by the Firecracker Jazz Band, which was kind of a reference to my charleston songs the night before. This is such a great band.
Really, I was headed towards Bessie Smith all the time. I find that whenever I play her, people love her. They really respond to her versions of songs they know, but also to her more obscure stuff. This song is super neat, and you can't really go past the line up in the band. This was a transition (with its brass solos) from the Firecrackers to the next song with its piano/guitar combo. It's a little lighter hearted than Bessie, but it's much dirtier. And it's really fun. These are two of my most favourite songs of all time. I especially like the man-singing-like-a-woman vibe, which I revisit later with the Teagarden/Waller duet.
I had to play this superior Pie/Cake version which Trev put me onto ages ago. Go Goofus Five! I think this song is a good example of how exchanges are super inspiring for DJs - they give us a chance to hear other DJs bring their wickedforce and then rip it off for our own gain. Ha ha! I like this version because I find the Four Clefs version a bit twee and overplayed, but I love the melody. I hoped it would twig the 'favourite' nerve in the dancers, but then twist it with a more uptempo vibe.
Jelly Roll, because, well. Jelly Roll. This is a nice, chunking, _pushing_ song, that doesn't drag - you feel like you're going somewhere with it. It's an easy tempo, but it has a bit more energy. We needed that energy if I was going to sit down here on these lower tempos. I actually think the vocals are just right - a nice, rollicking, swinging rhythm that contrasts really nicely with the slightly more straight-ahead rhythm section.
Jimmie Noone! I do love this man. And I love this song. More suggestive lyrics. But the expression 'tight like that' is kind of cool because it sounds like a really cool way of describing how something is just plain good stuff - "man, it's tight like that."
Wingy Manone, for a little more swing, and back in that 1939 later swing rhythm. Mike had played a few Manone songs, and I wanted to reference them a bit here.
I had wanted to play some Spivey/Henry Red Allen win, but all I could find was the slower stuff, and I wanted to avoid the bluesy vibe. But then I was reminded of this, which is one of my super favourites. I'd just been crapping on to Mike about how I liked the Spivey/Allen combination, and how it reminded me of the Rosetta Howard/Allen combination, and how Howard was the one who led me to the Hamfats in the first place (we'd just been talking Hamfats).
Bessie Smith. Because. People liked this, but it was a little uptempo, and a little too jesusy for serious dancing. But it's fun, and people like it.
Bennie Moten, while I'm there. Because Basie always wins. And the Jimmy Rushing addition (with the 'Good Morning Blues' lyrics) is full of awesome. Gotta love a bit of a accordian solo in there.
The Teagarden/Waller duet 'That's What I Like About You' was perhaps a bit mistimed - too fast, too straight for this time of night. Having said that, it's also wonderfully queer-as-fuck to hear Teagarden (sigh) singing a love song with Fats Waller (double sigh). They would have known exactly what they were doing. This is queer in so many wonderful ways. These guys were pretty transgressive (a black guy and a white recording together in 1931, who also played together live in Chicago*; all the drug references; the gender-play in this song itself), and this love song with the humourous twist _almost_ undoes the queer... and then it doesn't. It's still Jack Teagarden, who has the sexiest, swingingest voice EVER, singing a love song to Fats Waller, kind of comedic timing and also king of poignant understatement. They're singing a song about mismatched, chalk-and-cheese love. It's perfect.
I closed with Artie Shaw because that song is nice and swinging, it's easy to dance to and it's really nice. It's also pretty slow and mellow, but also kind of chunks along and doesn't drag.
I really enjoyed this set. Though the room slowly emptied out til I called it at 4am, people were still dancing.
Hoo-rah for lindy hop.
* The Fats Waller/Teagarden connection is quite cool. They also did a song called 'Lookin' Good But Feelin' Bad' (Fats Waller and his Buddies (Henry 'Red' Allen, Jack Teagarden, Albert Nicholas, Otto Hardwicke, Larry Binyon, Eddie Condon, Al Morgan, Gene Krupa), 1929) which Les Red Hot Reedwarmers do superhot. That band is pretty much 100% rockhard awesome. The 'That's what I like about you' band isn't quite as good, but it is sporting Adrian Rollini, who I have a bit of a thing for. At any rate, it's all Chicago, and it's all quite subversive stuff.
Teagarden is also interesting for his work with Louis Armstrong - more race stuff that kind of fucked the mainstream American conservativism about. In the early days at least.
I wrote about Armstrong, race etc in these posts:
What again?
magazines, jazz, masculinity, mess
pop culture, jazz and ethnicity
"MSF set 2.5 + fan-gush for falty's djing" was posted in the category cat blogging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music
June 12, 2010
solo charleston comp MSF 2010 [edited]
Posted by dogpossum on June 12, 2010 6:47 PM | Comments (0)
Ok, so I've just checked this post that I wrote mid-exchange in a sleep-deprived haze, and realised that all of it is wrong. You can't listen to it here. That's a link to the image I used for the picture to go with the 8track.
Here's the player:
Or you can go to the 8track site to listen there.
The set list:
Shake That Thing Mora's Modern Rhythmists Devil's Serenade 227 2006 2:58
(a warm up all-skate track that everyone knew, but not the Vince Giordano version that usually gets played)
Digadoo Firecracker Jazz Band The Firecracker Jazz Band 247 2005 5:20
(My obsession with this band continues. I bought all their other albums the other day (you can see them here). This was a challenging song to play for a comp, particularly as they were doing shines at this point, and everyone had to deal with very different solos. But they did a brilliant job - it was super cool to see people enter with the vibe of the solo before, then suddenly realise 'oops, this is something different' then tailor their dancing to suit the music. So they weren't just dancing despite the music, pulling out stunts one after another, but actually dancing to the music. This is less common than you might think in a solo charleston comp, which can be a bit stunt-heavy. Anyways, this song is still one of my faves, and I've been playing this song for dancers for ages. It's long and complicated, but it's super neat.
The dancing was the best I'd seen all night, I think, and I had a lot of fun watching it.)
I Found A New Baby Firecracker Jazz Band The Firecracker Jazz Band 287 2005 4:05
(We had to do another round of shines as the crowd couldn't decide which people they wanted pulled out. So all the competitors (six instead of four) went back at it. This song is faster and kind of crazy. It's also kind of de rigeur to play this for solo charleston comps. Firecrackers again, because I love their crazy energy, and their 'sophisticated street sound'. This song kicked their arses, and we ended up with a winner).
Bugle Call Rag Jim Cullum Jazz Band (Duke Heitger, Clint Baker) Chasin' the Blues 243 3:51
(The winner, in charmingly good nature, conceded to a solo of triumph on request. This is the song I chose. It's a bit less frantic, because he was buggered. And we faded it at 30seconds. But he did a jolly good job).
plus some other ones I had on my short list:
Oriental Strut Firecracker Jazz Band 228 2005 The Firecracker Jazz Band
(Too many Firecracker songs for 8tracks).
Hop Head Charlestown Chasers 250 1995 Pleasure Mad 2:57
San Les Red Hot Reedwarmers 285 2007 Apex Blues4:45
Jubilee Stomp David Ostwald's Gully Low Jazz Band (Howard Alden, Mark Shane, Herlin Riley, David Ostwald, Ken Peplowski, Randy Sandke, Wycliffe Gordon) Blues In Our Heart 278 2006 3:22
Happy Feet The Manhattan Rhythm Kings The Aviator 233 2004 2:59
"solo charleston comp MSF 2010 [edited]" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 7, 2010
fitness: running
Posted by dogpossum on June 7, 2010 8:11 PM | Comments (0)
km tracked: 4, duration: 00:30, pace: 06:53, calories: 389, effort: 5/5
Had some foot pain that made me walk a minute in the middle. I think I need to backtrack into the c25k and start building up slowly and regularly again. I don't have the fitness I want, and I seem to have having too much foot pain. Still haven't gone to the podiatrist, though, so it could be my orthotics...
"fitness: running" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
June 6, 2010
last night's djing
Posted by dogpossum on June 6, 2010 4:56 PM | Comments (0)
I haven't done this in ages (hellz, I haven't posted in ages - I'm blaming teh tweets), but I just feel the urge. So this is a post about a set I did last night.
I've been working super hard at uni lately. Too hard, really. The assessment for one particular subject was out of control, and I've really pushed myself. So I haven't listened to any music in two weeks. Really. I did a couple of hours preparation work yesterday afternoon before my set at the Roxbury because I really wanted to get on top of my music and to do a good job. I need the practice before the MSF weekend next weekend, where I have some sets. So I really thought about this set.
I wanted to avoid doing some things:
- leaning on the modern recordings of old songs. I wanted to play the original versions.
- ignoring the wave. I really wanted to work the wave, tempo and style and energy wise. Basically, that means moving logically and smoothly between speeds, musical styles and energy levels. Build up the energy, climax, let them down, build it up, climax, etc etc etc.
- getting distracted and not giving the crowd 100% of my attention.
So this is what I played:
Roxbury 5th June 2010 9-10pm
title artist album bpm year length
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra (Zutty Singleton) After You've Gone 154 1943 2:42
The Harlem Stride Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra Live At The Savoy - 1939-40 199 1939 3:29
Leap Frog Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Luis Russell) The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (disc 7) 159 1941 3:00
Ridin' And Jivin' Earl Hines and his Orchestra (Walter Fuller, Milton Fletcher, Edward Sims, George Dixon, Edward Burke, John Ewing, Joe McLewis, Omer Simeon, Leroy Harris, Budd Johnson, Robert Crowder, Claude Roberts, Quinn Wilson, Alvin Burroughs, Horace Henderson, Jimmy Earl Hines:Complete Jazz Series 1937 - 1939 158 1939 2:40
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra (Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole) Willie Bryant 1935-1936 153 1935 3:26
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band (Barney Bigard, Helen Andrews) Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 160 1946 3:13
Just Because You Can Catherine Russell Inside This Heart of Mine 136 2010 4:10
You Got to Give Me Some Midnight Serenaders Magnolia 187 2007 4:02
When I Get Low I Get High Linnzi Zaorski and Delta Royale (Charlie Fardella, Robert Snow, Matt Rhody, Seva Venet, Chaz Leary) Hotsy-Totsy 165 2004 2:36
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra (Jack Teagarden) Father Of Jazz Trombone 136 1934 3:14
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 164 1950 2:15
Summit Ridge Drive Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five Self Portrait (Disc 2) 128 1940 3:21
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan With Buster Bailey, Milt Hinton, Jerome Richardson, Osie Johnson, Dick Hyman, Wendell Marshall A Tribute To Andy Razaf 147 1956 3:19
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 143 1999 3:34
St. Louis Blues Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra Ella Fitzgerald In The Groove 183 1939 4:46
Wrappin' It Up (The Lindy Glide) Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra (Henry 'Red' Allen, Buster Bailey, Ben Webster, Benny Carter) Tidal Wave 208 1934 2:42
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 148 1937 2:41
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 165 1937 3:10
[Gettin' Much Lately?] Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller, his Rhythm and his Orchestra (John Hamilton, Bob Williams, Herman Autrey, Geoge Wilson, Ray Hogan, Jimmy Powell, Dave McRae, Gene Sedric, Bob Carroll, Al Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones) Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 134 1941 3:10
I Like Pie, I Like Cake Four Chefs Roots, Volume 2 the 1930's 154 2:45
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 176 1933 2:56
Get Up Skeets Tolbert and his Gentlemen of Swing (Carl Smith, Otis Hicks, Clarence Easter Harry Prather, Hubert Pettaway) Skeets Tolbert 1931-1940 144 1939 2:52
As you can see, it's not a list of rare and unusual songs. There're a lot of standards, songs that people know. Which is kind of the point, isn't it?
I started with Roy Eldridge, because this song continues to be a great opener. Fab trumpet solo to open. Sharon had the room nice and warm for me, and there were enough people to justify something in your face like 'Jump through the window'. I do like this song a lot. The fact that Frida and Skye used it for a fairly ok routine only adds to its cultural cred with lindy hoppers. If they're the type of lindy hoppers who follow international competitions. And not that many of the Roxbury crowd are. I assume.
I wanted to get some up tempos in there after that, and to take advantage of the energy generated by the first song, so I played that lovely Ella track. It's from one of the live recordings she did with Chick Webb's band at the Savoy after Webb passed away. That stuff is fucking GREAT. I crap on about it to everyone, I pimp it all the time, but it continues to go really well whenever I DJ it. It's good because it's live, you can hear the crowd, and you can hear the musicians egging each other and really interacting. It has a stomping rhythm section and a super fun building energy thing happening.
The crowd were a bit tired after that, so I did the right thing and dropped the tempos so they could recover. These days the Roxbury crowd will dance to any tempo. Sharon starts the night with 30mins of super fast old school big band action which she calls the balboa bit, and I call the badkickingfuckingarse bit. Because it is awesome. I am playing that version of 'Leap Frog' quite a bit, but it is great. It does exactly as I want, too - it keeps energy there, but it's not all up in your grill, so you have a bit of an emotional break. It's kind of fun and interesting and does some fun back-and-forthing musically, so it's fun to pay with at the lower tempo.
Then I played 'Ridin' and Jivin'' because I haven't played it in a hundred years, and it's one of my favourites. I don't hear it here in Sydney very often at all, though it was super popular in Melbourne in about 2007 or so (I think it was another of those competition songs). It's kind of mellower at 150 odd bpm and it has a less in your face energy. It kind of builds up and down, it feels a bit saucy, but in a kind of a sneaky way. Not sexy, but kind of lurking.
Then I played 'Viper's Moan' because it is an old fave, and I was trying to mix in favourites with things I don't hear all that often in Sydney. I also like 'Viper's Moan' as a transition from old school big band swing to more New Orleans influenced stuff, and I wanted to kick things up tempo and energy wise with that great version of 'Jericho'. I hear the Sydney Bechet version all the time, but the Kid Ory one is vastly superior.
From there I had a few other bits and pieces lined up - 'Sister Kate', 'Blackstick', 'Ballin' the Jack', favourite stuff that you hear around the place - but I didn't. I felt as though I'd kind of pushed that as far as I could. I was a little bit all over the place with the energy, and I wasn't confident that the NOLA stuff would work. It's not all that popular in Sydney, and I'm not really enjoying it myself atm. By NOLA, of course, I mean that 40s/50s revivalist sound. It's great, but there were other things I wanted to do.
I played 'Just Because you can' because it's super popular atm. People go nuts for it, and I always get asked about it when I play it. So I'm going to play it til we've all had enough of it. It's a good song. It was a big fat energy drop from Jericho, but that was kind of the point. I was pulling a Brian stunt with a bit of stunt DJing. It was within the same sort of stylistic vein of Jericho, what with the violin, chunky rhythms, banjo, etc. But it's kind of saucy and Russell almost eases over into the way-back-behind-the-beat of later swing. Almost. I like this song because it starts chilled and sparse, but it builds up.
I followed up with the Midnight Serenaders because that's a fun song. It's light, it feels bouncy and fun. It's a bit quick in that combination, but the funness always drags people onto the floor. I also like matching the singers in those two songs.
'When I get low I get high' was another in a similar vein - a modern band doing old school small group stuff with chunky rhythms and eccentric vocals. That's one the Roxbury kids are into, because Christian played it when he DJed there. At about that time I realised just how Ella Fitzgerald heavy my set was. I don't usually play her, in part because I don't like her early lyrics, and I find her later stuff a bit groovy. And I don't like her singing all that much at any time.
I played 'Davenport blues' because it's mellow and calm. And because it builds up at the end. I was also determined to end that whole modern thing right THERE because I could see myself going overboard. 'Davenport Blues' is one I overplay. But it always goes down really well, and people like it.
I think it's worth saying here, that one of the things people like about favourites is that they know all the breaks, all the structure, so they can experiment with musicality and step combinations in a musical way, and with some confidence. I know, I know, it'd be easy to critique that with a comment about how lindy hoppers should be familiar enough with the structure of this music (which isn't very complicated, really), and not need hand holding. But I think it's important to remember that this isn't popular music we're dealing with here. It's not something you hear every day, and the structures and style and elements are pretty unfamiliar for most people. And what the fuck - why not play a song people know so they can pull out their best action? That's what makes for a good competition, that's what makes for fun dancing, sometimes.
'Rag Mop' needs to go on my 'don't play this again, you play it too much' list. But it kicks the energy up.
But by the end, the dancers were pretty tired. People seemed pretty tired that night. I think it's because they were dancing most nearly every song. So I played 'Summit Ridge Drive', which I don't play that often any more. In retrospect, I'm really glad I did. I do love it, and people love it too, even though the harpsichord intro puts them off at first. It's a nice, friendly, stompy little song. And I'm glad I went so low with the tempos; it's evidence of my working a real wave, with proper troughs as well as crests.
After that, people were rested, and it was time to get serious. 'Massachusetts' is so overplayed. It's so familiar. But it's still a great song, and it's a great way of building up the energy in the room. The musicians are just so good, they just work together so well and build something really nice.
Same goes for 'C Jam Blues', which I've actually had a moratorium on for ages. But I do like it. And it did the job.
Energy was up by then, people were rested and feeling confident after two familiar songs, so I played 'St Louis Blues' (the Ella one), which I also overplay. But it's great! It's another of those songs that makes people dance even if they're feeling a bit 'oh, it's too fast'. The thing about Roxbury these days is that 183bpm isn't really fast any more. That crowd are also quite happy to experiment with the latiny rhythms in the intro. Also: live! Ella! At the Savoy! It's such a fucking great song.
'Wrappin' it up' was a bit of a stretch, but the hardcore bal dancers just pulled out their shit and eased into some dancing. It was really nice to see the floor stay filled, but with a completely different type of dancing. Balboa is really good for making people feel comfortable with higher tempos. They just get used to them, and don't panic.
Then I played 'For Dancers only' because it was just right. I wanted to get everyone back, and it's a fun, familiar song that actually sounded mellower in that context. And it's a big band classic swing track, to continue that vibe.
Then 'Peckin' because I've been using it for tranky doo lately, and I fucking love it. Still. I love the shouting in the middle. I have been thinking I need to play more Ellington, and this was a step in that direction (that's actually one of his small groups).
'Ain't nothin to it' was a continuation of the silly feel from 'Peckin's lyrics, and also a less intense sound. Another smaller band, but with a more relaxed, fun feeling. So I was easing off the intense emotion of 'St Louis Blues' and 'Wrappin it up'. This is important when you have a smallish crowd of dancers who're dancing every song, over the course of a longer night of social dancing. I find they get emotionally drained as well as physically, so you have to pull back a bit now and then. Work an emotional wave.
I didn't mean to play the pie and cake song there. I really don't much like that version. I _hate_ the intro, and _everyone_ is playing it, _everywhere_ in Sydney. I had meant to play 'Get up' (which I didn't end up playing at all), because it was the perfect segue to 'Madame Dynamite'. It would also have been a song that we don't hear very often (if at all), so it would have made this last section more interesting. But I made some sort of clicking/playlist error. Boo.
Pie Cake, whatevs. It filled the floor, though. I'm a sell out.
'Madame Dynamite' is one I overplay, but it's very popular. And It's super fun.
And then I finished and did some dancing!
It was a fun set, and I think I did a much better job of watching the floor, working the room and playing songs in interesting, smoother combinations. I spent less time looking at my computer, and more watching the room. Yay. I find it a bit tricky to get connected with the crowd in the fairly separated DJ booth at the Roxbury, but it just means I have to walk around more. Though I hated it as a venue, CBD was well set up for connecting with the dancers on the floor and the people in the room.
So I didn't play a particularly challenging set in terms of familiarity - people knew most of that action. But that's ok. I don't think we should set aside songs just because they're popular. I mean, there's a reason favourites become favourites. Sure, they might be hip because some rock star did a routine to them that then got pimped on youtube and faceplant. But if it's a good song, and someone DJs it to dancers a few times, they'll dig it.
I like the Roxbury at the moment for the old school emphasis and higher tempos. But part of me wonders if the slow disappearance of the older crowd and rock and roll crowd hasn't actually been doing good things to the event. Sure, it's now more solidly a good night for lindy hop, and lindy hop tends to be a dance for the younger, more agile crowd (because it helps to be fit when you start getting into it), but a mixed range of ages is a good thing for a community. Longevity, baby. Sustainability, baby. A lack of cliqueiness, baby.
But for now, I'll just enjoy it. And perhaps think about how we might promote it to the half of Sydney who don't go, but do go to the Swingpit.
Swingpit is not fun these days. It's a nice, big venue, the floor is good, it gets a big crowd. But the acoustics are poo, and it's a _church hall_ with no bar. Boo. The DJing has been utterly terrible lately as well. So even when I go looking for fun, I don't always find it there. I haven't DJed there in ages, partly because I've been doing so much Roxbury work and get a bit burnt out when I do more than one set a fortnight. But mostly because I haven't been asked, and haven't really sought it out. And I hated the sound system there (though I noticed they had a new one). I haven't heard DJs like Alice or Justine DJ there in a zillion years, and they're really good stuff. Worth getting your arse to a dance event on a Friday night to see.
The Squeeze calls it Noisepit because the volume is usually pushed so high (to fill the huge, echoey room) it distorts the music and just makes a whole heap of ear-hurting NOISE. And that noise is usually fucking Michael Buble or some second rate neo or some fucked up Wham. I have to say, my friends, an entire set of that does not a fun lindy hopping night make. It's rhythmically WRONG for lindy hop (it don't swing), it's structurally dull, and it's just plain old bad music made by second rate musicians doing ordinary arrangements. Booooring. Annnoooooooying. But I'll go back. And when I get the energy, I'll volunteer for a set. But sometimes I just like to go and dance and dance and take advantage of the large floor space.
There is another night happening in Sydney these days, once a month in Balmain. It's intended as a dance for 'advanced dancers', which of course gets my hackles up. I do not approve of segregating 'advanced' from 'beginner' dancers at social dancing events (which Swingpit and this new thing deliberately do). I don't like it because mixing is good for both groups (beginners dance up and see fun dancing; more experienced dancers learn to fucking socialise like normal people, and mix it up... though they don't always). I don't like it because I don't actually think the categories 'beginner' and 'advanced' apply in this setting - they just seem to be arbitrarily applied by position within that dance school's hierarchy. Perhaps they should be 'people who've only spent a bit of money with us' vs 'people who've spent too much money with us'. I really don't like that sort of segregation of people. I think it breeds cliqueiness, and I think doesn't help build sustainable dance communities, and I think it's rubbish.
Also, the classes before the DJed social are on when the very good band is on downstairs at the same time, and I think it's wrong to disrespect the band like that. I've heard people justify this whole thing as 'giving people a choice', but I don't buy that. I've heard that rubbish before. It's not a 'choice' when you weigh the process down with such ideologically and value-laden structures.
Mostly, I'm not all that interested in going because it's in Balmain on a Sunday and that's too late and too far away on a school night when the buses are really unreliable. It's often on the night after a Roxbury, and I'm a bit over dancing, loud music and late nights by then. So I don't go. If it were in a different area... nah, I still wouldn't go. Balmain is hard for me. If it were in a different area, I'd be more likely to go. If it was just another social night, I'd be more likely to go. And if I wasn't already dancing one night a week on the weekend, I might go.
So that's dancing for me at the moment.
"last night's djing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 5, 2010
fitness: dance work
Posted by dogpossum on June 5, 2010 8:10 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 1 hour
Fun.
"fitness: dance work" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
May 28, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on May 28, 2010 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 00:02:00
Sore knee is sore.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
May 15, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on May 15, 2010 1:00 PM | Comments (0)
effort: 4/5 feeling: good, duration: 02:00
Tireder than I usually am - need those 3 runs a week to keep my fitness up.
Felt some bad pain in my right foot (the bung foot) at first so had to do some stretches.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
May 8, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on May 8, 2010 9:52 PM | Comments (0)
time: 03:00, effort: 4/5, feeling: 4/5
Felt really good and had lots of fun til I gave my knee a good bump being stupid. Was benched for the after party. Boo.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
May 1, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on May 1, 2010 8:04 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:00, feeling: ordinary, effort: 2/5
More ordinariness, health wise. Danced a bit of 20s charleston which proved a really bad idea. It's really bad for bung foot. Boo.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
April 30, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2010 8:02 PM | Comments (0)
time: 03:00, feeling: ok; effort: 1/5
Didn't actually dance all that much. Feeling a bit rough and wondering if I had a cold rather than allergies last week.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
April 29, 2010
kindergardeners rock spaghetti architecture
Posted by dogpossum on April 29, 2010 1:37 PM | Comments (0)
This film is interesting for the discussion of iterative design processes. This is something we talk about in class - the importance of building prototypes over and over and over again during the design process. This has also been the hardest part of learning to design things, for me. In the beginning of the semester I tended to spend half, if not three quarters of the allocated design time in class talking and thinking and writing about my design. And then I'd try making or doing the design and realise that, actually, it's more useful to talk less and to play more.
I think that a PhD does this to you: it trains you to think about doing things, rather than to actually do them. Which of course is the inverse of learning to dance. You'll never dance fast or well or interestingly if you just stand there thinking about it. I think that learning jazz routines on the social dance floor, in 'real time'* has been the single most important part of my education, ever. Of all time.
It's taught me to work with other people. It's taught me to observe - to watch and listen. It's taught me that to make shit, you have to do shit: you can guarantee that you will NEVER learn a routine if you just stand there and look at it. But if you try, you automatically improve your abilities a zillion percent. And even if you don't get the routine (which most of us won't), you will learn how your body works. And understanding how your body works is absolutely the most important part of dancing. Or building things.
Learning jazz routines on the social dance floor also teaches you that counting out steps is ridiculous. It's a silly enforcing of a rigid organising system on something which is far more exciting and slippery. Jazz - in 'real time' (ahahhahaha) is bound by phrases and bars and so on, but it is also slippery and busts out of those boundaries with improvisation all the time. If you only learn routines by numbers, you will never learn how to bust out of boundaries and improvise. And improvising is everything that dancing is. Without it, you might as well be... writing pages of the dictionary out by hand. It's far better to learn a jazz routine by listening to the music and understanding musical structure (and hence choreography and dance structures) by moving your body and using the music as the organising principle.
Off the dance floor, improvisation and iterative design processes teach you the limits of your materials (how strong is a piece of spaghetti), the importance of collaborative design and learning (and you can't learn to work with people in theory - you can only learn by doing) and the sheer joy of working within a time frame and feeling the adrenaline surging.
I know I'm an adrenaline junky. But I just think life is so much more fun when you give yourself a little jolt of the organically manufactured good stuff.
*I pause here to laugh a lot about the ridiculousness of this idea: dance is always in real time, or else it just doesn't exist!
"kindergardeners rock spaghetti architecture" was posted in the category academia and fitness and learning and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 24, 2010
Speakeasy
Posted by dogpossum on April 24, 2010 2:00 PM | Comments (0)
A few Sydney dancers have recently been running some late night speakeasy events after churchpit on Fridays, and they've been very successful. The venue is small and has pleasing acoustics - the square 'end' of a long, L-shaped room contains the sound (especially when the speaker is positioned on the long wall, playing into the short leg of the L) and leaves the rest of the room at the right noise level for talking and drinking. The long, narrow L shape leaves people squashed pretty close together, and this makes the room feel crowded (because it is) and fun. The drinks are well priced and good - beers, wines, etc for drinkers, top quality soft drinks (san pelegrino, those organic softies, etc) for non-drinkers. I don't know if there're coffees, but there could be. Last night there were cakes as well.
Last night I had a chance to DJ the gig and it was super fun. The organisers are really good to work with - friendly, easy going, relaxed, lots of useful feedback on the music, etc etc. It was like DJing a late night at an exchange, except better because the crowd were relaxed and friendly (rather than hyped and kind of cliquey/show-offy), the organisers were mellow and professional and the sound system was nice.
The music is usually blues or 'slow lindy', with the organisers themselves favouring a soul/funk aesthetic. Because the emphasis is on socialising rather than hardcore dancing, and because the gig follows the churchpit lindy night, there's less pressure to play 'proper' music, and more interest in 'good' music. So it's a fun gig.
This is what I played (title, artist, album, bpm, year, time):
Come Together Ike And Tina Turner Absolutely The Best 80 1998 3:40
Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton Very Best Of 76 2:52
Leave Your Hat On Etta James The Best Of Etta James 85 1973 3:19
Chain Of Fools Aretha Franklin Greatest Hits - Disc 1 116 2:48
I Got What It Takes Koko Taylor I Got What It Takes 72 1975 3:43
3 O'clock In The Morning Blues Ike and Tina Turner Putumayo Presents: Mississippi Blues 64 1969 2:40
My Man's An Undertaker Catherine Russell Cat 106 2006 2:48
My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More Alberta Hunter (acc by Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Fran Wess, Norris Turney, Billy Butler, Gerald Cook, Aaron Bell, Jackie Williams) Amtrak Blues 76 1978 3:49
Sugar Blues Preservation Hall The Hurricane Sessions 61 2007 5:02
Shave 'em Dry Asylum Street Spankers Nasty Novelties 131 1997 4:21
Louisiana Two Step Clifton Chenier Louisiana Blues & Zydeco [Bonus Track] 197 1965 3:49
Built for Comfort Taj Mahal In Progress & In Motion (1965-1998) 98 1998 4:46
It Takes Two to Tango Lester Young and Oscar Peterson Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio 104 6:09
My Sweet Hunk O'Trash Billie Holiday with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra and Louis Armstrong The Complete Original American Decca Recordings (disc 2) 95 1949 3:20
The Clifton Chenier track was really my just taking advantage of an open minded crowd, and didn't work. But it did make people jiggly in their seats, which is good. I <3 zydeco atm, though I know nothing about it.
I tried to play upenergy, fun party music. The first Koko Taylor song is where I got a bit chilled. This wasn't really a crowd interested in slow, sexy dancing. They were more interested in slower, funkier dancing, and that was fine with me. The first block were more what I think of as 'Chicago' blues, though that's not really a very accurate description. From there I got a bit more old school in style, though I played 'new' songs for the most part - no scratchies. I was aiming for dirty, fun lyrics, lots of energy, beerdancing party music. 'Sugar Blues', which is rocking it with blues dancers at exchanges at the moment was a bit too 'serious' for this crowd.
Though Chenier cleared the floor, it was full again by the middle of the next song. I was moving towards a more lindy style for the next DJ, Gunther, who's more comfortable with lindy than blues. Those last couple of songs went down nicely, and they're a couple of my favourites. 'Two to Tango' is one of those long-term favourites, and I really like the Billie/Louis duet 'Sweet hunk of trash'. Holiday's masterful delayed approach to timing is really understood by Armstrong, who hangs back there with her. That feeling of squeezing the very last second out of each beat makes the song feel just a little bit saucier, but also lets the singers make some clever jokes. Comedy is made by timing, and swinging jazz rhythms make for perfect delivery: that long pause that lets the audience begin to figure out the punch line, and then pop! the line.
It was a fun gig, and I really enjoyed doing it. I like going to that event as a punter, as well, even though the late nights are challenging at the end of a busy week.
"Speakeasy" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
April 23, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on April 23, 2010 1:54 PM | Comments (0)
time: 01:30, feeling: great, effort: 4/5
Not a lot of dancing because I was DJing. But I danced with enthusiasm.
dancing
Edit: Today, the 24th, I feel really stiff and sore, but in a good way. Yoga + dancing + some cycling = yowzers. I might actually be an adrenaline junky. I did say I'd unload my foot, and I have. Yoga did stretch it a bit, and that might be a problem - we'll see.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
April 22, 2010
fitness: time to unload
Posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2010 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
Well, I recovered from the sore knee, but I'm still getting nasty pain in my right shin and in my right foot in the old injury. The shin feels like shin splints, which I had trouble with when I was into charleston hardcore. At this point, I need to rest and unload, and then start again. I'm thinking I might stay off running for a while, as it's the impact which hurts. Instead, I'll try to do some proper, regular walking so I can stay a bit fit, at least. I'm tempted to cycle in the mornings, but the roads are crazy busy when I usually run (about 7.30) and cycling in peak hour traffic is not fun. There are the bike paths along the canal and water front, though, so I should think about that. At this point, though, I'm very disappointed, but I'm also quite worried about my old foot injury. Recovering from that took a very long time. But I know that I have to be patient and just let it heal.
At any rate, this week I ran on Monday, and I won't run again for a while. I am DJing on Friday, so there's the possibility of dancing, but I'll try _not_ to dance. Yeah, right. And I'd like to do a long walk on the weekend, which might be a bit much. We'll see.
I do love running, though, and I think that the high impact + speed of running requires good core strength and stability, and that's the one thing I really like. It's super useful for dancing, and makes dancing so much more fun. I was also beginning to see the benefits of running on my latissimus dorsi, which is one of those muscles partner dancers obsess about, because it's very useful for helping you connect your arm to your hips/centre. I like figuring out how these things work when your body is in motion. I like the way movement forces you to multitask: not fall over and figure out how your body works.
The challenge for me is always to stay relaxed in the muscles that aren't working (alert but not alarmed), while also being able to activate and use the busy muscles just enough to do the job. I am continually fighting to release tension in my upper body (especially my right shoulder - a side effect of bung foot and a lifetime of hardcore writing). The best way of doing this (usually) is to stabilise my core. If hips are stable, then my upper body doesn't need to overcompensate to stop me falling over. Running has helped me isolate these two parts (which are of course actually far more complicated interconnected groups of muscles and bones and so on) and begin to get stronger in the core. I have less curve in my lower back, which is partly because my pelvis is less tilty, which is because various muscles and things in the front of my torso are more active, 'pulling' it into place. This in turn frees up muscles (like my lower back) and lets them relax.
The nicest effect has been having the chance to loosen up my shoulders, which then lets me feel how my lats are working. It's very nice and very interesting. My one concern is that stopping running will stall my progress. But the good thing about having a body, is that you have it for your whole life, so you never need stop learning about these things. And learning how to use them.
Once again, I'm surprised by how much of my life involves fitness and exercise. We have no car, so walking to the train and bus is important, and I do all my errands by bike. We like going on bike rides with our friends, we like walks, and we like dancing. We're also up for anything fun that involves exercise - games, frisbee, etc - fun stuff that gets your heart rate up. I guess that once you get a minimum level of fitness, your body becomes the perfect medium for fun. :D
(photo is from the wikipedia page linked above)
"fitness: time to unload" was posted in the category bikes and fitness and lindy hop and other dances and running
April 19, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on April 19, 2010 9:54 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:30, feeling: good, effort: 4/5
Fast tempos, lots of solo and lindy hop, lots of sweating and super fun. I LOVE having better fitness and control from running.
But it left me quite sore the next day - the B210K runs are really taking their toll on my joints. I think I'll ease it off next week.
hot
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category B210k and c25k and fitness and lindy hop and other dances
April 16, 2010
amazing
Posted by dogpossum on April 16, 2010 6:57 PM | Comments (0)
Nadia Gric's photos from the Harlem dance fest in ... Lithuania? ... are AMAZING. I found them via faceplant, but you can see them on picasaweb. Do make sure you look through the stuff from other days of the festival. No one gives fabulous venues like those European countries.
I also really really really like this pic.
"amazing" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
April 2, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on April 2, 2010 9:49 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 03:00
Dancing = fun
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 26, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 26, 2010 8:50 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 02:00
Humid! Hot! Fun! Lindy hop is way harder work than running, but way more fun.
hot, humid
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 22, 2010
beginning DJing: different DJing contexts
Posted by dogpossum on March 22, 2010 5:48 PM | Comments (0)
Rereading my first post on beginning DJing, I'm struck by the lack of clarity in my writing. I did intend that first post as a sort of first scratch-around and scene-setting for my own experiences. Kind of a way of explaining how I got to this point in my thinking about DJing for swing dancers. But it didn't quite work like that.
So let me revise that first post.
I've had a few people ask questions about getting into DJing. They tend to ask things like "what're some tips for a beginner DJ?" It's hard to answer these sorts of questions without giving too much information...
What I meant here, was:
- There's so much to say about DJing generally, that a few simple tips can be overloaded by detail
- I really like talking about DJing (and most things), so it's difficult to rein myself in and think simply and clearly about this stuff)
- There's a big difference between ideas about DJing and actually, practically DJing. At the end of the day - and just like dancing - what you think and say has zero meaning when you're out there with/on the dance floor
The second point in that (very busy) paragraph that I'd like to address is:
I've had a few people ask questions about getting into DJing. They tend to ask things like "what're some tips for a beginner DJ?" It's hard to answer these sorts of questions ...without knowing about that person's scene.
I think that, despite what we might like to think about the 'nature' of lindy hop, jazz dancing and jazz generally, the specific details of individual local dance scenes is far more important in shaping what DJs play and why. So sometimes advice and tips from an interstate or international DJ - or even a DJ playing on the other side of town in a very large scene - aren't very helpful. How do I think about the different places and ways of DJing and being a DJ?
- Regular DJing in a local scene, playing for after-class socials, regular social dancing nights and occasional bits and bobs. This is the bread and butter of DJing. This is the stuff that keeps a scene's social dancing working. It's the day-in, day-out stuff like this, where you turn up every week or month or whatever to play for all sorts of crowds, from the very small to the very large, that makes up the bulk of my DJing. I also think it's where I learn the most, and it's also often the most challenging and most frustrating. But this is also where the crowds are kindest, you get the most satisfying feedback, and you can really learn to DJ with less pressure. I'd distinguish between playing after-class stuff and social dancing 'nights'. The first is where new DJs should cut their teeth, the second is where DJing can become more 'important', but also more pressured and more challenging. And more political.
- DJing at large local events like dances or local exchanges This mightn't involve large crowds, famous dancers from overseas or even very much truly satisfying DJing. But it's a different animal to the regular stuff. There're greater chances to stretch, but there's also more pressure. Dancers expect more, and are usually more interested in dancing hardcore.
- DJing large interstate or national events This is where dancers expect to hear interesting, new, challenging music. This is where you get to stretch a little. This is where I think organisers should be really picky about who they hire to DJ and how they represent their event.
- International and 'famous' events I have no experience here, but I'm talking about DJing at large events overseas like Herrang, the more 'famous' exchanges like the DC Lindy exchange, and the 'flavour of the month' events like Camp Jitterbug, Showdown and so on. This is where there's more money - to fly in and pay DJs - and more pressure.
There're a whole range of other events for DJing: radio gigs, house parties, after after after parties, corporate and non-dancing events, DJing for competitions, DJing for classes and performances for the public and so on. These all require very different skills sets.
It's difficult to make definitive statements about 'how to DJ' in each of these types of circumstances. How you DJ (and how your DJing is received) will also depend - in a very large way - on who you are.
A famous international teacher will get more leeway and a degree of arse kissing regardless of their ability to work a wave or transition between styles. Dancers may have other barrows to push, here, and demonstrating a great love for this DJ's work might serve other purposes.
A DJ with an interstate or international reputation will be met with a degree of expectation and anticipation. The stakes will be higher, but then there might also be a degree of leeway granted simply because dancers are _expecting_ to be entertained.
One thing I've noticed, though: most dancers don't know any DJs beyond those in their local scene. The longer a dancer's been dancing, the more they travel, the more contact they have with visiting dancers, the more active they are in DJing-related online talk, the more likely they are to know a visiting DJ. But for the most part, 75% of dancers won't have a clue and couldn't give a shit. For them, the dancing's the thing, and a band will always be more fun than a DJ. This is the case in most Australian scenes. I dunno what it's like overseas. I also tend to think that this is a good way to be.
At the end of the day, the people who'll pay most attention to your DJing are other DJs. And even then, 65% of them are too busy dancing/drinking to pay attention. Unless you really suck. Then they'll notice.
To sum all this up, different settings require different DJing skills for most DJs. And the people who'll know a scene best are the people who dance there, regularly, with the most people.
Other posts on beginning DJing:
- beginning djing: preparing for the first set
- beginning djing: different DJing contexts
- beginning djing: how i got into djing
"beginning DJing: different DJing contexts" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 21, 2010
beginning DJing: how i got into djing
Posted by dogpossum on March 21, 2010 1:35 PM | Comments (1)
I've had a few people ask questions about getting into DJing. They tend to ask things like "what're some tips for a beginner DJ?" It's hard to answer these sorts of questions without giving too much information and without knowing about that person's scene. So I'm going to try to write a few posts addressing key issues.
[EDIT: I've expanded/clarified these points here, in this post
beginning DJing: different DJing contexts']
Of course, these are issues which I see (with my 20/20 hindsight) as key to my beginning DJing. So they're probably not going to apply to anyone else's experiences, or even be a terribly accurate reference point for my own DJing. But what the heck.
Firstly, here's how I got into DJing:
It was in Melbourne in 2006. Which isn't very long ago, really. At that time there were two large social dancing nights - CBD on Thursdays in the city and Funpit in a dance studio every second Friday night. There were also many after-class, shorter social dancing opportunities where you could get in an hour or so of dancing. The Brunswick and Camperdown classes were good spots for this. There was also a struggling Sunday afternoon/evening event at a venue called Mayfields. This died almost immediately after I did my first ever set there. I take full responsibility.
Nationally, there were two all-social dancing exchanges - Canberrang and the MLX. MLX had only just moved to social dancing only in 2005.
I had been to Herrang in 2004 and was particularly frustrated by the social dancing in Melbourne. The music really varied. There was one or two DJs who were really solid (Brian, Doris), and there were only a few who really played the sort of music I liked - classic big band swing from the swing era. Otherwise, Melbourne was awash in supergroove, neo, terrible late 90s 'swing lite' and contemporary artists like Michael Buble. It was killing me. I wanted to dance to the music I loved, and I wanted to dance to the music I saw in the clips from old films. DJing is not, however, a good way to do this. When you start DJing you're almost guaranteeing you'll never dance to your favourite songs. You'll just be playing them for other people.
I'd been into swing for ages - long before I started dancing lindy hop. It was wanting to dance to swing that brought me to a class in Brisbane in 1998. So I'd been buying music for a while. By 2005 I had been buying CDs for dancing in earnest and had enough music to DJ with. A close friend of mine had started DJing in 2004/2005 and it was her enthusiasm and suggestions which really pushed me to start DJing. From here, it was the support of my close friends which really got me to DJing.
Before I actually played for a crowd I used to practice DJing at home, playing with my music software and doing 'pretend' sets. I did my first sets for small after class crowds, and they really weren't what I'd think of as DJing. I was all caught up in the scariness/excitement and really didn't rock. It was after about the third of these that I finally did a real set at CBD.
I was really scared.
I really could have done a 'serious' gig at an after-class social. But the DJing standard at CBD was so bad at that time, I don't think I could really have done any worse.
I practiced combining songs and working on 'flow' between styles at home a LOT. Basically, I wanted to play stuff I loved, but I knew I was going to have to make some concessions to pre-existing tastes. In retrospect, I was going in there with an agenda: "play some good music, not that shit we hear every week."
I think it helped that I'd been dancing so long before I started DJing. I had an idea about what might work for dancing, and I had a decent idea about the structure of swing music and how it worked with lindy hop (this is something that's _really_ improved over my DJing lifetime). I also had an idea about what was fashionable now, and had been in the years before. So I could make some observations about 'favourites' and which songs had failed terribly in the past.
I did a few things for my first set:
- I approached the organiser for a chance.
- I did the first set of the night
- I asked an experienced DJ to stand next to me during my set and help me set up and handle the technical stuff
- I practiced with my laptop and DJing software til I knew it inside out. I didn't want to have problems there in front of a crowd.
- I DJed for an hour and a half, which was a bit too long.
This is the first set I played for a real crowd. It was at CBD on Thursday 1st February, 2006, starting at 8.30pm and finishing at 10.
[title bpm artist year album]
Knock Me A Kiss 115 Louis Jordan 1943 Swingers
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off 120 Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Louie Bellson 1957 Ella And Louis Again [MFSL]
Cow Cow Boogie 120 Jennie Löbel and Swing Kings 2001 He Ain't Got Rhythm
Splanky 125 Count Basie and his Orchestra 1957 The Complete Atomic Basie
Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy 126 Stan Kenton and his Orchestra with June Christy 1945 The Best Of Big Band - Swinging The Blues
Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby? 140 Dinah Washington 1956 The Swingin' Miss "D"
Moten Swing 138 Oscar Peterson 1962 Night Train
Out South 129 Junior Mance Trio 1962 Happy Time
Good Rockin' Tonight 155 Jimmy Witherspoon 1963 Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon
Now Or Never 167 Katharine Whalen 1999 Jazz Squad
Big Fine Daddy 125 Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers 2000 Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout Miss Thing
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop 136 Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 1945 Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
For Dancers Only 148 Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 1937 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford
C-Jam Blues 143 Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke
Don't Falter At The Altar 138 Cab Calloway and his Orchestra Are You Hep To The Jive?
Let's Do It 148 Eddie Heywood and his Orchestra (Billie Holiday) 1941 Lady Day Swings
Apollo Jump 143 Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra 1943 Apollo Jump
Shoutin' Blues 148 Count Basie and his Orchestra 1949 Kansas City Powerhouse
Comes Love 105 Billie Holiday and her Orchestra (Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller) 1957 Body And Soul
My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More 76 Alberta Hunter (acc by Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Fran Wess, Norris Turney, Billy Butler, Gerald Cook, Aaron Bell, Jackie Williams) 1978 Amtrak Blues
Salty Papa Blues 115 Lionel Hampton and his Septet with Dinah Washington 1943 Dinah Washington:the Queen Sings - Disc 1 - Evil Gal Blues
Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee 130 Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 1949 Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun
Drum Boogie 176 Gene Krupa Drums Drums Drums
Looking at it now, there's a fair bit of stuff I never DJ any more and don't even listen to. That Oscar Peterson version of Moten Swing for a start. But in 2006 Melbourne was heavily into supergroove. There was no real interest in old school music or dancing, beyond the kids learning at Got That Swing, and a few indy dancers. The tempos in this set are really low. Oooh, that first block is tediously slow. And low energy. The tempos in Melbourne were generally extremely low. So 160bpm was crazy fast.
I posted about the set on the Swing Talk board here, though there's nothing here on dogpossum.org.
In general terms, I think I took a few chances which were new to or underplayed in Melbourne, but used a lot of familiar stuff which I knew would work. The transitions between styles aren't as smooth as I'd like, and the energy levels are a bit low, but this was my first set, and this was the first set of the night at the venue. If I remember rightly, it was a bit quiet in that moment after the classes and before social dancing. And that set could be heavier on the beginner dancers.
In terms of song selection, I'm surprised I played two Billie Holiday songs. I love her so much, but I rarely play her now. Which is a massive shame - she played with such wonderful bands. Handy Man was probably a moment of 'oh I loooove this song and I _have_ to play it.' I dunno how it went down. This was before Melbourne got into blues, so it might have had mixed results... though the preponderance of supergroove meant that Melbourne dancers were generally ok with lower tempos.
Looking back over my set lists (I've kept them all as playlists in itunes), I played about 22 sets in the next six months. Which is scary. I was a totally new DJ, playing heaps of sets. And I notice most of the second sets at CBD, where I was finishing, ran way over time, from anywhere to 20 minutes to one and a half hours over my rostered 1.5 hours. I do remember the organiser for that venue wasn't all that organised, that there was a shortage of DJs willing to do sets, and that I said yes to every set I was offered. I think saying yes (often at no noticed) was a good strategy in that it got me lots of sets and got me lots of experience and exposure and got me a rep as someone you could call on in a pinch. But I'm not sure how good it was for the dancers.
Looking over the sets themselves, I didn't suck at all (though how can you tell without seeing the effect songs had on the floor?), but I'm not sure it's a good idea to have so few DJs working a social scene. CBD was very popular during this period, though it did decline in the following year.
There's some interesting comment about DJs' sets in the DJed sets thread with some interesting parallel discussions about CBD in this thread. The DJ bubbs thread is also kind of interesting.
I'll try to do another thread on beginning DJing generally. But I don't make any promises...
NB: looking back over those threads from SwingTalk, I'm struck by Brian's awesome music. He was playing stuff I still haven't discovered. It was a sad time when he gave up DJing. :(
Other posts on beginning DJing:
- beginning djing: preparing for the first set
- beginning djing: different DJing contexts
- beginning djing: how i got into djing
"beginning DJing: how i got into djing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 20, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 20, 2010 8:45 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 02:00
Lots of fun. Running has made dancing fast _so_ much easier - I'm fitter and my movements are more controlled and more efficient.
hot
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
reports
Posted by dogpossum on March 20, 2010 4:49 PM | Comments (3)
Running report: I can run for 28 minutes without stopping. I'm at run 3 of week 8 of the c25k. I am badass. I am considering some sort of fun run situation.
DJing report: went to BBS and DJed. DJing for blues dancers is a bit boring. Blues dancing events are a bit boring. Having said that, I had a very good time. For my money (and it was), BBS offers the most interesting bands and venues at any Australian dance event. G$ has some great photos here. That's one of his there with this post.
My DJing was ok, and I think I did a pretty good job on the... Sunday night I think it was. On the whole I didn't hear a whole lot of really inspiring DJing over the weekend. Most of the sets seem to lack coherency or flow. And they tended to be really low energy. The low energy is a real suck at an entire weekend of blues - you really need to keep the energy up there so people dance. One exception was Chris Haarm, who did some really nice work warming the room on the Friday night. I think his set was my favourite.
The bands, though, ROCKED. And that's how it should be.
I don't think I'll bother with another blues weekend. I ended up going for a run on the Sunday because I didn't feel like I'd had enough exercise. And that's just wrong for an exchange.
Learnz report: I am working my way through this pgrad diploma. It's really hard not directing your own learnz. I don't like waiting for someone else to decide when I'm ready for the next bit of learn. I also much prefer following my own interests rather than having to follow someone else's curriculum. Remind me to talk a bit about this more later on.
Intertubes report: I have neglected this blog for twitter. And my learnz.
That's it.
"reports" was posted in the category academia and c25k and djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music
March 12, 2010
c25k: wk7, run1
Posted by dogpossum on March 12, 2010 8:36 PM | Comments (0)
distance: 4 km, time: 00:35, pace: 08:44, calories: 454, effort: 4/5
Another 25 minutes without stopping. But it was a challenge. These longer runs are _tiring_. But I did it all without stopping. Very very slooooowly.
sunny
"c25k: wk7, run1" was posted in the category c25k and fitness and lindy hop and other dances
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 12, 2010 8:35 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:00, calories: 1559,
Dancing like a fool at the ball in Canberra. Some floor work, many stunts. Manjury gave surprisingy little trouble. Improved fitness makes for superawesome showing off.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 7, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 7, 2010 8:31 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 2:00, effort: 4/5
Lots and lots of social dancing craziness without resting.
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 6, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 6, 2010 8:25 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 02:00
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 4, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on March 4, 2010 8:20 PM | Comments (0)
duration: 01:00, effort: 3/5
Good fun - hot and sweaty!
hot, overcast
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
March 3, 2010
mid-week report
Posted by dogpossum on March 3, 2010 10:05 AM | Comments (1)
This is just going to be an account of things I've done lately, as I'm trying to get my brain in gear for doing readings and some writing.
Today I did the third run of week five of c25k. That was 5 minutes walking, 20 minutes running, 5 minutes walking. I ran for twenty whole minutes without having to stop. I haven't been able to do that since I was in an athletics squad at thirteen. It's pretty bloody amazing. And it wasn't as hard as I thought. My knees did get a bit sore from the impact, and I really felt the limited range of movement in my right ankle, but otherwise it was ok. I'm pretty tired now, and I don't have that massive, crazy adrenaline-charged energy I usually have on days I run, but I don't feel terrible at all. In fact, I am tough.
Tomorrow I'm off to Melbourne for Blues Before Sunrise, a blues dancing exchange. I'm not doing workshops. I never do any more - I'd much rather spend the daylight hours being a tourist and socialising. I'm not interested in any of the teachers either, which is usually the deciding factor. I'd really like it if Damon Stone came back so I could do some historically informed blues dancing classes.
I'm doing some DJing there (as I mentioned earlier), and I'm interested in seeing how Melbourne's social dancing is going these days. I'll probably play the sort of set I do at Roxbury these days, as Melbourne used to have slightly higher tempos than the Sydney SP gigs, but I'll also keep an eye on the lower tempo range as it's an after-class gig.
I'm also looking forward to buying a good sports bra. I've lost a bit of weight since I started running and this has meant that most of my clothes no longer fit the same way. Most of my wardrobe is cope-with-able, but I'm finding that I really need to get a smaller bra. I've got three super awesome Berlei ones that are actually still in good shape, even though they're about two or three years old. Apparently the elastic goes in bras after a few zillion washes, so you should replace them. But I like these and they were fricking expensive ($70 each). They're not, though, really fitting properly, and I'm getting some bad bounce which actually gives me a bit of a stitch. Egads. So I'm going to go in and get fitted at Myer and then have a look at the outlet store in Brunswick to see if they have what I'm after. I really do have to buy at least one good one for running in.
The semester has started and I've been to two of my three classes. There's an option of getting credit for one subject because of my previous study, but I'm not sure I'll take it. I should, because it'll save me heaps of money and make the workload easier, but I'm actually interested in the content. It's really just basic semiotics and critical thinking, but it's applied to information systems and data management, which is interesting. I really could just do the readings and guide myself through the content on my own (seeing as how I've spent a couple of higher degrees learning just how to do that), but I think the discussions in class could be interesting. At any rate, I have until week four to make up my mind and then withdraw without academic penalty. I should withdraw - it'll save me 1.5 thousand dollars.
Classes have been interesting. The one I'm thinking of dropping was a little frustrating. It really was like being in a first year semiotics/intro to cultural studies subject, but in a very light weight way. It felt as though the discussion was going really. really. really. slowly. Partly because the group doesn't have the sort of discussion skills you get from an arts degree, but also because the tutor/lecturer is kind of adversarial, and this shut down the contributions. It's also because it seems as though information management people are only just discovering concepts like cultural diversity, active readership, meaning as a product of reader + text not inherent in text, etc etc.
The literature is equally slow - it's very tentative about its claims about audiences and users and the status of texts, which is very ANNOYING. These things are so standardly basic in cultural studies, it feels as though we are reinventing the wheel, but without actually using any round shapes. It's a bit interesting because it also makes clear the fact that info management really does rely on the idea that texts do have innate or essential value and meaning. If they didn't, you wouldn't collect and catalogue them and libraries wouldn't exist. The very nature of cataloguing is that texts and items carry meaning within them.
I think this is why the field is having such difficulty accommodating the idea of users as a diverse bunch with different needs and interests. If your text is the important bit, you really have to assume that readers have a shared value system and shared approaches to text. I'd like to see how the literature ultimately deals with this stuff, but right now articles published in the 1990s are all 'you know what - anything can be information! Even a building!' and I'm all 'oh fuck, didn't we talk about this thirty years ago?' So it's very frustrating, but also reveals a whole lot about the way museums and libraries and things work.
It's super frustrating because I'm used to teaching these things to undergrads, and I'm not particularly enjoying the way the tutor in our classes is handling discussion. This stuff really requires a lot of talk and testing from students; they really have to actually do the whole 'meaning is made not innate to texts' thing in class through their own discussions and exploration of readings. But this can't happen if your (white, male, hetero, alpha-male...) tutor can't let the discussion move away from him-as-focus. It's really emphasising the way patriarchy relies on masculinist ways of communicating and engaging in public talk and the negotiation of ideas to maintain the status quo. And while this tutor is all about 'multiple approaches to texts' and so on, he can't see that his own discursive style is enforcing boring old hierarchies and status and modes of engagement that marginalise women and not-patriarchy-types. This is way poop when your group is 90% middle aged women with badass careers behind them. I mean, you've gotta be doing something wrong if you manage to reduce a loud, enthusiastic, cooperative group of mature aged women students to silence. Self-reflexivity, please.
But I am really really really enjoying being back in a class again, as a student not a teacher. I did have to fight my instinct to manage the discussion in the first tutorial (especially when I could see the tutor squashing the discussion). It is hard to change the way I work in such a familiar setting. Tutorials are so clearly hierarchical. The tutor really is the alpha, or at least the guiding, structuring entity. And while I don't mind being in the beta position (yahoo! no lesson planning!), I'm finding it hard not to act on my instincts to lubricate discussion. I think in part it's because I'm also used to being in academic discussions where everyone knows how to talk - you know how to keep things rolling along.
I also think it's a part of being a woman in talk - women tend to do more affirming, active listening and general social lubrication. I've noticed that women tend to respond to alphas in a particular way - affirming, listening, agreeing rather than volunteering ideas, disagreeing or asserting themselves. In a group setting, when faced with an alpha, I tend to square up, to assert myself. And I'm trying not to do that in this class because it then encourages a sort of competition between me and other alphas, but it also provokes a particular response from the women in the group - agreeing, nodding, etc. And while that's all very nice, it also shuts you off from the sort of serious, hardcore communicating women do in all-female groups. Sure, there are particular hierarchies and power dynamics at work there, but they're not such blunt objects. So I need to chill and step back because a) I'm not responsible for the smooth and productive running of the tute, and b) these are my peers, not my students and I'll gain a lot from remembering that.
Basically, this has reminded me of how challenging being a university student is, and of how academia is - despite all this talk about discourse and collegiality - absolutely all about competitive, masculinised interaction. While it was professionally a good idea to learn how to do this type of behaviour when I was teaching, it's actually a fairly shitty way to be in a cooperative, collaborative class setting. So I'm trying to - once again - stop talking and to listen more. To not be the first one to answer questions, and to not 'take control' of the discussion or social setting, even by doing things like massaging conversation or discussion, or heading off at the pass disruptive influences.
It's also a real change to be a student within the university. I'm used to the status and privilege of teaching and researching. But as a student, no one will provide my reader, no one will tell me where to be at any one time, no one will organise rooms for me. Staff deal with me in a different way (I'm definitely lower status). It's super-nice to have other students treat me as peers, though. It's strange because though I've always tried not to be a 'we are gods' type academic, I've still benefited from the higher status of being staff. But I just haven't noticed it. So that shift in status is kind of destabilising.
I noticed it most yesterday when I couldn't find my lecture room. When you're doing the teaching, everyone has to wait for you to find the room. But when you're a student, things just continue whether you're there or not. I found this a bit daunting because it was the first class of the semester for a new subject. So coming in late, I found it tricky to catch up.
This class was discussing stuff I really know nothing about - the internal architecture of information systems like google or databases or search engines. It's taught by a computer science dood (who's really a very good teacher and a lovely guy) and it's run a bit like a computer science subject - practical lab work and lots of contact hours, but NO READINGS (that blows my brain). So I'm going to have to learn how to learn in this new type of setting.
I'm kind of lucky that I do do dance classes regularly - I have ongoing experience learning how to learn in a class, and being comfortable with not knowing things. I think that dancers in the lindy world are very much about learning and knowledge... well, most of them are. The ones who are interested in historical dance forms tend to be very interested in learning. Learning new steps, routines, etc. But there's a great deal of difference between learning a routine from an archival clip or being in a dance class, and learning how to construct databases in a computer lab.
So being a student again is challenging. But it's also very exciting. I really love being in a group again, rather than working independently as you do during a PhD. I love hearing other people talk about their ideas, and having my own brain fired up by their saying things I'd never have come up with. I love this part of teaching, but when you're part of the group it's as though you have permission to just let your brain go, and follow ideas much further. When I'm teaching, I have to stay on track and keep the discussion within some sort of structure, as you have some goals and definite things to achieve. But when you're a stood, you can just let your brain run on and on and on. It's fabulous, and I love it SO MUCH.
Meanwhile, less fabulously, the bathroom renovation continues. The tiling is going on as I type, insulated by my headphones. The floor will go in today (hopefully), and then it will be tiled tomorrow. The vanity should be in by the end of the week, and the plumber in and doing the bits and pieces that make water work and the toilet exist. Next week they put in the fittings and shower screen. So, really, it won't possibly be done by next Wednesday, unless we're really lucky. But it should be done by Friday.
I haven't had a shower since Friday, and though I'm doing a good job with buckets, I'm looking forward to showering in Melbourne. Especially as I'll be dancing so much. But the bathroom will look good, and I think I did a good job choosing the tiles. It's all white, but the shade of white matches the old tub. The shiny (rather than matte) tiles mean it's already far brighter in there, and the whiteness is really good for light. There're no external windows, just a skylight, but the new downlights have also made a big difference. I'm not entirely happy about the vanity, as it will just eat up room, but we just couldn't afford a custom-made one, which is what would be required. Well, we could have afforded it, but it's not a good investment in a flat we won't spend the rest of our lives in.
And that's just about it, I think. I have some readings to do now. :D
"mid-week report" was posted in the category academia and c25k and domesticity and learning and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and teaching
February 26, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2010 8:13 PM | Comments (0)
time: 01:00, feeling: good
Sweeeeeaaaaaty.
cloudy
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
running -> exercise -> dancing -> jazz history
Posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2010 9:39 AM | Comments (0)
There's a man upstairs in our bathroom banging and hammering and sawing. It's really loud. Bathing without a shower is difficult, but not that bad. It'll be nice when we get our shower back, though.
Meanwhile, I'm still on the c25k, and did the first run of week 5 today. It's a nine week program, so I'm over half way. This is the point, though, where most people tend to give up. I actually feel quite good. It's not as difficult as I thought, probably because it starts so gradually and then builds progressively. Today's program involved:
a 5 minute warm up walk
5 minute run
3 minute walk
5 minute run
3 minute walk
5 minute run
5 minute cool down walk
I was surprised that I could do all the running bits without having to stop, and I remember thinking as I finished the first run 'Woah, I just ran five minutes without stopping. Haven't been able to do that in years.' I still breathe really loudly (though not as loudly as I used to) and I certainly couldn't hold a conversation at the same time (which is the ideal running pace). But I didn't have to walk during any of the running bits and I felt pretty ok the whole way.
I actually quite like the sessions. Thirty minutes of exercise is a tiny amount, but it's time well spent - no dilly dallying about - and it leaves me feeling really good. I have pretty bad snots at the moment because our bathroom is being ripped to bits, but that's not affecting my running the way it used to. I have some new aches in my left foot, under the arch, but that feels like a hamstring issue, and I have very tight calves, so I always need to stretch my hamstrings. So, generally, I feel pretty good. I'm knocking on wood as I type, as I can't really believe this is going so well.
There are a few things that seem key to the usefulness of this approach to training. Firstly, the audio cues on the ipod are essential. It tells me when to start running, when to start walking, when I'm half way. Secondly, the music is really good. I choose songs that either pump me up, or warm me up (or down) gently. I might end up using spoken podcasts later, as they distract me from the exercise and make the going easier. After this, the steady progress, with a structure to the sessions that changes weekly (and more frequently as you progress) makes the sessions more interesting. And I think the most important part is having clear goals.
One of the things that's made it difficult to stick to a serious exercise program in the past is the lack of goals. Learning tranky doo is fun, but once you have that under control, it's difficult to feel motivate. One routine after another is also kind of dull. Working on dance stuff with a partner is nice, but I think that without clear goals you tend to get a bit distracted and demotivated. I guess that's why competitions are so useful.
So I really like the couch to 5k program. I'm especially happy with the fact that I can run five minutes without stopping. No pain in my feet, and I can actually breathe. It's very satisfying. To think that I'll be running half an hour without stopping soon is almost beyond the imagining.
One of the other things I like about it, is feeling my muscles toning up. I feel as though my jubbly bits are kind of being compressed and firmed up into muscle. The muscles I have underneath the jubbly are slowly being revealed. I'm fascinated by my arm muscles, which are entirely the result of cycling. I can't believe cycling gives you arm muscles. But then cycling in a hilly city is challenging - you work harder. You use your arms to control your bike, and you tend to overwork your arms if you're too tight in your shoulders and too weak in your core. But I'm also beginning to feel stronger and more stable in my core, which is fab. I'm also finding it easier to activate my lats (so important for dancing) and other individual muscle (and groups) which in turn makes it easier to reduce the energy I spend. Using the right muscles for the job means that I become more efficient in my movement - less flobbering about out of control, less overusing the wrong muscle.
So while I'm muscling up, I'm also finding that other, tighter muscle groups (my lower back, my shoulders) are loosening up. As the rest of my body steps up and starts doing its job, those places can relax and stop doing more than their fair share. It's all very interesting. I'm especially exploring the way these changes affect my dancing and other activities. I can feel myself becoming more stable. I have more energy and greater stamina.
This is also making me the most annoying student in classes on Tuesday night. Hollywood style lindy hop (as in west coast not east, centred on dancers like Dean Collins rather than the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers) is a foreign country. It's fascinatingly technical, using the same principles as the lindy I'm used to, but in different ways. It's complex, and yet when it's done right, it's very energy efficient.
I'm particularly fascinated by the swingout. This type of swingout uses much the same principles of momentum and dynamic energy, but in a very different way. The thing that makes a swingout so amazing is that the follow moves towards the lead, then turns and changes direction, moving away from him. This simple process is actually really complex, in terms of energy and momentum. It's too easy to lose all your energy and momentum when you change direction, so the challenge is keeping that energy in your bodies, and yet still changing direction.
This type of swingout involves a more thorough 'leading' of the follow, but it also seems to use a less 'natural' approach to movement... that statement could perhaps be the product of ignorance, but it seems as though the lead has to be more aware of energy and where the follow is and also where he is. I use a gendered pronoun deliberately. I'm the only female lead in the class, and I'm finding the gender stuff is quite different in this type of scene. An emphasis on vintage dressing seems to reflect a more conservative approach to gender roles. Women follow, men lead. There's also been less emphasis on improvisation within the swingout.
For me, improvisation (within the swingout and elsewhere) is the follow's opportunity to 'speak.' A decent lead doesn't 'allow' the follow time to speak, but actually incorporates these contributions into their leading. So the two really do function as a team. The more comprehensive leading seems to micromanage the follow's movement, and it's been tricky figuring out where and how I should add in my jazz steps (I follow in the second class and usually socially - I rarely lead socially these days, which I am about to change).
The classes this week did look at variations on the swingout, and this was really interesting. It also meant that I had to stop and learn the basic footwork and shape of this type of swingout properly. I'm also wondering whether I should adopt this type of swingout when leading in class. That's the sensible thing to do, but I worry that it will mean I'll lose all memory of any other swingout completely. Which is kind of bullshitty, as any swingout I have now is no doubt so riddled with personal habits and problems it's already kind of broke. Learning a new swingout will make me conscious of all these idiosyncrasies and make it possible to rebuild a stronger swingout.
At any rate, I'm thoroughly enjoying being in classes again. It's so new, it's challenging. I'm also out of practice, in terms of knowing how to learn in class, and I'm quite enjoying the way this makes everything more difficult. I am also the type of student who asks questions and really likes to get things right, so I'm annoying everyone. I still find leading makes more sense. I just have no sense of what my body is doing when I'm following. I'm really not aware of my body and muscles and so on when I'm following. I think it's because when I'm leading I not only have to understand what I'm doing, but also be aware of my follow and what's happening in their body, so understanding my own body becomes the first part of understanding momentum and how we make it work between us. What I don't understand is why I can't figure this out when I'm following.
This stuff makes it really difficult to follow in class. I can look at the moves and understand how they work, and I can also figure out how I'd lead it, but the lead I'm working with mightn't, so I have to let them figure it out. But because I can't feel the follow (because that's me), I don't really understand what's going wrong/right in our partnership at that moment. Meanwhile, I find it really difficult to stop concentrating on the lead and to start engaging with following. Part of me wonders if I should just give up on following altogether. But then the rest of me refuses to be beaten.
I still haven't found a good yoga class. Sigh.
But I have spent some lovely time in the library this week, reading some really good stuff on Frank Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden and listening along to my music as I go. I've also been digging into the library's music collection, listening to some of their neat stuff as I read. It's all been really really interesting. These guys are interesting because they were white, very popular and also totally top notch. And there these moments where they recorded with African American musicians in the 20s and 30s and I think 'how the fuck did this happen in segregated America?' I've also come across interesting references to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a band popularly considered a crappy novelty band who claimed they invented jazz. They didn't. But while they weren't the most awesome band, they were very influential, and I keep coming across musicians and bands they worked with who were very good. This stuff is also interesting because Bix, Tram and Teagarden worked in Paul Whiteman's band. I generally think of Whiteman's stuff as a sort of wet, watered down jazz with strings and sweet arrangements. But this sort of dance music was super popular. And while I don't like it much at all, the sales of this stuff bolstered the recorded music industry generally, which in turn made it possible for artists I do to have recorded. I don't think it's actually that simple a connection, but there's definitely a complex relationship between class, race, musical aesthetics (sweet or hot?) live performances, venue ownership and management, radio broadcasting and recorded music during this period.
I don't know that much about this yet, but it's definitely caught my eye. I hope I'll have time during the semester to chase these thoughts down. Probably not. Classes start next week, and I'm going to have to do some clever catching up after BBS.
Right, that's enough of that.
"running -> exercise -> dancing -> jazz history" was posted in the category c25k and lindy hop and other dances and music and research and yoga
February 25, 2010
eh? what's that they're sayin'?
Posted by dogpossum on February 25, 2010 9:01 PM | Comments (0)
I've made a new 8track. You can listen to it here or...
(Image stoled from Shorpy, king of olden days pictures)
These are all songs that are a little odd. Songs that I have to listen to on headphones, repeating bits to be sure I heard correctly... But these are all songs that I'm loving at the moment. Some of the lyrics are funny (Fats and Teagarden singing about their love for one another), some of the melodies are funny (way down Borneo way), some of the songs feel kind of kooky (another orientalist), sometimes the language is charming and yet also kind of odd (French popswing), some are interesting versions of favourites (first you get a bottle...)... I am madly in love with Jack Teagarden again, so he dominates a little. I always love Fats, because he makes me giggle. Lil Hardin is badass. Teddy Wilson is scarygood - but a piano/vibes duet?
title - year - artist - bpm - length (you can find these songs without the albums, I think... because I'm tired of adding them in...)
Hittin' The Bottle 1930 Frank Trumbauer and his Orchestra (Andy Seacrest, Nat Natoli, Bill Rank, Chet Hazlett or Charles Strickfaden, Fud Livinginston, Matty Malneck, Roy Bargy, Eddie Lang, Min Leibrook, George Marsh, Jack Fulton) 2:59
That's What I Like About You 1931 Jack Teagarden and his Band (Charlie Teagarden, Sterling Bose, Pee Wee Russell, Joe Catalyne, Max Farley, Adrian Rollini, Fats Waller, Nappy Lamare, Artie Bernstein, Stan King) 173 3:23
Borneo 1928 Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra (Bix Beiderbecke, Charlie Margulis, Bill Rank, Frank Trumbauer, Chet Hazlett, Irving Friedman, Lennie Hayton, Eddie Lang, Min Liebrook, Hal McDonald, Scrappy Lambert, Bill Challis) 184 3:11
Oriental Swing 1938 Lillian Armstrong and her Swing Band (Ralph Muzillo, Johnny McGee, Al Philburn, Tony Zimmers, Frank Froeba, Dave Barbour, Haig Stephens, Sam Weiss) 181 2:59
Hey! Stop Kissin' My Sister 1940 Fats Waller and His Rhythm (John Hamilton, Gene Sedric, Al Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones) 191 2:48
Coucou 1940 Le Quintette du Hot Club de France (Hugo Rostaing, Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt, Francis Luca, Pierre Fouad, Josette Dayde) 153 2:42
It's Tight Like That 1929 Jimmy McPartland, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Gil Rodin, Larry Binyon, Vic Briedis, Dick Morgan, Harry Goodman, Ray Bauduc 204 2:51
Honeysuckle Rose 1937 Teddy Wilson Quartet 168 3:13
"eh? what's that they're sayin'?" was posted in the category 8 tracks and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 23, 2010
fitness: dance classes
Posted by dogpossum on February 23, 2010 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:00, feeling: good
Feeling surprisingly fit and well, even in the super-hot hall.
hot
"fitness: dance classes" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
February 20, 2010
fitness: dance work
Posted by dogpossum on February 20, 2010 5:17 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:00
Hot! Sore quad/hip/knee combo on bungfoot side required serious stretching afterwards. Should have taken rest day between run1 of wk4 and a dance work session.
hot, sunny
"fitness: dance work" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
upcoming DJing
Posted by dogpossum on February 20, 2010 3:03 PM | Comments (0)
My DJing schedule for the next little while:
Sunday 28th February: DJing @ Blues Night in Sydney (8:30-9:30)
Thursday 4th March: DJing lindy hop @ Czech Club in North Melbourne (9:30-10:30)
Friday 5th March: DJing in blues battle @ Forever Dance (BBS in Melbourne about 1/3 way through the night)
Saturday 6th March: DJing band breaks 9-12 @ Y-Dance (BBS)
Sunday 7th March: DJing 12-1:30 @ The Copacabanna (BBS late night).
Just enough to keep me busy, but actually a terribly demanding load - just little blobs of sets here and there.
"upcoming DJing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 16, 2010
digital resources... mostly
Posted by dogpossum on February 16, 2010 5:38 PM | Comments (0)
This post is really just to track a range of online sources I've used today. I'm really interested in the relationship between different tools, and between online and face to face tools. I want to frame this post/discussion by pointing out that swing DJs are interested in music primarily as dancers and as DJs for dancers. So their interest in music and dance and history is almost always tied to the physical experience of dancing. And dancing is ALL about the body, no matter how intertubed you are. Dancers also tend to have quite extensive online networks, networks of friends and acquaintances which crisscross their country and the world. I just know that if Peter wasn't actually playing music as I type, he'd be chiming in with useful tweeted comments and links.
The body pwns the intertubes any day.
I read this thread on SwingDJs this morning,
which directed us to:
this story about hot jazz in a full-text issue of Life on Google books.
I replied in the thread on swingdjs, but also in a post on my own blog, here.
Reading the list and thinking about hot jazz as I wrote that post, I was reminded of things I'd read in books (!), one of which is also available in full text on google books here.
I have also found full text versions online, but I can't remember where. If you start with The Jazz Study Group @ Columbia and Jazz Studies Online you'll probably eventually find them all.
But while I was reading these things in books, I came across references to a series of photographs and films which are very popular with dances - by Gjon Mili. Mili is best known amongst dancers for his short film Jammin' the Blues which is available on youtube along with other films he made featuring jazz musicians (I link them here.)
There're some iconic photos of dancers in Life magazine in their 'Life goes to...' series. These are available in Google/Life's online collection. Gjon Mili also did some very interesting photos as part of a photo shoot for Esquire in a Jam Session series.
I've already written about magazines and jazz ad nauseum.
Meanwhile, that original Life article listed '30 good hot records'. Which made me think about canons. And discographies as canons. There are various online versions of discographies, but the good ones aren't freely available online. Boo. Hiss.
Canons and discographies made me think about following particular musicians, and all this talk about 'essential' lists of jazz musicians and songs made me think about the Great Day In Jazz photo, which has a documentary film attached, and which Rayned used to structure his Yehoodi Radio show, which you could stream online.
After I'd written that post earlier today, I was still thinking about these issues. And I remembered seeing a note attached to an Australian photo from the 20s in an online collection. I eventually found the photo on flickr.com in their flickr commons (with which I am obsessed) by typing 'bands jazz sydney' into the search box, getting this list. This is the photo. I was particularly interested in the comment that black American bands were banned in Australia from the date of this photo (1928) until 1955 (when Louis Armstrong visited Australia). I wondered if it was true.
So I asked twitter. This led to a discussion between (mostly) The SwingDJ, DJRussellTurner, a discussion witnessed by all the people who followed one or all of us on Twitter.
TheSwingDJ was sceptical.
DJRussellTurner tweeted clarified the Rex Stewart thing.
DJRussellTurner suggested a distinction between 'band' and 'musicians', and then linked to an an article by Alec Morgan in the journal Scan which used the original photo and added
But, not all musical imports were welcomed by Sydney's moral guardians. Sonny Clay's renowned Jazz band, The Colored Idea, arrived here from the USA in 1928 to play the burgeoning nightclubs. After a couple of white women were found in a hotel room with the Afro-American musicians, the band was escorted back to the ship and told never to grace our shores again. While the occasional black musician was allowed in after careful scrutiny for a limited period, Afro-American bands were not permitted back until the mid 1950's when Louis Armstrong and his band pushed the colour-bar down.
I suddenly decided I needed to know more, and I certainly needed to verify this idea that 'black bands were banned in Australia' during this period. The important question here is why? Why did I want to be sure? Partly because this would indicate interesting things about:
- race and racism in Australia (White Australia Policy)
- jazz and jazz culture in Australia (jam sessions, playing with and listening to other musicians is central to the exchange and cultural transmission of creative, ideological and discursive forms. A lack of African American musicians in Australia would go some way to supporting my continuing suspicions about the whiteness of Australian jazz. And, consequently, white jazz dance.
- the music and entertainment industry in Australia.
I had a bit of a squizz in various online sources, but eventually decided I needed to look at some more newspapers from the day. These sorts of (albeit somewhat unreliable) primary sources can be helpful.
So I started simple, and followed this link from the flickr page. Not a whole lot of help right now, but it would be worth following up the original photographer.
Then I remembered someone on twitter mentioning an online tool which allowed you to search online Australian primary sources. I couldn't remember who it was who put me onto it (I still can't), so I just followed a bunch of links from likely sources.
Until I saw a name I recognised: Trove. And started searching for "Sonny Clay".
I found this newspaper article on Trove which outlined accusations about the musicians' union from the 'banned band''s representatives.
Meanwhile, TheSwingDJ confirmed our suspicions but also noted that Rex Stewart wasn't black, according to the musicians' union (I wish I had his reference for this, actually).
He also tweeted other interesting tidbits including one about 'good reputations' and 'paying' to be allowed to play.
And then there were various comments on twitter from peeps 'listening in' to our 3-way chat, including comments about the photos as resources for fashion, Trove's value for private research projects and so on. I asked for help RE Trove's browser-compatability as I wanted to edit the scanned text of the article, but couldn't log in. Various tweeps offered tips and feedback.
Then I revisited DJRussellTurner's link to the Scan article and the original flickr photo page and discovered that the author of the Scan article had a blog where she discussed this photo and issue. Her thinking about this issue led to her discussion of flappers and gender here and here.
I then checked our her blog's 'about' page and discovered she's at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at UQ where I did my BA and MA and where I still have friends working.
In one of those blog posts she notes in a caption for (a repro of that original photo from flickr):
(Members of Sonny Clay's Coloured Idea (including the singer Ivie Anderson) on deck as they pull into Sydney, 1928)
And this made me think: Ivie Anderson! Best known (in my world) as a singer with Duke Ellington's band. So I did a crappy search of my music (using the wrong date) to see if she recorded with Ellington during this period. I also scanned the photo carefully to see if I recognised her. I was, pretty much, guessing. But I was using photos of Anderson I found online to try and compare them with the women in those two original photos.
TheSwingDJ beat me to it with this link to a source many Swing DJs use quite often. That entry for Anderson includes:
Born in California, young Ivie received vocal training at her local St. Mary's Convent and later spent two years studying with Sara Ritt in Washington, DC. Returning home she found work with Curtis Mosby, Paul Howard, Sonny Clay, and briefly with Anson Weeks at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in Los Angeles. She also found work in vaudeville, touring the country as a dancer and vocalist in the Fanchon and Marco revue, starring Mamie Smith, and with the Shuffle Along revue. She was featured vocalist at the Culver City Cotton Club before leaving to tour Australia in 1928 with Sonny Clay. Returning after five months down under she organized her own show and toured the U.S. In 1930 she found work with Earl Hines.It was while appearing with Hines that Ellington first heard her sing. He hired her in February 1931, and she quickly became a fixture of the orchestra's sound.
(I've bolded the important bits.)
At this point, we're still thinking about and looking up sources. Meanwhile, colleagues from the CCC at UQ have chimed in about the author of that blog, discussions about archiving this sort of research are happening, I'm listening to 1930s Ellington featuring Ivie Anderson and I'm just about to look up youtube for some clips of Anderson to see if I can check her out more thoroughly.
But first, I think I'll go dancing.
(srsly)
"digital resources... mostly" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and people i know and research
dancing: classes
Posted by dogpossum on February 16, 2010 5:12 PM | Comments (0)
time: 02:00, feeling: good
It was very hot in that hall.
"dancing: classes" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
magazine themed jazz prn
Posted by dogpossum on February 16, 2010 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Magazine-themed prn from the 'Jam Session' pics in the Google/Life set Gjon Mili did for Esquire:
(NB that little group in the bottom left hand corner are from Vogue magazine.)
Mili of course made Jumpin' the Blues, and also this freekin great clip of rockstars:
"magazine themed jazz prn" was posted in the category cat blogging and fillums and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
lists and canons in jazz
Posted by dogpossum on February 16, 2010 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
An interesting discussion has cropped up on SwingDJs called "30 Good Hot Records" from LIFE. This is what I'm about to post in response.
I love lists of iconic or 'good' songs/books/films/texts. I love them because though they are presented as definitive, they are always[ more effective as a provocation than a definitive answer to questions about what counts and is important enough to be listed. Discograhies work, pretty much, as definitive 'lists' or 'canons'.
I've come across a few different uses of 'hot' in articles and books from the 1930s, particularly in reference to discographies. Kenney's discussion of jazz in Chicago outlines the differences between 'jazz' or 'hot' bands and music and 'dance' bands. These differences are not only musical, but also inflected by race, class, the recording industry, live venue management and ownership, gender... and so on. I've also come across quite a few discussions in an academic (rather than populist or 'music critic') sources about the expression 'hot jazz'. The most useful sources point out that any attempt to finally define 'hot' or 'jazz' is not only difficult, but also problematic.
Krin Gabbard discusses the cultural effects of constructing canons - in which discographies play a key role - and points out that lists of 'hot' or 'important' or 'real' jazz records aren't neutral or objective lists of songs - they are highly subjective and negotiated by the author's own ideas about music and place in society generally.
Kenney (who's written some absolutely fascinating stuff about jazz music in Chicago in the 20s) discusses Brian Rust's discographies, making the point that Rust distinguishes between 'hot' and other types of jazz recordings. Friedwald talks a bit about Rust (and other discographers) in his jazz.com articles. Kenney's research into the recording and live music industry in Chicago suggests that who got to record or play what types of music was actually dictated in large part by record companies' ideas about race and class and markets rather than musicians' personal inclination. That last point suggests that you could make some interesting observations about the correlation between race, class, recorded songs, 'popularity' and 'jazz' in Chicago jazz during this period. I don't know enough about it, though, so all I'll say is that you could, but you'd better have some badass sources to support your arguments. And you'd also better be prepared to accept the idea that though America had a national music industry, different state legislations and music cultures resulted in quite different local practices: it'd be tricky to generalise Chicago's story across other cities and states. Not to mention countries.
Life and other magazines' comments on and participation in music promotion in the 30s is also pretty interesting - these guys had ideological barrows to push, just as did Rust and other discographers. One of the effects of publishing this type of list (which was no doubt as hotly contested then as it is now - except by a wider audience :D) is that it does stimulate discussion and debate. And, hopefully, record and ticket sales. One thing I'd be interested in knowing is who owned Life
As an example, every time I see that Great Day In Jazz photo, I think about the fact that it was a photo for Esquire magazine, and that Esquire also produced a series of live concerts, recordings... and of course, photo spreads in magazines. While GDIJ works a fabulous representation of jazz it also serves as a canon, and as such is also subjective, ideologically framed and interpreted (eg asking why are there so few women in this photo leads us to questions about gender and jazz?) Canons are fascinating things, and can be the jumping off place for all sorts of great discussions and debates. I think this is why I was so excited by Reynaud's session on Yehoodi Radio where he used the GDIJ photo as an organising structure for the music he chose. In that case, the photo became a listening guide for a radio program. I'd just rather not use them as definitive, fixed lists; I like them more as provocations, or a place from which to begin discussing (and arguing about) a topic.
If I saw a list like the one in Life today, I'd be extra-suspicious. Songs on So You Think You Can Dance, for example, are owned by the company which produces that tv show. There's been quite a lot written about the Ken Burns' Jazz series and its role in cross-promoting sales of records from catalogues owned by the same media corporation. The Ken Burns example is an especially interesting one: that series does not present an 'objective' list of important artists and songs. It is a jumping off place for a very successful marketing project surrounding back catalogues and contemporary musicians like Marsalis. George Lipsitz has written quite a bit about histories of jazz (including Burns'), and he makes this point:
...the film is a spectator's story aimed at generating a canon to be consumed. Viewers are not encouraged to make jazz music, to support contemporary jazz artists, or even to advocate jazz education. But they are urged to buy the nine-part home video version of Jazz produced and distributed by Time Warner AOL, the nearly twenty albums of recorded music on Columbia/Sony promoting the show's artists and 'greatest hits,' and the book published by Knopf as a companion to the broadcast of the television program underwritten by General Motors. Thus a film purporting to honor modernist innovation actually promotes nostalgic satisfaction. The film celebrates the centrality of African Americans to the national experience but voices no demands for either rights or recognition on behalf of contemporary African American people. The film venerates the struggles of alienated artists to rise above the formulaic patterns of commercial culture, but comes into existence and enjoys wide exposure only because it works so well to augment the commercial reach and scope of a fully integrated marketing campaign linking 'educational' public television to media conglomerates. (17)
Lipsitz is interesting because he says thinks like Why not think about jazz as a history of dance? Why not look into the lives of musicians who gave up fame and fortune in massively famous bands to work in their local communities?
Friedwald, Will. "On Discography" www.jazz.com, May 27, 2009 http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2009/5/27/on-discography
Gabbard, Krin. "The Jazz Canon and its consequences" Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 1-28.
Kenney, William Howland. "Historical Context and the Definition of Jazz: Putting More of the History in 'Jazz History'". Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 100-116
Lipsitz, George. "Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz," Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004: 9-26.
References for my posts on Esquire.
"lists and canons in jazz" was posted in the category cat blogging and djing and fillums and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
February 12, 2010
fitness: social dancing
Posted by dogpossum on February 12, 2010 5:08 PM | Comments (0)
time: 1.0, feeling: good
Only an hour dancing because i was djing. :(
Hot! Humid! Pouring rain!
Feel really good. Except for right tricep - ouch!
hot, humid
"fitness: social dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
February 9, 2010
twitter continues to swallow up my intertubes brain
Posted by dogpossum on February 9, 2010 5:28 PM | Comments (0)
Things are kind of rolling along here in Sydney.
It rained all last week, every single day, and that was terrible. But today it's sunny again. SUN!
This is what it was like last week (and this is WHY I couldn't go out running yesterday morning when it was raining, TWITTER):
I've started doing the couch to 5k, which is really just an interval training approach to running 5km. So far I walk/run about 4km. It makes me feel like a gun. I didn't think I'd like running this much, but the endorphines are fabulous and helping me stave off a case of the unemployed-understimulated-uninteresting-s. It also helps me keep my mood stable - no 'what am I doing with myself?' introspection and anxiety... well, a little bit. But mostly that sort of thinking is under control. I'm also delighted by the effect just a couple of weeks of the program has made to my dancing. That, as well as finally ditching the wedding-exchange cold has me feeling fit, collected and energetic on the dance floor. Yay.
In other news, I'm all signed up for a pgrad diploma in Information Management. It will cost a ridiculous amount of money, but at least this degree will get me a job. I'm especially interested in digital archiving and increasing the accessibility of public collections like the Powerhouse's, the National Archives, the State Library, etc etc etc. It's all a bit exciting. I was asked to teach some undergrad subjects when I contacted the postgrad coordinator, but I said no because a) that's too weird, and b) I want to focus on my own study and to (brace for ridiculously over-achieving ambition) do really well and kick arse. There's a complicated online enrolment process (not like in my day, when we had to line up at the office to hand in our forms in person) and a heap of screwing about to do yet, but it's all happening.
This is a fairly demanding course, so I'm not sure just how much traveling for dance I'm going to be able to do this year... not that we could afford much, what with the zillions of dollars this course will cost. But I will make do with local Sydney and Canberra stuff and a mid year trip to Melbourne and November trip to Melbourne for MLX. The latter are combined with family visits, of course. This means, sadly, that I won't be able to go to Hullabaloo, which I tend to think of as one of the Big Australian Events, both in terms of DJing and dancing. The dancing is good and the music is good at Hullabaloo, and Perth always puts on a quality event with lots of attendees. I'd also have liked to DJ at Hullabaloo (if they'd have me), but we simply can't afford $1000 in plane fares plus assorted expenses. That's a subject and a bit of my course right there.
In other news, I've been experimenting with bread baking. I'm not hugely good at it. It looks ok, but it tends not to taste too good. Sort of sweetish and overly yeasty. I'm going to try some sourdough next (as inspired by Tammi to see if that improves the flavour. A different sort of yeasty taste. But I've not had a chance to get the starter going, yet, so that's a way off. In other food thoughts, we've been eating well, but the shitty humidity has sapped our appetites. Lots of boring salads and little interest in anything else.
On the DJing front, things continue as usual. Lately Sharon has been DJing like a demon, inspired by international travel and an unfortunate laptop theft. I think the theft was actually a good thing, as she's been going through her music, re-adding CDs and transferring files from her other computer, rediscovering forgotten stuff and adding new things. It's meant that her DJing has suddenly had a burst of inspiring energy, and is absolutely great for dancing. She's a madkeen balboa dancer, and much of the music she loves dancing bal to is my perfect cup of lindy hopping tea. Yahoo.
The tempos in Sydney have also jumped up quite a bit (interstate visitors over the wedding exchange weekend last month commented on the speediness), and I have to say that this also delights me, as I really do prefer the higher tempos for dancing. By higher, of course, I mean over 160bpm. Tempos at other Sydney venues remain ridiculously low. I'm not interested in a majority of songs below 120bpm (srsly) with the odd dodgy 'faster' song for 'balboa'. Egads.
We've also got a Swiss DJ in town who's also a bal nut and a solidly swinging classic jazz fan, so nights at the Roxbury have been really, truly great dancing. For me. One thing we've noticed, though, is that the beginners have sort of dropped away a bit. In part, I think because the first half hour (8.30-9 or so) is super-fast tempoed for bal-nuts and crazyjazzlindyhopfools. By 9, things return to normal, but the tempos over all have been a bit higher.
This is great for me, and great for the scene as a whole, I think, as Sydney really needed a wider range of tempos in the classic swing vein. There's lots of superfast neo at Jump Jive and Wail, but that's not much good for lindy hop (well, for my lindy hopping taste). So we just needed some faster stuff. Right now, though, I think we could perhaps re-administer a little more at the lower end of the spectrum (120-140) just for variety's sake, and then we're laughing.
When I DJ I'm very conscious of working the wave (moving up and down the range from 130->200 and down again), and the mega-humidity and heat have made this even more important. My last few sets have seen me working a fairly predictable wave: 140-160-180-200-180-140- etc. It feels as though I'm covering the tempo bases pretty well and managing dancers' energy levels more effectively. I think in the recent past I've tended to clump at specific tempos, neglecting the wave. I've also tried hard to manage energy levels as well. Though dancers are more interested in higher tempos, now, they simply can't hack the physical demands of fast lindy hop in 90% humidity (which is where we've sat for the last two Roxbury nights) and mid 30s temperatures. It's just too draining - the humidity in particular.
I think that balboa has, once again, to be thanked for many dancers' comfort, or willingness to experiment with, faster tempos. Faster tempos simply seem less threatening when you hear them more often. And when you hear really fast tempos, 180bpm just doesn't seem too fast at all. Which is very nice. My own increasing fitness has made it much easier to deal with the humidity and to enjoy faster dancing again. Yay.
Though we have perfect growing weather now (warm, wet, sunny), we still haven't put in a proper herb garden. We are feeling its lack quite seriously, but we just haven't had time to get to the markets for plants, or to get some seeds sprouting. We must get on that ASAP, as fresh herbs are so important in our day to day cooking.
Twitter continues to swallow up my intertubes brain. It's the instant gratification that I like. I'll try to do better.
I'm sure there's more to write about, but I can't think of it. So, enough, then.
"twitter continues to swallow up my intertubes brain" was posted in the category academia and djing and domesticity and fewd and gastropod and lindy hop and other dances and music
dancing: classes
Posted by dogpossum on February 9, 2010 4:51 PM | Comments (0)
time: 2.00
My bad foot was a bit achey.
It was hoooooot.
hot
"dancing: classes" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
February 4, 2010
fitness: dancing
Posted by dogpossum on February 4, 2010 4:46 PM | Comments (0)
time: 2:00, feeling: tired
Really felt better now that I've gotten rid of that cold. Danced a lot and my knee is pretty sore today as a result, but badfoot is actually ok.
It was insanely humid and hot. Again
humid
"fitness: dancing" was posted in the category fitness and lindy hop and other dances
January 29, 2010
poor kneeless rainbow brite
Posted by dogpossum on January 29, 2010 9:13 PM | Comments (0)
Mostly, I feel concern for the old Rainbow Brite avatar: she had no knees. How did she shim sham with no knees? More importantly, how did she get down without knees?
After all...
Africans brought to North American were no doubt affirming their ancestral values when they sang a slave song that urged dancers to gimme de kneebone bent. To many western and central Africans, flexed joints represented life and energy, while straightened hips, elbows, and knees epitomized rigidity and death. The bent kneebone symbolized the ability to get down (12).
More talk about knees over here.
"poor kneeless rainbow brite" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 10, 2010
that stupid bra colour thing
Posted by dogpossum on January 10, 2010 10:51 AM | Comments (3)
Ok, so there's thing on faceplant where you're (as in you, women) are encouraged to post the colour of your bra in your facebook update, but not to explain what you're doing. I'd dismissed this as just one of those fb games and not really worth thinking about. As it's progressed, colours began popping up in people's fb updates, and men began asking about it. As this snowballed, I started hearing a mild alarm bell tinkle.
I'm not sure I'm ok with public games that ask women (only women, mind you) to discuss their underwear in a privately owned public forum. I've also been feeling a bit strange about the edge of titillation here. As you might expect, the more purile male faceplanters immediately sexualised the game. The 'keep it secret' element seemed to fuel the sexy element. This really emphasised the fact that women's underwear - bras, specifically - are sexualised objects.
I know this kind of sounds a bit durh to type out loud, but sudden association of this fairly silly but minor bit of fluff with breast cancer really made me stop and think.
The tweet that caught my eye:
The page at the end of the tweeted link:
Lauredhel's Hoyden discussion of similar issues is probably a lot better researched and thought out than my little post.
When a friend essentially called the faceplant bluff, revealing her bra strap in a photo accompanied by characteristically dry commentary, the sexualisation was undone.... to a certain extent. I think that the important elements in this entire non-event are/were the idea that: a) women's bras are inherently sexy; b) bras are sexy because they are/should be hidden; c) women's bras are sexy because they have something to do with breasts; d) women's breasts (and women) are _always_ objects for male sexual desire. My unease lies with the effects of this association on/in breast cancer awareness campaigns and on public perceptions of breast feeding.
To return to faceplant, though... The most concerning The fucking irritating part of this is the gradual seeping-in of comments from men on women's updates on faceplant which read as sexual harassment. The majority of these have been from your standardly socially inept swing dancers, but I think an attendant unwillingness to call men on this type of commentary indicates the pervasive tolerance of chauvinism in swing dance culture. The online world simply allows us to point to specific, recorded examples of this behaviour.
More interestingly, it's worth thinking about the consequences of sexual harassment in this context. In basic terms, sexual harassment works to keep women feeling unsure of themselves, powerless to control the terms upon which they - and their bodies - are considered in public dance/online discourse. This is significant with dance, as women's bodies are necessarily open to the public gaze, and there is a continuing negotiation of the sexuality/isation of women's bodies on the dance floor. Don't get me started about fucking high fucking heel fucking shoes!
Let's talk context. There are usually more women social dancing than men, hence the term 'follow heavy' and the explicit suggestion that too many women is a bad thing. For other women. Having uneven numbers of follows and leads at a dance (where following and leading is clearly gendered) results in one group (almost always the follows, almost always women) competing - either explicitly or implicitly - for the attention of men, in order to secure a dance.
This results in tensions and competitiveness between women in swing dance culture, and, rather than working together to achieve positive outcomes, women tend to work to secure their _own_ dances/happiness, etc. This situation is exascerbated by the large number of younger women (the teens to twenties) and the emphasis on physical appearance (both in terms of conventional beauty but also performances of physical dancing ability) in social swing dance. It also serves to secure the confidence of male dancers. Simply put, it feels good to be competed for. It also improves your dancing to be on the floor, dancing all the time. And when you're on the floor all the time, dancing and feeling and looking confident, your status rises and, well, you get a feedback loop which recreate the same old boring gender dynamics.
Booooring.
As you can imagine, this shits me TO TEARS. Tears of rage and FURY.
But rather than sit about being angry and resentful and generally furious, I'd rather get proactive. After all, one of the side effects of this bullshit - patriarchy - is to reduce women in confidence, to keep us sitting idly, frustratedly, powerlessly by. These are things that I do to get around this bullshit:
- I lead
- I dance alone
Simple, and effective. In both scenarios I dance with women and I side step the broader challenges of men-leading-women on the social dance floor. It makes me feel good to develop new skills, and it makes me feel good to simply step out of that unhealthy cycle of self-blame (aren't I a good enough dancer/pretty enough/young enough/cool enough) and rage (wtf is wrong with you?!). I've also found that setting an example to other women is important. Because I'm not the only one standing there, bored, I find that other women are just as keen to get dancing - with me, alone, with each other. And I'm also very willing and keen to follow the example of other women leading or dancing alone.
One of the most important parts of this process is stepping out of the silent to-ing and fro-ing of unspoken competition between women. I think the unspokenness is significant, just as with the bra colour thing. As soon as you simply stop participating in a silent cycle that disadvantages women, you break it.
"that stupid bra colour thing" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 8, 2010
a new 8track: 9 songs I might play for flappers tonight
Posted by dogpossum on January 8, 2010 1:44 PM | Comments (0)
I'm putting together some music for tonight's set at Swingpit in Newtown. A discussion about 'fast' music on twitter + some low-level interest in 20s charleston and solo jazz encouraged me to revisit some appropriate music in my collection.
I put together an 8track of things I'm thinking about.
(clicky).
There isn't as much solo charleston in Sydney as there was in Melbourne when I left, though there is a bit of solo dancing generally. Very little hot 20s or 20s-style music is played here at social events. I think we might need a rash of workshops on 20s dances generally to stimulate interest and skills... actually, there's definitely interest, it just feels as though people don't really feel confident or know what to do out there to this stuff.
Personally, I'd really like to learn some eccentric 20s partner dances.
At any rate, this 8track is a list of songs that I am considering playing tonight. The sound set up at this venue is very shit, so I'm avoiding the lofi action. Which is a crying shame. But there you go. I had to add the Armstrong version of Oriental Strut, though, as I LOVE it. It also makes me think about Woody Allen films as he plays it quite often in his films (especially Bullets Over Broadway) and I'm trying to get a copy of Sweet and Lowdown.
I'm also a bit hot for Jabbo Smith atm, so I had to add Jazz Battle as well. Same with Johnny Dodds.
I stole the image for the 8track from here.
Track details:
Rhythm Spasm Rhythm Rascals Washboard Band 315 1995 Futuristic Jungleism 2:33
San Les Red Hot Reedwarmers 285 2007 Apex Blues 4:45
Jubilee Stomp David Ostwald's Gully Low Jazz Band (Howard Alden, Mark Shane, Herlin Riley, David Ostwald, Ken Peplowski, Randy Sandke, Wycliffe Gordon) 278 2006 Blues In Our Heart 3:22
Stampede Randy Sandke and The New York Allstars 260 2000 The Rediscovered Louis And Bix 2:47
Jazz Battle Jabbo Smith's Rhythm Aces (Omer Simeon, Cassino Simpson, Ikey Robinson) 259 1929 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 1) 2:41
Hop Head Charlestown Chasers 250 1995 Pleasure Mad 2:57
New Orleans Stomp Johnny Dodds' Black Bottom Stompers 244 1927 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 2 2:47
Oriental Strut Firecracker Jazz Band 228 2005 The Firecracker Jazz Band 2:36
Oriental Strut Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five (Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St Cyr) 191 1926 Hot Fives and Sevens - Volume 1 3:03
"a new 8track: 9 songs I might play for flappers tonight" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 12, 2009
thinking about victoria spivey and discographies as historical resources
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2009 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
I've recently come across some Victoria Spivey songs quite by accident. I have quite a few by her, but mostly bits and pieces from various compilations. I haven't put any effort into collecting her, in part because my resources are limited and in the other part because my attention was caught by Bessie Smith. I also tend to prioritise 'songs for lindy hopping' in my purchasing.
I came across some Spivey songs in a Henry Red Allen JSP (I think) set from emusic. It's also on one of the Complete Jazz Series, and I think the latter versions are slightly better quality. On both it was just labelled 'Henry Red Allen and his orch' I think. I found the additional details in the discography at the library. Listed under Victoria Spivey, she did quite a few sessions in New York 1928 with Clarence Williams etc, and then in 1929 she did some stuff in New York again with some really big guns. Below are the discographic details for the sessions that caught my interest:
Victoria Spivey
[S10354] Victoria Spivey (vcl) acc by Louis Armstrong (tp) Fred Robinson (tb) Jimmy Strong (ts) Gene Anderson (p) Mancy Cara (bj) Zutty Singleton (d)
New York, July 10 1929
40252-C Funny feathers
Okeh 8713, Swag (Aus) 1267, 1310, Col C3L-33, Odeon (F)7MOE-2250, Par (E)PMC7144, CBS (F)65421, (Jap)SL-1209/10/11
402526-A How do you do it that way?
Okeh 8713, Swag (Aus) 1267, S1310, Odeon (F)7MOE-2250, Par (E)PMC7144, CBS (F)65421, Spivey LP2001, Jass 5, Biograph BLP C5, Book of the Month Club 21-6547
[there are details about where these songs were published]
[S10355] Victoria Spivey (vcl) acc by Henry "Red Allen" (tp) J.C. Higginbotham (tb) Charlie Holmes (sop) Teddy Hill (ts-1) Luis Russell (p) Wil Johnson (g) Pops Foster (b,tu-2)
New York, October 1, 1929
56732-1 Bloodhound blues (1)
[with recording details I can't be arsed typing out]
56733-2 Dirty T.B. Blues (1)
56734-1 Moaning the blues (1)
56735-1 Telephoning the blues
[there are details about where these songs were published]
When you go to the Henry Red Allen entry, you find him in New York in the same months (July and October of 1929) recording with mostly the same musicians. Luis Russell is the one that catches my eye, mostly because he's (one of) the connections between Allen and Armstrong, leading a band which starred both of them at some points in the 30s.
Here are the details of recordings from the Henry Red Allen entry:
[A1573] Henry Red Allen (tp,vcl) J.C. Higginbotham (tb) Albert Nicholas (cl) Charlie Holmes (sop, cl, as) Teddy Hill (ts, cl) Luis Russell (p, celeste) Wil Johnson (g, bj, vcl) Pops Foster (b) Paul Barbarin (d, vib), Victoria Spivey (vcl) and the Four Wanderers (vcl quartet) added: Herman Hughes, Charlie Clinscales, (tenor), Maceo Johnson (bariton) Olivier Childs (bass)
New York, September 24, 1929
55852-1 Make a country bird fly wild (tfw vcl)
[with recording details I can't be arsed typing out]
55852-2 Make a country bird fly wild (tfw vcl)
55853-1 Funny feathers blues (vs vcl)
55853-2 Funny feathers blues (vs vcl)
55854-1 How do they do it that way (vs vcl)
55855-1 Pleasin' Paul
55855-2 Pleasin' Paul
[there are details about where these songs were published]
I think the sessions under Spivey's own name were the best for blues dancing, though really it's a matter of taste.
FYI, if you're trying to find all the recordings by a particular musician, you use the Musician's Index (if you're using the books rather than the online or CD Rom version of the discography) to find all the page and recording session details for each song featuring that musician. When you're looking at someone like Louis Armstrong, that can get tedious very quickly. In his case, there're whole books devoted just to his discographies. But people like Henry Red Allen (and Eddie Condon) tend to ramble across dozens and dozens of bands and hundreds of individual songs. You tend to get a feel for a particular musician, and you realise that they played in a whole range of bands in a particular city at any particular time. This gets really interesting, particularly when they're using pseudonyms to escape restrictive recording contracts with particular labels.
Just looking up 'Henry Red Allen', for example, won't get you all his recordings. But it will get you the recordings which are credited to him, or recorded by bands with his name attached (eg Henry Red Allen and his Orchestra). This sort of attribution gets interesting when you look at artists like Spivey, who had some of the biggest names in jazz listed as her accompanists.
You can see how I get interested in the relationship between blues and 'jazz' or 'swing' when I'm doing this digging in the discographies. Surely accompanying these singers (and they were accompanying, particularly when it came to people like Bessie Smith) influenced their music in significant ways. And these big names in jazz influenced other musicians - particularly when we're talking about people like Louis Armstrong or Allen.
Spivey is interesting because she was not only a seriously famous singer in the 20s, she also managed to survive the declining popularity of blues at the end of the 20s. She did interesting things like play in the Hellzapoppin' stage review (not the film, lindy hoppers, the stage review from which material for the film was drawn) and found her own record company, Spivey Records in the 60s. It was with this label that she recorded Bob Dylan as an accompanist.
I'm fascinated by the idea that you can chart the relationships between musicians in a particular city by using the discographies. All you have to go on is the city, date, song title and musicians. Which is a surprisingly useful amount of information. My attention is caught by the names which turn up all over the place, in all sorts of bands. Zutty Singleton. Paul Barbarin. Buster Bailey. Peanuts Hucko. People I didn't know before I started looking through the discographies. Now I find that following these guys through the Chronological Classics or Complete Jazz Series gives me an overview of a particular city or style during a certain time frame. So if I follow Zutty Singleton through a particular year on CD, I'll hear a range of bands. And I can speculate about the professional relationships between bands and the way creative ideas spread between bands.
Of course, all this information is really only dealing with recorded performances. Though this does include a massive amount of recorded broadcasts and live performances (particularly in the 1930s), we're really only looking at formal recording sessions in the 20s. I always wonder what went on around these sessions. Who did they meet at the restaurant where they had dinner afterwards? Did they go for drinks with the band who'd been in there before? Who sat in on the following sessions to make up numbers or simply out of musical interest? Did these things even happen?
And of course I can't help but think about the race stuff going on. I notice things like particular bands having personnel with names of particular cultural backgrounds. German or European names in Benny Goodman's bands. Italian names in New Orleans bands. Anglicised names in Chicago. Certain names are more common in African American bands than in Anglo-American bands.
There are hardly any mixed-race recordings, so when they do pop up, my interest is immediately caught. And of course, when you get into the French recordings of artists like Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, the remnants of Glenn Miller's band in 1945, you see familiar American names teaming up with French artists. Glenn Miller's former bandmates (Peanuts Hucko, Mel Powell, Joe Schulman, Ray McKinley) are joined by Django Reinhardt.
All this is super-interesting. And that's just the information you can gain from reading through the discographies. When you listen along with the discographies, tracing particular sessions and particular combinations of musicians, you can hear musical developments and experimentations expanding and changing an individual musician's style. Arrangers become much more important. Listening across bands (following a particular musician rather than a band), you hear similarities within a single year. And when you add to that the fact that many bands recorded the same songs in the same year, you hear each of these little moments in creative time explored within the framework of a single composition, arranged in countless ways, exploded by solos and improvisations.
When you think of the music that wasn't recorded, of all the live performances on stages and in back rooms and kitchens, you realise that music was not only everywhere, but that these were communities of musicians, complicated networks forged by the act of making music. And money.
And, finally, in all of this, if I do come across a female name anywhere other than in the vocals, I'm flabbergasted. This is a world of men. Or so you'd assume, if you relied only on the discographies. There were plenty of women in these pictures, just not dug into the grooves on the record. There were women playing and writing and recording music, women running offices, making dinners, washing clothes. It's just that you can't hear them on the records, unless you listen very closely.
Refs:
Lord Jazz Discography
This is an interesting piece about Henry Red Allen.
Red Hot Jazz.
"thinking about victoria spivey and discographies as historical resources" was posted in the category ideas and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
December 10, 2009
blues djing
Posted by dogpossum on December 10, 2009 5:54 PM | Comments (4)
FYI: I've made a dodgy 8track with examples of the stuff I'm talking about in this post. I'm not entirely confident with some of my observations as I really don't know enough about blues music. So please just read this post (and observations) as my ideas and working-through stuff rather than as any sort of authoritative commentary. The discography details are below the post.
(clicky)
I've been listening to the latest Confessing the Blues podcast. It's interesting to read a blues dancing equivalent to the Hey Mr Jesse show, especially when I'm not really all that conversant with American blues dancing culture.
In case you're curious, blues dancing developed within (or at least in close proximity to) the lindy hop communities. In Herrang, there's been a Wednesday blues night for ages. At American exchanges blues nights would often follow evening dances or even the late night dances. Australia has a slightly different blues dancing history. I remember workshops as early as 2001 in Melbourne, and then occasional classes or sessions by visiting teachers. By about 2005 there was a sort of staggering blues sub- or developing culture in Melbourne.
It wasn't til about mid 2006 that Melbourne's blues nights were running regularly and flourishing. These blues nights were run by the large school in that city and featured classes with a side of social dancing. Interestingly, though, these blues classes were pioneered and eventually pushed through by enthusiastic teachers and dancers who'd been involved in blues events overseas. In contrast to the usual round of lindy hop fare from that organisation, this was much more a grass roots development. I think this has been an important factor in blues dancing's popularity in that city.
In 2006 MLX ran blues events as part of their late night calendar. In 2009 there were three annual blues 'exchanges' or workshop weekends. There are regular blues workshops in Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane and Sydney. Moving to Sydney last year, I was struck by the very different local blues dancing culture. Melbourne's blues scene is firmly rooted in everyday social dancing and socialising. Sydney, in contrast, again with its blues scene organised by the large school, is centred on classes and has no un-class-related blues social events. The large school had, more or less, transplanted a Melbourne product to Sydney. The product, without that broader enthusiasm and firm social setting, has struggled in this particular market.
That's not to suggest that there isn't a great deal of interest in blues dancing in Sydney. There is. It is more that the events are managed and prescribed by the school, with the impetus from within a commercialised pedagogic model rather than a sort of groundswell of local popular interest. One of the consequences of this (which we see in one of that organisation's lindy social night as well) is an emphasis on using spaces which are suitable for classes and not quite right for social dancing. Blues in Melbourne used smaller, more crowded bar-like venues, and I think this emphasis on socialising is very important. Local teachers also used their own small studio spaces for social events, and I think this interest at a non-commercialised, local-interest level was also very important. It simply meant that the lessons and workshop weekends were serving an already existing market, and were meeting an already present demand. In Sydney, the demand is not so significant, and the classes have had to be marketed quite rigorously for their success. There is not the significant word of mouth promotion that was so successful in Melbourne.
It's been disappointing, as a blues dancer and DJ, to see the local Sydney blues scene struggle. They've been struck by difficult venue changes, by interrupted class and social schedules, and perhaps most significantly, they're also dealing with an organisation which is run from Melbourne, rather than locally. This has seen numerous problems in the lindy hop community, and has - I think - been partially responsible for the stunted growth of the local blues scene.
Blues is an interesting example of the power of localised, groundswell interest and creative and commercial development. In America, and in Melbourne to a more limited extent, house parties and private parties have been important in developing DJs' and dancers' skills. More significantly, dance in private spaces has contributed to the development of community of interest and creativity which is not necessarily mediated by larger commercial dance interests. Though blues in Melbourne has definitely been commodified through the class and workshop structure, it still resists with its emphasis on social dancing and socialising.
But of course, my information and experience is almost two years old now. And I don't have the close connections with blues that I do with lindy hop. Things might not be quite as I've described...
On another point, blues in Australia is largely without the interest in historical musical and dance forms that its American counterparts have been exploring in recent years. There are certainly individuals who are very interested in historical blues dance forms, but the predominant teaching and social event themes are not. One exception was a recent visit by an American teacher very interested in historical context. Brought to Australia by Australian teachers, this visiting teacher conducted workshops in a number of Australian cities. Unfortunately, either by coincidence or by design*, the large teaching school ran a large blues event the weekend after this international teacher left. One of the workshop weekends conducted by this teacher coincided with a large lindy exchange which is run by one of the more enthusiastic Australia blues dancers. Interpersonal conflicts and a generally disorganised approach to promotion meant that the visiting teacher did not receive the broader discussion the visit warranted.
In summary, the commercial interests and interpersonal conflicts which characterise the Australian scene were a direct impediment to the introduction and dissemination of this historical aspect of blues dance at that moment. This issue troubles me as a DJ and dancer. As a DJ, I found less interest in historical blues music and music for blues dancing, which was endlessly frustrating. As a dancer, I could not find local classes disseminating this historical content, and on the social floor I found a resistance to or intolerance for my own experimentation with historical steps and movements.
Since then, the broader interest in history and historical dance forms in lindy hop has seen a trickle-down or follow-on effect for blues dancing in Melbourne. This delights me, and yet I am unsure of its broader effects within the local Melbourne scene or national blues scene. I haven't been to the major blues dancing weekends for a number of reasons, even though I've been (most flatteringlly) invited to DJ at them. They tend to cluster in the second half of the year, right in the middle of the marking period of the semester. And my partner isn't interested in blues dancing at all.
This second point is particularly important to me, and I think, indicative of the national Australian blues scene in general. The Squeeze and I tend to go to exchanges with the thought that we are on holiday together. We both enjoy lindy hop very much. But The Squeeze isn't interested in blues dancing, and I'd really rather save our travelling money for combined trips. Just because I like to go on holiday with my partner. The Squeeze isn't the only lindy hopper with no interest in blues whatsoever.
I think that the popularity of lindy exchanges and of of 'groovy' or connection-centred lindy hop in America were important factors contributing to the development of blues dancing scenes in that country. The cost of flights and sheer distances between cities in Australia limited the number of annual lindy events for a long time. It was only in about 2005 that traveling for weekend events - let alone social weekends - became very popular and affordable here. The last couple of years in particular have seen social dancing weekends (exchanges) rise signficantly in popularity.
As we move into a culture which prioritises long weekends full of late night dancing and no workshops, however, we are also following America into an interest in historical lindy hop forms. It is as though we missed the broader, saturated interested in groove and connection-centredness. In Melbourne, though, this approach to dance did rise sharply in popularity. But a little later than the US, and with less lasting influence.
My doctoral research suggests that the sudden and more significant penetration of American lindy trends into the Australian scene is almost entirely due to the influence of online media. Youtube, discussion boards and lately Faceplant and (to a much lesser extent) Twitter. Youtube in particular suddenly gave us access to the dancing bodies of America in a way previously prevented by the cost and time of flights. We could actually see what was happening on the dance floors in other countries. The last year in particular has seen a massive increase in dancers' use of online media for the dissemination of images of dancing bodies.
Faceplant has not only connected dancers internationally, making it simpler to map the networks of inter-local communitas (and this glocal networking is something I wrote about quite extensively in a number of articles as well as my doctoral thesis), it has also connected their online clip-viewing habits. A clilp featuring a particular dancer or dance is suddenly right there in front of dancers on Faceplant, showcased and framed by the 'friend' relationship, by the tagging of featured individuals and by clip's placement in the 'live' feed of updated status and posted content.
Faceplant and other online social networking services and tools have not seen dancers necessarily adding more content to the intertubes. But it has seen them suddenly drawing connections between individuals, dance events, and online tools. Podcasts which previously existed only in the menus of discussion boards for some Australian dancers suddenly leapt to the front of their minds when linked from Faceplant. More importantly, individual dancers (and DJs) making contact via Faceplant began sharing their own online resources - lists of links, clips, audio files, music purchasing sites, comments or updates about their experiences at international or national events.
Faceplant has not changed the way dancers interact. But it has suddenly sped up connections between individuals, and tightened the relationships between them as a consequence. As I see it, the most important consequence of Faceplant has been its integration of a range of online tools, particularly YouTube and the hosting of AV content with individual blog-light or tweet-like content of networked friends. Dancers aren't doing anything new online. They're just doing it faster.
Though one thing they are doing now that they didn't do a few years ago, and which has far more lasting importance, is travel. Online contacts and networks do facilitate travel (and the Frankie95 event is the very best example of word-of-mouth promotion via online networks), but it is the actual, face to face interaction with other dancers in other cities that has effected the most substantial changes to Australian lindy hop and blues dancing.
But I've rambled off-track a little. What I had meant to say, originally, was that if we had had this depth and breadth of online contact in the early 2000s and late 1990s, blues dancing (via groove and connected-centredness) would have traveled to Australia earlier and been more substantially established here before the American interest in historicism had developed. But it did not, and so we sort of skimmed over the supergroove moment. Local cultural influences held sway, and the teachers who traveled internationally to their preferred destinations (Herrang, Camp Hollywood, wherever) continued to be the guiding influences in their local communities.
What, then, to reiterate, is happening in blues in Australia? I can't speak with any (convincing) authority on this. I can say that I suspect a greater interest in historicism. But I can't be sure - I haven't seen any local Sydney interest in this _at all_. Melbourne remains the largest blues dancing community in the country. I will try to get to some national blues events this coming year and comment further.
So, then, with all this in mind, what exactly am I doing DJing for blues dancers? In the simplest terms, there's often a shortage of DJs willing to do the late night sets at exchanges, and there's a shortage of blues DJs in Sydney. I'm no longer quite as willing to do the super late sets, but I have contacts who've seen me DJ those later sets, and seen and heard me DJ blues. These contacts are who help me secure gigs. I have no idea how good a blues DJ I am. I don't think I suck, but I'm fairly certain I'm not the most amazing blues DJ in the universe. At this point, I aim for 'don't break it' and am surprised if I manage anything more.
With that, I'm not sure if my comments about DJing for blues dancers are at all useful or even accurate. But hells, as if that'd stop me filling up the intertubes with _something_ other than pictures of kittehs.
Returning to that Confessing the Blues podcast. In the program someone had written an email asking a series of questions. The presenters answered in detail, with side trips for rants and other digressions. As to be expected and welcomed in any discussion of DJing.
One of the questions was:
What music do you play at a blues dance?
...or something to that effect. You can listen to the podcast for their answer. Mine is as follows.
What exactly makes it into my playlist depends on a number of factors. I don't pre-plan my set lists. Though I do make short-lists of songs I might play, I develop the actual list as I go, responding to what I see and hear and feel in the room. These factors are shaped by:
- The scene. When I say 'the scene', I'm referring to the local community. The sorts of people out dancing regularly; the sorts of music played regularly; the venues used; the class content and teaching styles; the 'regular' DJing.
- The crowd. This refers to the people who are actually there at that moment, at that event. This is affected by the context - is this after a class, is it a blues session at a late night at an exchange, is it a set at a blues event, is it a free-floating social event, is it band breaks, is it in a bar, a studio or a hall? These things all determine the type of people at the event, and the ways in which they interact.
- The event itself. Is this a lindy exchange? A blues exchange? A social dance at a blues workshop weekend? After-class at a weekly blues event? After class at a monthly or fortnightly blues event?
In terms of the songs that are already in my 'maybe' list - the music that I actually own - I personally:
- like stuff that's 'blues structured';
- like stuff that's identified as 'blues';
- but I also like slow drags and other musical forms which 'work' for blues dancing.
I tend to favour historical music, but certainly not exclusively. The 'blues' genre is mighty and wide, and still a living, viable music today. I do not stick to one particular historical period - I range from the 20s to the current day.
I look for a particular feel. As an example, in cataloguing my music I distinguish between 'kissing songs' and 'blues songs'. Kissing songs are ballads, or songs that make me want to grab The Squeeze and cuddle him. Or they make me think of nannas having polite slow-dances with their husbands [Moonlight Serenade - Glenn Miller = kissing song example]. Blues songs make me feel like dancing. I've heard other DJs talk about tension and release in blues dancing songs. I guess that could mean the difference between a kissing song and a blues dancing song. Kissing songs are polite, blues dancing songs demand your attention. But I don't think that definition is quite useful for me. I've also heard people talking about blues songs having a 'pulse', but that doesn't even begin to work for me, because I'm looking for that rhythmic 'bounce' in my lindy hopping music (and dancing).
I'm also sceptical of comments that a piece of music 'is slow lindy not blues'. I think that there is a range of dances which aren't necessarily lindy hop (slow or otherwise) but which are also more than a slow-dancing cuddle. When I'm blues dancing, I don't even bother thinking 'no lindy hop!' I think 'dance!' If some lindy gets in there, good enough. And, to be frank, I sure as fuck don't bother classifying each of my movements as 'lindy hop' or otherwise. I'm just dancing. Historically, lindy hop and other vernacular dances were all about change and cross-polination. There weren't terribly many rules about dancing beyond social conventions. Context, the music and mood shape the way I dance. So a shimmy can be either incredibly sexually provocative, it can be slightly silly, or it can be an incredibly macho shake of the shoulders. So I don't make any rules for what moves or steps I do where. But I look for a different feel in the music when I'm blues dancing.
I think that this is where I have to leave my discussion of how to define blues dancing music. The ways I choose and buy my music might be more useful.
My musical tastes are motivated by my dancing interests and by my musical interests. As a DJ, I'm very interested in historic musical forms, but I gather most of my music almost accidentally when I'm buying music for lindy hopping. Or when I'm 'going complete' with an artist (eg the lovely surprise of Herny Red Allen with Victoria Spivey [Moanin' the Blues by Spivey et al is on the 8track]). As an example, I bought the Mosaic 'Classic Columbia, Okeh and Vocalion' Count Basie/Lester Young set. This is, as the title suggests, a complete collection of recordings by a band leader/musician during a particular time period with a particular recoding label(s). Basie is an interesting example. He has his roots in Kansas, and he also has his roots in blues music. This set includes a number of songs that I think of as 'classic blues' including I Left My Baby [which is on the 8track]. These songs have been performed in many ways, at many tempos, and in many styles. On this set, the 1939 version of I Left My Baby is 86bpm, and the mood is slower, more introspective, more intense. We're encouraged to listen to the vocals and the solos by the slower tempo. There's an intensity that makes you want to move, but to move with meaning. And this song is along side a host of songs that are perfect for lindy hopping. Some of which are, incidentally, blues structured, but with a higher tempo and a different energy and mood.
The distinction between 'blues' and 'lindy hop' isn't fixed or definite - one set a song can set the room to lindy hopping another night it can get them bloozing.
I make musical choices when I'm compiling my 'maybe' list based on my musical tastes, and on what I would like to dance to. So my sets are subscribing to my tastes and preferences. I've tried buying music to suit general trends, but I find I end up with music I don't especially like and don't DJ very often. So I don't do that much.
My sets are, though, guided by the brief I've been given by the organiser. I like to talk to them about what they want, or to just have a couple of lines in an email outlining their preferences. I like this when I'm DJing for an unfamiliar lindy hop crowd. I like managers of regular events to give me updates on their preferences as well, particularly when they're as astute as some I've worked with in Melbourne. Canny event managers see when their crowd is changing and developing in its musical and dancing tastes, and asks the DJs to work with that. I'm happy to take that sort of direction. If I don't like their vision, I don't do the gig. I've been lucky enough to DJ in two cities with relatively healthy social scenes, and with a few different events to choose from. But I also put a lot of effort into developing good relationships with event managers, where I can ask what they're interested in, and I can make suggestions or speculations.
I choose the songs I'm going to play, ultimately, by what I see going on on the floor - who's there, how the room feels, and so on.
More specifically...
Tempo?
I tend to keep it below 160bpm. 160 is about where I'll begin my solid lindy hop. More probably, I'll sit below 120 with occasional forays up into the 140s. But the tempo will be dictated by feel. So I might add in some slow drag stuff at higher tempos.
There is no basement tempo - I will go low.
What moods am I looking for?
With lindy hop, I tend to look for higher energy music. But this isn't the case with blues.I tend to range across the energy levels and moods. Some of my favourites include:
- upenergy, 'beer room party' music. I think of this as 'Andy' music. I remember having a revelation listening and watching Andy DJ - he came in loud and proud and didn't DJ down into the cuddle zone, mood wise. The crowd was lively and boisterous. I really like this. This energy can be found in soul, early RnB, etc. I am a bit keen on Chicago blues at the moment, and this stuff is really good for that party feel [Hound Dog is my current obsession and example of this style on the 8track.]
- lowenergy, cuddly stuff. This sort of music encourages close connection and often sensuous themes. Stuff that encourages introspection and serious facial expressions. I won't play this at an after-class event first off. I usually work into this vibe later in the night/set. Unless I'm following from a DJ who was doing this stuff. As a DJ and dancer, I prefer blues events to work with more than just this vibe. I know that this feel was the primary goal of a lot of blues dancers in Australia at first, particularly at late night house parties. But I think I'd die of boredom if this was all I had to work with as a DJ or dancer [I Got It Bad by Oscar Peterson is the example on the 8track.]
- humourous, medium to high energy. This is often vocal-driven. There may be sensual or even sexually explicit lyrics or musical elements, but the sex is subverted or sort of tipped on its side by humour. So you feel silly dancing sexily unless you're being ironic or otherwise adding layers of meaning to what you're doing. I put my dirty, salty nannas here [My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More is the 8track example.]
Generally, I think a song's a 'blues dancing song' when I listen and think 'this makes me want to dance slowly and it doesn't make me want to lindy hop.' I really like to 'solo blues dance' (whatever that fucking means), so I like that stuff.
Examples of songs/styles that I play:
- big bands playing blues songs during the 30s, 40s and 50s. eg Basie with Jimmy Rushing singing I Left My Baby;
- - small bands with vocalists singing blues structured blues songs. eg Victoria Spivvey with the Henry Red Allen small groups; Bessie Smith with small bands. These tend to be blues queens accompanied by badass musicians [Moaning the Blues by Spivey et al is the 8track example];
- small bands with or without a singer doing blues structured songs [a Duke Ellington sextet doing Tough Truckin' is the 8track example];
- Chicago blues, especially as it leads into soul. Big Mama Thornton. Blues structured. Important instrumentation. Can be massive big energy, or less crazy [see Hound Dog on the 8track].
- New Orleans, slow drags and slower walking styles. I really like this style, and I tend to play quite a bit of this. It's very popular with dancers who are keen on old school lindy hop. I like to play slow drags for the long, sensual/miserable feels. I watch the tempos, and I don't tend to live here all night during a set. This stuff is important when I'm transitioning. I often find that I'm only one of a few DJs who play 'old school' blues sets at an event, so I feel obliged. [St James Infirmary and The Mooche are good examples by Aussie bands on the 8track]
How do I actually combine choose songs when I'm DJing a blues set?
Pretty much the same way I do when I'm DJing a lindy hop set. Except I sit down more. And wear a jumper because I tend to get pretty cold at those super late nights. I like to work a wave, energy wise, and often tempo-wise. But I worry less about working the tempos. The energy is more important. I'm also much, much more careful about transitioning between styles. Mostly because the music I might play is representative of so many different styles. But also because the range of styles means that you have a range of moods and energy types on offer. And you want to really bring the crowd with you, or work with the crowd rather than jolting and jostling them about.
I guess, what I'm saying overall about the way I DJ for blues dancers is:
- slower than lindy hop, but not all slow all the time;
- blues structured or blues identified songs and styles are good;
- emotional range is far broader than with lindy hop (where I tend to DJ the 'crazy manic happy' vibe);
- historical forms and songs please me, so I tend to favour them.
Songs I won't play:
- Trip hop, hip hop, contemporary styles that I think of as 'dancing alone'. Because I hear this stuff at normal clubs and venues, and I dance 'normally' there. Also, those DJs know this stuff and I don't, and I'd much rather a DJ with those skills and that collection make this stuff sound good than I stuff one into my set as a sort of random tokenism.
- Soul and Funk. I will play blues songs by soul singers, but I prefer not to play what I think of as solid soul or funk. I love that stuff, but it's not blues. I will and have occasionally dropped in a soul favourite, but often as a sop to popular taste. I don't mess with funk, I stick to soul. And I prefer earlier soul. Again, ultimately, I don't have much of this, I don't know it well, and so I'd really rather not embarrass myself trying to be 'cool' with it [the Etta James song is a soul song I do play].
- Songs with male singers and sexist lyrics. I hate that shit. So I don't play it.
*I would suggest coincidence if it were not for the fact that this strategy has been employed time and again by this organisation. While I suspect that they are simply this clueless and disconnected from the broader national scene, I am also quite sure that they are disinterested in broader community development and good will.
8track set list
Moonlight Serenade Glenn Miller and his Orchestra 84 The Aviator 3:25 [an example of a 'kissing song']
I Left My Baby Count Basie and his Orchestra with Lester Young, Jimmy Rushing 86 1939 Classic Columbia, Okeh And Vocalion Lester Young With Count Basie (1936-1940) (Disc 2) 3:13 [an example of a big band with a blues shouter doing a blues structured song which works for blues dancing. Also, a song from a big chronologically ordered set by a particular artist, which also has a lot of great lindy hopping music on it.]
St. James Infirmary The Cairo Club Orchestra 109 2004 Sunday 3:33[An Australian band doing a song which I think of as 'New Orleans' and sort of like a slow drag (though not really...well, whatevs). It also has a slightly higher tempo and works for lindy hop]
Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton 76 Very Best Of 2:52 [A Chicago blues queen singing a very famous song. This is an example of what I think of as 'party music'. Lots of energy, lots of sass]
I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good) Oscar Peterson 55 1962 Night Train 5:09 [Cuddle music in the supergroove vein.]
My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More Alberta Hunter 76 1978 Amtrak Blues 3:49 [A small group with a female vocalist doing a humourous song that works for blues dancing]
Moaning The Blues Victoria Spivey acc by Henry 'Red' Allen, JC Higginbotham, Teddy Hill, Luis Russell 100 1929 Complete Jazz Series 1926 - 1929 3:02 [A 'classic blues' song by a blues queen accompanied by some shit hot musicians, some of whom had very high profile careers with big bands which recorded songs we play for lindy hop]
Tough Truckin' Duke Ellington Sextet 96 1935 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 1) 3:09 [An instrumental song recorded by a small band which works for blues dancing]
The Mooche Michael McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers 117 2006 Rhythm Of The Day 3:41 [An Australian band doing a song which I think of as New Orleans, though it isn't (I think it was recorded by Ellington in New York...). The instrumentation feels New Orleans - banjo, reeds, a particular percussive sound. The Ellington 1928 is of course the superior recording, but this version is very popular with dancers in Melbourne and the band itself is also very popular]
Please Please Please James Brown 74 Sex Machine 2:45 [A soul song from the 70s or 60s (I forget which) but which I will and have played for blues dancers... though with my tongue in my cheek]
I'm Gonna Take What He's Got Etta James 57 1967 The Best Of Etta James 2:35 [A soul track that I do play for dancers, and which works very well.]
"blues djing" was posted in the category 8 tracks and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 8, 2009
8 songs from 1935 that I love
Posted by dogpossum on December 8, 2009 7:49 PM | Comments (0)
(linky).
Spreadin' Rhythm Around Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra (Billie Holiday, Johnny Hodges, Cozy Cole) 195 1935 Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday On Columbia (1933-1944) (Disc 01) 2:56
Chimes At The Meeting Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 245 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:01
Swing, Brother, Swing Willie 'The Lion' Smith and his Cubs, Willie 'The Lion' Smith vocal 231 1935 Willie 'The Lion' Smith 1925-1937 2:52
Murder In The Moonlight Red McKenzie and his Rhythm Kings (Eddie Farley, Mike Riley, Slats Young, Conrad Lanoue, Eddie Condon, George Yorke, Johnny Powell) 193 1935 Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 2:55
Chasing Shadows Louis Prima, Pee Wee Russell, Frank Pinero, Garry McAdams, Jack Ryan, Sam Weiss 170 1935 Louis Prima Volume 1 3:04
Truckin' Henry 'Red' Allen and his Orchestra 171 1935 Henry Red Allen 'Swing Out' 2:54
Swingin' On That Famous Door Delta four (Roy Eldridge, Joe Marsala, Carmen Mastren, Sid Weiss) 190 1935 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:00
There's Rhythm In Harlem Mills Blue Rhythm Band (Lucky Millinder, Henry 'Red' Allen, Buster Bailey) 207 1935 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Harlem Heat 3:11
I love all of these songs a great deal. Why?
Billie Holiday is the best. And in this band, Wilson not only has her gun pipes, but also Johnny Hodges and Cozy Cole. omg orsm.
Teddy Wilson was freaking GREAT stuff and turned up in all sorts of bands.
Louis Prima was actually cool, once.
I especially <3 the vocals in Chimes at the Meeting: "Goodnight sister pork chop." Also: more Teddy Wilson.
Willie 'The Lion' Smith is foshiz. I like this tinkly version of a song we tend to associate with Billie Holiday.
Murder in the Moonlight pleases me with its silly, cheesy lyrics: love in the first degree and all. +1 for Red Allen.
The Delta Four are just one of a million bands featuring Roy Gun Eldridge.
That version of Truckn' is fucking GREAT. I DJ it a lot. I love the kind of lazy pathos matched with a song about a dance fad. Madness. +1 for Red Allen.
There's a Rhythm in Harlem is mo good. I've crapped on about versions of In The Mood, and this is one of my favourites. + Red Allen.
There's quite a bit of overlap in band personnel here, not only because my tastes are fairly consistent, but also because musicians got around. Which no doubt contributed to some musical and creative cross-polination. And some broader consistencies or at least repeating patterns in music in that year.
I could have picked multiple versions of the same song from the same year, but I didn't.
"8 songs from 1935 that I love" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 1, 2009
8 dirty nannas
Posted by dogpossum on December 1, 2009 6:25 PM | Comments (0)
I've made a little 8track of 8 of the women singers I played in my late night set at MLX9.
(clicky)
I tend to think of the women I like to DJ for blues as 'dirty nannas', and I've banged on about this here ad nauseum. This isn't quite 100% dirty nannas. Some of the women here were younger when they recorded these songs. But all of them had attitude. I tent to play far too many vocal tracks when I DJ for blues dancers. I think it is, in part, because I'm really not a very experienced blues DJ, and because I don't have a whole lot of music I'd play for blues dancers. But it also probably has something to do with the fact that I like my music for blues dancing to carry levels of meaning. More than just a straight out 'grab you partner and cuddle' imperatives. I like irony and parody and suggestion.
At any rate, this is only a small chunk of the stuff I played in that set, and when you listen to it here or on the 8track site it won't be in the order I played them. So imagine there are other songs in between them, cushioning the changes.
A note: that version of Fine and Mellow is about the most perfect performance on earth. You can (and really should) watch it here:
(clicky)
Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton 76 Very Best Of 2:52
Rosetta Blues Rosetta Howard acc. Harlem Hamfats 103 1937 History of the Blues (disc 02) 3:00
Jealous Hearted Blues Carol Ralph 80 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 3:48
Kitchen Blues Martha Davis 80 1947 BluesWomen: Girls Play And Sing The Blues 3:05
Fine And Mellow Mal Waldron and the All-Stars (Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton) 79 1957 The Sound Of Jazz 6:22 best live on CBS TV 'Legendary sound of jazz' 1950s small female vocal Swinging blues 60 14/01/07 4:58 PM
3 O'clock In The Morning Blues Ike and Tina Turner 64 1969 Putumayo Presents: Mississippi Blues 2:40
Hard Times Mildred Anderson 67 1960 No More In Life 4:15
Gimme A Pigfoot Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor) 1933 Complete Jazz Series 1929 - 1933 3:30
"8 dirty nannas" was posted in the category 8 tracks and djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music and travel
November 30, 2009
MLX9 set 3
Posted by dogpossum on November 30, 2009 7:10 PM | Comments (2)
Goodness me, but that 3-5am set was a bit of a push for nanna. I used to always be there right til the end, ready willing and able to play blues til the very last dancer lay down and died. But not this weekend. I was exhausted by 2. But I still managed to get it on.
The main room closed at about 2.30am, and while I and the DJ before me were rostered to do 'blues' sets, we both figured it was a good idea to play more transitional sets. Noni played a spankingly good set of what I think of as 'power groove' - hi-fi, lower tempos, but good, fat, chunking energy. It was really great to watch and listen to, but a bit of a challenge to follow. I was just blank (again). I really don't handle these late nights very well any more. We were in the back room, which I much prefer for dancing (wooden floors, not parquetry over concrete, a smaller, more intimate setting, slightly darker lighting, etc etc etc) and the main room had closed.
The lindy hopping crowd had moved into the foyer full of couches, or started filtering into the back room. Keith, the DJ before Noni and I, had played my favourite set of the weekend: olden days stuff. Stuff I love to dance to. Small and large bands, the former of which especially suits that back room. Then Noni and I were to follow up with blues. So the crowd was still, generally, a lindy hopping group, but with a fair few blues dancers or people who dance either. It was a tricky moment, really. I'm not sure how I would have handled it as an organiser. MLX is a lindy event, so lindy should always come first, but blues is very, very popular in Melbourne and MLX has given good blues in the past.
We'd had similar issues the night before when I finished the night out in the lindy hopping main room at 4am (as requested by the organisers): people were really still interested in lindy hopping. The problem, really, was that the organisers and volunteers were just too shagged to keep going. And of course their night doesn't end with the DJ, it continues on for an hour or two afterwards as they clean up and push dancers out.
At any rate, I feel pretty ok about my set. I didn't know when to move to blues, though, and would have appreciated some guidance from the organisers. But they were particularly unhelpful with this sort of thing that night. So this is what I played:
MLX9 29-11-09 3-5am Blues
All Right, Okay, You Win Gordon Webster (with Brianna Thomas, Jesse Selengut, Matt Musselman, Adrian Cunningham, Cassidy Holden, Rod Adkins, Jeremy Noller) 137 2009 Happy When I'm With You 4:41
Intro / Time's Gettin' Tougher Than Tough Jimmy Witherspoon with Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Vernon Alley, Mel Lewis 134 1959 The 'Spoon Concerts 3:35
I Ain't Mad At You Mildred Anderson 158 1960 No More In Life 3:04
Blues For Smedley Clark Terry, Ed Thigpen, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown 137 1964 Oscar Peterson Trio + One: Clark Terry 6:57
Here I Am (Come and Take Me) Al Green 95 1975 Greatest Hits 4:15
Son Of A Preacher Man Aretha Franklin 77 Greatest Hits - Disc 1 3:16
I Got What It Takes Koko Taylor 72 1975 I Got What It Takes 3:43
Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton 76 Very Best Of 2:52
I Just Want To Make Love To You Etta James 106 1960 The Best Of Etta James 3:07
3 O'clock In The Morning Blues Ike and Tina Turner 64 1969 Putumayo Presents: Mississippi Blues 2:40
I Hate To Be Alone Roosevelt Sykes 77 The Bluesville Years Volume 11: Blues Is A Heart's Sorrow 2:04
Telephone Blues George Smith 68 1955 Kansas City - Jumping The Blues From 6 To 6 3:03
Built for Comfort Taj Mahal 98 1998 In Progress & In Motion (1965-1998) 4:46
Sleep in Late Molly Johnson 86 2002 Another Day 2:47
Reckless Blues Louis Armstrong and his All Stars (Velma Middleton, Trummy Young Edmund Hall, Billy Kyle, Everett Barksdale, Squire Gersh, Barrett Deems) 88 1957 The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 06) 2:30
Perdido Street Blues The Lake Records All-Star Jazz Band 107 2009 The Rosehill Concert 6:05
Sister Kate Firehouse Five Plus Two 100 Dixieland Favorites 4:31
Wild Man Blues Sidney Bechet and his New Orleans Feetwarmers (Sidney de Paris, Sandy Williams, Cliff Jackson, Bernard Addison, Wellman Braud, Sid Catlett) 88 1940 The Sidney Bechet Story (disc 3) 3:20
Winin' Boy Blues Jelly Roll Morton and his New Orleans Jazzmen with Sidney de Paris, Claude Jones, Albert Nicholas, Sidney Bechet, Happy Cauldwell, Lawrence Lucie, Wellman Braud, Zutty Singleton 91 1939 The Sidney Bechet Story (disc 2) 3:10
Rosetta Blues Rosetta Howard acc. Harlem Hamfats 103 1937 History of the Blues (disc 02) 3:00
Gimme A Pigfoot Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor) 1933 Complete Jazz Series 1929 - 1933 3:30
Papa Ain't No Santa Claus Butterbeans and Susie with Eddie Heywood sr 116 1930 History of the Blues (disc 01) 3:20
You Took My Thing C.W. Stoneking with Kirsty Fraser 111 2006 King Hokum 2:51
Jealous Hearted Blues Carol Ralph 80 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 3:48
Riverside Blues The Lake Records All-Star Jazz Band 88 2009 The Rosehill Concert 4:47
St. James Infirmary Allen Toussaint 107 2009 The Bright Mississippi 3:51
Kitchen Blues Martha Davis 80 1947 BluesWomen: Girls Play And Sing The Blues 3:05
Fine And Mellow Mal Waldron and the All-Stars (Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton) 79 1957 The Sound Of Jazz 6:22
I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl Nina Simone 65 1967 Released 2:33
Hard Times Mildred Anderson 67 1960 No More In Life 4:15
Back Water Blues Belford Hendricks' Orchestra with Dinah Washington 71 1957 Ultimate Dinah Washington 4:58
Hound Dog Big Mama Thornton 76 Very Best Of 2:52
The first few songs were very much transitions from Noni's vibe: high energy, hi-fi power groove with a live or high energy feel. That new album by Gordon Webster (who is also a dancer) is very versatile, and I heard a lot of it this weekend. I quite like this version of All Right because it's not the Barbara Morrison one. Then more Witherspoon live. I really, really like Mildred Anderson's voice, and though this song isn't what I'd think of as good lindy hopping music, it is quite fun early r n b or jump blues (I'm not sure of the distinction). I wanted to move towards blues (as briefed), but I wasn't sure people were ready to get cuddly. I also wanted to get to New Orleans in the near future, but wanted to keep the chunky basement party feel.
Blues For Smedley was a mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. Except, perhaps, that I wasn't quite thinking clearly and hadn't really decided what I was doing. I think I might have been trying to mellow the crowd out. I just bored us all with an interminable Ray Brown solo. Again.
After this, things were kind of flat/mellow. So I tried some (wonderful) Al Green because he's touring here very soon. And because I love him. I was also thinking about that r n b/soul/ house party vibe and deciding that was what I wanted to do for the next little while.
Aretha was purely an attempt at populist easy-scores. It's also a sing-along song. I DJ it at blues dances every now and then, and it still rides well with me. I was kind of trying to get to the soul/rnb side of Aretha rather than the soul/funk side of things.
I Got What It Takes was a test: were they ready for blues dancing? For slower, sexier stuff? This is where I got a bit confused. The floor emptied and refilled with a completely new crowd when I moved between higher and lower energy stuff over the next half hour or so. It was as though the blooz guys were moving in for the blooz, then sitting down when the kids interested in lindying on got up. So I was confused. I was a bit too tired to go survey the foyer and see what people were into. I would kind have liked to do a lindy set, but, really, I'd prepped for a blooz set, and I wanted to work that vibe. In retrospect, I could have done as a band would have: moved from each style alternatively. And an early New Orleans style would have worked for me. A brave move, I think, but could have worked.
Oh well.
This is clearly one instance where a bit of clear guidance from the organisers would have been helpful. And usually I can judge these things pretty well. But I was so freeking tired, and really having trouble focussing. I was also alternating between standing up and jiggling and dropping into my seat, exhausted.
Hound Dog was the perfect vibe for this particular moment. If I had more of this stuff, I'd have played it all night long. This is the stuff DJ Goldfoot plays. It's early rnb, it's gritty, it's not, in any way, associated with Elvis Presley or that sell-out, rip-off white-wash bullshit. I have decided to blow my remaining emusic credits on lots more as soon as our internet gets unshaped.
This is an interesting stylistic moment, actually. I'd put it, clearly, in the blues music camp. It's definitely blues music. But it's quite high energy. A lot of this stuff is above 100bpm, though it's really heading towards the average tempo for pop music today (about 120bpm). But it doesn't really feel as though it's in the jazz camp any more. We can hear rock n roll, just, sort of, in the next room. But it's also remembering jazz and early blues. And echoed in the work of people like Sharon Jones.
I think that I'd really, really, really like to go to an afternoon or Sunday night gig at an exchange that featured this type of band in a grotty basement bar or nightclub. Beer, food, dancing, talking shit, hanging out, singing along. Not hardcore anti-social lindy hop where we all leap about like rabbits, but real party music, where people pick up and fight and get back together and laugh and drink have fun til they're exhausted.
So then I played a Tina and Ike Turner song that's a little mellower. I love this early Tina Turner stuff - she's just so great. I wish I had more.
Historically speaking, I'm not sure how people danced to this stuff. I suspect it was a little like this:
(Image lifted from here. If you're liking this Bill Steber photo, I've linked to a few more here.)
That's how I dance to it. I spent about two band sets talking to a good friend about the advantages of having a whole heap of jelly to shake and being over 35. We laughed a LOT, frightened a couple of twenty year olds and talked a great deal about >35 year old boob-sag and boob-bounty. Ultimately, if there's a pistol on the mantelpiece in act one, it's going to get used by act three. And, really, it's a crime to pack heat and not flaunt it.
Speaking of which, this Taj Mahal song is still a favourite. It's a good thing I don't DJ blues much these days, or this song would be massively overplayed. I love the lyrics. And the fact that it's a man singing. There were actually two blokes dancing together to this song and it was a delight. I think, unfortunately, the gender-flexi subtext of the song added to the social challenge of two men blues dancing together eventually led to their abandoning the dance. I was disappointed.
Sleep in Late was my transition song. I was thinking 'New Orleans'. And also '1920s.' And 'blues queens.' Which, really, is where I want to be most of the time.
That version of Reckless Blues is another I overplay. But it's hi-fi and a really useful transition track.
That version of Perdido Street Blues is super-saucy and really fucking great. And it's live, and featuring Duke Heitger. I'd had the Bechet/Armstrong version on my shortlist all through my Saturday lindy set, and was really glad I managed to stuff it in somewhere. At this point a heap of people returned to the room for dancing. In retrospect, I think they were lindy hoppers looking for uptempo stuff, but then again, I'm not entirely sure - some of them were also hardcore blues people. Ah well. Maybe they were looking for that particular style?
I'm not all that keen on the Firehouse Five any more. They're a bit cutesy. But I couldn't resist another slower version of a popular fave.
And then I _finally_ got to Bechet. If you're thinking about New Orleans, you really have to play some Jelly Roll. This is a version with cleaner lyrics, which is a good thing, as the other version is really obscene. Nothing coy or double entendre about it at all - it's just straight up obscenity. And I kind of prefer a little clever word play.
At Rosetta Blues, I was thinking 'tinkly piano' and 'dirty nannas.' I'd had a few requests for some dirty nannas kicking arse and taking names, so I figured it was time. I play this song almost every time I DJ blues so, once again, it's a good thing I don't do much blues DJing these days. I fucking love it.
I'd had Bessie Smith lined up for ages, but hadn't quite had the guts to do it. I've never DJed Bessie Smith before... well, I think I've DJed Do your duty (with Bessie Smith acc by Buck and his Band (Frank Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Buck Washington, Bobby Johnson, Billy Taylor in 1933), but not for a long while. It was an absolute delight to see dancers really getting into her and really responding to her performance. Smith is really incomparable as a vocalist, and even all these years later, mediated by layers of wax and crackle, she still pwns.
Pappa ain't no santa claus was a stretch. I should perhaps have not played it. Or not have played the next song. The Stoneking song is almost exactly the same as Butter Beans and Susie, but the performances aren't any where near as good. I have ongoing reservations about Stoneking's appropriation of black blues performance styles and songs, and kind of wanted to show how he's not as good as the originals. It didn't go down as well as the preceding songs, but then it was the third or fourth in a row, and this stuff is a bit challenging for Australian dancers at the moment (in my experience, any way, and my experience certainly isn't terribly broad).
All this annoyed me, and I was particularly irritated by Stoneking's bullshit, so I decided to just change gears immediately. Carol Ralph's song is another good, solid transitional track when I want to get to what I think of as 'New Orleans'. That's a good song, and it kind of trucks along with a nice, rolling rhythm.
Riverside Blues went down well as well, with an effect similar to Perdido Street Blues. I like it that I play the same artists for blues dancers and for lindy hoppers, just at different tempos. I like the implication (or evidence?) that you can't have swing or jazz without the blues, that blues dances (and the blues idiom more generally) gives lindy hop and swing its backbone.
The Allen Toussaint went down as well as it usually does, and I was tempted to just play another. Or even the entire album. It's gorgeous music, beautifully produced, and a wonderful tribute to and reimagining of the New Orleans classics. But I played it in part as a way of dropping the energy. It was time to cuddle-blues. This version of a blues dancing favourite is so lovely. I love listening to it, and it's really nice seeing dancers work with the dynamic range, and exploring the layers of rhythm at work here.
I was also trying to make my way to the lovely version of Billie Holiday's Fine and Mellow. I think Laylie had actually sung it with the band earlier that night (I can't really remember, though). I love this Holiday version because it's so, so taught with emotion and suggestion. She's trashed, but her musicianship is flawless. It's also a live performance.
So Kitchen Blues, with its light touch and Lutcher's delicate piano and lovely, rich (yet restrained) vocal are a great introduction. Kitchen is instrumentally sparse - just piano and drums, I think.
Fine and Mellow did as expected. Cuddles all round. It gives me goose bumps every time I hear it in a dark room on a big sound system.
I almost played the Bessie version of Sugar in my bowl, but went with the super-sensual Simone version instead.
The more Mildred Anderson. This time slow, slow, slow, with her lovely, velvety voice really stretched and achey.
Back Water Blues is something I always play for Cheryl when she's in the room, because she loves Dinah. And because I do too. And I figure, if I'm playing Bessie, I better play a whole lot.
And then I had to call last song because it was 4.57 and I was utterly exhausted. The kids would have danced longer, but, frankly, they would have danced til they died, so I wanted to end it before it made me hate all blues dancers. And I like to end with a full room, rather than letting it peter out.
This song's so nice, I played it twice. There was some comment on that, but, what the fuck - it's 5am and I'm the boss. And it's a fucking good song. And people liked it as much as I did, so they had a fun dance with it. There were more than a few voices joining Big Mama in the howling at the end.
So, generally, it was a pretty good set. It went better than I'd thought it was. I discovered that I'm probably a bit too weak for super late night DJing these days. Though sitting down makes it easier. Blues is boring to DJ. Super boring. Because the dancers are really introverted and partner-centred. I never see anywhere near enough solo stuff (if any at all), and I don't see enough extroverted, show-off stuff or parodic/ironic riffs on the parodic/ironic lyric content, but then, that's blues dancers for you in general. They tend to be a bit... serious.
MLX9 is over now, and I'm kind of relieved. My ankle is pretty swollen, but it doesn't hurt that much. I didn't dance much, which really sucks, but then it's kind of good because it means that I didn't hurt myself. I spent most of my time talking to people, which was fabulous. I also made a serious effort to get to all the band gigs on time so I could watch the bands. The more I DJ, the less interest I have in listening to DJed music; I want bands. And the bands at MLX9 were really really good. A really good cross-section of styles, from recreationist 1920s hot jazz to 1950s Ella and Basie. And things in between. I have a few clips to upload at some point so you can see what I mean.
Now, I think I need to go to bed. Because it's finally after 7.30 and I don't feel ridiculous letting myself sleep. The Squeeze has been fast asleep beside me in the bed for ages already, and it's very sooooothing.
"MLX9 set 3" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music and travel
November 29, 2009
MLX9 set 2
Posted by dogpossum on November 29, 2009 2:30 PM | Comments (0)
Because I <3 Timmy.
Last night I did my second set, starting at 2.40am. It wasn't the best I've ever done, it wasn't as good as last night. Here's my list of excuses:
- I started my period and I was beginning to feel really rough. Also, a little angry. Don't DJ angry.
- The preceding DJ was using the booth monitor which was sitting next to me where I was preparing my for my set. It was very loud and full of bass and jiggled my sore menstrual guts in a painful way. Did not want.
- Everything seemed really loud. It did not please me. But I turned the volume waaay down when I started my set.
- I felt really good about the job I did the night before. Quite a few people had said they were really looking forward to my work in my second set. The pressure was on, and I felt a bit under the pump. And I crumbled.
- I was cold. The night before I was boiling. But last night I was cold. So I wore Scott's (tiny, kindly leant) jacket and it squeezed me.
- I really wasn't on top of my music; I didn't have enough badass stuff at the front of my brain.
- I couldn't really find my focus til the last part of the night
I have plenty more excuses, but these are the important ones.
MLX9 28/11/09 2.40am-4:00am
Froggy Bottom Jay McShann and his Band with Jimmy Witherspoon 155 1957 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 2:37
Sent For You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today) Count Basie and his Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing 172 1952 Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings (Disc 2) 3:13
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie and his Orchestra 144 1958 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 3:13
Flat Foot Floogie Carol Ralph 186 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 3:44
Sweet Nothin's Midnight Serenaders 154 2009 Sweet Nothin's 3:14
I Ain't That Kind of a Baby Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys 159 2008 Ready For You 2:59
Putting On The Ritz The Cangelosi Cards 195 Clinton Street Recordings, I 3:38
Shake That Thing Preservation Hall Jazz Band 157 2004 Shake That Thing 6:30
Deep Trouble Les Red Hot Reedwarmers 179 2006 King Joe 2:55
Tishomingo Blues Carol Ralph 128 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 4:15
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra with Jack Teagarden 136 1934 Father Of Jazz Trombone 3:14
The Harlem Stride Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra 199 1939 Live At The Savoy - 1939-40 3:29
Whoa Babe Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra (Lionel Hampton voc) 201 1937 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 1) 2:53
Everything Is Jumpin' Artie Shaw and his Orchestra 170 1939 Self Portrait (Disc 1) 5:07
Fifteen Minute Intermission Cab Calloway and his Orchestra 165 1940 Cab Calloway and his Orchestra 1935 - 1940 vol 02 (disc 04 - New York-Chicago 1939-1940) 2:54
Just Kiddin' Around Artie Shaw and his Orchestra 159 1941 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 3:21
Blackstick Noble Sissle's Swingsters with Sidney Bechet 183 1938 The Young Bechet 2:46
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra 165 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 3:10
Truckin' Henry 'Red' Allen and his Orchestra 171 1935 Henry Red Allen 'Swing Out' 2:54
Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller and his Rhythm 134 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 3:10
Light Up Buster Bailey 189 2008 Complete Jazz Series 1925 - 1940 2:48
Chasing Shadows Louis Prima, Pee Wee Russell, Frank Pinero, Garry McAdams, Jack Ryan, Sam Weiss 170 1935 Louis Prima Volume 1 3:04
Algiers Stomp Mills Blue Rhythm Band (Lucky Millinder, Henry 'Red' Allen, J.C. Higgenbotham, George Washington, Edgar Hayes) 219 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Harlem Heat 3:08
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 1950 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 3:04
The preceding DJ had been playing a set of favourites and crowd pleasers, all of which were at moderate to slow tempos. The set began a bit old school, but moved into a more mixed, and then more contemporary set. The floor was full the entire set. I think that this is where my personal priorities as a DJ become mixed: do you take a risk and play a mixed tempo set and really push dancers, so that the hardcore kids really stretch _and_ the newer/slower/injured/older/not full-on dancers get some fun? Or do you play a set pitched primarily at the latter group and guarantee a floor full?
I didn't get the floor as full as the previous DJ, but I did hit the 3am kill zone, and lost a few folk. There was a full blues room with some great DJs, and blues is almost as popular as lindy at MLX, so that room was very full, and there's not a lot of lindy/blues cross over once people are in a particular groove. Also, I didn't really get it together. I couldn't quite find my groove. I think, basically, I was too tired for the job. Goddess help me with my 3-5am set tonight. But I just couldn't quite find my flow, couldn't quite get in the zone, couldn't really get it together. So I felt as though I wasn't really _with_ the dancers, and it really showed. But, ah well. What can you do?
The last song of the last set was a soul/funk track, which meant that I could either change gear without the clutch or find a transitional number. I began with an old fave and my workhorse starter: Jimmy Witherspoon doing some chunking, in your face hi-fi jump blues. I should have realised when I began with that, that I wasn't quite happening. But I had a short list of about 30 possible songs, and that also tells me I couldn't quite get a handle on the dancers.
I wanted to get to old school, big band lindy hopping action. So I went with 50s Basie and Rushing as a transition.
Then I got distracted and confused. Rather than going straight to someone solid like Lunceford before getting into more unusual stuff, I was pulled off-course by Carol Ralph (an excellent Australian act). I think part of me was thinking about the previous DJ's populist approach, and I wanted to maintain that general, all-crowd interest with something with vocals and hi-fi. It's a great song - a really great version of a well-known fave - but it pulled me away from my mission.
But from there I figured wtf, and did a little Midnight Serenaders loveliness. A little saucy, but kind of quirky and accessible. Followed by Janet Klein, who does similar stuff. Then the glorious Cangelossi Cards. This little chunk of three songs (which a friend described as 'old fashioned radio style songs') went down really well. It was a lovely room to play at that moment. Willing to experiment with quirky stuff, interested in the more complex musicianship and arrangement, enjoying the funny/suggestive lyrics. So what did I do wrong?
At this point I thought 'I could do an entire set of new bands.' But I discovered that that stuff wears a little. I should have moved from the Cards to something different. But I went with the Preservation Hall. That version of Shake that Thing is fab - long, though - full of energy, lots of shouting. But LONG. And while it filled the floor, it did tire everyone out. It also tends to get a bit wearing, what with all the shouting.
The Les Red Hot Reedwarmers was positioned wrongly. It's a great song, and goes down well, but it was too great a mood change from the Pres Hall. I should have played it directly after the Cards instead. It's kind of a light, wacky feeling version of a really nice song. But it really conflicted with the Pres Hall. I should have gone into something solidly lindy hop or solidly big band or solidly olden days here instead.
So I figured I'd fucked up a bit. The floor was emptying. We were right in the middle of the kill-zone: 3.15/3.20. If you don't keep them on the floor here, they go home. If you do keep them on the floor, you have to be careful with their energy. Let it get too low with too much slow or mellow stuff and they get tired and sit down. Let it get too high and full on and they get overkill and tired and sit down. And when they sit down two or three songs at that time, they go home.
Ralph was ok here, but it was just a little slow. And a bit too in-your-face, really. Which is in contrast with the way this song usually works - it's a good floor-saver earlier in the night.
Then I played Davenport Blues. Again. Yes, I'd played it the previous night as well. I love it more than anything. And I wanted an old school medium energy song that kind of chugs along and then builds a little. But I just couldn't think of anything else. Which means that a) I was too tired, b) I was too uninspired, c) I don't know my music quite well enough atm, d) I was just not _on_. Sigh. It's moments like this that I get frustrated with myself. I know I can do better, but I just don't quite bring it off.
So here I thought: 'ok, wench, fuck this shit up properly; get those motherfuckers dancing. Do what you do, don't try to do what other people do.' Thank you Ella with Chick's band, live @ the Savoy in 1939 (not '41, Brian :P ). Chunking fun that did what I wanted.
It did clear out some of the lagging tireder not-hardcore-lindy hoppers, but then I was thinking 'ok, can we dance badass at this point, please?' I figured that the earlier part of the night had been more accessible, it was time to really push things. Which is kind of dodgy thinking, I know. But we are at the biggest, most hardcore lindy exchange in the country.
Whoa Babe has a fabulous intro. But it drags in the middle. It made people crazy, but then it screwed them over and let them down instead of sustaining them with crazy energy. I should have chosen something a little more badass all the way through. This is another point where my tiredness and not-on-ness really showed.
So I decided to save it with something familiar and live and pumping. That Shaw track is great. It's long, but it's really worth playing because it's so energetic and great. It's also a very accessible tempo/energy combination. And it worked. Unfortunatey the version of Fifteen Minute Intermission was almost incoherent audio mess on the sound system. Sigh. DJfail. Again.
The next Shaw track saved me again, but then I fucked it with Blackstick. I had had reservations about that one, but I thought 'it's high energy, it's a fave.' I should have reminded myself 'it's squawky, New Orleans flavoured and kind of unrelenting' a little more loudly.
Then I just thought 'Hamface, what would YOU like to dance to right now? What do you love?' And I decided: something lighter-feeling (ie not a wall of sound or face-punching intensity). Something musically a bit interesting. Something at an easy tempo. Something with a lovely riff that just makes you feel really good. A sort of melodic sweet-spot that makes you feel really good with its repetitive, charming gentleness. Peckin' was just right.
I love to follow this song about a dance move (where there's a line dissing truckin') with this spunky Red Allen version of another song about a dance move. I love it that they're both kind of sell-out pop song tracks about pop culture. But that I love the scrunchy vocals in Peckin and I love the kind of lazy, sardonic, vocal part of Truckin. They sort of tip the sell-out factor on its side. This version of Truckin really _feels_ like the dance step. Sort of slidey, scuff-and-drag shuffle with a quirky finger in the air - the lighter melody waggling over a chunky, drag-shuffle rhythm. And Red Allen making it all work together.
And then my fave Waller song. A slightly bigger group for him, and a nice, easy tempo. Friendly, fun, dirty lyrics. It's a great song. And people loved it. Not quite selling out to the Waller craze because it's a bigger band. But mostly selling out. But then: I loved Waller when all the kids were into the Soup Dragons.*
I thought Light Up was one of those Herrang-fad songs that everyone knew. Perhaps not. It's a great little song, that did go down well. It has a big break in the middle with almost utter silence. I hadn't been paying attention, so when it came on the crowd yelled and I was caught hopping. At first I thought 'hey, what's gone wrong now?' and couldn't figure out the error - it was still playing. All was cool. And then it started again, and everyone laughed and yelled and it was all cool.
At this point, I had them. The floor was filling for every song, regardless of tempo. I had found my groove. Lighter feel, not in-your-face. Mixing tempos. Interesting musicianship. Quirky not-big-band, mid-30s coolitude. It was also about then I was told I had to wrap it up. Which was frustrating but also a very great relief. I like to finish on a high note, and I don't like to drag a set out to the point where there's no one dancing but a couple of friends. There was a general outcry from the dance floor, but I was very firm. And then Cheng was very firm. I let them know we had to stop to give the volunteers a chance to clean up. It was also 4am and there were a lot of people there and a lot of junk to clean out of the room. They wouldn't have had that room done til 5am at least.
Meanwhile the back room was continuing with blues. We went home because we were EXHAUSTED.
I have to add: Yvette Johansson and Andy Swan did their mid-50s Ella and Louis show at the evening dance, and it was just GREAT. I sat and watched and had a lovely time. I danced about four songs (I'm not dancing much - I need to keep an eye on my stupidly swollen ankle), and those four songs were fucking amazing. It was a really good show. They were so professional, Yvette has great stage presence and really commands the band, calling the solos, checking the tempos, working the crowd. She's a gem. A lot of people commented on these things, and it was really nice to see how the dancers really responded to her/their work. There was a massive ovation at the end of their second set, and I did think they were going to demand an encore right then and there. That second set was really tops. And the third was tops. Talking to Yvette, she said that she'd planned a mellower, gentler set of favourites for the first one, then heated it up for the kids in the second. That's a dancer/seasoned band-for-dancer speaking right there. It was also nice to see how she worked the dancers' energy and really engaged with them, talking and interacting with them from the stage.
I have really enjoyed the MLX9 bands: I think I'd really rather there were bands at each event, and far less DJs.
But I have also heard some nice DJing. Loz Yee had only just begun DJing when I left Melbourne, and in the last year she's really started kicking arse. I enjoyed here band break sets an awful lot. Sharon Callaghan was a gun, but unfortunately wasted on a first set to an empty room (sigh). Same goes for Sarah Farrelly. But I made an effort to be there to hear them, and I enjoyed them both.
I have also pretty much decided that the sistahs are pwning the blokes, DJing wise. Justine and Alice at SSF/SLX, then the Loz/Sharon/Sarah trifector at MLX. But there's always tonight, and I'm sure the fellas will bring it.
*I also like their old stuff better than their new stuff. And I listen to bands that haven't even been formed yet.
"MLX9 set 2" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie and melbourne and music and people i know and travel
eggs @ MLX9
Posted by dogpossum on November 29, 2009 2:24 PM | Comments (0)
This is a crap way of poaching eggs. But they turned out better than our first go. We are so fucking tired. I wish we were eating nice food, but we aren't.
Yesterday (Saturday) I managed to bully my friends into going to Bismi's on Sydney Road for fully sick rotis. They are fully sick. I can't remember if they're roti chani or what.
We ate:
3 plain roti (these are served with dahl)
1 garlic roti
1 plain rice
1 indian fried rice (lamb) - this was super tasty and my fave. Lots of fresh coriander and spinach as well as other vegie bits, fried egg bits, lamb, etc.
pappadams
raita
lassi (plain and mango - I like the salty ones)
2 chicken fry (a thigh/drumstick chicken bit fried in nommy spices)
1 samosa
1 fried fish
paneer in spices (cheese blobs in red spicey nom)
goat m... something (goat curry - a bit tough, but tasty)
chicken in something (this one was chosen by sight and not name)
...and some other things I can't remember. It cost us $18 per head. We ate til we felt strange, then we went dancing and felt even stranger.
Bismi is really really delicious. It's cheap as chips, it's served from bai maries (sp?), but that's ok because it's so popular with locals (esp Indian, Malay and Singaporean students, a table of who next to us asked for a bunch of things "make them all really spicy!") and the turn over is really quick. It's very spicy: spicy in that there's often a lot of chilli (of various types), but also spicy in that the tastes are really complex and interesting. Dishes like the fried rice have all those lovely dark, lower notes, but also bright, fresh green flavours. The chicken fry is kind of dry on the outside and moist inside, perfect with lemon squeezed on it, and with a tasty dry spicy taste.
I'm sorry I'm not writing very well. I'm very tired. And, as with many of my women friends this weekend at MLX, I am riding the crimson wave. All about the jam sandwich. Having a visit from a friend/aunt. And other coy euphemisms. This has made me a bit tireder than usual. Also, quick to anger. Not really ideal DJing conditions. But I am tough.
Tonight I'd quite like to have some really good Lebanese food. Possibly at Tiba's. We are a bit poor atm, so we are eating at cheap eatery places. Places we love. I'd like to have salads with lots of lemon: chick peas, broad beans, long beans, lentils, tomato, cucumber, greens. Yoghurt. Mint. Garlic. Lamb. Felafel. Octopus. And lots of flat, skinny pide with hommus rubbed all over it. But mostly I'm thinking about the lemon and the salads. Tiba's is very cheap and does a range of very delicious fresh salads. That's what I want.
"eggs @ MLX9" was posted in the category djing and fewd and gastropod and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and travel
November 28, 2009
yay MLX9!
Posted by dogpossum on November 28, 2009 1:49 PM | Comments (0)
I've just woken up, and it feels as though we've actually had another day in between yesterday and today. We got to bed at about 4.30am, which is actually pretty civilised for MLX. In previous years I've left the venue at 6am. Today I did also wake up at 9.30am, which is insane. So I ended the insanity and went back to bed.
But now I am awake, and needing to do some quick DJ prep for tonight's set. Mostly because I played all my guns last night and am left with the same old spooge for tonight.
Here's last night's set:
MLX9 Friday 27th November 2009, 1am-2.30am
title artist bmp year album length
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:15
San Francisco Bay Blues Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band with Barbara Dane 160 1964 Blues Over Bodega 3:42
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band with Barney Bigard, Helen Andrews 160 1946 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 3:13
St. Louis Blues Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra 183 1939 Ella Fitzgerald In The Groove 4:46
Leap Frog Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra (Luis Russell) 159 1941 The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (disc 7) 3:00
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra with Jack Teagarden 136 1934 Father Of Jazz Trombone 3:14
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) 176 1933 Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 2:56
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 148 1937 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 2:41
Flying Home Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 197 1942 Lionel Hampton Story 2: Flying Home 3:11
Savoy Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra with Trevor Bacon 166 1942 Anthology Of Big Band Swing (Disc 2) 3:05
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and his 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 2:49
Sugarfoot Stomp Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra 244 1939 Live At The Savoy - 1939-40 3:09
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 3:09
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 153 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:26
Shortnin' Bread Fats Waller and his Rhythm 195 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 2:41
It's You're Last Chance To Dance Preservation Hall 179 2007 The Hurricane Sessions 4:31
Shake That Thing Mora's Modern Rhythmists 227 2006 Devil's Serenade 2:58
Savoy Blues Kid Ory 134 1950 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 3:01
Call Me A Taxi Four Of The Bob Cats 175 1938 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:13
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra (Zutty Singleton) 154 1943 After You've Gone 2:42
Jumpin' At The Woodside Count Basie and his Orchestra 235 1939 The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 02) 3:10
Keep On Churnin' Wynonie Harris 146 1952 Complete Jazz Series 1950 - 1952 2:56
Big Fine Girl Jimmy Witherspoon with Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Vernon Alley, Mel Lewis 156 1959 The 'Spoon Concerts 4:55
Every Day I Have The Blues Count Basie and his Orchestra with Joe Williams 116 1959 Breakfast Dance And Barbecue 3:49
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 3:34
I followed Sarah Farrelly, who is one of my favourite party DJs. It's a pleasure to step into the DJ seat after her: she builds the fun, and then I come and play in it.
The last song was a joke. Because I'd been trying very hard to avoid my usual party-favourites. The room was very hot and humid and the dancers, though trying very hard and full of exchange beans, were really having trouble keeping their energy up. So I tried to work a pretty sharp-angled wave. There was also a pleasingly diverse crowd - lots of noobs, lots of old sticks, all the states represented - so I tried to work those tempos. This was only the second night of MLX and the first late night, so I wanted lots of energy (this IS FUCKING MLX MOTHERFUCKERS!), but I figured the peeps wouldn't quite be at their most lindy-crazed just yet. It was a super-prime set, and I felt very lucky and excited to have it. So I tried to do my best. I also used my 'DJ standing up because the dancers are standing up' policy, and it worked. I find I lose my DJing nerves faster and I feel more connected to the dancers. I also figure there's something interesting to look at if you're not dancing - down the front of my shirt as I bend over to check the computer.
I tended to avoid the 'safety songs' with simple lyrics and hi-fi familiarity (eg Blip Blip and its ilk) and to go with the big, fat swinging big band. Because this is lindy hop, yo.
Playing For Dancers Only was a tactical decision. It was nice to play it not because it's a safety song and I knew it would work, but because I was thinking 'ok, I need some high energy, big band classic swing of a moderate tempo, something familiar but also something with serious staying power and iconicism*' And that song was just perfect. I like it because it makes me think about Frankie Manning. Then, of course, Flying Home also reminds me of Frankie, because of its role in the Spike Lee Malcolm X biopic. And it's also carrying the iconic weight of twenty years of post-revival lindy hopping culture. They're also both really great songs, and I think that sometimes we forget how great our overplayed favourites are. So I tried to use them both not as safety songs (as I've said), but as great songs in their own right. I also wanted to revive a tiring room after a couple of what I think of as Chicago tracks.
Basically, though, my set 'theme' (if there was one) was big bands playing in big ballrooms to crazy crowds. Hence the Ella live at the Savoy stuff, Flying Home and so on.
Savoy has been (re)popularised by the Silver Shadows, but it's also a standard. But it's not always a song every scene plays a lot, so I like to use it. And, of course - Savoy! I don't play it that often, but the Silver Shadows reminded me of it. Which is nice.
By that stage people were kind of frazzled and hot, so I shifted gears. Back Room Romp is a song I overplay, but which not everyone else does. It has a mellower energy in the beginning - tinklier. But it has a steady, chugging rhythm with funky upenergy flourishes that make you want to dance. So it gave the kids an energy rest, but also an energy injection of a different type. This is part of my working what I think of as an 'energy' or 'mood' wave as well as a tempo wave. I like to pound the dancers with high energy songs, but I also like to mix the styles and types of high energy to move their mood around as well.
I came in with Sugarfoot Stomp just one song too early. They needed something about 160 or 180 in between to build things a little. This is a great song, but it's a bit complicated and 'fussy' for such a high tempo if you're not really ready for it. But it has great energy (live! Savoy!) and it's familiar. But it's not a version I hear very often. It was a bit of stunt DJing, really, because I wanted my average tempos up a bit.
Stomp It Off always sounds mellower and slower when I play it after a hardcore faster song, so I like to use it to trick dancers into higher tempos. It's also fully sick. I had intended another build from here, but the room was HOT and people really weren't recovering as fast as they usually do in a cooler room. So some very familiar Willie Bryant.
Shortnin Bread was my concession to the current Fats Waller fad. I love that man, but I'm not always convinced he works 100% with every crowd. But I freeking love this song. I think it's one of his very best dancing songs. It always goes down well, and it did this time. It's another song that doesn't sound as fast as it. It also has that lovely chorus at the end which is kind of furiously crazy and awesome.
Here, the energy was high, but I felt as though I was just about to push that barrel over a cliff if I kept going, so I switched it up. The Preservation Hall has that lovely, chaotic New Orleans instrumentation and improvisation (which Fats heralded in that last chorus), but it's a slower song. It's simple, melodically and vocally - there aren't many words, really, but they're repeated. And the message is perfect: "it's your last chance to dance, so get up!" It made the crowd crazy. Sweet. I have played this for crowds where it's died. I think its in-your-faceness requires a larger, more robust crowd. I wanted to stuff in some 'charleston', so I played a lesser-played version of a familiar song. It was a bit too fast for this tiring crowd.
Savoy Blues was a recovery song, with more of that New Orleans flavoured style, but I think of it as a transition song, leading me from NO to classic swing. Call Me a Taxi was a strange choice in retrospect, but it has that lighter, easier feel than the previous face-kickers, and it also feels slower than it is. It has a lovely melody and really invites you to play.
Jump Through the Window is a song I used to play all the time, but had left behind for a while for a break. The recent Frida/Skye performance clip has popularised the song, so it's a good one for the crowd. This chunked the energy up again. The Taxi song had given them a rest, and many people were ready to go again.
I didn't play Jumpin at the Woodside intending to provoke a jam, but it has kind of Pavlov's lindy hopper effect. I played it because it's a really good song, and it builds on the energy of the Window song really nicely. At the end of that jam (which I didn't watch), I moved straight to an 'everybody dance!' song because I don't like to overdo jams. And that one was kind of lagging - not much crowd noise. I also like them to want more than to get tired of it. The Churning song is overplayed everywhere. But it's a great builder/spanker. It's at this point that people got their second wind and went insane. It was crazy. The dance floor was jammed, and people were losing their biscuits (in a non-vomit way)
So I figured it was time for more dirty southern sounds, maybe some sort of Kansas activity. Live Jimmy Witherspoon was the go. It was interesting playing him at this point, mid-set, because it changed the way I listened. It's a live song and it's in the middle of a performance, so it feels as though it's carrying on existing energy, with lots of crowd energy. The lyrics don't come in for a while, so it has that 'holding pattern' feel for a while. But the instrumentalists are mad-awesome.
As you can see, I was going hi-fi here. I wanted to change the energy in the room, to shake things up and kick the dancers into a different mood, so they'd be distracted and get over their hot-and-sweaty tiredness. It worked.
They were then utterly shagged, so a super slow Basie live track to let them breathe.
Then, seeing as how I was plumbing the favourites, I figured I'd play the most overplayed song in all of christendom. It went down a TREAT. And then I ended!
So I guess I did play a bunch of faves, but I used them in a different way. I was proud of myself for not just defaulting to them in a moment of panic, using them as a crutch. I actually used them for their own awesomeness and relationship with other good songs. The fact that this was also my first set of the weekend is probably another contributing factor: I like to open a weekend with faves and party songs. But it was a late night, prime lindy hopping territory, so I wanted to play solid lindy hop. Avoid the jump blues for the most part, and go a little easy on the eccentric or smaller group sound.
Tonight's set is later - 2.30-4 - so it'll be slightly different. I'll see what's happening at 2.30am, and play it by ear. I'm hoping for some slightly different stuff - the more interesting eccentric, small group and unusual songs. Earlier jazz (ie late 20s and earlier 30s) and more complicated rhythms. But I'll really wait and see.
*Is that a word?
"yay MLX9!" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie and melbourne and music and travel
November 27, 2009
Monsieur Truffle on Smith St
Posted by dogpossum on November 27, 2009 5:23 PM | Comments (0)
Monsieur Truffle on Smith St
Originally uploaded by dogpossum
We are fooding and lindy hopping our way through Melbourne, visiting all our old favourites and discovering a few more. Monsieur Truffle on Smith St in Collingwood is run by a bunch of hippy chocolate nerds. The truffles were so rich, this is all I could manage - half of these three. I just said to the guy "just a few little blobs to taste, please. With a milky coffee." The Squeeze got angry coffee and a gluten free chocolate cake.
It's a lovely shop and it smells nice.
We also went to Books for Cooks on Gertrude Street to buy books. I got a big, colourful one about Cajun cooking - expanding from my passion for Mexican fewd to cuisines within gastronomic proximity.
And we began (after a painless bus trip down Bell Street to Sydney Road) at A1 bakery for baked goods. It was difficult to pass my favourite Italian patisserie on the corner of .... Moreland and Sydney Roads? Perhaps it's a little higher. And I was also a bit keen for serious felafel or doner kebab at the Kebab Station in Coburg. But I held off for pide goodness.
And then, finally, we bought ourselves much-needed shoes. PHEW.
Oh, and last night we went to day 1 of MLX9. It was fucking crowded. Hot. Busy. Exciting. The band was made up of dancers and was really very good and fun. With dancers coming up to sing or take a turn on an instrument all night. My favourite was arriving as the brass section wandered through the crowd (as they did all night) playing 'When the Saints' at a slow, sauced-up funereal pace.
This is the biggest MLX so far, and it's the biggest event in Australia. I'm DJing a prime lindy hop set tonight at 1.30am and I'm a bit nervouse. Doing some hardcore prep now.
We've also done some quality family time (visiting the elderly, yet seriously bad-ass nanna yesterday morning, a father at lunch time, and tonight we dine with the aunt and mother) and spent some time with our extra-favourite buddies.
Oh, and last night we had tea at the Town Hall Hotel, and I was reminded of the awesomeness of Melbourne pubs and the fuckedness of Sydney pubs.
I will continue to nom and dance my way through the weekend. My ankle is a bit sore, but not as bad as expected. I did not bring enough Tshirts to get me through the weekend. Thank goodness it's cooler!! Knock on wood....
"Monsieur Truffle on Smith St" was posted in the category brunswick and djing and fewd and gastropod and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music and travel
November 19, 2009
modernism + jass = orsm punnage
Posted by dogpossum on November 19, 2009 5:29 PM | Comments (1)
A new 8track:
Or check the linky.
Songs include:
Putting On The Ritz The Cangelosi Cards Clinton Street Recordings, I 3:38
All I Know The Countdown Quartet 2002 Sadlack's Stomp 2:57
Digadoo Firecracker Jazz Band 2005 The Firecracker Jazz Band 5:20
My Daddy Rocks Me Les Red Hot Reedwarmers 2006 King Joe 6:17
Who Walks in When I Walk Out Midnight Serenaders 2009 Sweet Nothin's 3:21
Zonky New Orleans Jazz Vipers 2006 Hope You're Comin' Back 5:06
Eh la bas Preservation Hall Jazz Band 2004 Shake That Thing 3:52
Sud Buster's Dream Rhythm Rascals Washboard Band 1995 Futuristic Jungleism 4:18
I'll do another one of just Australian bands when I get a chance. Putting this together I found I had far too many modern bands to include in just 8 tracks, which suggests I should have put this together by theme. I guess the theme is 'new' and 'things I like at the moment.'
"modernism + jass = orsm punnage" was posted in the category 8 tracks and cat blogging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
November 18, 2009
house update + (much) exchange-inspired DJing thinking
Posted by dogpossum on November 18, 2009 11:51 AM | Comments (6)
Well, we are in our new house, and have been since the 2nd November. It was a bit of a push, and neither of us is all that keen to do any more painting, though we did manage to do the kitchen the weekend before last, which was necessary, as it stunk. It still stinks, and we want it OUT. But if the bathroom is leaking, that'll be the next job on our list, and then we'll have to wait til we save up lots more money for renovating. I've already been to Ikea to check up on kitchen and bathroom options and prices, and I can say, categorically, that Ikea sucks. It sucks because it's horrible shopping there, and because they don't deliver (they can organise an expensive delivery for you, though). But we are tough.
Otherwise, the flat is very nice to live in. The wide doors from the lounge room onto the verandah are very pleasant, and the long views out this door and the large windows in every room make the place seem much bigger. It's also a positive delight to live in a community (because it really is a community - people are very friendly and involved in the grounds and facilities and general community of this complex) with so many large trees and, consequently, so many birds. Lorikeets, rosellas, mynah birds, cockatoos, curlews, magpies, pigeons, sparrows, etc. The rosellas are my favourite at the moment. There's a pair considering moving into a hole in one of the big trees, despite the mynah's bullying attempts to see them off. There are also lots of bats at night.
On other fronts:
We've just had the Sydney Swing Festival weekend, and that was quite busy. I was organising DJs for the weekend, and I was very happy with their professionalism and capable skills. It was a delight to work with them all. It was also very nice working with the organisers.
As a punter, SSF was much improved on last year, though my stupid foot is still limiting me; not nearly enough dancing as I would like. Though everyone else made up for that. I liked the Sunday night band quite a bit as well. If you have faceplant access, you can listen to them here.
It was also nice catching up with a number of DJs and listening to their music and talking DJing talk. It's also very nice to see how exchanges inspire new DJs... (this DJ in particular was inspired and challenged by the good work she heard.) There were a number of interesting conversations about DJing in general, and about DJing skills in particular, which caught my attention. I'm of the opinion that a scene needs a DJing critical mass to maintain the interest and inspiration of both DJs and dancers, and that as new DJs develop they challenge the old sticks to keep their skills on-track and to think critically about their own work. A body of DJs also provides buddies for DJing nerdery talk.
The latter are things I find particularly useful. I really like the way new DJs not only make me move out of my comfort zone musically (making me move beyond my 'safety songs' and streeeetch), but also critique my own work and think critically about what I'm doing. Why did I play that song? Why did it work? Why didn't it? I especially like it when other DJs come up with songs in their sets in combinations I'd never expect or think to use. Especially when they play musical styles I don't usually use.
I think that having a few DJs in the scene keeps me working rather than just sitting back and being lazy. They remind me that I'm not actually the best DJ in the world, and that I actually have a lot to learn. I know. Really. I suppose this issue best points out the limitations of hierarchies within a cohort of DJs (and there certainly are hierarchies, even when you're all buddies) and the benefits of humility.
Exchanges are particularly useful, because they're the one time you know that every other DJ will also have that same collection of 'safety songs', and that just playing CJam Blues or Lavender Coffin won't work. In fact, just sitting on those favourites will really highlight how lazy I'm being, when I have a big, fat collection of music sitting there unused.
I'm not arguing that we should neglect the favourites at big events; I think that the faves are very useful at these events, especially on the opening night, for newer DJs, or for adding a little squirt of familiarity if you're playing a varied set. But I am arguing... or rather, I am suggesting, that in these situations, surrounded by DJs of sound skill and collection, I don't feel I can just hack through the same 20 songs. I really feel inspired to take my DJing to a new level. Having the faves unavailable (whether because I've chosen not to play them, or because they've already been played) pushes me to play a wider range of music.
And exchange crowds - particularly ones like those who attend the upcoming MLX9 - are not only willing to dance to new music, they're also looking for a wider range of music, in part because they're 'at an exchange!' but also because they're dancing with a range of new people, and they're feeling all energised and willing to play and experiment and be stretched themselves.
So this past weekend, where the other DJs were all capable, competent DJs who had that body of faves as well as a range of new and interesting and not-played-very-often songs, really reminded me that I can do better. And that a lazy DJ is a dull DJ who isn't learning anything new. And I like DJing because it challenges me. Challenges my knowledge of music and of my collection, but also my knowledge of rhythms and musical styles in combination, and my ability to judge the crowd. And I like the way DJing can fall flat; I like the element of risk, of possibly looking dumb in front of a crowd of people. It keeps me sharp. Ish.
This sort of relates to an issue that came up over the weekend, and comes up every now and then... or, rather, an issue I've seen on SwingdDJs once or twice in the past. Do DJs have a responsibility to 'educate' dancers? I kind of feel as though this one's a straw man. An argument that exists mostly as an argument, and not as a real issue. The premise is that DJs owe it to the dancers to play music that the dancers don't know. The other (more ideologically loaded premise) is of course that DJs know more about the music than the dancers (which isn't necessarily the case) and that DJs have more importance and influence than dancers. It also implies DJs occupy a position of power and privilege which I'm not entirely comfortable with.
I find that experienced dancers are very likely to have a broad musical knowledge, and that dancers with good musical and dancing skills tend to have a very complex understanding of music. In many cases, the DJ is not as capable a dancer as the people they're playing for, and so it's likely they won't understand the music in the way that these dancers do. And that's a particularly provocative statement, I know. I'm not suggesting a 'those who can't dance, DJ' scenario, but I am making the argument that DJs do not have a monopoly on musical knowledge. I am also increasingly of the opinion that you cannot DJ well if you're not also dancing. And the more you dance, the more dancing you experience (partners, scenes, events, tempos, styles, etc), the better your DJing will be.
I do feel, very strongly, that we should avoid privileging the power and status of DJs. After all, they didn't play the instruments or write the score, they're just very good at buying it. And, hopefully, very good at listening to it and predicting how a crowd of dancers will respond to it. Not to mention having good observation skills. So I find the suggestion that DJs are in some way 'educating' dancers both patronising and arrogant. Problematic in the extreme. So I avoid it.
How, then, do I imagine my role in playing music? Particularly in terms of playing 'familiar' and 'unfamiliar' music for dancers? I think, first and foremost, my DJing is all about me. Me. Me. Me. I buy and collect and listen to music that I love. When I first started DJing I did set out to collect the standards and songs that the dancers would like, songs that I knew would be an 'easy win' with the dancers. I still do occasionally seek out songs that will suit a theme or an event's style rather than my own personal preferences. But, ultimately, it's a waste of my time and money and energy to buy music I don't like. So I don't. I buy music that I love. I seek out new artists who catch my interest and fuel my passion for dance and for music itself.
I tend to follow individual musicians between bands and cities and through time. So I might go on a Louis Armstrong bender. Or an early Chicago kick. And when I play this music I'm certainly not thinking 'with this song I will educate the dancers about early Chicago hot jazz.' I usually think 'I fucking LOVE THIS SONG! I MUST PLAY IT THIS WEEK!!!!' And then I do. And I hope people will like it. If they don't, and I still think it rocks, I play it again at a different event or on a different night, in different combinations with other songs. Sometimes I look at people dancing to it and think 'these guys are struggling, but more experienced dancers would be ok.' Or I think 'hmm, this is great for newer dancers, but it's not quite structurally challenging for experienced dancers.' And sometimes hearing it on a loud system and watching people try to dance to it makes me realise that, well, I was wrong. It's a good listening song, not a good dancing song. Or it just isn't a good song.
I think that my judgement of whether a song is going to work improves every time I DJ. The more scenes I DJ in regularly, the more exchanges I DJ, the more I travel and dance, the more live bands I listen to and watch, the more confident I feel about judging a crowd and their responses to the music I want to play. That's not to say I'm actually any better at it, but more that I have the confidence to experiment.
That bit about live bands is important. There is no comparison to a live band for dancing. DJs simply don't cut it. Even if a band sucks, there's something about watching a group of people making music, and then dancing to/with them, that wins every time. And when a band's really good, and really working with the dancers (and it is a conversation), then it's sublime. Bands, unlike DJs, aren't looking to present a 'range of music' for dancing; they're just playing their songs, their way. So they're not interested in finding 'new artists'. It's quite acceptable for a band to play _only_ songs or compositions by a single artist or band. They are interested in new compositions, but they'll usually arrange them to suit their band's size and skills and interests. They'll rework a song.
Isn't that a fabulous idea? That's the sort of idea I really love. That's how dancers work, too. We take an existing or common or shared step and rework it to suit our personalities or abilities or what we hear in the music at that moment. And that's jazz, really. Unlike popular music, where doing a 'cover' is kind of a big deal and an act of homage to another artist or an attempt to co-opt their cred or whatever, 'standards' in jazz serve as a shared set of parameters for band and dancers, where each can work through their interpretation. And as with jazz dance, the shared structures allow for - require! Demand! - improvisation within those delineated spaces. So you're 'copying' but you _must_ also make it your own.
The problem with DJing is that while you can, to a certain extent reframe and recontextualise familiar recordings of songs by recombining them with other songs, or playing them at different times to different dancers, you're still stuck with playing the same, exact recording. The notes are always the same. The intonations are always familiar. It is the exact same expression of emotion or intention or idea that it was last time. DJs can get around this by using different recordings or versions of the same song, but, ultimately, each of those recordings is still a static object, a moment caught in amber.
So I think, really, the 'educating' comes when you dance to a live band. Otherwise, it's simply DJs doing what a dancer could do for themselves - play recordings they've found online or in a CD or a record or wherever. But bands do something we can't, as DJs - they _make_ music.
I think the idea of DJs educating dancers really is a straw man. It's fake target, a distraction from more interesting discussions. It's also a way of ideologically framing the DJ's role within a community or discourse. And it's most interesting effect is to establish a hierarchy of knowledge and power with DJs at the top. And that's crap. Let's be a little more interesting, shall we?
Writing about bands working from the songbook of only one artist reminds me of another issue that came up over the weekend, and which I've talked about with other DJs quite a few times. When - or is it - ok to play more than one song by an artist or band in a single set? I remember Brian Renehan's response to this when it came up on SwingDJs years ago. He played a set of nothing but Basie. I know Trev did this recently as well. Nothing but one single band for the entire set. And because it's Basie, the rhythm section would be the same. When Brian did it, no one noticed it was just one band, but they _did_ notice that it was a great set.
I regularly play more than one song by the same artist in the same set. This is usually because I've just bought a bunch of stuff by one artist and I just _have_ to play as much of it as I can. Sometimes it's because I'm working a 'wave', where I move between styles, and eventually come back to where I started. I even play two songs by the same artist in a row. Or more than two! Sometimes nothing suits the previous song like another by the same artist.
I think that there's only a problem with repeating an artist if you're accepting the idea that a DJ must play a diverse set, or that they are 'educating' dancers or otherwise intent on exposing dancers to as wide a range of music as possible.
...actually, I draw the line at Lou Rawls. One Lou Rawls song is too many in my book. More than one... sheesh. Shoot me now. But that's just my personal opinion and an expression of my musical taste, not a definitive stance on the technique. I just don't like Lou Rawls...
To return to that issue of a DJ playing a diverse set versus a DJ playing a fairly 'samey' set. This is something I've wrestled with myself. Should I play a diverse set, covering a range of styles, or should I specialise? There are advantages to each, and which approach I take depends on the set and the crowd and the time and the place. I tend to play a diverse set if I'm playing for new dancers, mostly because it's all new to them as dancing music, so I like to offer a sort of smorgasbord. But I have also done all old-school for new dancers as well, and had just as positive response as when I've played a mixed set.
As a DJ doing larger gigs, it can be an advantage to be known as someone who can play a mixed set - you have more flexibility. But by the same token, if you're a specialist, you're hired specifically to play that stuff you specialise in. And when you specialise, your knowledge of a particular styles acquires a depth and rigour that a mixer mightn't have time for.
As someone who organises DJs for exchanges and large dance events, I like to have both types of DJs on the program. Mostly, I look for DJs who have a decent collection (ie, they will be playing beyond the 'safety songs'), and a decent collection (in other words, songs of a reasonable sound quality and of a style suitable for lindy or other jazz era dances). Whether this collection is of one particular style, or of a range of styles is neither here nor there - either is good. Either is useful. I might favour the mixers for an opening night, but not necessarily. I'm far more interested in how a DJ combines songs, and their judgements about song length, suitability for that crowd and so on. I want a full, crazy dance floor. The rest is icing.
If I have DJs who can offer icing on hand, then I'm extra happy. Dancers are generally easier to get on the floor at an exchange, so I'm not just looking for full floors, I'm also looking for DJs who work the energy levels in the crowd (up and down the tempos, up and down the emotional scale, back and forth across styles within an era or general 'type'). And who really stretch themselves in terms of rummaging through their collection for 'new' stuff. In my experience, music collectors tend to also be music fans. And that's good. But not enough. You might have a large and esoteric collection, but if you can't get every kid out on there on the floor and keep them there, you're just a wanker.
As a dancer at an exchange, mind you, I like to hear unfamiliar songs. I like every song to be new to me. The good thing about jazz, especially swing, is that it has consistent and fairly predictable structures. So even if a song is new, you know what's coming next: phrase by phrase, chorus, verse, whatevs. You feel it building to a crescendo, you preempt breaks, you feel the easing or release of tension. So even if it's new to you, a song is still 'familiar'. I guess this is why live bands are so great - they're harder to predict, and so much, much more interesting.
But back to the issue of playing more than one song by any single artist. Here, I think it's worth asking, 'what counts as a single artist?' I mean, are we talking the exact same band, with the exact same personnel? That's a tricky one. Many of the bands from the 20s-40s really only recorded a few songs together in any one session. Then it was likely the personnel'd switch out as musicians went off to other gigs. So it's very difficult to play songs by the 'exact same artist' in a row.*
... though now I'm thinking of that ripper session the Mills Blue Rhythm band did in 1936, the one with Algier's Stomp....
So, if it's not the exact same band that counts as the 'artist', is it the composer, the person who wrote the songs? I doubt many dancers could pick that one. I know I couldn't. The same arranger? That might be interesting - some Henry Red Allen action, perhaps. Or Ellingtonese. The same vocalist? Sure, but even if you're working within just that criteria, there's a world of difference between Billie Holiday's stuff from the 30s and her stuff from the 50s. Same goes for Ella Fitzgerald. Or Louis Armstrong. I wouldn't tend to play a set entirely made up of vocals anyway. I'd actually be more likely to play a set of all instrumentals.
What about a particular soloist or musician? Now, that'd be a fun set to DJ, especially if you're talking about someone like Charlie Shavers, or someone who most people don't recognise immediately. Even if it was a particularly recognisable musician, I think it'd be ok. I mean, a set made up only of songs featuring Louis Armstrong could be perfectly awesome. You'd get some King Oliver, Armstrong's Hot Fives, Armstrong's orchestra, Sy Oliver's bands, Ella/Oscar Peterson/Louis supergroove, Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, Jelly Roll Morton Red Hot Peppers, Bessie Smith accompanied by Armstrong alone, Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, some stuff starring Sidney Bechet... and so on and so on. It'd be a diverse and really interesting set.
How about a band leader? That's a bit more telling, particularly when you're talking about band leaders who had shorter careers, or whose best music was recorded during a shorter period. But if it's a truly cracking band leader, with a really awesome band during an especially awesome period... I'd probably draw the line at a set of 1930s Basie alone, but not because it'd be crap music. It'd still make for a ripper set, with lots of dancing oomph. And that's the goal, isn't it? Good dancing?
This issue is, again, something of a straw man, I think. It assumes more importance if you don't have a list of personnel and arrangers in your library... which many of us don't, I'd suppose. Even me, with my obsessive time in the discographies has a long way to go before I have all that information for all my music (and it's a bit of a mobius strip - the more I collect, the further behind I get, the more I get, the more I want...). I'm sure the hardcore collectors are more up on this stuff, and that the longer you've been in the game, the better you get at picking particular musicians or arrangers, but generally...
I also think that a DJ sharing their passion for a new (to them) artist or band with repetition is ok. I think we all do it, eventually. And sometimes it turns out that the band we were obsessing over is crap. And sometimes it doesn't. I like to hear a DJ's enthusiasm exposed this way. So long as it's not Lou Rawls.
My position on this is: more than one song by a single... artist/band/whatever is ok. So long as I'm not playing songs that all sound the same.** So long as I'm actually going for a diverse set. If I'm doing a Bessie Smith retrospective, showcasing Basie or working my way through the best of contemporary street jazz bands... well, then I'm going for it.
My final point is, I guess, that many of the 'rules' we give ourselves as DJs are fairly arbitrary, and don't really accommodate the range of circumstances in which we play. Each of us is a different DJ with different musical interests and ways of watching the crowd and understanding what we see. We all play different types of gigs (well, we'd hope so) and we all articulate what we do in different ways.... if we even bother with that at all.
Generally, I don't have any DJing rules for myself, beyond:
- Make all the people dance.
No exceptions. I want 100% strike rate. Anything less, and I'm not working it hard enough.
To achieve that I might add some general guidelines:
- Watch the dancers; spend more time looking at them than at my computer.
- Stand up, don't sit down when I'm DJing (this is a new one for me, and surprisingly important.)
- Don't go into sets with an agenda. Don't say "Tonight I will play x% of this and x% of that, I will play y number of artists and z range of tempos." This always go wrong, and at the very least, limits my DJing; it means I'm following rules rather than following the dancers.
- Work a wave. Whether it's a range of tempos, a range of energy levels, a range of styles, a range of band sizes or a range of eras, vary what I play so that I can best manipulate the dancers' energy level and mood.
- Be prepared to be wrong and to start again. Sometimes I just suck, and sometimes I just need to play CJam Blues.
I might approach sets for different events in different ways - lots of energy and higher tempos for exchanges; mellower stuff with a sparser sound for a smaller gig; a few more 'simpler' structured songs for a beginner-heavy gig - but this stuff will really vary with my mood. And I try not to pre-plan. Because it's bad news.
So, ultimately, the rules are "There are no rules!" and, quite possibly "Keep it simple, stupid." The latter meaning, of course, "MAKE THEM DANCE! ALL OF THEM!"
*Which in itself is interesting. These days we might think of a band as a group of artists creating art for our arty ears. But the big bands - and the swing era in particular - really emphasised the idea of bands as working enterprises. Music - live music - was an essential part of everyday leisure time activities. So it carried a more workmanlike quality (well, so to speak... I exaggerate). Of course, we can still talk about swing musicians as artists, particularly when they were _on_, but the act of playing swinging jazz professionally certainly wasn't in accord with a romanticised vision of the artist in a garret creating art. It involved a lot of long, hard, dirty hours on the road, on stage, in shitty studios and in late night diners. The race politics at work meant that if you were a black musician (particularly in the south), your job was pretty fucking hard. And racism was not only rife, it was institutionalised. No hotel room for you, baby.
** So no freeking Lou Rawls. Well, just one song. But someone else can play it, not me.)
"house update + (much) exchange-inspired DJing thinking" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
October 21, 2009
rhythm rascals
Posted by dogpossum on October 21, 2009 6:49 PM | Comments (0)
I've just discovered the Rhythm Rascals (c/o the very excellently helpful Peter Loggins) and they're GREAT.
The site is not.
But I thoroughly recommend picking up a copy of Futuristic Jungelism if you like seriously hot 1930s washboard jazz. It'll blow your pants off.
"rhythm rascals" was posted in the category cat blogging and digging and lindy hop and other dances and music
October 15, 2009
blog - attend me!
Posted by dogpossum on October 15, 2009 10:14 PM | Comments (3)
Watching this clip is like the way I think about dancing. I mean, when I watch dancing, I think of it as a series of shapes and lines. Well, I don't actively, consciously think of that, it's kind of how I see it.
flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.
But it's not just how I see it. It's also how I feel it, and how I hear the music. The music is like a series of patterns and shapes - each sound is a shape or a series of forms. And they fit together. So you get repeating patterns and you get random moments, but they all work as part of a whole piece of music.
When I watch a really good dancer, I see those shapes and lines that I hear in the music. When I watch a really good dancer, they make me see the music in particular shapes. Their bodies make the shapes, but their shapes tell me how they hear the music at that moment. And it changes each time they dance.
When it's two people dancing together, you see two people making shapes at that moment. They make the music into something you can see.
When I watch that clip, it reminds me of dancing, because it's making something moving into something still or constant. It's like that with dancing - it's something moving. Your brain recognises the shapes and connects the dots with a sort of line of understanding or meaning. But that line doesn't really exist, except in your head.
And when I'm actually dancing, it's like my body makes the shapes of the music. But it happens outside my conscious brain. I can practice and practice and learn to understand how to control the shapes my body makes, and refine the way I use it as a tool, but, really, the best dancing happens when your brain turns off and you just connect your body up to the music in a direct line. A direct current, from the musicians to your body.
I've been watching these clips from ULHS and thinking about the way the camera angle has changed the way I watched the dancers.
Usually dance clips are shot from the middle distance, not from above. So we see the dancers in tableau, front elevation. They move and turn horizontally or vertically in front you. But these clips are from above, so we look down onto the dancers. And suddenly I see them from a completely different angle. I notice things I hadn't seen before. In the first clip the follow sits out, her hips back, while she's in open. I see it from above in a way I wouldn't have from below.
Watching the later clips, especially of Todd and Peter dancing with their partners, these leads' propensity for spinning their follows is emphasised. We see the follows spin and spin and spin. From a side or front view, we'd see the different types of spin, and the movements would be more interested, because we'd see more than the tops of these women's heads.
This simple shift in perspective reminds me that when most dancers watch other dancers or think about dancing, they're thinking about their own view from the edge of the dance floor. They're not thinking about other perspectives. Suddenly, opera and traditional theatre with its tiered seating seems more radical than any busted fourth wall.
I do like these three clips from ULHS. I've heard a bit of smack talk about them, critiquing the leads as too 'leady'. Of course they are - these two are the lead-centric leads; it's just that other leads are suddenly seeing this for the first time. Any follow could've told you before, because any follow will have felt with her body the effect of all that centrifugal force. Other comments have been that this 'isn't blues', that 'it's lindy'. Which is exasperating. I really hate bullshit lines where people declare a particular sequence of steps indelibly lindy hop or blues. I especially, especially hate it when people declare a song 'slow lindy' rather than 'blues'. Use your fucking imagination, kids.
AND
How the fuck can you be so sure of the boundaries of a dance? When I'm dancing, I certainly don't think 'no way, buddy, that's lindy hop there'. I feel a lead and I might think 'oh, this feels like tango' or 'a nice swingout, here, even at this tempo!' but I'm not thinking 'now I'm lindy hopping' when a lead adds some swingouts to a slow 'blues' song.
It's madness, just madness, to my mind. It is all just movement, and you can make even one single move feel and work as any type of dance - you just have to work with the music and your partner and what's going on in the music.
I have to stop typing now. I'm typing is so fucking crap right now - all that using a pod and only using 140 characters has fucked up my typing. I need to do more writing.
Blog - attend me!
"blog - attend me!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
October 12, 2009
jazz in france: purely speculation
Posted by dogpossum on October 12, 2009 4:09 PM
I like thinking about the American jazz musicians who went to France. I like to think of the African American musicians, persecuted and segregated and marginalised while record companies and promotors made squillions from their music, escaping to Paris where they were appreciated and valued and feted as musical giants.
I like thinking about American musicians meeting French and European musicians in Paris and getting together to make new music. I like thinking of the gypsy tradition getting together with the African American tradition and making music which subverted and transgressed and basically broke all the freeking rules.
I think this is why I like this album. You can hear Django and Stephan quite clearly, and you just know they were having lots of fun. I like imagining these guys getting together in a small back room and playing their hearts out. The locals excited to be playing with American friends they'd admired from afar; the American visitors excited to be playing with the amazing local talent.
I like this album as well. The story behind these recordings is a good one. After Glenn Miller was lost at sea during the war some members of his band were left in France with little money to cover their expenses. So they recorded some action with some local talent, including Django. These recordings are far hotter and more exciting than any of Miller's later work (though his early gear is fully sick).
I don't know much about American jazz in France, but I like thinking about it. It also reminds me that Ken Burns' Jazz documentary sold itself (and its audiences) short with its insistence that jazz is a purely American phenomenon.
This sort of thinking also reminds me of the effects of musicians touring in Australia during the same period. Not to mention dancers.
As I said, I know next to nothing about this. But it's something I like to imagine. Especially the bit about black American musicians leaving a country where they couldn't even stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants as white musicians, and arriving in France where their music was massively popular and the people were really excited just to meet them.
"jazz in france: purely speculation" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
October 11, 2009
again?
Posted by dogpossum on October 11, 2009 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
Another DJ roster. Geez. At least this one's simpler. The politics no less... challenging.
"again?" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 23, 2009
zora neale hurston
Posted by dogpossum on September 23, 2009 1:55 PM | Comments (1)
I keep returning to Zora Neale Hurston.
Negro dancing is a dynamic suggestion. No matter how violent it may appear to the beholder, every posture gives the impression that the dancer will do much more. For example, the performer flexes one knee sharply, assumes a ferocious face mask, thrusts the upper part of the body forward with clenched fists, elbows taut as in hard running or grasping a thrusting blade. That is all. But the spectator himself adds the picture of ferocious assault, hears the drums and finds himself keeping time with the music and tensing himself for the struggle. It is compelling insinuation. That is the very reason the spectator is held so rapt. He is participating in the performance himself – carrying out the suggestions of the performer.The difference in the two arts is: the white dancer attempts to express fully; the Negro is restrained, but succeeds in gripping the beholder by forcing him to finish the action the performer suggests. Since no art can ever express all the variations conceivable, the Negro must be considered the greater artist, his dancing is realistic suggestion, and that is about all a great artist can do (Zora Neal Hurston)
Hurston, Zora Neale, "Characteristics of Negro Expression" The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. Ed. Robert G. O’Meally, 1998. New York: Columbia University Press, 298-310.
(I can't find the original date for this right now - will look later).
I like this discussion of performer/spectator interaction, and the necessity of spectators participating in the performance. This is call-and-response at another level.
"zora neale hurston" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
September 22, 2009
blackfaces and performing identity. again.
Posted by dogpossum on September 22, 2009 4:56 PM | Comments (0)
EDIT: Sorry there are so many typos/bung urls, etc. I just wrote and posted this without editing, and now I can't be arsed - Zac Efron is calling.
Dancing the cakewalk was very popular just before the turn of the century and afterwards. It had evolved from slavery, when blacks mimicked the formal dances of the whites, sometimes, evidently, to the delight of the slave owners. Clearly, the blacks were doing some subtle things unseen by the whites, who doubtless were amused by these 'inferior' blacks attempting their dances. The cakewalk had resilience, however, and toward the end of the century fashionable whites were doing it. So here was a black dance parodying white dance danced by trendy whites. Finally, black dancers, responding to the new popularity of the dance, displayed it, improvised on it, and ended up dancing a black dance parodying white dance danced by whites now danced by blacks. Singing a song in black skin in blackface is part of the same structure; the black dancers are doing something else in their cakewalk, and so is the singer (Gayle Pemberton (from The Jazz Cadence of American Life, p 279))
I am endlessly fascinated by the idea of performing identity - slipping on a mask, stepping into a costume, painting on skin. I'm particularly interested in the scope for performance offered by dance and song - singing black, singing white, singing gentile, singing jew; dancing black, dancing white, dancing class, dancing gender. There's quite a bit written on it, including by me in regards to gender performance (with specific reference to swivels in a swingout, women leading and women solo dancing in a lindy-dominated scene). There's stuff written about white bands 'playing black' in recordings and on radio, and about jewish musicians playing gentile or black or... this is where it gets complicated. I think I like this idea because we are all performing identity at any time (and I always think of Judith Butler here), but we are only occasionally explicitly engaged in performing a specific identity or persona.
Imitation and impersonation in dance fascinate me (and I dedicated chunks of chapters to the issue in my PhD), in part because the line between imitation-as-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery and impersonation-as-ridicule-or-derision is so thin if there at all. Sometimes the perfect imitation intended as compliment is read as derision. Sometimes a performance gains its very value through the delicate tipping point - is this derision? Is it flattery? Are we laughing at this dancer, with them? I've taken great pleasure (and satisfaction) myself in imitating dancers who've irritated me, and then integrating that imitation into a dance so that it only reads as derision if you read on the slant. Safety in subterfuge and all.
I think that issues of power are indelibly inked in performances of identity, particularly in regards to race and class. Its particularly true of cakewalk, and disturbingly true of blackface and minstrelsy. Minstrelsy is a topic which has attracted great scholarly attention, and there is material written about black artists performing in blackface. I am interested in the way this putting-on of identity (and race and class) begins to blur and confuse when we drill down, as Pemberton's paragraph implies. I like it that we can't quite be sure of what is going on. I like this element of confusion and of deceit and of slippery meaning. It is a type of power in itself, particularly when the performer is disenfranchised by the setting, the society, the culture. It reminds me of the great pleasure of a lie well told.
The only thing better than a good story well told is a bold lie well embroidered. And not found out. I like the tension of deceit, I like the boldness of a pile of bullshit presented in conversation or public assembly. I like its creative edge, I like the way it breaks the rules and tips over our ideas of what is 'true' and what is 'good'. We all know that a story is better told with a little embellishment, and a good part of the bettering lies in the knowledge that there is some untruth here. Something made up. Something sneaky.
I think this is why I am particularly fond of the story about Marshall Stearns and cats corner. The story goes: Stearns, in the course of his research into African American dance in the 1950s, was told a series of stories about the Savoy ballroom and of ballroom culture in Harlem in the 20s and 30s. He was told that if an untried novice dared take to the floor in 'cats corner' (where all the very best dancers danced), they would be taken outside and beaten. He was also told a number of other stories of dubious veracity. Some years later ageing dancers told another version of the story, with the important aside: oh, they was having a game with Stearns; it was exaggerated, it wasn't like that.
Now, my favourite part of this whole story is that we aren't quite sure where the deceit begins. Or where the untruth leaves off. Was the original story exaggerated, a lie? Was the later amendment another lie? I also like it that the researcher (whose book Jazz Dance is the authoritative text on the subject) is the butt of the joke, whichever way it lies. He has no way of knowing what was true and what was not. His research - his data - is 'corrupted' by the subjects. The power of the researcher in-the-field is neatly undone by a few layers of maybe and perhaps-not.
This of course reminds me of a brief discussion on twitter a little while ago, where a friend asked 'does the subject have a duty to participate in research which is of benefit to the whole community' (I paraphrase here, because I've forgotten the wording). I thought immediately of this story of cats corner, and of my own wrestling with the 'power' of the researcher and the 'might' of the research. I eventually decided that to suggest that researchers have a 'right' to data, or that subjects have a 'responsibility' to participate is to enshrine the power of researcher (white, middle class, male... or otherwise empowered) and the disempowerment of the subject. And, above all, this thinking values particular types of knowledge and discourse above all others - the written word, the published page, the institutionalised speaker and voice. A large part of my thesis was spent discussing the importance of dance as public discourse for the utterly disenfranchised African slaves who had absolutely no access to public discourse. 'Meaning went underground'. Meaning became slippery and dependent upon particular knowledge and experience for its 'proper' deconstruction/construction.
I think that I like the idea of a research subject lying to a researcher. I like the way its purpose was no doubt (but then, entirely questionably) for humour's sake - for a joke, a laugh at the expense of the naive. A joke eventually to be found out, and then (hopefully) to be shared again. Because it is the finding out of the joke, of the deceit, of the lie, that makes it work. If a joke, a deceit, goes unnoticed, it isn't a lie; it's a truth. And I suppose this is where it is most powerful. And dangerous.
I came across that Pemberton quote today and was reminded of the issue. There was a brief question about blacks in blackface on twitter, and that set me thinking about it again...
Of course, I need to just add that all this is interesting when you think about jazz. Jazz is about improvisation (making stuff up) within a broader, shared structure. In the case of jazz, this shared structure is the score or melody or riff (or whatever). In terms of social interaction, it is culture and social norm. In dance, it is the partner structure (lindy hop) or the sounds of steel heels on wood (tap) or... I am most interested in jazz music and dance because improvisation - innovation, making things up, creativity - is an essential part of the formal system. Without it, we are just listening to dull old lists of rules. With improvisation (which includes impersonation and performances of other people) there is light and laughter and excitement. And interest. Lots of interest.
I talked about performance and gender here in reference to Beyonce and all the single ladies, Armstrong and performing blackness/masculinity and the power of satire and humour. More Armstrong and gender/class/ethnicity stuff here, here and here.
I wrote about hot and cool and cakewalk (and contrasting layers of meaning) here.
There's also some talk about gender and performance in dance here and here.
"blackfaces and performing identity. again." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
September 18, 2009
8 songs about food
Posted by dogpossum on September 18, 2009 11:03 PM | Comments (1)
8 songs with lyrics about 'eating'. And when I say 'eating', I mean 'sex'. Well, mostly. Some are actually songs about food. Probably. But not the Fats Waller ones.
There are approximately 60 squillion billion jazz and blues songs about 'food' and 'eating'. These are only 8, but 8 that I really like, or that we sign around our house, or that are just plain good.
Bessie Smith's 'Gimme a Pigfoot' is the best, because it's a song about simple culinary and social pleasures - a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. And she's not going to be payin' 25c to go in NOwhere.
"8 songs about food" was posted in the category 8 tracks and cat blogging and djing and fewd and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 14, 2009
8 1930s Ellington tracks that'd pwn Bechet in a ninja fight
Posted by dogpossum on September 14, 2009 6:49 PM | Comments (0)
As if Bechet and Ellington'd ever get into a ninja fight!
As if this is the final list of Ellington orsm!
8 of my favourite songs from Ellington's (small and large) 1930s bands.
1. Jungle Nights In Harlem Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 1930
2. Shout 'Em Aunt Tillie Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 1930
3. Rockin' In Rhythm The Harlem Footwarmers with Duke Ellington 1930
4. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) Duke Ellington and his Orchestra with Ivie Anderson 1932
5. Stompy Jones Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 1934
6. Digga Digga Do (M 187-2) Cootie Williams and his Rug Cutters 1937
7. The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and his 52nd Street Stompers 1937
8. Top And Bottom Cootie Williams and his Rug Cutters 1939
"8 1930s Ellington tracks that'd pwn Bechet in a ninja fight" was posted in the category 8 tracks and cat blogging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 10, 2009
instead of twitter
Posted by dogpossum on September 10, 2009 1:11 PM | Comments (1)
Looking at this complicated DJ roster, I'm wondering how I get myself into these things.
"instead of twitter" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances
September 6, 2009
in which we ask 'why ya buggin?!' and then learn to whom the house actually belongs
Posted by dogpossum on September 6, 2009 5:18 PM | Comments (3)
Last night I did one of the most challenging gigs I've ever done. It was for a very large event - around one thousand punters and dozens of performers, including a large band, two troupes of swing dancers, heaps of burlesque dancers and some international MC talent. My role was fairly extensive: warming the room at the beginning of the night before the burlesque performers; handling the music for an hour's worth of burlesque and lindy hop performances; DJing a (very crowded) smokey back room full of non-dancers. I was also required for a couple of hours of rehearsals in the late afternoon before the event began.
The first bit - the room warming - was the easiest. I've done this sort of thing many times before, and it went well. I played the usual high-energy, hi-fi swinging jazz, so it's not worth giving you the set list, really. There was a designated dance floor with a series of graduated standing areas overlooking the dance floor and the stage. This bit went well - swing dancers (of all stripes) getting down in the usual way. I think I did a pretty good job getting a crowd of mostly non-dancers wearing full 'gangster' getup excited. But there were delays and the main act started half an hour late. This can be challenging, especially as I was being updated every five minutes: "one more song, one more song." So I was working on a song-by-song basis, and couldn't really manage the energy in a more complex way. Crudely put, if the performance was the climax, I was keeping these guys on the brink for an uncomfortably long time. If I'd known there'd be so long a delay, I'd have let them down a bit, then worked them up again. But then, that's the way these things go sometimes, and it taught me something.
The performances were nerve wracking. Me plus a light guy carefully managing a series of complicated lighting effects and music for ten different performances, with a bunch of spruiking and MCing in between each. The bit that made this so nerve-wracking was that each performer had a different cue - some entered with their music, some had the music begin after they were in position, etc etc etc. In itself, challenging, but not freak out stuff. But the running sheet I'd been given didn't include all these cues and some of the cues had been changed. These sorts of things could have been ironed out in rehearsals, but the rehearsals weren't managed, and there was no real communication between the performers and the tech doods (including me).
Watching the lighting guy (a young fella who obviously loved what he was doing) work, I was absolutely stunned by his skills. He was working with performers who ranged from those who really didn't know what they wanted to the super-professional. The first act included a shadow screen set up, which then transitioned to standard spotlight/varying light scheme set up. And he managed it marvelously. Though he turned to me with a 'omfg, that was tense' expression at the end. I was really impressed by the way this bloke synchronised the lighting, the music and the performance. He was literally moving along with the music and performer, the way he worked the lighting clearly an extension of what he felt in the music. As you might imagine, the performers' ability to articulate their creative intentions was absolutely pivotal here. But he was the type of young bloke who worked well with women, and also had really good people skills.
At this point, I have to say: I'm not keen on burlesque. Sure, some of those women (and there were all, but one, women) had some mad choreographic skills, some kickass technical movement/technique skills, but not all of them. And, ultimately, this was about revealing and displaying and exhibiting the female body for titillation. Only a couple really had control over the audience, really working the responses and manipulating them effectively. Only one really used more than one layer of meaning in their performance.
Having seen these women backstage in their pre-show jitters, then rehearsing, then finally performing, I was able to see a little more than the final 'product', and this gave me a bit of critical distance. While most of the acts really didn't have that sensual/provocative/erotic edge that makes you forget what you're doing and _respond_, having the distance of the tech booth/rehearsal process allowed me to step back and technically assess what I saw rather than to respond. I know there are arguments for burlesque as women reclaiming sensual performance or using bodies and femininity for control, and I am also very much aware of the fact that there is also a vast range of types of burlesque, but, ultimately, there is some seriously gendered shit going on here. And these are women's bodies displayed for an erotic gaze which is, essentially, male (for all the reasons Laura Mulvey described). And I'm not comfortable with this.
I am, however, far more comfortable with some of the blues dance and multi-layered performances of the jazz dance vernacular. There, humour is an essential defuser and complicator of the erotic frisson. The power dynamic is far more complex, and far more interestingly negotiated. I guess I'm also more used to women in lindy hop and charleston, where their bodies are displayed, but in acts of athleticism and strength, in partnership with men (who's bodies are equally on display). The historical context and content of these dances is also more complicated; while you might make an argument for burlesque today as decontextualised and potentially more liberatory or transgressive, its roots are -absolutely - in the objectification and commodification of the sexualised female body. And burlesque cannot, ultimately, easily escape this. At this point, I have to just signpost, briefly, the queer eye. Or rather, the awesomeness of badass dykes at this event, and their responses to the burlesque costuming and performance. 1) It was different; 2) It was less problematic. I also have to say: the women in the audience knew how to cheer the boy burlesque performer, but the response to the women performers was more subdued. I think it's the humour that makes the difference: it releases the tension of the eroticism.
From the performances, I was to have a 30 minute break, but this didn't happen. I just ran for a toilet break, then it was off to the back room, where I was down to do an hour of DJing for a crowd of drinkers, 'casino' players and dancers. The DJ in there had the room in a frenzy. It was amazing. Within a song, I was mad keen to dance - I wanted to forget DJing completely and just dance like a fool. I wanted to jump into that crowd and go nuts. But the DJ had another gig to go to, and I was supposed to take on. But it was a real challenge. He was playing a range of 50s-70s soul/funk/early RnB, etc. All amazing stuff - nothing ordinary or really familiar. Etta James tracks I'd never heard. Freeking awesome original versions of songs I only knew in white-ified jump blues-made-into-rock-n-roll incarnations. In other words, fucking great music, but a difficult place to begin when you're billed as a 'swing' DJ.
I have tried moving from this stuff to jazz before, and it's really, really difficult. The flattened out tempos of swing - the swing - often feels too 'smooth' and laid back for the dancers after the jagged, up-and-down energy of kicking rock and roll. The melodies can also be too complex.
So I began with a bit of Etta James, then some Aretha Franklin. Sell out stuff - nothing new or unfamiliar. I had no idea where to go from there. So I tried my usual transition-to-swing stuff (a bit of funkified 50s/60s high energy groove). I felt the energy drop immediately. Then I went to the swing. Man, that floor emptied. Five songs later, I was desperate. I'd been asked specifically to play swing. But even neo swing wasn't going to work here. The good, solid chunking lindy hopping favourites weren't working. There were very few lindy hoppers in the room, but there wasn't room on the floor for them to dance. And when they did dance, the other non-dancing punters would clear a spontaneous circle around them, which wasn't what I wanted - I wanted 100% crowded-floor dancing action. And then I thought, 'hells, what's the jazz version of badass, kicking 50s/60s/70s RnB/funkity/soul rock-n-roll?'
It seems charleston is the best dance after all.
For the next hour I played nothing but hi-fi 20s-style hot jazz. Stuff that makes me want to charleston til I wish I'd worn two bras instead of one. Because that shit was the badassery of the prohibition era. The room was full of chicks in fringed dresses and blokes in suits and fedoras. And smoke. And there were blackjack tables and beer on the floor. It was a fairly skanky place, with a raised level where punters could sit and drink and watch. At one point the room was packed with chicks making up charleston, blokes who looked like they'd been reading The Sartorialist fancifying their footwork and badass dykes in awesome suits trying to pass me their number. It was the funnest of fun gigs ever.
I came in with Zonky, because I figured most people would know the 'Inspector Gadget' riff. And because the New Orleans Jazz Vipers do that sort of punk-street-jazz thing so well. It was a bit long, but it had the sort of chunky 1-2, 1-2 rhythm that makes me want to fling my arms in the air like I just don't care. People really, really liked it. It's 200bpm, which is twice as fast as your average pop song.
By this stage I'd realised that the sound set up was flawed. After the wonderfulness of the main room, I realised why the preceding DJ had pointed out the dodgy gain/master relationship. Information I passed onto the following DJ, who struggled even more than I did. This made me decide that I was only going to play hi-fi repro stuff. After the difficult earlier songs, I wasn't brave enough to try the lo-fi. But I didn't mind - I've been buying lots of repro stuff lately, and I wanted to see how it would go down. Vince Giordano, master of repro hot jazz, was the perfect option.
Shake That Thing made people shake their things. As Skeets Tolbert said, "stuff's out, stuff that's never been out before". A room full of women in corsets and stockings amounted to a room full of boob-outage. It was awe-inspiring. There was a gang of dykes in a combination of formidable bosom/corset, suit/moustache costume who really dug the 20s thing and were actually very nice to me, cheering me on (which I needed in the early stages). There was a guy who had a Tesla moustache, an ivory-topped cane and bowler hat who was a whisker away from perfect cake walking awesomeness. There was plenty of high-action prancing and elaborate posing in the crowd, and it was just fabulous. At the beginning of that song a bunch of lindy hoppers burst into the room and charlestoned their stuff out. It was a definite high point in my DJing career: a room of mixed punters in hardcore 20s costume dancing like crazy maniacs to the hottest music I know.
Then I figured I'd ease off a bit, energy wise, and play some Midnight Serenaders, a band I figured would absolutely fit in with this crowd. Same sparse, 1-2 rhythm, spankin' trumpet solos, hot jazz action.
I wanted to go a little quirky here, and to break the 'no cheese' rule, so I played some Janet Klein, because I like the way the words of I ain't that kind of a baby contrasted with You Got To give me some. It's cutesy, but in a modern way; heavy on the retro, but with a punky aesthetic. And because I was talking dirty, I had to go with some Asylum Street Spankers and the ubiquitous Shave em Dry. It was a pretty dirty, dirtier than the crowd were expecting, I think. But some in the room knew the band, and the live recording adds energy to the room. The stomping beat is infectious and the mood is generally heaps of fun.
By then I'd been sitting a little lower on the tempos, and I wanted to kick the energy back up again, to capitalise on the boost Shave em Dry always gives. This version of Digadigadoo is absolutely rocking. It's super fast, and super fun. I've DJed it for dancers a few times before, and even though it's really long, it keeps them dancing like nuts. It worked a treat with these guys too. but they were absolutely shagged by the end. So Minor Drag for a rest. More NOJV. Yes, I played a lot of them. But that's because they rock. I wanted to do some Loose Marbles, but I didn't know their action well enough to risk it on such a chancy crowd. MD was a bit too long, and a bit too minor key to really work. So I went with If You're a Viper to use the drug references as a cheap win. But it wasn't so successful. Note to self: if you think a song tries a little too hard and doesn't quite win you over, it won't work on a crowd of non-dancers either.
I like this version of Stevedore Stomp (Duke Heitger). I wanted to see if a slightly swingier edge would work with this crowd. It went down well, but apparently they don't hold no truck with that new-fangled rhythm. They were really quite tired by then, though, so I dropped it down with another punt - the MS's version of Handyman. Which people liked, but I didn't like all that on-dance-floor snogging and sexing up. So I chunked it back up with some more Giordano. And teh orsm. By this stage the next DJ was ready to go, so I played one more to give him time to plug in properly, and then I was off. And went straight to the bar where a nice barman refilled my 2L water bottle, goddess bless him.
Yes, I did play two versions of Shake That Thing. I've done that a couple of times lately. Because I am, basically, lazy. And a bad DJ. But it's a really good song, and I like the two different treatments. I was looking for a version of Charleston or Charleston is the best dance after all, but I was, frankly, too fucking tired after six hours of DJing, to find it.
So, overall, it was a really fun set. Started really badly, was heartbreaking to bust that preceding DJ's fucking awesome vibe, but finished well. If only lindy hoppers would hack a set that fast. Guess it takes a bunch of alcohol, pin-striped suits and masses of magnificent bosom to bring out our inner badassery, I guess.
This is the (mini) set:
Zonky New Orleans Jazz Vipers 203 2006 Hope You're Comin' Back 5:06
Shake That Thing Vince Giordano 230 2004 The Aviator 2:59
You Got to Give Me Some Midnight Serenaders 190 2007 Magnolia 4:02
I Ain’t That Kind of a Baby Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys 159 2008 Ready For You 2:59
Shave 'em Dry Asylum Street Spankers 131 1997 Nasty Novelties 4:21
Digadoo Firecracker Jazz Band 247 2005 The Firecracker Jazz Band 5:20
Blue Drag New Orleans Jazz Vipers 181 2002 The New Orleans Jazz Vipers 4:23
If You're A Viper New Orleans Jazz Vipers 156 2004 Live On Frenchmen Street 3:57
Stevedore Stomp Duke Heitger And His Swing Band 239 2000 Rhythm Is Our Business 4:18
My Handyman Midnight Serenaders 95 2007 Magnolia 5:11
Quality Shout Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks Orchestra 232 1993 Quality Shout 3:03
Shake That Thing Mora's Modern Rhythmists 227 2006 Devil's Serenade 2:58
If I'd had any idea I'd be playing this stuff, I'd have spent more time on it than I did on the neo. But I had no clue. If I could do it over, I'd come in loud and proud with some skankin' charleston. I'd stick to the hot stuff, lay off the swing and keep the tempos high. I'd use the same sort of stuff. In a perfect world, I'd use the original recordings as well as newer stuff. But the newer guys, the guys who're into the hot jazz - the punker-street-jazz guys - really encapsulated the energy of that event. The neo swing world has more in common with punk than swing jazz, and hot 20s jazz really has more in common with punk than swing, attitude-wise. It's just built for showing off, and doesn't have the shmaltzy edge some swing can have.
It was a long, hard night, I didn't do quite as well as I would have liked sometimes, I worked really hard in challenging conditions, and I realised my DJing skills were quite specific: I can work a room full of people who know how to dance. But I'm challenged by a room of non-dancing drinkers, especially as my music is so unfamiliar. Non-swing dancers are challenged by the swing, I think. Another small, but very important thing I learnt: lindy hoppers like space between the songs to stop and talk and change partners - at least 5 seconds. Non dancers don't know what to do with the gap. Though I ended up getting applause at the end of songs they liked, which was weird, but I guess that's what you do with some dead air when you like something.
"in which we ask 'why ya buggin?!' and then learn to whom the house actually belongs" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 3, 2009
Leo Mathisen, Duke Heitger, etc etc etc
Posted by dogpossum on September 3, 2009 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
What? There's a Leo Mathisen CD I don't own?!
Leo Mathisen: 1938-40 Leo’s Idea from Little Beat Records is the one Mathisen CD from this (very awesome) label that I don't own. And I WANT it!
But I also want more Duke Heitger. I have a copy of Rhythm Is Our Business from emusic, and the more I play it, the more I like it. Some of these recreationist doods can really suck, but re-listening has convinced me that there's something good going on here. But one album just isn't enough.
I also want:
Prince of Wails. The title track is a fave, and I'm keen to hear how this small group recreates teh orsm of Moten's group... in fact, I'm back to loving Moten in a big way.
Krazy Kapers as it looks a little more swingy and hence a little more all-purpose.
What is This Thing Called Love because the track listing is freeking A1.
I've had nothing but fabulous experiences with Jazz By Mail - super-fast postage times (though I've had a couple of CD covers get a little crushed in their light-weight cardboard boxes - nothing major, though), reasonable prices. And I'm especially keen on their Stomp Off Records stuff - an indy label chock full of top notch hawt jazz artists.
"Leo Mathisen, Duke Heitger, etc etc etc" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
August 24, 2009
midnight serenaders and janet klein
Posted by dogpossum on August 24, 2009 4:50 PM | Comments (0)
I am currently extremely nuts for the Portland band Midnight Serenaders' album Sweet Nothin's (even though I'm unsure about that inverted comma in the title).
I bought the album from emusic this month and have been listening to it over and over. I played three songs from it at the after party I DJed on Saturday (though the first was to an empty room as I tested the sound gear): Swing Brother, Swing, Sweet Nothin's and Who Walks in When I Walk Out?. They all went down a treat.
I really like this band: some of the musicians have bluegrass/jugband/ole timey roots, some jazz, and the steel guitarist used to be in Helmet. The female singer plays the ukelele, an instrument I have mixed feelings about. I'm not keen on the Aussie folky/community ukelele sound, but I do like it in an Hawaiian, jazznick context. I'm also fond of the way this band combines the 'street jazz' sound that's very popular with some American dancers atm (a la the Loose Marbles, Cangalossi Cards, etc) with a more sophisticated studio mix. They also remind me of the Hot Club of Cowtown, which can only be an awesomely good thing.
I haven't bought their other album Magnolia, yet, but it's only a matter of time.
I've also just bought some songs from Janet Klein's second album Ready For You which has a similar style, but leans a little more heavily on the cutsey recreation of 20s girl singers. Klein has other albums, but I'm not so struck on the Paradise Wobble album on emusic, which is mostly vocals and ukele. I prefer Klein with the band balancing out the cutesy with some badass instrumental action.
I played That's What You Think from Ready For You at that same after party, and it also went down a treat.
Though I have a feeling both these albums will work with dancers, I'm pretty sure the after party was kind of a loaded option: this was a crowd of post-ball dancers with a couple of drinks under their belts and a serious interest in part-aying. The presence of a few Melbourne dancers also reminded me of the seriously slow average tempos in Sydney - come on, gang, let's get lindy hopping!
EDIT: I just bought Magnolia from the Midnight Serenaders, via CDBaby's downloads. It was supercheap ($9.99 US/$11.92 AU) and supereasy... which isn't a good thing for our bank account... The little I've heard of the album is fuuuully sick.
"midnight serenaders and janet klein" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
Armstrong and Middleton for the win
Posted by dogpossum on August 24, 2009 4:00 PM | Comments (4)
The awesomeness that is Louis Armstrong and his All Stars in 1956. Velma Middleton features prominently as the badass performer she was. Image stoled from here. Looks like Kid Ory in the background on trombone, but I could be (and probably am) mistaken.
I have a bunch of this All Star action from Armstrong, but I rarely DJ it. It is fully sick, though.
This version of All that meat (and no potatoes) is ok, but not fabulous.
They do a version of Reckless Blues which I quite like. The interesting thing about that song is that Armstrong first recorded it with Bessie Smith in 1925, then again with Middleton in 1957.
Just to demonstrate Middleton's awesomeness, here she is with Luis Russell's orchestra in 1942:
"Armstrong and Middleton for the win" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
August 19, 2009
recent djing (is this politics?)
Posted by dogpossum on August 19, 2009 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
I haven't been terribly happy with my DJing lately. I think part of the problem has been that I've been acquiring vast blobs of music from emusic and not properly assimilating them before DJing. I've been doing a lot of DJing (once a week at least, often more) and I haven't had a chance to spend time with my music getting to know it properly. I've also done some sets at venues with very difficult sound (churchpit is the main offender here - the speakers/amp just can't handle the huge hall), so I've not been able to DJ the older stuff I really love with any confidence. All this has lead to my doing sets which are 'easy' and lacking inspiration.
(that fabulous photo is from this site).
These fairly uninteresting sets have leaned a little too heavily on the jump blues, and blues structures generally. There's also been far too much Jimmy Witherspoon. But I've also been flogging the New Orleans revival stuff like the proverbial, and recent recreationist NOR stuff at that. Not making for terribly great sets, right?
The set below is one I did at Canberräng the weekend before last.
Canberräng 7 August 2009 9:00-10:30pm
Blue Monday Jay McShann and his Band with Jimmy Witherspoon 125 1957 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 3:40
Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra with Sonny Parker 134 1949 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 3:24
King Porter Stomp Kansas City Band 170 1997 KC After Dark 4:38
Gimme A Pigfoot Lavern Baker 120 1958 La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith 3:11
Big Fine Girl Jimmy Witherspoon with Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Vernon Alley, Mel Lewis 156 1959 The 'Spoon Concerts 4:55
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 3:34
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie and his Orchestra 144 1958 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 3:13
Sent For You Yesterday Count Basie and his Orchestra with Joe Williams 163 1960 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2) 3:10
Roll 'Em Pete Count Basie and his Orchestra with Joe Williams 215 1957 At Newport 3:01
I Ain't Mad At You Mildred Anderson 158 1960 No More In Life 3:04
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:15
The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else Boilermaker Jazz Band 161 2006 You Do Something To Me 3:46
Paper Moon Monica Trapaga with Bob Barnard, Paul Furniss, David Blenkhorn, Peter Locke, David Seidel, Andrew Dickeson, Monica Trapaga 140 2006 Sugar 4:05
Tishomingo Blues Carol Ralph 128 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 4:15
If You're A Viper New Orleans Jazz Vipers 156 2004 Live On Frenchmen Street 3:57
Lavender Coffin Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James 134 1949 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 2:47
On Revival Day Lavern Baker 144 1958 Lavern Sings Bessie Smith 3:16
The Jumpin' Blues Jay McShann and his Band with Jimmy Witherspoon 155 1957 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 3:04
It was actually just the right set to play for that crowd at that time. It was the second set of the night (and weekend) at a crowded bar/restaurant where there wasn't much room for dancing. The venue management was a bit very intrusive, commenting on the music (and turning the volume up and down!) and generally making things difficult. It was a mixed crowd of dancers, but not a whole lot of experienced dancers who're interested in older music. There wasn't really room to bust out with badass lindy hop either. So I went for the 'partyhardy' beer-and-laughs approach. I quite like this sort of set for starting off a weekend - loud, shouting choruses, simple rhythms, call and response sections, familiar songs, lots of energy, lots of hi-fi. It went down very well.
(Image lifted from here.
EDIT: If you're liking this Bill Steber photo, I've linked to a few more here.)
After I'd warmed them up a bit, I shifted to the NOR stuff (well, that's how I'm thinking of it, even though it's not strictly accurate for most of these bands). That went down quite well as well. I also tried to get with the wave, moving up and down through the tempos, which I've not been doing so well lately.
Overall, I was happy with the set - it did as it should, the organisers were happy with it, the venue manager was happy with it, the dancers had fun. It wasn't totally awesome for lindy hop, but then there wasn't really room for awesome lindy hop. It was a beer and laughs partyhardy set.
But this is the sort of stuff I've been DJing lately, and I'm just not happy with it. As a dancer I'd be very disappointed. Partly because it's just the same old same old; there's nothing new or interesting there.
In contrast, here's a set I did at the Churchpit gig last Friday:
Swingpit 14 August 2009 10:30pm-midnight
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 1950 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 3:04
Oh! Gram'pa Cab Calloway and his Orchestra 147 1947 Are You Hep To The Jive? 3:04
Shout, Sister, Shout Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Buster Bailey 140 1941 Apollo Jump 2:45
Just Kiddin' Around Artie Shaw and his Orchestra 159 1941 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 3:21
Davenport Blues Adrian Rollini and his Orchestra with Jack Teagarden 136 1934 Father Of Jazz Trombone 3:14
Madame Dynamite Eddie Condon and his Orchestra (Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Sidney Catlett) 176 1933 Classic Sessions 1927-49 (Volume 2) 2:56
Summit Ridge Drive Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five 128 1940 Self Portrait (Disc 2) 3:21
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 153 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:26
Hot Spot Blues Leo Mathisen's Orkester 167 1942 Leo Mathiesen 1942-43 Terrific Rhythm 3:06
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 146 1949 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 3:01
Paper Moon Monica Trapaga with Bob Barnard, Paul Furniss, David Blenkhorn, Peter Locke, David Seidel, Andrew Dickeson, Monica Trapaga 140 2006 Sugar 4:05
Gimme A Pigfoot Lavern Baker 120 1958 La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith 3:11
Keep On Churnin' (01-09-52) Wynonie Harris 146 1952 Complete Jazz Series 1950 - 1952 2:56
Sent For You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today) Count Basie and his Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing 172 1952 Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings (Disc 2) 3:13
Big Fat Mama Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra with Trevor Bacon, Buster Bailey 135 1941 Apollo Jump 3:09
Bearcat Shuffle Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy with Mary Lou Williams 160 1936 The Lady Who Swings the Band - Mary Lou Williams with Any Kirk and his Clouds of Joy 3:01
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra 165 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 3:10
Truckin' Henry 'Red' Allen and His Orchestra 171 1935 Henry Red Allen ‘Swing Out' 2:54
The Basement Blues (low-downer than any low down blues) Nobel Sissle and his Orchestra with Sidney Bechet 153 1931 Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Sidney Bechet 3:16
Georgia Bo Bo Graeme Bell and his Australian Jazz Band 137 1952 Graeme Bell the AMI Australian Recordings 2:40
Bli-Blip Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five 140 2007 Moppin' And Boppin' 2:44
Flat Foot Floogie Carol Ralph 186 2005 Swinging Jazz Portrait 3:44
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan 147 1956 A Tribute To Andy Razaf 3:19
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie and his Orchestra 144 1958 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 3:13
John Silver Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra 155 1938 Swingsation: Charlie Barnet and Jimmy Dorsey 3:15
Turn It Over Bus Moten and his Men 148 1949 Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) 2:38
Don't Falter At The Altar Cab Calloway 138 Are You Hep To The Jive? 2:44
All This Beef And Big Ripe Tomatoes Julia Lee, Cleophus Berry, William 'Bill' Nolan, Franz Bruce, Clairborne Graves, Elmer W. Price 143 1951 Kansas City Star (disc 5) 2:09
Laughing In Rhythm Slim Gaillard and his Peruvians 142 1951 Laughing In Rhythm: The Best Of The Verve Years 2:56
Algiers Stomp Mills Blue Rhythm Band with Henry 'Red' Allen, J.C. Higgenbotham, George Washington, Edgar Hayes, Lucky Millinder 219 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Harlem Heat 3:08
I Diddle Dinah Washington 153 Dinah Washington with Quincy Jones 3:05
This is a regular fortnightly event in a large church hall. The sound can be really, really difficult as the speakers/amp just aren't big enough for this big, echoey space, but this time the room had been rearranged and the sound was a bit better. It's usually a newer crowd of dancers - people who've only been dancing less than six months or so. It can include more experienced, hard core dancers, though. The hall actually has a great floor and is really good for spreading out with big, fat lindy. But there's no bar and it really is a bit churchpit. But there you go.
I quite like doing these sorts of gigs with the newer dancers because newer dancers tend not to have any preconceptions or biases about the music. They're only just beginning to get to know the dance, and they're usually a-flush with post-class endorphines and excitement. They just love dancing. Most of the ones who do this class regularly also bring their own beer and snacks and make a bit of a party of it, which is also nice. I like DJing for these guys because they tend to just dance when the music moves them. And I've found with this crowd (as with the Funpit doods in Melbourne) that they respond best to four-on-the-floor straight-ahead swing. The less NOR the better. They like a bit of jump blues or 12-bar blues structure stuff, but they really go off with the 'proper' swing. They're suprisingly willing to tackle higher tempos and are far more flexible about this than many experienced dancers (mostly because no one's yet told them that something's 'too fast'). They don't actually say any of these things - I'm just working on what I see.
That night I followed Miss Bonnet, who was DJing one of her (if not the) first sets. She did a great job - lots of favourites, good working of tempos and volume, nice combinations of styles. I danced. I wanted to keep up her good energy, so I came in with something familiar - Solid as a Rock - something at a nice, easy tempo, with lots of clapping and fun vocals. I also wanted to segue to some older, solid swing stuff, and this is a nice, tricky way of getting there.
I've been listening to my music on the bus using an ipod lately, and it's really helped me get back into my own music. I've also been thinking about DJing more lately, and actually done some practice. I'm also dancing more myself, and that's been really important. I'm not sure I did such an awesome job with the wave, tempo-wise, though. The floor was full all night, though, and I Noticed that the dancers favoured the solid swing/four-on-the-floor stuff above all else. Which just goes to show - lindy hop is built for that action. It swings, it's simpler rhythmically (and in terms of arrangement), and it matches the stuff students learn in class. The class before had been doing 20s charleston and a range of charleston variations to faster music (though not to what I'd term 'charleston music'), so they were set up for faster, solid beats.
I challenged myself to avoid the stuff I'd played in that Canberräng set, though I did cave with Lavern Baker and Wynonie Harris, then the Basie with Rushing, but then it was back to business with a bit of Lunceford transitioning back to Andy Kirk goodness. The Wynonie Harris is very popular here atm, and it's actually great for shifting gears and injecting some energy into the room. Instead of thinking 'oh, I'll just continue on to more of this blues-type stuff', I thought 'I'll just inject this here, then get back to business'. And it worked. I currently love, love, love that Davenport Blues by Rollini and his band, partly because I have this THING for Jack Teagarden. And because I'm listening to quite a bit of hot Chicago action at the moment (finally - I move north from New Orleans!), I followed up with Madame Dynamite, which I also love. These are new songs to me, but much loved. I've found both go down really, really well with dancers.
It's round about there that I was working a sort of emotional wave - Artie Shaw had taken things up and people were nuts, but because there were a lot of noobs, I figured a little rest with the mellower Rollini was in order. During the Shaw song a few doods had gotten going with some Madison, which suited the song perfectly and spread like a virus as people started joining in and learning the fairly simple routine. It was actually a lovely moment, as all sorts of people got into it and had a really fun time. It lifted the energy in the room noticeably, and I felt the 'lindy hop vibe', the 'let's get serious' vibe. So I figured I'd keep to the olden days stuff and work that vibe.
(The Madison takes on.)
Most of the songs I played are old favourites - no surprises with A Viper's Moan. But this is a new crowd of dancers, and I've found that most of the 'old favourites' like VM aren't played much here at all. Which is fine by me, as I love that shit - they're not favourites for nothing. Anyways, I moved wave-like from Rollini through to Joog Joog. 
Hot Spot is something I rediscovered lately. Mathisen is a Danish musician who sounds a lot like Fats Waller, and I lovelovelove his (marvelously restored) CDs I bought from Little Beat Records. So I gave this a whirl. The recording isn't so great for that particular space - the higher and lower parts get lost - but it's such a fun song, it worked out ok. It's the type of song that'd work well with a stroll I think.
But Joog Joog was a return to the vocals and also signalled my change in style.
Paper Moon is by a local singer (as in, from my actual suburb), and goes down well. The band in that recording are freaking A1 as well. I think of that as a real beginner's song, because I learnt to dance to it in Brisbane in 1998. Then came that brief reversion moment.
Then back to Lunceford and then to Kirk. Peckin' and Truckin' went down a treat - I love those two played together, for obvious reasons. Then some Noble Sissle (yay!). Georgia Bo Bo is another Aussie act, but this didn't work quite so well with the crowd. NOR. Bah. So some Campus Five to recover.
This crowd of noobs was getting pretty tired by now, but they were really doing well - two hours of classes then so much social dancing is tricky when you have no dance fitness. The next chunk is a bit random. I thought John Silver, my pirate song would work. Fail. People danced to every single song from here, and the floor was full. Algiers Stomp was a response to a request for 'bal', and actually sparked so much interest I regretted not playing more faster songs earlier. That'll teach me to go with my preconceptions rather than actually working the crowd.
It was a nice night, actually. There were quite a few out of towners visiting, and rather than doing a proper 'welcome dance', we paused so they could be introduced. Which was also nice, because the crowd were feeling very friendly and spontaneously applauded. Unusual, but actually very friendly. There was also a birthday, and the two birthday kids had requested a special song which was played between the two DJ sets. This can go either way, particularly when people supply their own song. But they'd worked out a sort of mini routine, and it was pretty fun. We all then carried on with the usual 'happy birthday' jam, and it was a friendly, fun one. At one point I back announced the Carol Ralph song, because she's playing at the dance this Saturday. I don't usually do this sort of thing, but I really like Ralph, and her music is always really popular with dancers. On that particular night Flat Foot Floogie went down a treat (as it usually does), so I figured people might like to know that she was playing a dance with her band, and that CDs would be available.
Overall, I was happy with this set, happier than I've been with my DJing in ages. A return to my preferred musical styles. The Squeeze sat behind me programming on his laptop through all this, not dancing or even talking to anyone. He had a lovely time. And I kept making him pay attention to how "four-on-the-floor is the BEST!" It wasn't the best set I've ever done, and I didn't push any boundaries, music-wise, but I hope this is a return to the good stuff of yore. And that I'll stay hard enough to play it. Or, more importantly, I'll work on my DJing and music knowledge a bit more so that I can make it work, regardless.
I have a bit of DJing this Saturday - doing band breaks for the Carol Ralph dance and then a set at the after party. I hope it goes well. I'm mostly just happy to get into the gig for free!
"recent djing (is this politics?)" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
August 15, 2009
what makes a good jam?
Posted by dogpossum on August 15, 2009 7:46 PM | Comments (2)
Not, foodie friends, a post about preserves. But a post about jam circles and the dance 'jam'.
When you say 'jam' to most lindy hoppers, they think of that exciting moment at a dance when a particularly exciting song prompts dancers to freekin BRING IT. A couple lights up and dances like serious badasses. The appropriate (and instinctive response) is to watch and cheer and goad them on. In the olden days, if the floor was crowded (as it usually was), a little space would clear around the dances to give them room to really bring it. These days, a circle (often ridiculously big) forms in an unnatural way to allow room for a little entertainment. Today, the initial couple are often replaced by other couples, one after another, entering the cleared circle at the end of a phrase. The dancers crowded around clap and cheer and egg on the 'performers'.
My favourite jam sees dancers crowded close (risking losing an eye), and couples pushing to get in there and show off. The energy in the room leaps and I feel like screaming like a crazy fool. Sometimes I do.
My least favourite jam is 'staged'. In the very worst case scenario someone announces "We're going to have a jam now," and couples enter the circle in a very formal, almost staged order, to pull out very staged, rehearsed sequences of steps. There is no spontaneity, there is no excitement, and often, there's no me - I've gone to the bar for a drink.
My favourite jams are usually to live bands - a band simply brings the energy up and dancers freekin lose their biscuits (in a non-vomiting way).
Jams aren't a new idea, by any means. Forming a circle into which dancers enter and 'perform' is as old as Africa in African American vernacular dance, is found in indigenous Australian dance, in European folk dance and most other dance cultures around the world. The performance ranges from formalised, ritualised and highly prescriptive to ecstatic, out of control, crazed. Audiences are encouraged to participate - to clap and cheer, to sing or chant along, to exclaim; to respond.
DJing jams can be a bit tricky. I've done quite a few now, and I kind of have a feeling about the types of songs to play and the way I can develop the energy in a room to the point where that spontaneous group-hysteria showing off happens*. These sorts of jams usually happen at an exchange or special event, somewhere when people are relaxed and ready to partyhardy, when they're out of town or hosting guests, excited by new dance partners and music and DJs or bands. I usually find them happening on the first night of an exchange, later in the night, or at a late night during the weekend.
If I'm DJing, I've been gradually working the energy and tempos up, so people are charged with those happy hormones and really having a good time. I make sure I work 'the wave'**, giving people lower tempos to rest and higher tempos to challenge them, keep their heart rates up. I also try to play higher energy songs with that fat, four-on-the-floor rhythm that makes it impossible to mistake the beat. Old school, classic big band swing is most effective in these situations, and I tend to avoid lyrics. Lyrics tend to anchor the meaning of the song - like labels or titles on a photo - and I like instrumentals for the way they feature groups and individual instruments rather than just showcasing one singer. The most important part of this working up of the crowd is mood and emotion. They have to be feeling really, really good. Not just a couple of experienced, hardcore lindy hoppers, but the whole room, from the dancers to the people watching on the side lines. Otherwise you get a kind of emotion-sink, where the good vibe drains away. When the whole room is involved, the energy increases exponentially, as people add their good feelings to the mix.
I don't really know how to explain what it feels like to be in there, on that type of dance floor, in that type of room. I think of the process of getting there as 'warming the room', literally and figuratively. I find that if I'm DJing, I have to actually be in there with the dancers, feeling the good feelings. It helps if I'm DJing standing up. It doesn't work if I'm not invested as well.
But when I have them there, before they've peaked and are on the dowhill slope to exhaustion, I suddenly drop in a badass 'jam' song. These are songs that I have either tried before with dancers and seen result in a jam, or which feel like the sort of songs that make it impossible to stand still. They're usually higher tempos, because higher tempos usually mean higher energy. Just freakin exciting, like quick cuts in a film, or quick exchanges of dialogue, or jerky movements in an action film. I also like higher tempos because they're challenging - we want to see badassery in a jam, and we're often moved to stare at or be impressed by faster, badass dancing. But it's not really just being a 'good dancer' that's important here - you have to really bring it, bring some attitude or emotion or delight or excitement or awesome physical sense of the music.
But when I say 'challenging', I don't mean a song that's particularly difficult, melodically speaking. The best jam songs usually have straight forward rhythms - four on the floor and no cheating, as Basie said. That's the simple, straightforward 4/4 time. We're usually up around 200-250bpm, so you're looking at about 4 beats per second. Which works out at at least 4 steps per second, usually more because we like syncopated rhythms in lindy hop. That's a fair bit faster than your resting heart rate. But that rhythm, that beat has to be insistent and consistent. Bam-bam-bam-bam throughout. This is maintained by the engine room of the band - the rhythm section. Basie stuff is awesome for jams, mostly because his rhythm section was just so tight and pumping. Basie on piano, Jo Jones on drums, Freddy Green on guitar and Walter Page on bass. Just chunking away through those big band songs.
Here's one of my favourite Basie songs, Jumpin' At The Woodside. Recording in 1939, this is one of the most-played, best-known Basie songs. You can easily argue that it's overplayed. It is. But for good reason.
It's not slow. At about 230bpm, it's twice as fast as your average pop song. But it swings so you don't feel rushed. Each beat is delayed; it's not bashed into, no one's rushing to reach the next beat. The intro is super exciting. Basie marks out the time with a nice, solid lower-register piano, then the other three parts of the rhythm section come in, one 8 (or two bars) at a time, until by the end of the first phrase you have a nice, fat, chunky rhythm that shouts "DANCE!"
I don't usually play this song intending a jam circle, but I do find that if it's dropped into the room at just the right moment, people lose control.
(That's a picture from MLX6. I was actually playing Jumpin' At The Woodside there, but the 1960 version which is a bit quicker and a bit clearer. It's not quite as awesome as the 1939 version, but it's pretty freakin great.)
Jumpin' At The Woodside also one of those songs that's often played deliberately to inspire a jam, so dancers are wired to read it as 'jam song!'
But one song is often not quite enough for a crowd of crazy jammin' dancing fools. I'm also quite fond of some Jimmie Lunceford, songs like Runnin' Wild have the right sort of chunky rhythm, but Lunceford Special has that same pulse-stirring introduction.
Lionel Hampton's 1942 Flying Home has the right feel, but is a little slow for a really pumping jam. (it's only about 190bpm).
I might play this as a sort of prod to get dancers in the mood. It's an iconic track, one which dancers know well. Not in small part because of this sequence from Spike Lee's film Malcolm X:
Frankie Manning was a consultant for this sequence, and the scene is in no small part a homage to various iconic historic lindy hop sequences (including the longer 'jitterbug contest' scene from the soundie Keep Punchin).
So Flying Home isn't exactly go-to gear for a jam, but it's useful for the way it pumps up energy in the room and gets people thinking about showing off. Having said that, it's so iconic, that playing it at the wrong time can just sound cheesy. If you're playing for a crowd of experienced dancers who've been round for a while, it mightn't be quite quick enough to get their pulses up, and it might bring back uncomfortable memories of earlier days wearing zoot suits.
What exactly makes for a good song for a jam, then?
High energy songs with a good, solid beat. I like a big band, an instrumental, something that sits solidly in the swing era, the lindy hop era - the mid 30s to early 40s, leaning on the late 30s. Something familiar is good, because dancers are better able to hit breaks and really show off.
Exactly which song I play will depend on the crowd. 'Fast' is relative and really is determined by the experiences and preferences of the crowd. Same goes for 'familiar'. But I do insist on something with a solid beat. I also avoid that later 50s sound, or a sort of shuffle super-groove, super-swinging rhythm. I like a nice, solid, built like a brick shithouse beat.
When to stop?
Often when I've played that one song, people are raring to go, wanting more. I'll often oblige with a second song. Something faster, something madder, but in the same style. But I won't do more than two songs, not unless the room is really going off, with couples fighting to get into the jam. If I see energy lagging, the crowd losing interest, the performers pulling out the same-old, same-old shtick, if I see those performers getting a bit full of themselves and not sharing the spotlight, I'll not play a second song. I certainly won't play a third. My goal is to use a jam to lift the energy in the room to climax point. I want everyone in the room to feel it. I usually follow up with something high energy, but much slower - 160bpm is nice, but I can go lower. I want that next song to say 'this is not a jam'. I want it to say 'get on the floor everyone!' I've noticed that if I time it right, all the kids watching will swarm onto the floor. If a DJ leaves it too late, lets things go on too long, the energy fizzles out and things get a bit embarrassing.
*There are few things finer than the dance-and-music inspired group hysteria of social dancing, where you lose control of your body (not in a bowel-loosening way, thankfully), you become totally uninhibited, and it's like you're dancing all the best dances in the world, right then. The room is physically and emotionally hot, and your body is running with awesome endorphines, adrenaline, all those good-time drugs.
** Where the tempos move up and down through a 'wave' - eg 120bpm - 140bpm - 160bpm - 180bpm - 140bpm - 150bpm etc
"what makes a good jam?" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
July 16, 2009
amiri baraka at last
Posted by dogpossum on July 16, 2009 2:31 PM | Comments (2)
Finally, I've made it to Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones). It's taken way too long.
I've just read this: Jazz and the White Jazz Critic. I didn't read it there (in a google books page that make me suddenly think 'what the fuck do we bother with publishers and book deals? All our rights as authors are dead with this one new technology... which really just does as the photocopier did for us all 20 years ago, but faster). I read it in a paper book.
And I got excited.
And then I went here and read that story. But mostly I looked at the youtube clip and got a bit excited.
I recommend the Jazz and White Critics article, as it sums up my misgivings about the jazznick fanmags and magazines and newsletters and recreationists.
Here's one bit I like:
There were few ‘jazz critics’ in America at all until the ‘30s and then they were influenced to a large extent by what Richard Hadlock has called ‘the carefully documented gee-whiz attitude’ of the first serious European jazz critics. They were also, as a matter of course, influenced more deeply by the social and cultural mores of their own society. And it is only natural that their criticism, whatever its intentions, should be a product of that society, or should reflect at least some of the attitudes and thinking of that society, even if not directly related to the subject they were writing about, Negro music (Baraka 138).
And here's another:
Most jazz critics began as hobbyists or boyishly brash members of the American petite bourgeoisie, whose only claim to any understanding about the music was that they knew it was different; or else they had once been brave enough to make a trip into a Negro slum to hear their favorite instrumentalists defame Western musical tradition. Most jazz critics were (and are) not only white middle-class Americans, but middle-brows as well (Baraka 140.)
This article is important because it was written by a black man in the 60s, and published in Down Beat magazine. I can't remember whether Down Beat was moldy fig or modernist, but I think it was the latter. I cannot tell you how rare it is to come across a commentary by a black writer on jazz from the 60s or earlier. Doing all this reading of 'jazz histories' I'm beginning to think I might have to kill myself. It's tedious. I like Baraka's comment about 'gee-whiz' approaches to jazz. I was just saying to The Squeeze the other day that I'd have liked one of these guys to stop gushing about how wonderful jazz is, and to actually open their freakin eyes and see what's going on around and beside the music. Hells, even in the music!
I'm gearing up for Blues People and will report back later.
"amiri baraka at last" was posted in the category cat blogging and ideas and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
July 14, 2009
jjj's hottest 100: where was Lil Armstrong?!
Posted by dogpossum on July 14, 2009 2:01 PM
John has posted an interesting piece about JJJ's Hottest 100 and I thought I'd better comment at length here rather than cluttering up the comments thread there. I will annotate for those who haven't been following the twitterati/bloggy chat.
[Point raised by others: the hottest 100 was a bit 90s-nostalgia trip for blokes who were teenagers in the 90s]
JJJ and Rage have always felt a bit 90s-nostalgia to me. But perhaps that's because the 90s were about the last time I listened to mainstream music...
I was wondering where Blondie, Siouxie and the Banshees and other punker chicks were at in the hottest 100?
[This is where I get into some stuff I've been thinking about]
To be honest, I wouldn't really expect JJJ's list of 'hottest 100' songs to come up with anything particularly inclusive or properly representative of rock (let alone the broader music world). It's a list made by listeners of one particular (state funded national) radio station in one particular historical moment, so audience demographics, radio playlists and radio/record company relationships are going to be the guiding factors.
I'd be more interested in 4ZZZ's list - localised indy music? Or in comparing hottest 100 lists from different radio stations and then different media sources generally.
[Here I address a bigger couple of issues]
Someone noted that I should respect the opinions of the women voting in the hottest 100. If not, wouldn't that also be neglecting women's contributions?
My response is that this approach simply accepts the broader social and institutional factors that have lead us to this point. It is more the case that the hottest 100 and the way it is run and organised is at fault, and that it's more useful to discuss the way the music industry works, and to think about the audiences of JJJ and popular music generally. In other words, I do not accept the premise of the question - that it is not JJJ that is at fault, but women (and their voting or failure to rock).
Firstly, here's a point that's been raised by a couple of books I've been reading about women in jazz (Placksin and Dahl, primarily):
women have been making music forever. It's just that the music industry has not recognised this. Both Placksin and Dahl point out that the profound absence of women in jazz histories is in fact a complete fallacy. There are and have always been plenty of women in jazz. It's just that they haven't been scoring recording contracts, haven't had properly managed careers, haven't been promoted or even hired by venues or band leaders, and haven't even been allowed into bands in many cases. Placksin and Dahl produce a massive list of fully sick jazznick sisters, and make the point that there _were_ plenty of women in jazz. We just have to look beyond the popularly accepted myths about jazz history.
So, in reference to the Hottest 100, there are heaps of women who rock. It's just that people aren't seeing or hearing them. Who are these people?
a) the DJs playing music on the radio,
b) the station programmers making up playlists,
c) the record company promotions teams who aren't sending promo material to radio stations,
d) the record companies who aren't putting women musicians under contract,
e) the company and radio peeps who aren't looking beyond their own memories of the music world - they're not actually getting into the library to see what's there,
f) the audiences of these radio stations who are (voting) and buying/listening to music,
g) and of course the machinery of live music, where bands get their starts - the venues and festivals and so on simply aren't giving chicks a go. If women even feel comfortable asking.
So, there are fully sick women musicians.
There are fully sick women musicians who rock.
There are fully sick women musicians being recorded.
There are fully sick women musicians playing live gigs all the time.
It's more that the problem is with the music industry not promoting their music, and that the music industry itself is inimical to any type of professionalism which is not aggressive, competitive, misogynist, etc. It's not that it's even a masculinist culture; it's more that a particular set of skills and personality traits are required. And these tend to coincide with hegemomic masculinity.
Sigh. Just once, I'd like this not to be about the goddamn fucking patriarchy. Or capitalism.
[This is where I think about industrial and cultural factors which might prevent/discourage women from getting into bands/rock]
I was just reading an interesting discussion of the way different instruments are perceived as 'female' or 'male' (Dahl). This was an issue in the 20s and 30s - there's a famous quote from Jelly Roll Morton where he states that there was some concern that playing the piano would sissify him (and this from such an aggressively heterosexual man). Looking through jazz history for women musicians who played instruments (other than vocals), there's a preponderance of pianists. In the 10s, 20s and 30s the piano was an acceptably ladylike instrument, as was the voice. This is not to say that there weren't women playing guitars, trombones, trumpets (the most masculine of 1930s instruments), etc. It's just that they weren't recorded and didn't feature on stage in a big way until the war years, when all-girl bands became a novelty. Even though bands like the International Sweethearts of Rhythm were massively badass, and bands led by people like Lil Hardin Armstrong had a very long history of badassery and fully sick jazz roots and cred.
I wonder if 90s grunge was important for stimulating a garage band phenomenon which offered young blokes something else to do in the garage beyond fiddling about with cars? There's also that story about Seattle's climate facilitating the development of such a vibrant live music scene (similar comments are made about lindy hop today - Seattle has a massive lindy scene, in part - I suspect - because indoor activities suit rainy, miserable weather). But part of me is sure that all the time spent fiddling about with instruments has something to do with the way girls and boys are encouraged to spend their leisure time - domestic duties for girls, guitars for boys?
[Here is where I testify and you hear a lot about me. And me.]
I spend quite a bit of time in music shops (usually the DJ Warehouse, but often a music store when I'm looking for cables), and I am almost always (as in 99.99% of the time) the only woman in there. I've never dealt with a female retail worker. I have the same experience in jazz music shops. I don't mind this, really. I'm used to being around blokes, and I'm not exactly your conventionally feminine chick. I'm not adverse to kicking arse and taking names. But more importantly, I'm stubborn and determined, and it'll take more than a cock to distract me from purchasing the perfect headphones.
I'm a DJ rather than a musician, and the mainstream DJing scene seems just as male-dominated as the band scene. In swing (where I'm DJing), most top tier DJs are male, whereas the gender divide is fairly even in the everyday, bread and butter DJing. ie, women and men are doing the everyday DJing for regular events (keeping the local scenes going), but there are very, very few women at the top end, doing the big name interstate and international DJing.
Sound familiar? Looks like there are glass ceilings in the swinguverse too.
This is partly because of social/cultural factors: DJing is an intimidating world, with an emphasis on technology and a fairly intimidating culture. Women DJs are no more collaborative and supportive of new DJs than male (I've found), but they're less likely to speak up in online DJing talk and less likely to pursue a DJing career aggressively. They do good community stuff, men can do good community stuff, but male DJs tend to have the skills and appproach required by professional DJing.
Economics are also important. DJing requires:
- A fairly steady income (which can be frittered away on music, software, hardware, etc),
- copious amounts of time (to spend cataloguing music, dealing with tossers in music shops, practicing, learning to use technology, researching music, participating in online DJ talk (networking, skilling up, etc), etc).
Basically, you need time and money to get a certain skill and experience base.
- Actually getting gigs also demands some serious networking, and it's very masculine, male-dominated networking: you have to really work hard to get into the gang if you want good, high profile, paid gigs.
Working conditions are challenging.
- Once you're actually there, the hours are hard (late nights, long hours, lots of coming home late by yourself), dealing with the technology can be challenging (working in shitty venues with shitty gear) and there's quite a bit of pressure - you're responsible for entertaining a bunch of dancers, you have to be assertive enough to not get screwed over by event coordinators and also confident enough to put your hand up for challenging gigs.
All of these are the usual, familiar issues facing women in employment. I think that many of these issues face women in bands as well. While no one in the swinguverse has ever said (or even implied) to me that women shouldn't be DJs (like to see them try), the work and role are heavily gendered in the sort of sneaky, invisible way that we see in many other industries.
And girls in bands, of course, have to deal with record companies, with PR machinery, with radio networks, with the importance of visual presentation (ie what they look like), video clips, etc etc etc.
Add all this to the fact that a large proportion of teenage blokes have been trained to think of women only as boobs with legs, should we be at all surprised that JJJ's Hottest 100 didn't sport a higher proportion any women?
Fuck, I'm surprised. And it'll be a sad day when we stop commenting.
Blogging commentary:
The Hoydens have had at it already.
Stubborn mule has given us some figures re the list's favouring the 90s.
John brings it (after a long stream of interesting tweetage, btw).
Something to remind you:
What is male privilege? (I have to add: even writing that makes me cringe in anticipation of a kick from some bloke. I've spent far too long in the swing world, which is so scarily patriarchal even I've absorbed it. egads.)
Book references:
Dahl, Linda. Stormy Weather: the Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women. Limelight: NY, 1992.
Placksin, Sally. Jazzwomen: 1900 to the Present. Pluto Press: London and Sydney, 1982.
"jjj's hottest 100: where was Lil Armstrong?!" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
July 8, 2009
charleston is really tedious
Posted by dogpossum on July 8, 2009 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
This photo (from Camp Jitterbug's solo charleston comp this year) by the very talented Bryant Gover just proves it.
I'm not sure of the ethics of posting a pic I found on faceplant on my blog, but think of this as promotion for this photographer's work. It's tricky to find a photographer who can not only take a good pic, but a good pic of dancers that really captures the feel of the dance. This one is of Hurley and, by geebs, it's sweet.
"charleston is really tedious" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
July 6, 2009
duke ellington's 'difficult' 1949/1950 period
Posted by dogpossum on July 6, 2009 6:01 PM | Comments (0)
I'm trying to get a better grip on my ever-increasing collection of music. I'm finding that my DJing is suffering from both my time off the dance floor and my spending on emusic. Emusic in particular challenges me, because it means I'm buying one or two songs rather than whole albums and as a result not getting to know an artist or particular period in depth.
So here's something about one CD I've just been listening to this afternoon.
I like it that Ellington stuff from the very late 40s and early 50s can be so challenging. Almost good for lindy hop. But then, also often experimenting with dissonance in a way that dancers can't quite handle. This Ellington collection from 1949-50 is an excellent example. Track listing? Here:
1949:
You Of All People
Creole Love Call
The Greatest There Is
Snibor
The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise
Joog, Joog
Good Woman Blues
On The Sunny Side Of The Street
B-Sharp Boston
1950:
Hello Little Boy
The Greatest There Is!
Perdido
Take The "A" Train
Untitled Blues
Oscalypso
Blues For Blanton
Mean Ol'Choo Choo
Me And My Wig
How Blue Can You Get
Juke Bop Boogie
Set 'Em Up
New Piano Roll Blues
The Man I Love
I picked this one up on Chron Classics a few years ago, and really like the combination of songs. Chron Classics are just that - a chronological (and complete) collection of songs by an artist (or featuring them) during a specific period. But the development of Ellington's style is quite marked in just these two years, on one album of 'singles'. When I first bought it I was spending a lot of time on public transports and reading Gunther Schuller's Swing book. I'd combine listening to music with reading Schuller on PT via The Squeeze's ipod. Ellington had such a long career, and was so musically interesting, it's no wonder Schuller devoted such a long chapter to him. Or that I kept coming back to him on the ipod.
I play 'Joog Joog' a lot for dancers. And 'B Sharp Boston'. 'Joog Joog' has an unusual beginning, and dancers are never quite sure about it. But the beat is insistent - you _will_ dance to this medium-tempo song. But there are a few here that are really quite... unusual. Ellington was interested in dissonance quite early on - earlier on that a lot of other doods. But when it's mixed in with his more conventional, danceable fare, it comes as a bit of a surprise. I like listening to the transition in his approach over just this short two year period. The second version of 'The Greatest There Is' has an earthier, more vernacular vocal, but it's a bit less comfortable harmonically in parts. Even 'Take the A Train', a standard in the lindy hopper's collection, is challenging. The piano intro is dissonant, the bass solo is long and complicated. It's all fabulous music, but it's not stuff I'd automatically play for a general lindy hopping crowd.
"duke ellington's 'difficult' 1949/1950 period" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
what again?! I'm still crapping on about dance, power, etc
Posted by dogpossum on July 6, 2009 3:59 PM
I'm refining and developing these ideas. So I'm just going to keep writing and posting these same points. Over and over again.
One of the more interesting discussions I've read about derision dance (from Jacqui Malone's book I think) discussed derision dance in African American dance as a way of responding to white power/black disempowerment 'under the radar'. In other words, the cake walk (or whichever example you're using) allowed dancers to deride or mock whites surrepticiously or indirectly. To 'get the joke' you had to recognise who was being mocked, and how the mocking was intended.
This sort of idea comes up in a number of different cultural practices across cultures. I've read a bit about satire and humour and derision-through-impersonating-for-humour's-sake.
I'm reading this book at the moment:
(Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the blues Tradition by Adam Gussow.
Gussow is a a blues musician who's interested in violence and the blues. One of his central arguments is that the blues (as in blues music - both sung and instrumental) gave black musicians access to a 'blues subject'
who then found ways, more or less covert, of singing back to that ever-hovering threat. Although blues scholars have long claimed that blues singers remained self-protectively mute on the issue of white mob violence, lynching makes its presence felt in various ways throughout the blues tradition: not just as veiled references in blues lyrics and as jokes recounted by blues musicians...
Gussow discusses the fact that black responses to white violence (in southern America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) were limited by necessity. In the simplest terms, if you fought back, if you responded to white violence, then white retaliation would come ten-fold. Without this 'right of response' (legal or otherwise), music offered a way of dealing, publicly with violence. Albert Murray talks about singing the blues as a way of 'stomping' the blues - of sharing woe and therefore easing its burdensome weight. The idea with singing a song that implies lynching or violence (ie you might simply sing 'I have the blues, my body is broken') is that you share your pain and frustration without directly inviting white censure. Singing and music allow you to sneakily respond, but without risking violent retribution.
Gussow begins his book with a comment from the book What is Life? Reclaiming the Black Blues Self by Kalamu ya Salaam:
[W]e laugh loud and heartily when every rational expectation suggests that we should be crying in despair. [T]he combination of exaggeration and conscious recognition of the brutal facts of life is the basis for the humour of blues people (Gussow x)
So in these cases making jokes when it seems impossible to laugh is an important part of subverting white power and violence. Simply being able to laugh is a way of saying "I am not beaten down". The joke part is an extension of the sneakiness of singing about violence indirectly, of responding indirectly when direct responses could get you killed. Humour is of course utterly subversive and powerful in this sort of setting.
The sort of violence Gussow talks about in Seems Like Murder Here is a fairly extreme example (though I highly recommend the book - it's disturbing but also fascinating), but it makes the point that humour through music can work as humour in dance does. By hiding your true meaning or intention under a layer of melody or rhythm, you can say subversive things, do subversive things and reclaim some control over your life and public discourse. You mightn't be able to speak out, but you can sing out.
I'm particularly keen on the idea of multiple layers of meaning. The cake walk can function just as silly clowning. But (as every clown knows), the surface humour hides something deeper and more subversive. While at first glance the black clown appears as the butt of the joke to white audiences (of the day), to white dancers and observers, the butt of the joke lies elsewhere. Tommy deFrantz writes in Dancing Many Drums that, when faced with white forbidding of black religious dance,
serious dancing went underground, and dances which carried significant aesthetic information became disguised or hidden from public view. For white audiences, the black man’s dancing body came to carry only the information on its surface (DeFrantz, discussing black masculinity in dance 107).
I've also heard similar discussions from aboriginal Australian elders discussing religious dance. While some dances are strictly for women or men or older women or older men or not to be seen at all, under any circumstances by the uninitiated, the meaning of a sacred dance can be hidden in plain sight. The uninitiated, watching a sacred dance (or looking at a sacred image in a painting) doesn't have access the important, sacred meaning, simply because they haven't been initiated, and therefore don't understand what they're looking at. They look, but cannot see.
I think it's important to say here, though, that having control over who looks at your body (dancing or otherwise) is a matter of power. I've been thinking about it in reference to film and how we give permission to have our own image photographed or filmed (and I repeatedly return to an article on the Warlpiri Media Collective's siteabout managing access to sacred or even just private space in indigenous Australian communities). But discussions about, for example, women's rights to control who looks at their bodies has just as long a history as white occupation of Australia. It is, after all, a similar discussion about occupation, colonialism and the power of the gaze.
I've read some interesting discussions about this in music in other places as well. There's quite a bit of discussion about Louis Armstrong and his 'mugging' or 'uncle tomming' for white audiences. Krin Gabbard discusses Armstrong's work with Duke Ellington, including the filming of Paris Blues (in which Armstrong starred, and for which Ellington contributed the score) and the recording of the 'Summit' sessions:
…at those moments in the film when he [Armstrong] seems most eager to please with his vocal performances, his mugging is sufficiently exaggerated to suggest an ulterior motive. Lester Bowie has suggested that Armstrong is essentially “slipping a little poison into the coffee†of those who think they are watching a harmless darkie….Throughout his career in films, Armstrong continued to subvert received notions of African American identity, signifying on the camera while creating a style of trumpet performance that was virile, erotic, dramatic, and playful. No other black entertainer of Armstrong’s generation â€" with the possible exception of Ellington â€" brought so much intensity and charisma to his performances. But because Armstrong did not change his masculine presentation after the 1920s, many of his gestures became obsolete and lost their revolutionary edge. For many black and white Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, he was an embarrassment. In the early days of the twenty-first century, when Armstrong is regularly cast as a heroicized figure in the increasingly heroicising narrative of jazz history, we should remember that he was regularly asked to play the buffoon when he appeared on films and television (Gabbard 298).
Gabbard continues the point here:
...Armstrong plays the trickster. Armstrong’s tricksterisms were an essential part of his performance persona. On one level, Armstrong’s grinning, mugging, and exaggerated body language made him a much more congenial presence, especially to racist audiences who might otherwise have found so confident a performer to be disturbing, to say the least. When Armstrong put his trumpet to his lips, however, he was all business. The servile gestures disappeared as he held his trumpet erect and flaunted his virtuosity, power, and imagination (Gabbard 298).
Again, there's this idea of layers of meaning. On the one hand, Armstrong appears as the smiling, 'safe' black man, entertaining white audiences with clowning. But on the other, his sheer musical talent empowers him and defies his reduction to 'harmless' clown.
There's quite a bit written about black masculinity and layers of meaning in musical and dance performances, but I'm especially interested in women in all this. Gussow has a fascinating paper about Mamie Smith's song 'Crazy Blues' (which is in that book). And Angela Yuval Davis talks about lyrics and women's blues performances and power.
Ultimately, though, the idea of layers of meaning is important to a discussion of African American dance. Any one dance can yield a whole host of meanings or interpretations. And at times it's important to hide the most subversive or dangerous meanings way down inside, where you need a lived experience with violence and disempowerment to really understand or to 'get' the joke.
Here's my current absolute favourite example of layers of meaning in dance. This is a scene from a musical stage play version of the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Most of us are more familiar with the film version (with its wondeful music) and with Oprah's interest in the story/film.
On one level it's very much 'classical' musical stage play fare - 'singing', dancing, 'period' costumes (late 19th, early 20th century), young black men with phenomenal dancing ability performing a 'light hearted' song about 'love'. That's the straight reading (well, almost straight). It looks quite a bit like some of the clips we watch for lindy hop or jazz dance dance from the 30s and 40s. Almost.
But it takes on a different meaning when you've seen this.
Immediately, another layer of meaning can be found in that first clip. Men dancing a 'woman's' song. Add the fact that this is a contemporary stage play, not a piece from the 30s or 40s. The lyrics, the movements of the dancers all gain new levels of meaning. The reading is 'queered up', not only in terms of sexuality (gay? straight? tranny? wuh?), but in terms of power and gaze. The Color Purple is a story about gender and power and race and ethnicity and class. It's themes and story are heartbreaking in parts. And yet here are three gorgeous young blokes performing a dance which invites a smile or a laugh. It's 'queer' in that it's played 'straight'. The dancers are dancing 'seriously', but the entire performance seems unusual, something is happening here, below the surface. Actually, not below the surface. It's right there, in your face. Making you want to dance. This sort of performance is often talked about in critical literature as provoking a sense of unease in the audience - should I laugh? Or is that wrong, considering the story of The Color Purple? This unease or anxiety centres on issues of sexuality, gender, class, ethnicity, etc etc etc. In some ways, this is what makes the performance so powerful. You can enjoy it simply as badass dancing. But you can also left wondering what it means. And context is everything. Watching from an expensive seat in a huge concert theatre is a little different from watching from the audience with different vested interests:
Link.
I like the second version because it's not a quiet audience, sitting and listening quietly and politely. It's a loud, rowdy audience interacting with the dancers. It's ok to laugh, to cheer, to want to dance with them, to enjoy the show. The audience are part of the performance. The 'mistake' where one dancer drops his hat becomes a chance to demonstrate their ability to improvise, to work it for a crowd. Three men dancing the overtly sexualised, feminised steps from Beyonce's clip changes the meaning of the movements. It changes the way their bodies are sexualised or regarded as sexualised bodies. It's 'feminine' movement, but this is definitely a performance of masculinity and masculine sexuality. Just not a terribly straight or mainstream one. And when the women appear on stage, all this gets tipped over again.
Is it derision, though? I think it's more complicated. But it makes a point that we can apply to cake walk. On one hand, it can be read as 'straight', fabulous dancing. But it can also be read as clowning or buffooning. Or it can be read as queer-as-fuck politics. Or sexed-up awesomeness. Or race politics. Or mocking Beyonce. Or celebrating Beyonce. It's imitation and flattery and derision and commentary. It's complicatedness invites us to engage and to look for layers of meaning. Which of course is the point: one dance becomes a discourse, a discussion, rather than a monologue.
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Toronto: Random House, 1998.
DeFrantz, Thomas. "The Black Male Body in Concert Dance." Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 107 -
20.
Gabbard, Krin. “Paris Blues: Ellington, Armstrong, and Saying It with Musicâ€. Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 297-311.
Malone, Jacqui. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Murray, Albert. Stomping the Blues. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
"what again?! I'm still crapping on about dance, power, etc" was posted in the category ideas and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
July 5, 2009
things i have done regularly lately
Posted by dogpossum on July 5, 2009 9:53 PM | Comments (5)
Cooked a large piece of meat in milk for a long period of time. Pork, chicken, whatever. I'll cook it, you can eat it.
While searching blindly in my backpack, felt something soft and hanky-like, pulled it out and discovered it was a single maxi-sized pad*. This has happened: at the bi-lo checkout with a middle aged woman cashier, trying to pay for bread with a cocky indie boy salesman, rummaging for cables at the DJ booth while sitting next to a very-christian tech-dood (this happened twice in one weekend with two different christians), looking for a hanky, desperately, while trying to obscure a post-sneeze-excitement nose. The one time I actually _needed_ a maxi (as in badASS absorbency) pad I couldn't find the fucker.
Played more than one song from The Spoon Concert album while DJing for a bunch of spazzed out lindy hoppers. It's like a sickness. Not the lindy hop - my playing stuff from this album. I just can't help it. I need to get some sort of clue.
Wandered why mormons bother with plural marriage** where the arrangement is one man + many women. While I know that many women is a fully sick option when you're looking at running a conference or a university degree or planning a lindy exchange, I'd have thought the ideal solution is one woman + many men within a marriage. Because I sure as fuck know The Squeeze is run a little ragged riding back and forth between the couch and DVD shop and could do with a sub some time soon.
Thought I might like to re-watch Aliens, mostly for Bill Paxton.***
I like imagining him ranting "Game over, man, game over!" when the Law discovers he's a polygamist.
Wandered why I didn't believe people when they told me Veronica Mars was good. I used to enjoy that bit in Deadwood when Kristen Bell was eaten by Woo's pigs. Now I can't believe I wasn't into this shit.
Wished we had broadcast TV. But only when people are tweeting like motherfuckers about freakin' Masterchef. Whatever _that_ is.
*as in PERIODS.
**this is what happens when you re-watch Big Love.
*** Big Love, again.
"things i have done regularly lately" was posted in the category djing and domesticity and fewd and fillums and gastropod and lindy hop and other dances and television and veronica mars
June 21, 2009
thinking about djing tactics and set structures
Posted by dogpossum on June 21, 2009 6:21 PM | Comments (1)
Thinking about DJing. Again.
Things I've noticed:
The less I dance, the poorer my DJing. I lose touch with what music 'works' for dancing. You can watch dancers and you can listen to music, but to really, truly know whether a song will work for dancing, you have to dance to it. I am at an obvious disadvantage here.
The less I dance, the more out of touch with tempos I become. This has manifested itself primarily in a) my determination to 'lift' tempos (which is getting a bit evangelical, I must admit), and b) my failure to properly work 'the wave', tempo-wise. I have instead been tending to sit between 150 and 170bpm, with sporadic trips up to 180 and 200 and >200 bpm. I need to remind myself that changing the average tempo a scene dances to cannot be achieved overnight or even over a few months; it can be achieved slowly, over a year and a large number of sets. It often requires parallel increases in tempos by teachers in classes. To assume that you will, single handedly 'change' a scene is also insufferably arrogant. Get over yourself.
Sitting/standing there DJing, watching the crowd, I forget that though they might actually be capable of 160bpm and higher, a room of dancers is a) mixed in experience, fitness, musical and dancing interests and energy, and b) only human. Working the wave - moving up and down tempos - is important for a number of reasons. It allows dancers to dance through or choose from a range of tempos. The fitter, younger types can dance every single song and relish the faster ones. The newer and less fit dancers can pick and choose, dropping in every second song yet still moving up and down the tempos (or even staying on the same tempos). Most importantly, this moving between tempos allows the DJ to really work the energy in the room. Though you can play an entire set on 155bpm, it will eventually feel a bit flat. The dancers mightn't pick the fact that every song's the same tempo (unless they're a DJ!), but their bodies and the general energy in the room will be affected.
The next set I do, then, I resolve to work the wave properly. I will begin at my 'floor' tempo (about 140bpm) and then move up and down - 140, 150, 160, 180, 200, 160, 140 etc. I will make the occasional abrupt change in order to work the energy in the room (eg 140, a high energy 150, 190, 160, 140, etc). I will also trust the dancers to get back up to 160; I won't be afraid to drop the tempos down, to get a low trough and then, more importantly, work our way way back up to higher tempos.
I think I also need to be careful of overplaying my new music. Just because you gots the new stuffs, don't mean you should play it all in one set. Right now I'm working on some stuff for a blooz set tonight. It's a very short set (45 minutes rather than 1.5 hours - reduced), so I have to be tactical. I can't really take a long, slow run up. I'll need to work the crowd properly from the get-go. I'm second DJ, so I do have a degree of leeway there: I'll be starting with a warm crowd. But I will have to work from where the previous DJ ends. Which I don't mind - I like having a starting place. I also like getting from something completely un-me to something typically me.
What I think I'll do (which I used to do), is get a few 'goal' songs - new or particularly interesting, or a specific style - and then put my set together (as I go of course - no pre-planned setlists here!) so as to reach these individual 'goal' songs, with each song moving smoothly between styles (or within a style) and moods. As opposed to trying to pack a set with 100% new and exciting songs. I have a feeling I'm becoming a bit of a stunt DJ, packing a set with 'riskier' songs, and not paying enough attention to my older faves or to crowd faves. This is actually a great departure from my earlier DJing, where I tended to overplay stuff to death. I am still overplaying things, but I tend to mix overplayed with brand-new-stunt songs, and, frankly, that smacks of the amateur.
I'll see how it goes and whether it's worth reporting back about.
"thinking about djing tactics and set structures" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 20, 2009
i love una mae carlisle
Posted by dogpossum on June 20, 2009 8:04 PM
and I always have. One of my very first 'jazz' albums was a crappy compilation of 'blues singers' and it featured a version of Blitzkrieg Baby by Una Mae Carlisle. I like her attitude. I like her voice. I like it that in her duet with Fats on 'I can't Give You Anything But Love' she gives as good as she gets from him. Checking out my emusic Chron Classics purchases in the discographies, I realised that she was playing with some seriously badass musicians, and that's no doubt why her recording seriously rock.
For those of you who've also bought stuff from emusic and don't have details (liner notes! want!), I've added what I have below. Musicians to look out for: Fats (of course), Zutty Singleton, John Kirby, Lester Young, Buster Bailey, Charlie Shavers, Ray Nance... and more! No wonder these recordings rock the kasbah!
Don't Try Your Jive On Me (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:52 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
I Would Do Anything For You (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:57 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Hangover Blues (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:52 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Love Walked In (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:38 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Mean To Me (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:40 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby (05-20-38) Una Mae Carlisle with Dave Wilkins, Bertie King, Alan Ferguson, Len Harrison, Hymie Schneider 1938 2:41 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby (11-03-39) Fats Waller and his Rhythm with Una Mae Carlisle 1939 2:57 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Now I Lay Me Down To Dream (08-02-40) Una Mae Carlisle with John Hamilton, Albert Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones 1940 3:05 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Papa's In Bed With His Britches On (08-02-40) Una Mae Carlisle with John Hamilton, Albert Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones 1940 2:42 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
If I Had You (08-02-40) Una Mae Carlisle with John Hamilton, Albert Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones 1940 3:27 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
You Made Me Love You (08-02-40) Una Mae Carlisle with John Hamilton, Albert Casey, Cedric Wallace, Slick Jones 1940 2:55 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Walkin' By The River (11-03-40) Una Mae Carlisle with Benny Carter, Everett Barksdale, Slam Stewart, Zutty Singleton 1940 3:05 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
I Met You Then, I Know You Now (11-03-40) Una Mae Carlisle with Benny Carter, Everett Barksdale, Slam Stewart, Zutty Singleton 1940 2:53 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Blitzkrieg Baby (03-10-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Shad Collins, Lester Young, Clyde Hart, John Collins, Nick Fenton, Hal West 1941 3:22 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Beautiful Eyes (03-10-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Shad Collins, Lester Young, Clyde Hart, John Collins, Nick Fenton, Hal West 1941 3:04 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
They'll Be Some Changes Made (03-10-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Shad Collins, Lester Young, Clyde Hart, John Collins, Nick Fenton, Hal West 1941 2:45 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
It's Sad But True (03-10-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Shad Collins, Lester Young, Clyde Hart, John Collins, Nick Fenton, Hal West 1941 3:31 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
I See A Million People (05-01-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1941 3:04 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Oh I'm Evil (05-01-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1941 2:25 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
You Mean So Much To Me (05-01-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1941 2:51 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
The Booglie Wooglie Piggy (05-01-41) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1941 2:42 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941
Don't Tetch It! (02-13-42) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1942 2:21 Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944
So Long, Shorty (02-13-42) Una Mae Carlisle with Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Billy Kyle, John Kirby, O'Neil Spencer 1942 2:30 Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944
Tain't Yours (05-23-44) Una Mae Carlisle with Ray Nance, Budd Johnson, Snags Allen, Bass Robinson, Shadow Wilson 1944 2:53 Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944
I'm A Good, Good, Woman (05-23-44) Una Mae Carlisle with Ray Nance, Budd Johnson, Snags Allen, Bass Robinson, Shadow Wilson 1944 2:50 Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944
I Like It, 'Cause I Love You (05-23-44) Una Mae Carlisle with Ray Nance, Budd Johnson, Snags Allen, Bass Robinson, Shadow Wilson 1944 3:06 Complete Jazz Series 1941 - 1944
"i love una mae carlisle" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
even more recent emusic adventures
Posted by dogpossum on June 20, 2009 6:35 PM | Comments (1)
Here, Trev - this is what I've been downloading from emusic lately.
Btw everyone else, if you're at all interested, then you can find me on emusic as dogpossum and check out exactly what I've been downloading.
Someone recommended Duke Heitger's Krazy Kapers on HeyMrJesse recently, and while I'll definitely pick that up at some point (you really should try JBM if you haven't - fabulous (really fabulous) range of music, delivered old-school, by snailmail), I went straight to emusic to see if I could get some instant satisfaction.
I found Rhythm Is Our Business by Duke Heitger And His Swing Band . Isn't that a scary here-comes-some-second-rate-neo! cover? But the album is actually quite good. I downloaded just one song - 'Murder he says' - because it's a strangely addictive version. I plan on DJing that tonight.
Here's the Betty Hutton version:
There is a Tori Amos version (from that crappy film 'Mona Lisa Smiles') but I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, it's the sort of shit you hear the odd DJ play at swing events. For which they will go to DJing hell.
At any rate, I'm into Duke Heitger, and will chase up more of his stuff. Basically, he's a badass trumpeter who's doing recreationist swing. That album is really quite good. As good (if not better) than people like the Campus Five.
He also has another album on emusic, The Rosehill Concerts. I prefer this one - the energy's a little hotter, and it's a live recording, which always lends itself to funner, higher energy... well, nearly always. I've downloaded a few good songs for blues dancing and a really nice version of 'Christopher Columbus', but I'm going to see how the 12-song deal on emusic goes. This album does rock, but many of the songs are quite long, which can be a bit of a challenge for DJing, especially when the tempos are higher.
So, Duke Heitger = good find. Thanks that guy on HeyMrJesse (I think it was Marcello, but I'm not sure).
I've also downloaded about a million versions of 'On Revival Day', because it's a truly fabulous song. Searching for these, I came across a bloke called Bob Howard. I picked a few songs from his 1937-1947 Chronological Classic. He sounds a bit like Fats Waller, but a little straighter and not quite as good.
The best version is the Bessie Smith one. She is the freakin' shizzle.
But I have a Jimmie Noone version I quite like from The Complete Recordings vol2 disc 3. This isn't the most amazing music in the world, but I really like Noone - I love his playing style. This one is 279bpm and a little too rough for DJing too often. The Bob Howard is a bit slower and a bit better.
Another version I picked up is by Carrie Smith from When You're Down and Out (a Definitive Black and Blue). This is a little closer to the overplayed Lavern Baker version (from the Bessie Smith tribute album), but it's a bit faster. I like Carrie Smith - she has a big, shouting voice. This version has the irresistible handclaps that make you want to dance like a fool. I also downloaded 'Nobody wants you when you're down and out' from that album for blues dancing. It's nice. Smith has a lovely voice and a really nice style. Reminds me a bit of Alberta Hunter, but her voice isn't as damaged and she doesn't mug quite as much (which is a bit of a relief - Hunter can get a bit much sometimes).
What was with my interest in 'Revival Day'? Well, I've taken to playing it after 'Lavender Coffin' sometimes when I'm DJing. It's not the best stylistic transition, but I like the whole 'jeeeeezus!' vibe. I usually play the Lavern Baker one, but it's a bit annoying and overplayed. I will move to the Carrie Smith one. Or the Bessie Smith, depending on the crowd and the vibe. Bessie Smith's is really the very best - she has the biggest, baddest badass voice.
And, finally, I got a bunch of stuffs from The Sidney Bechet Society Jam Session Concert album. Mostly things for blues dancing, though. This was another one I found via HeyMrJesse.
The wonderful thing about the latest HeyMrJesse show (June 2009) was that it featured bands from the recent Frankie95 weekend. Are we drooling, much? YES! Jesse is (as per usual) a bit heavy on the groovier, shufflier sound, but then, that's his cup of tea. There is some really lovely action in there, though, so have a peek. A trumpet solo on the version of 'Basin Street Blues' on the Bechet Society album just moved The Squeeze to a sort of frenzied loungeroom thrash-dance, so it has to be good.
EDIT: I have to add this one other album I discovered. I'd heard early Louis Prima was quite hot and good, but this was the first I'd actually sampled:
Louis Prima volume 1. I only grabbed a couple of songs, but I did get a sweet, uptempo vocal version of 'Chasing Shadows'. I also grabbed 'Swing Me With a Rhythm', but I might go back for more, because it's nice. Not the best music in the world, but fun.
"even more recent emusic adventures" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 16, 2009
swine flu and jazz
Posted by dogpossum on June 16, 2009 6:09 PM | Comments (3)
The weather is fairly shit (it's cold and rainy) and I've been ill with a craptastic cold since Friday, so spirits are low here at chateau de snot.
Today I finally felt a bit more normal and had managed to get a better night's sleep last night. This cold did impede my research, but it didn't stop me sewing yesterday. Not sewing terribly well I discovered today, but yesterday I took a lot of care and time to make a skirt that's kind of mutant and a collared shirt that's... well, let's just say interesting. I am trying to get better at making collared shirts with set-in sleeves. I haven't sewn anything in about six months, so it's all a bit challenging. But sewing's not really all that complicated, and it's difficult to forget how to do it. I have made one white collared shirt so far, and it's a bit bung. The problem really is the colour. I look really, really bad in white, and this style really doesn't suit me - too much white fabric and too much shoulder-structure-action. Ah, well. I'll have another bash tomorrow.
Being ill in our noisy house has finally convinced me that we probably should move somewhere quieter and on a quieter street. The Squeeze is agreed: quieter house would be good. But our house is large and has a garden and is renovated. So it'll be a smaller (and probably crapper) quieter flat. The thought of moving is anxiety-inducing, of course, but it'll be worth it for the chance at better nights' sleep, uninterrupted by loud trucks. So I'll start looking into that this week. Sigh.
We're off to Tasmania for Devil City Swing on Monday, going a bit earlier so we can have a bit of a non-dance related holiday. I'm looking forward to just being away. There's some dancing involved, but no major sets (one band breaks night - blurgh - and one late night - the first of the night, so not a terribly great spot). I'm sucking it up, though, as it means I'll be able to go home earlier on the early night and the band breaks set is the DJ version of community service, I've decided. I'm still packing injury, having overdone it a bit with the cranky poo last week, so no - or very, very little - dancing for me over the weekend. Good thing the DCS exchange is not a hard-dancing event - there'll be lots of people to talk to. And, if I play my cards right, plenty of little bubbies to squeeze (Hobart dancers tend to bring their bubs to dances - can I get an amen?!).
On other, DJ related fronts, I have a lindy set on Saturday night at the Roxbury, which I'm hoping will be as fun as the previous weekend, which was a big night. It was the Friday of a long weekend, though, so I can't really expect the same size crowd. And I did have a bit of a crappy technical experience (wtf's new about that? I have decided I suck with technical stuff - must get my learn on IMMEDIATELY to rectify this). But I am looking forward to it. I'm also down for a blues night on Sunday, which'll be good as there're blues workshops on that weekend. This week is also balboa week at the Bald Face Stag (urkiest venue ever), but I haven't heard back about that. I'm up for the challenge though: one day I will be a badass balboa DJ.
I am, as a consequence, trying to get on top of my music so I can play some decent sets in the coming week. There'll be at least four of them, possibly five, in all the major dance styles, I'm going to need to have mad skillz and a clue about my entire collection. I do have some lovely new things from emusic, though, which is always exciting. I've also sorted out my technical problems (knock on wood), so things should be a bit smoother. A visit to Hobart does mean, however, a trip to the best music shop in the country:
Music Without Frontiers
147 Collins St, Hobart, TAS 7000
p: (03) 6231 5411
It does not have a website. It's also very tiny. And it has the best range of jazz I've ever seen in a real, live shop. And its divided into 'nostalgia', 'classic' and 'bop', then with a separate section for blues (subdivided into jump blues and trad blues). Then that side of the shop moves into soul and funk. It's an absolutely fabulous collection. I've been there a million times, but I've never quite gotten to the other 3 racks of CDs. It carries _everything_: opera, country, alt., pop, etc. EVERYTHING. And the guy knows everything about each CD. He's also a bit loopy, but then, you'd have to be. And he's just had to deal with the opening of a JB HiFi, which sucks arses. He needs a website. He always cuts me a deal on my CDs, and is very occasionally patient when I want to preview stuff. I spend a few hundred bucks there each visit, and I see him about two times a year. And every CD I've bought from him has been really amazingly great. More expensive than the internets, but then I'm buying from a real person, the only person in a small city who bothers to bring quality music to the people, regardless of label or fad.
On a slightly related front, emusic has decided to fucking FAIL me just as I was getting seriously addicted. Those of you who have accounts will know that they've decided to carry Sony products. This means that they're increasing prices (by a really big amount) and also limiting access only to people who are in the US or Europe. Unless you already have an account with them. This means that my 50 songs per month account, which cost me about $14.99 will now only get me 35 songs per month for the same price. There will also be - apparently - '<12 song album deals', where you can download an entire album for the price of 12 songs. But only on select albums. This is actually a super bargain for me, as most jazz albums (especially the older ones) are around 20 songs. But let's just wait and see which albums will be marked for the deal. I wish I'd downloaded all the Chron Classics I'd had my eye on; now they'll be far more expensive and less awesome a find. It's all a big shit, really. I've been expanding my musical purchases with emusic, particularly in terms of shopping outside jazz and blues, and in buying music from indy labels. I'll wait and see how the 12song deal goes, but I think I might ditch my emusic subscription for buying CDs from amazon or downloads and CDs from places like CDbaby.
There are far more interesting and coherent posts about the emusic changes over at flopearedmule here and here.
And I'm finally going to get my arse over to a Sydney Jazz Club gig to see some live music. Watching George Washingmachine at the recent Darling Harbour Jazz Fest (which wasn't terribly great - stage FAIL) I was reminded of the awesome musicians in this town. None of whom we see at lindy hop gigs. But I'm going to get it together and go check out some of the hot shit in this town:
The Bechet Night: Bridge City Jazz Band - David Ridyard, Frank Watts & Nesta Davies
Friday 19th June 7:30pm
Club Ashfield - 9798 6344
Note the glorious venue: Club Ashfield. The worst freakin' part of Sydney is the RSL/club/gambling culture. Pubs here SUCK ARSE, in part because they are so dependent on pokies and gambling for revenue. Liquour licenses are expensive, and it's not really possible for little pubs to get by without pokies. There's not the same community pub culture in Sydney as in Melbourne. This is a very great shame.
But I'm interested in the music. So I'll go check it out. Anyone in the neighbourhood is welcome to join The Squeeze and I. We will not be dining in, but instead getting our noodle on in the main drag of Ashfield, which is a gastronomic universe away from the Ashfield Club. Possibly not a universe we should be occupying. Or even visiting (Gotgastro.com offers a disturbing amount of evidence).
I'm also planning on going to see the Ozcats (legends of Australian jazz) on July 31 at the Drummoyne RSL.
I have to pause at this point and say:
GET A FREAKIN WEBSITE.
And, please, not one with comic sans. Man, jazznicks are crap at internet. I feel like hiring myself out to them, if only to save myself the pain of reading their websites or having to try and find a paper jazz newsletter so I can learn about them. These guys are _so_ into social media, but the sort of social media that involve paper and nannas talking hardcore at the bar.
I am also considering a trip to the Newcastle Jazz Festival (28th-30th August). The names on the program are pretty good, but mostly, I'm thinking about a fabulous hostel I stayed at in Newcastle years ago. It's an old, converted mansion on the beach and was just about the most fabulous hostel I've ever stayed in (this one, I think).
I am a big fat jazz nerd. But at least my shirts are interesting.
"swine flu and jazz" was posted in the category djing and domesticity and lindy hop and other dances and music
June 8, 2009
MORE freakin' cranky poo?!
Posted by dogpossum on June 8, 2009 2:16 PM | Comments (0)
Yes, you bitches.
Because I am back in the dancing game, my friends. The podiatrist has given me permission to start getting back into dancing. Which means a long, slow building up of stamina and strength. Two dances every second day. That's 10 minutes of dancing every second day. I have, of course, broken that rule. I did mean to do just thirty minutes the other day, but it became an hour. Two days later, another hour. Then two days later, 2 songs worth dance, then 1.5 hours of DJing, then about 45 minutes of mucking about. And I hurt the next day. But not in a crippling you've-fucked-up way (but jeez, is dancing fitness-requiring; I have zero dance fitness, and cycling is nothing compared to lindy hop!)
Today is rest day, and then I'll have a look at more slow-building work this week. With the Cranky Poo, of course.
"MORE freakin' cranky poo?!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
June 4, 2009
my current lindy hop interests include...
Posted by dogpossum on June 4, 2009 1:44 PM | Comments (5)
I am currently really enjoying Bethany and Stefan, two lindy hoppers who've eschewed the current trend for pointy-toed high-steppin' pony follows and cock-rock leads. Is that too harsh a dismissal of what I'm seeing in a lot of lindy these days? I think not.
But, here, let me show you what Bethany and Stefan are doing:
That's them competing in the ILHC in 2008. That's the first I'd seen of them (that I can remember). It's unusual stuff. Why? Well, for a start, the songs they choose aren't your standard classic swing action. They favour less well known versions of songs which lean towards vocalese, well, eccentric renditions. Their dancing is similarly unusual. Though we see an awful lot of Bethany's knickers, this display isn't as coy or barbie-pony as some of the other knicker action I've seen around the place. They also tend to favour interesting jazz steps, often doing far more 'solo' stuff (together) than they do 'lindy hop'. This, of course, delights me: lindy hop is built for this.
But what else have they done?
That is their more recent routine, from Frankiefest. Again, it's unusual. They look a little nervous (well, you would - there were zillions of dancers in the audience and they were onstage with the biggest names in lindy hop), but they seriously rock. I'm really enjoying Bethany's swivels - no pointy toed prancing pony swivels here; she's seriously grounded.
I have to say, I do like their lack of vintage clobber. He looks like Dr Who (circa Tennant), she looks like an indy kid... well, I guess she is. No silly high heels here, either - she's badass.
This next one is them in 2007:
I think that though I really like Bethany's style (take that, patriarchy - we've got other things to think about), I also like the way Stefan works with her style. He's just as unusual and skilled, it's just that we're not seeing his undies.
This is the sort of lindy hop I'm digging these days. Oh, as well as the Hot Shots and the olden days doods.
"my current lindy hop interests include..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
more jazz maps
Posted by dogpossum on June 4, 2009 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
This site has a series of maps of Chicago listing jazz clubs. I haven't had a chance to look through it carefully, yet, but I think I'm going to go back and read it in tandem with the Kenney article (Kenney, William Howland. “Historical Context and the Definition of Jazz: Putting More of the History in ‘Jazz History’â€. Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 100-116.) where he talks about black and white owned clubs.
One of the things I've noticed in all this talk of jazz history is the importance of walking and listening to the world around you. There're plenty of stories of journeymen musicians standing outside clubs listening to their heroes play, or of 'music in the streets'. Can't hear any of that action if you're driving a car, right? This has made me think about urban planning and community and how important a walkable city was to the development of jazz as community practice... not to mention dance in everyday life.
"more jazz maps" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and maps and music and research
June 3, 2009
pssf - want
Posted by dogpossum on June 3, 2009 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
Squillions upon squillions (literally - there are thousands and thousands of Korean lindy hoppers!) of excellently fun lindy hoppers, all in one city!
"pssf - want" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 28, 2009
all the single ladies!
Posted by dogpossum on May 28, 2009 8:34 PM | Comments (2)
There's been a bit of talk about gender and roles in swing on twitter today. As you might expect, there are some teachers who don't approve of men following and women leading, and then there are some (fully sick) teachers who do approve.
I'm a bit iffy about some 'girls routines' and 'boys routines' getting about. But these have reminded me of their awesomeness.
Know Beyonce's clip for 'Single Ladies'?
Well, these lads really know it:
(They do it here too, bringing it a little more... bet it's a queer crowd...)
"all the single ladies!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 25, 2009
happy birthday frankie!
Posted by dogpossum on May 25, 2009 6:05 PM | Comments (1)
As many of you know, Frankie Manning passed away a couple of weeks before the massive Frankiefest week of celebrations for his 95th birthday. The saddest of news, and yet, probably saddest because Frankie'd be crawling with jealousy that thousands of dancers are enjoying his party without him.
But even those of us who couldn't get to New York are thinking of him. And watching clips that make us cry and cheer out loud:
"happy birthday frankie!" was posted in the category cat blogging and lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie
carol ralph
Posted by dogpossum on May 25, 2009 3:36 PM | Comments (1)
As soon as I posted that last post, I thought of Carol Ralph, an Australian singer (who totally PWNS - I thoroughly recommend her CD). I don't know Carol's background, and I feel uncomfortable writing about it. But she doesn't read 'black' or 'white'. I think I need to read a whole lot more about issues of ethnicity in Australia. I know I need to read more about whiteness-as-ethnicity.
That's a photo by my friend Scott, who's photography has improved so dramatically since November I was just stunned as I flipped through his pics looking for this one just now. In fact, his photos are just gorgeous - I like the way his photos of friends and of people he knows reveal the way he feels about them. They're very affectionate and often quite lovely photos.
Here's another of two lovely Melbourne leads:
It's funny, but I feel very strange writing about ethnicity in relation to this photo. These are my friends, and people I do not want to reduce to example of multiculturalism in swing dance. I want to tell you what it's like to dance with them, about how one of them makes films, and how the other is a lovey and one of my favourite stunt buddies. Ethnicity is important and part of who they and I are, but I don't think I have the language tools to talk about it in a way that does what I want. This, of course, was the difficult part of my dissertation. How to write about my own community, my own friends, myself, in a way that's respectful and yet also thoughtful and cognisant of these sorts of issues.
So I think I'll just end this post with another huzzah for Scott's photos (and the fact that he can make me feel all fuzzy inside looking at this lovely photo of my friends), and the recommendation that if you ever get the chance, you must dance with these boys. Or at least buy them a beer.
"carol ralph" was posted in the category clicky and lindy hop and other dances and music
pop culture, jazz and ethnicity.
Posted by dogpossum on May 25, 2009 2:43 PM | Comments (2)
NB: I've done some edits on this post for the shocking grammar/mistypes. Apologies.
In the 1930s and 40s - most particularly the 40s - jazz was mainstream music. It was popular. Though it had been discussed in a range of specialist magazines and periodicals (including Down Beat and Metronome) for years, the mid-40s saw mainstream publications like Life, Look and the men's magazine Esquire publishing stories and photos about jazz and hiring writers to produce jazz reviews. I think it's worth noting the point that Esquire was a men's magazine, that almost all the jazz promoters and managers were men, and that almost all jazz instrumentalists were male.
(Norman Granz from the Verve site)
This mainstreaming of jazz is interesting. It was also a challenge for jazz afficianados who were committed to raising the profile and status of jazz musicians as artists. Reading about Norman Granz, I've come across this discussion:
Beginning with the first jam sessions he organized and extending through two decades of JATP concerts, tours, and records, Granz applied three rules. The musicians he hired would be paid well; there would be no dancing at his events; and there could be no segregation on either the bandstand or in the audiences. The first of these rules responded to exploitative club owners and promoters. The second institutionalized a trend that was already familiar from other attempts to establish jazz as an art, a concert music. The third rule was most important, because it recognized the limitations of previous efforts to mix the look of jazz- efforts that had relied on an optimistic trickle-down theory of cultural-social change. Granz’s third rule attempted to ensure consumption as an act of resistance to racist conventions; it tried to direct attention both to the relation of individual consumers to the producers of the music they consumed and to the relations between individual, and perhaps different consumers of the same musical product (26).
It's interesting to see how Granz's efforts to raise the status of jazz as art coincided with his anti-segregation and anti-racism efforts. The popular served as 'low' culture, and low culture is where black musicians were situated. It's this equating of segregation with popular culture which I find really interesting. I'm also paying attention to the way jazz is 'artified' by various discourses.
Today jazz in Australia has been thoroughly canonised, stuffed into the 'elite' or 'art' category. It is not popular music. 'Modern' jazz is 'difficult art', 'classic jazz' is daggy and something for old white people. The issue of race works in a different way: there are no black artists in the jazz bands I see at Australian dances, besides the occasional female singer. This is in part because Australian multiculturalism works in a different way to American. But I also think that these efforts to 'artify' jazz has effectively distanced it from anyone other than white musicians and white jazznick fans.
This is just a first thought, so please don't take it as any final argument or position. But it's making me wonder about ethnicity and class in Australian jazz. We were, after all, segregated as well. And we did have a White Australia immigration policy. I haven't begun any work on Australian jazz, but I'm wondering how the contemporary jazz landscape looks, in terms of race and gender?
It's also important to note that there's a general undercurrent in much of the critical work on jazz that I'm reading (critical in the 'theorised' sense rather than 'reviewing records' sense) that bebop was far more challenging and engaged with race politics in America than swing. There's also some provocative stuff about masculinity and black masculinity in the literature on bebop).
(another Gjon Mili photo from his Life magazine series)
Additionally, I'm noticing that the 'jam session' is acquiring mythic status throughout all the jazz literature. This is where jazz musicians (regardless of colour or class) could come together and just play, for hours or days, in 'safe' clubs or back rooms. The implication is of course that in jam sessions musicians were 'free' and in staged performances they were 'caged' by social convention.
My spidey sense is tingling. If these jam sessions were so free and liberal, where are the sisters? Who's home looking after the kids or grandmothers so these uncaged tigers can jam the blues all night? You know, of course, that this brings us back to the role of gender in jazz, and in jazz journalism. And to my central research interest: the relationship between different media within a community... or in constructing community.
Knight, Arthur, “Jammin’ the Blues: or the Sight of Jazz, 1944â€. Representing Jazz, ed. Krin Gabbard. Duke U Press: Durham and London, 1995. 11-53.
An earlier post on magazines and jazz
An even earlier post on magazines, jazz and masculinity
"pop culture, jazz and ethnicity." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music and research
May 23, 2009
last night
Posted by dogpossum on May 23, 2009 3:32 PM | Comments (0)
Last night I danced a few dances. About four in total, with a (poorly executed) big apple. I'm not sure today!
Noticed:
- dancing is freakin' hardcore exercise.
- I have no dance fitness.
- my dance muscles (including all of the ones in my thighs) are not ready for hardcore dancing just yet.
- dancing is the best.
I also livetweeted my DJing. Meh.
"last night" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances
May 22, 2009
djing for balboa... again, and not terribly well
Posted by dogpossum on May 22, 2009 1:52 PM
Last night I DJed for balboa dancers again. That makes three times, ever. I'm not sure I'm much good at it. I can't quite figure out what they like and whether they're really into the stuff I'm playing. They're very kind and thank me for my DJing, but I'm not quite sure I'm cutting it. There are a few challenges: I don't dance balboa very often and I've never attended a hardcore all-bal weekend or event. I don't lead bal very often at all, and I don't really understand the way balboa dancers use space or the music, so I'm not so good at reading the floor - it all looks small and tight and lowenergy to me. Because I don't go to balboa dancers, I have no idea which songs are 'popular' or favourites, so I have no careful 'safety song' list.
So far I've noticed they like: 'Jive at Five' - Basie (1939). Ellington's 'Rockin' In Rhythm' (1931) went down well last night, as did some Katharine Whalen (Just You Just Me). Mora's Modern Rhythmists' 'Tar Paper Stomp' has gone down well in the past, so I tested them with Wingy Manone's 'Jumpy Nerves' (1939). I've talked about all the songs that use the 'In The Mood' riff before, and 'Jumpy Nerves' is just one of them. It's a nice little song - it doesn't feel rough and fast or aggressive. It's about 177bpm, but it feels mellow. The familiar riff often makes people feel a bit more comfortable as well.
I also did a little shark jumping, playing some Bob Wills. I love 'Stay A Little Longer', but I'm fairly sure it won't work for lindy hop. It's solid western swing, and the the rhythms don't quite work for 8 count lindy. I was wondering if balboa dancers could do something with it. Well, people really liked the song (once they got over mocking me for the hardcore western-ness of it), but they did find it tricky to dance to. I don't know if I'll play it again.
I think part of my problem with DJing for bal dancers is that I've not seen lots of very experienced bal dancers social dancing. I'm thinking of the international doods who dance bal hardcore. I've not sat and watched a crowd of them dancing all weekend. Nor have I listened to a weekend's worth of music. So I have no clue about the 'elite' bal scene (ie, I have no idea of what to aim for). I don't know much about the history of the dance, either.
Look, here's a clip of two very famous olden days balboa dancers, Hal and Betty Takier. The 'balboa' bits are usually recognised as the stuff in closed. But bal isn't necessarily all in closed position unless it's (to use the nomenclature but not to imply any 'rules') 'pure bal':
I have done a bit of research and asked a lot of questions, but all I really 'know' is that bal developed during the 30s and continued. As with lindy hoppers, there was a preference for big bands (which I suspect was a consequence of local culture - big ballrooms (where most people danced) hired big bands to fill big spaces, and because big bands were mega popular). Swing was super popular in the 30s and early to mid 40s, and the 'dixie' sound of 20s New Orleans was considered a bit naff - sort of 'old news' - though it was popular withe NO revivalists. By the 40s bebop was developing and live music culture was changing a bit. All this means is that there were lots of things going on in the 30s and 40s, musically. And we can infer that this meant some of it was popular with some people. I suspect then, as now, there were different patterns of taste and influence, depending on the age, interests, location, class and so on of individual dancers and small pockets of dancers.
What do balboa camps or events in the US look like?
Asking people overseas, watching clips of famous bal dancers and hassling visiting dancers or well-traveled dancers isn't all that helpful either, really. While such and such might be very popular in LA at the moment, each local scene has different musical tastes. These are shaped by a range of factors a) the music teachers play in class, b) what teachers say about music in class, c) what local DJs are playing, d) dancers' exposure to different tempos and styles - what they hear in all these spaces - and whether they've danced to these different songs. The usual ideas apply to tempos - more experienced dancers are better equipped for dealing with (and enjoying) a wider range of tempos and musical complexity. New dancers are often happy to dance to anything, but they can feel too intimidated to try something fast if they're not dancing with someone they feel comfortable with.
So while I might be thinking 'I'll play X, because my friends overseas love it, I've seen it in dance clips from comps, so I'm assuming locals have also watched these clips and are into it too,' it's more likely that a small class group will only have heard music from their classes. The strongest influences on local music tastes are still teachers, particularly for dancers who spend most of their dancing time during the week at classes. This is particularly true of students with the local McDonalds dance school - I've noticed it in Melbourne, and here in Sydney, that their musical tastes are largely homogenous, mostly because their teachers tend also to look within their school for musical tastes and dancing influences. Which isn't really surprising - we do tend to keep to our peer groups and to the opinions and examples of people we admire and have contact with. Thing is, my knowledge of balboa and music for dancing to balboa is so limited that I don't even know what's 'cool' with this small group of local dancers.
I don't want to slag off the local bal teachers, mind you. I've always found bal dancers and teachers to be particularly welcoming people, and to be very supportive of my DJing (far more than lindy hoppers) and also to be most prepared to experiment with new music and new dancing ideas. Part of me, though, suspects that the small, specialist/fanatics pond which encourages such a nice, friendly and supportive culture also inhibits a broader overview of music and dancing styles. But I also suspect that idea is bullshit: often the most hardcore fans have the most hardcore knowledge of the object of their fanaticism. And balboa - as with blues to some degree - is pretty specialist in Sydney and Australia. These dancers are also disproportionately well-traveled; many of them travel overseas to balboa festivals.
Of course, the easiest solution to my balboa DJing quandary is to get out there and dance some freakin' balboa. But there are a couple of impediments here: my injured foot is in no way ready for hardcore balboa learning and dancing, and I'm just not that into dancing bal. If I had to choose between bal and lindy, I'd choose lindy every time. And because my dancing is so limited (as in non-existent) these days, I can't imagine 'wasting' a dancing opportunity on bal. In fact, if I had to choose between lindy, bal or jazz these days, I'd be 100% jazz; I just find it most interesting and challenging.
All this just goes to show that to be an excellent DJ for dancers you have to:
a) dance the dance they're into, and dance it frequently;
b) travel a lot - as a dancer and DJ - and pay attention to the music and dancing you see going on around you;
c) learn a lot - watch video clips, read about music and dance, eavesdrop on discussion boards and take classes;
d) keep your finger on the local community pulse; just cause it's cool in the US, doesn't mean it'll fly in Sydney;
e) make changes slowly and gradually, don't assume you can just drop in and change dancers' worlds;
f) be prepared to be wrong most of the time. Keep your eyes and ears open, and be prepared to change your opinions and ideas about DJing as you DJ;
g) accept that though there's some underlying logic and some consistencies in how people respond to music and how you can manipulate the responses of a crowd, at the end of the day, you have to stop thinking and just go with your instincts and feel what's going down. Just like dancing.
I'm enjoying learning how to DJ for balboa dancers because it is so challenging. It's making me rethink everything I've assumed about musical tastes and dancer/DJ responses.
Right now I'm working with these assumptions:
a) Bal dancers in Sydney are more comfortable with a range of tempos than local lindy hoppers are: bal doods are happy in the 160-250bpm range, and will happily have a bash at anything faster. Lindy hoppers in Sydney are most comfortable in the 120-160bpm range, though they will stretch if you're sneaky and take care to not overwork their energy/fitness (hopefully we'll see an increase in tempos, but only if teachers in class get the tempos above 115!!).
b) Bal dancers can work with lowenergy/high tempo combinations, but lindy hoppers have more trouble (I find experienced dancers are ok, but newer dancers need to be fired up with higher energy to work with higher tempos... but that could just be how I work as a DJ; the theory needs wider testing).
c) Bal dancers are more interested in the type of music I currently love - early 30s stuff. They like a variety (as most rooms full of diverse people do), but they're interested in exploring this earlier stuff. Most of this earlier stuff is a bit faster, so they're happy with the stuff play.
d) Some stuff just screams 'lindy hop!' But I'm not quite sure where the line is - when something stops being bal and screams lindy hop. I suspect it's entirely subjective. But I'm also fairly sure it has something to do with the rhythms and the horizontal feel of the music. I can't really explain that further beyond a feeling that bal feels more like early swing and hot jazz than like later swing that's super swingy. I could be wrong there, but I just don't have the experience to judge that yet.
Anyways, here's the set I played last night. It was a small crowd, with only about six leads to about twelve follows. It was a small, after class gig (and people've been dancing and learning intensely for a couple of hours already), so the emphasis was on 'practicing', low-stress dancing, socialising and touching base with people. After-class gigs also have a stronger focus on the teachers and a group of people who know each other quite well, so the social dynamic is a bit different to a general en masse social dance. It's a pub venue, so people are also buying drinks and drinking. The sound system is decent, the floor is small.
(title artist bpm album length)
I've Got To Think It Over Willie 'The Lion' Smith and his Cubs 164 Willie 'The Lion' Smith And His Cubs 2:37
Call Me A Taxi Four Of The Bob Cats 175 1938 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:13
The Wedding Samba Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 187 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:30
Flying Home Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian 167 1940 Charlie Christian: The Genius of The Electric Guitar (disc 1) 3:16
You'll Wind Up On Top Bus Moten and his Men 182 1949 Kansas City - Jumping The Blues From 6 To 6 2:47
We're Muggin' Lightly Leo Mathisen's Orkester 227 1942 Leo Mathiesen 1942-43 Terrific Rhythm 3:03
Jive At Five Count Basie and his Orchestra 174 1939 The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 03) 2:51
Jumpy Nerves Wingy Manone and his Orchestra with Chu Berry 177 1939 Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions (Disc 5) 2:53
The Mayor Of Alabam' Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra with Jack Teagarden 206 1936 King Of The Blues Trombone - 2 3:14
Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Part 1 Benny Goodman Quartet with Martha Tilton 176 1937 RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (Disc 2) 3:27
Just You, Just Me Katharine Whalen 181 1999 Jazz Squad 3:22
Stay A Little Longer Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys 232 The Tiffany Transcriptions (vol 2) 3:07
Let's Misbehave Boilermaker Jazz Band 196 2006 You Do Something To Me 2:52
Zonky New Orleans Jazz Vipers 203 2006 Hope You're Comin' Back 5:06
Minor Swing Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five 202 2003 Jammin' the Blues 3:24
My Blue Heaven Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 170 1935 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 3:16
Rockin' In Rhythm - Take 2 The Jungle Band with Duke Ellington 190 1931 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 05) 2:53
Twenty Four Robbers Fats Waller and his Rhythm 196 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 2:43
Charlie the Chulo - Take 2 Duke Ellington 225 1940 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) 3:10
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 3:09
Honeysuckle Rose Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys 180 The Tiffany Transcriptions (vol 7) 2:12
As you can see, I have - once again - some music without dates. Back to the discographies. I find I'm having to go in there regularly to update my collection. I could just pay for a subscription, but I quite like visiting the library - free student shows in the cafeteria or in the concert hall, books, vinyl collections to raid, human beings to meet, and it's right near the FREAKIN' OPERA HOUSE in circular quay. Win!
I am currently obsessed with Willie the Lion Smith. He didn't head up too many bands, but he was an important pianist in lots of other people's bands. I'm also coming out of a Bob Crosby fad. More NO revival stuff, but it's sweet. I need to see the Australian Bob Crosby 'tribute band' the Ozcats real soon, so I can compare. Those two Crosby songs are quite different in sound and style, so they don't sound too 'samey'.
That Benny Goodman small group stuff is very popular with balboa dancers, I've noticed. The teachers played some in class, and I've heard other Australian bal DJs/teachers talking about it. I'm suspecting it's perhaps a fad; I love it and think it's marvelously complex, but it can be a bit lower energy. I prefer Willie The Lion Smith for that sort of feel, partly because he's higher energy. At any rate, that particular song is a V-Disc recording. Or so Benny Goodman says in the intro. But the wikipedia entry says that VDiscs weren't started until 1941, so either the date on that recording is wrong (which is from a large, fancy Charlie Christian boxset who's accuracy I hesitate to question) or the wikipedia entry is wrong. Whatever. I like the live intro. This song was played in class and drew people onto the floor immediately.
I love Bus Moten. I play a few of his slower songs for lindy hoppers a lot. This song has a lovely, cheery feel and feels nice and bouncy. Bus' vocal style is mellow and laid back, and he has quite a nice, light voice. The lyrics are way dirty, but you can just pretend he's singing about ... well, something else. People liked the song. I haven't played this for dancers before.
I love that Mathisen song. I haven't played it for dancers before. Mathisen is a Danish pianist who sounds like Fats Waller. This song starts out sounding a bit like Goodman - kind of tinkly and 'chamber jazz', but it has a bit of an edge and is a little hotter. A minute in the vocals begin, and the tone changes completely - it feels hot and more like Fats Waller with lots of silly chuntering vocals that actually feel wonderfully rhythmic rather than obscuring or impeding the beat. Some of the lower sax parts remind me of MBRB and that brand of New York early 30s hotness. Though Mathisen is a pianist, the song doesn't focus on his playing the way Fats' recordings tend to.
I don't know if this worked for balboa dancers. I think I'll test it on lindy hoppers. I know I'd love to lindy hop to it.
'Jive At Five' is a safety song, and filled the floor again after that last, faster song. It also feels laid back. It's an old favourite with most lindy hoppers who've been around a while. It makes me think of Frankie Manning.
'Jumpy Nerves' I've discussed above. It was a nice transition from the mellow JaF, and kept the mellower vibe that's quite important for smaller after-class gigs I've noticed.
I freakin' LOVE 'Mayor Of Alabam''. It's the combo of Teagarden vocals (he's my MAN), the bouncy, sprightly rhythm and melody. Another example of vocals working with the rhythms rather than drowning out or obscuring the beat.
'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen' is an old bal fave from Melbourne. I love this version for Martha Tilton's vocals and the laid back, slightly minor treatment by the rest of the band. It builds and builds energy but doesn't quite explode. It's a good builder to follow with a high energy song. Also, it's a good version of a song which is overplayed in a poorer, horrible version.
The Katharine Whalen song was a strange choice for me. I'd listened to it in the afternoon and thought it might work for bal, whereas it's not so great for lindy. This is, essentially, the Squirrel Nut Zippers (some of whom are in the Asylum Street Spankers and the Firecracker Jazz Band). I chose it for the good, hi-fi quality, the chunky beat and Whalen's vocals to follow on from Tilton's (Whalen's a bit like Madeline Peryoux, but BETTER). I wanted to pump up the energy, and hi-fi is a good way to go. I was priming the room for the Bob Wills song, which is high energy, but perhaps too tricky for bal.
Then the Boilermakers as a 'recovery' song - they're popular in Sydney and the sort of music people've been dancing to bal to in Melbourne... not sure it works for this crowd, though.
'Zonky' was perhaps a mistake. I was flogging a dead horse - too much of the same, hi-fi, hot stuff. It's too long a song, too. But I love it and didn't think people could hack the McKinney's Cotton Pickers' version. Also, I was talking and not 100% focussed.
'Minor Swing' is a bal fave and was a calculated floor filler.
'My Blue Heaven' because people were getting tired, but still wanted to dance. This is a good song, but the vocals aren't properly mixed - the rest of the band goes really quiet, which sucks. Otherwise, it's quite mellow and nice, and people know the melody.
'Rockin' in Rhythm' is the fushiz. I love this sort of Ellington stuff. It went down ok, but people were kind of over hardcore dancing by then, and the leads were buggered.
The Fats song is quite well known, and someone requested some Waller. Which wasn't hard to accommodate.
'Charlie The Chulo' is my passion. I keep coming back to it. I don't think it's so great for lindy hop (though I've seen some great dancing to it). I thought I'd test it on the bal dancers. But perhaps it was too full on for too late in the night. Some people liked it.
The last two were really just fillers til we ended the night. An early night at 10.20pm, but an hour's worth of DJing was really all I was up for. I love 'Stomp It Off' and it always goes down well with dancers. People liked that version of 'Honeysuckle Rose' as well. It's a dancers' fave, but I never play it, ever, mostly because I HATE that late Ella version with all the scatting. This Wills one is nicer. Though I did get more ribbing for the western guitar.
Then I rode home. I love riding to and from DJing in Leichardt - it's a quick, 15minute ride on a safe route, and it gets me warmed up for DJing and then lets me work out my post-DJing excitement on the way home. I managed to dodge the rain last night and had a lovely ride home in the cool, quiet evening. Sydney rainy season rocks: it's not bitterly cold and windy as it would be in Melbourne on these sorts of days.
Generally, it's a set of music I really like, but I think there's a bit too much experimentation in there. I really DJ bal like a complete bub DJ who's a new dancer - I just don't know what's 'familiar' and 'safe', I try too many 'new' songs that I love and which don't necessarily work for dancing. But they ask me back for DJing, so I mustn't suck that much.
If you're interested, here are a couple of bal clips I quite like:
AnneHelene and Bernard 2006 Bal Rendezvous. I like this couple's dancing. They're French, and very nice people. I really like his relaxed, fluid upper body. A lot of bal leads (who happen to be men) tend to carry way too much tension in their upper body, so they look stiff and uncomfortable to dance with. I don't know how to just the quality of this couple's dancing, but I like his relaxed, flowing style. It makes me want to dance balboa.
Marcus and Barbl in 2003. An oldie but a goody. They stuff up a few times, but I don't mind. No one can strut like a camp German man with a moustache.
"djing for balboa... again, and not terribly well" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
May 21, 2009
jam session photography
Posted by dogpossum on May 21, 2009 2:41 PM | Comments (0)
Remember I was all interested in magazines and their interest in 'all-star' shows and bands? Well, I've been reading* about Gjon Mili, who directed 'Jammin' the Blues':
(I think this version is edited down... but I'm not sure)
Seen that one? Maybe you haven't seen this one:
Here's the blurb from the youtube site:
Life Magazine photographer Gjon Mili joined with jazz producer and Verve-label owner Norman Granz to produce the short film "Jammin' the Blues" in 1944 with Lester Young, Red Callendar, Harry Edison, "Big" Sid Catlett, Illinois Jacquet, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones and Marie Bryant. The film was nominated for Best Short Subject at the 1945 Academy Awards, but didn't win.The pair came together again in 1950 to shoot footage of leading jazz artists of the day, but when funding dried up, the film ceased production and sat on shelves for 50 years (except for a few snippets which found their way onto bootlegs).
Blues For Greasy is one of those pieces shot by Gjon Mili and Norman Granz, using musicians from his Jazz at the Philharmonic tour.
Harry 'Sweets' Edison: trumpet
Lester Young: Tenor Sax
Flip Phillips: Tenor Sax
Bill Harris: Trombone
Hank Jones: Piano
Ray Brown: Bass
Buddy Rich: Drums
Ella Fitzgerald: Vocals
Isn't Youtube wonderful?
But then, Google is pretty good too:
Gjon Mili was actually a photographer, who did lots of work with magazines like Life. He also did some work for Esquire, including a 'Jam Session' shoot at his studio. And because the internets is truly freakin' awesome, I had a little look at the Life photos on Google and found this freakin amazing collection of photos.
What's so great about this series? Lots of things. The sheer calibre of stars, all together in one room, playing jazz. Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday, Eddie Condon... there are just so many amazing musicians in there together. One of the other important things to note about this session is the fact that this is a group of mixed race musicians, playing and photographed together. That was still pretty amazing in 1943.
This is my favourite one:
I like it because it's Billie Holiday singing 'Fine and Mellow' with Cozy Cole on drums. I'm sure someone with a better eye could identify the others. This isn't the famous 1957 television performance I've posted before, though.
I also quite like this one:
It's a group of people from vogue magazine at the same photo shoot.
You know what I'm thinking.
*Knight, Arthur, “Jammin’ the Blues: or the Sight of Jazz, 1944â€. Representing Jazz, ed. Krin Gabbard. Duke U Press: Durham and London, 1995. 11-53.
"jam session photography" was posted in the category fillums and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
May 14, 2009
omg: jazz oral histories!
Posted by dogpossum on May 14, 2009 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
Reading yet another article (Peretti's “Oral Histories of Jazz Musicians: the NEA transcripts as texts in contextâ€), I found a reference to the Jazz Oral History Project, which is a collection of interviews with jazz musicians. The collection includes both oral and transcript records. The paper is centrally concerned with the challenges of working with oral histories (which of course is related to the idea of the 'history' and telling the history of jazz).
The JOHP was begun in 1968 by the National Endowment for the Arts, run by the Smithsonian, and after 1979 by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Many of the musicians were not applying for or receiving financial support from the NEA, so it developed the interview project as a way of ensuring older jazz performers received money. Each subject was paid $2000 for a minimum of five hours speaking. The project's funding was cut by two thirds by the Reagan government in 1983. Musicians were chosen from a range of groups, and were both big names and smaller sidemen(and women). Elderly or unwell musicians were targeted in particular. Almost fifty of the 123 subjects had died by the end of 1991.
The JOHP's main goal was to capture the reminiscences of older jazz musicians in substantial and serious interviews (Peretti 120)
I'm particularly interested in this process of interviewing older musicians because of the importance of older dancers in the swing dance community. Dancers such as Frankie Manning (who passed away a couple of weeks ago, and who is deeply mourned by thousands of dancers) have been an essential part of contemporary swing dance culture. Not only as a source of story and recollection, but as a dance teacher and as a cross-generational mentor and role model for younger dancers.
But back to the JOHP. As soon as I read that there were audio records, I thought 'Oh baby, this has to be on the internet! How fully sick would that be?!' So I gave it a good google, and found the Institute of Jazz Studies' JOHP site. If you follow the links, you can listen to some sample audio files or read some transcripts. My initial reaction is: where are the rest of them?! There are heaps, according to the Peretti article. The site says:
The condition of the original reel-to-reel and cassette tapes and some of the service copies had deteriorated to the point where the Institute could no longer offer access to large parts of the collection. With recent funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, all 120 interviews have now been preserved in digital format. The digital versions of the interviews are currently stored in various media forms, including multiple sets of CD's for archival purposes as well as for client access at the Institute. The digital versions of the interviews are also being ingested into a new digital library repository (RUCORE) under development as part of the Rutgers University Libraries new digital library initiative, which will provide another form of archiving as well as enhanced means for access by users.I'll investigate and see what I can find.
*This institute was founded in 1950 by Marshall Stearns, John Hammond George Avakian. Stearns was the author of Jazz Dance (which he cowrote with his wife Jean), and he also conducted some very famous interviews with Al and Leon. John Hammond was, of course, the famous jazz promoter (who was also involved with the Newport Jazz Festival) and George Avakian was a promoter and music producer. His son is a lindy hopper and DJ.
Peretti, Burton W. “Oral Histories of Jazz Musicians: the NEA transcripts as texts in context†Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 117-133.
Related projects:
- Selected video clips from the Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project
- The Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program
"omg: jazz oral histories!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music and research
May 12, 2009
more pakour
Posted by dogpossum on May 12, 2009 11:59 AM | Comments (1)
Watching this (occasionally annoying) video about pakour/freerunning, I was struck by the similarities between these jumps and lindy hop.
I'm most interested in the landings, and in the way momentum or velocity are managed. I don't know a whole lot about the science of this stuff, so my comments are purely ill-informed conjecture.
When this guy lands, he tends to land with his feet shoulder width apart and his knees bent. This makes for stable landings - this distance between your feet is optimal for a nice, stable landing. The bent knees are also very stable - straight legs are unsteady and tend to lift your centre. When your centre is lower, you have more stability. But you don't want to be too low - it's harder to recover from a very low pose. The bent knees function a bit like springs or suspension on a car - they absorb the energy of your fall, but they also allow you to store the energy to use it again for another movement. Landing with straight legs and close together feet makes for a) jarring and b) instability.
These are all things that are really important in lindy hop. Because lindy (in the old school sense) is fast, and, essentially, like playing a basketball game within a two meter square space, you need to be able to move quickly, to make quick turns, to not lose your momentum. This makes bent knees and shoulder-width apart feet very useful. Old school lindy hoppers like Frankie Manning, who was known for his air steps, would also lean forward, bending at the hips and putting their hips back. This added 'hinge' gives greater stability and also adds another layer of 'stored energy'. It also requires your activating the layers of muscles in your torso that keep you stable and also allow you to respond quickly with turns and twists.
Here, have a look a this iconic footage (Manning is in the overalls):
I'm interested in the way these practical mechanics have been translated into bodily aesthetics. The straight leg and pointed toe are classic markers of ballet and of feminine beauty - the longer-seeming leg, the tinier foot.
It's also interesting to watch the first clip and see how this guy uses the energy from a drop or jump to move immediately into another jump (so it looks like he's springing up), or how he translates that energy into a roll. How are his feet positioned then?
Of course, all this contrasts really nicely with yoga, where you move between poses very slowly - you don't bleed off momentum with bounces or other movements. Your muscles have to be strong enough to move you through poses (and to hold you in them) without losing energy. And you hold poses for a longer time.
NB I think the reason I'm so aware of this stuff is that quite a few leads have a tendency to stop the follow during a faster dance. When you're moving at speed, it's less work to maintain the momentum than to stop and have to start again. This means that sequences of moves which use larger movements are easier on the follow than a combination of (for example) swing outs and (to be ridiculous) body rolls. It's also a reason why it's important to not stop your swingout half way through (on '4' or so); you want to keep the movement happening.
"more pakour" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and yoga
May 11, 2009
video in the desert; youtube in the cities
Posted by dogpossum on May 11, 2009 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
As you probably know if you've read some of my earlier posts, I'm fascinated by indigenous media use as a model for community media practice. Whatever that means. So I was struck by this bit of a book I'm reading at the moment:
It was costly and difficult to bring hired videotapes almost 300 kilometres from Alice Springs to Yuendumu and to stop them from being scratched or damaged in the sandy desert camps and few commercial videos in the video shops in Alice Springs were attractive for the Warlpiri to hire. So the community came up with the idea of connecting all the video recorders in the camp a low-frequency, low-powered community television 'station' and using it to distribute a single videotape to all the sets in the community (Bell 80)
Firstly, I thought, 'This is Youtube - this is what Youtube does for dancers.' Before Youtube, dancers would distribute edited bits of archival film (featuring dance, of course) via video, and later as digital clips on CDs. Then Youtube happened, and suddenly all those locally distributed clips were online, available to everyone. Previous networks of exchange and the associated hierachies of knowledge and supply were dismantled. Everyone could watch archival clips, could see the original lindy hoppers (and balboa dancers and blues dancers and charlestoners and black bottomers and...) and experiment with the movements they saw. In my thesis I wrote about the way this upset hiearchies of knowledge in the local Melbourne scene, and how it had the potential to disrupt the commodification of dance (and knowledge) by dance schools and teachers.
Of course, the results weren't quite so radical. Learning moves from grainy, downloaded Youtube clips is difficult, and many people would much rather just be taught the moves by some dood in a class. Many people don't know where to begin when searching for archival clips online - you need to know terms (black bottom, lindy hop, charleston, Al Minns, Frankie Manning...) before you can search effectively. And of course, dance classes serve a range of functions beyond the transfer of dance knowledge - they socialise new dancers, they provide peer groups for the lonely, fellow addicts for the junkies and so on.
But Youtube is fascinating for the way it changed how dancers acquire and watch archival footage. Within a year, things I'd written about in my thesis were changed, utterly. And in the last year, Faceplant has changed things again. The most important part of faceplant for this particular community is the way it's integrated and conglomerated a host of different media. Audio files, youtube clips, online discussion, blogs, newsletters, event notices, email: all of them centralised in one site. Facebook, though it is effectively a gated community* has also suddenly connected thousands and thousands of dancers all over the world. And in a very public, collaborative way. I've been fascinated by the way 'being friends' with a few key, well-traveled dancers can connect you up to a host of international scenes.
This was proved most clearly in the recent passing of Frankie Manning, just a few weeks before his 95th birthday. I'd like to write more about that, but I don't feel up to it, really. And I think Frankie deserves more than one poorly written post on my blog; I'd like to write something properly. But this one event illustrated most clearly the connectedness and sheer speed of communications within the online swing dance community. It has also pointed out, thoroughly, that my ideas about localised communities are still very important: we might all be online, but we are still thoroughly grounded, embodied and localised by dance.
Of course, we can still make the point that this sort of media use - as with the Yuendumu example - is not like traditional broadcast media. The difference is not so much that we aren't really working with the 'few-to-many' model of distribution, but that these are smaller groups taking up 'new' media and adapting them to their own particular circumstances. Wether those circumstances require dealing with dust or a way of seeing elders.**
*Thanks for that term, D4E.
**And of course, here is where parallels between Yuendumu and swing dancers arise again: the Warlpiri media collective has been very concerned with filming and then distributing the filmed image of elders. Just as swing dancers have been focussed on distributing filmed images of elders - swing era dancers. Both, of course, are managed by extensive social and pedagogic networks. And both rework 'pedagogy' for their particular contexts.
Bell, Wendy. A Remote Possibility: the Battle for Imparja Television IAD Press: Alice Springs, 2008.
"video in the desert; youtube in the cities" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and research and television
May 10, 2009
every day is blog amnesty day for me
Posted by dogpossum on May 10, 2009 2:09 PM | Comments (0)
...because I feel no shame, and publish every entry I begin. For which I apologise.
I was just thinking: why do I alway recognise an Ellington song? Is it the arrangements or the soloists? Ellington's band carefully showcased each soloist with personally tailored and arranged solos/parts for specific people. So I guess it's a combination: parts and whole.
Then I was thinking about my obsession with various jazz pianists. I thought I might do a post with little bios and pics of each one. Then I got distracted. But here are some I love:
Willie 'the Lion' Smith. Wasn't a big band leader, but did a zillion songs with a zillion bands. One of my favourites is a song called '4,5, and 9' with Leadbelly in 1946 from a CD my mum bought me at the Smithsonian in Washington. It's (the song, not the Smithsonian) fairly sparse - piano, guitar, harmonica, male vocals. It has a rolling, rollicking rhythm that makes me want to roll and rolllick around the house. You can't lindy hop to it. You can only roll or rollick.
Fats Waller Duh. Was a band leader. Died younger than we'd like, but not surprising considering his lifestyle. His band was famously loyal and stayed with him for a very long time. He began his career with bands like the McKinney Cotton Pickers in New York. I love his light, tinkly playing, his chunky left hand rhythms and his lovely lyrics. I love the combination of light-hearted humour and melancholy.
Mary Lou Williams You tend to find women in jazz bands at the piano or behind the microphone, mostly because they were considered 'ladylike' musical pursuits. No tubas here. Williams was in Andy Kirk's band, and was important not only because she could play like a demon, but also because she was a badass arranger. She didn't sing (that I know).
There are plenty more, but these are the ones I'm currently interested in.
I was going to write something else about something else, but I've forgotten what it was.
Oh, that's right. I've been playing Flight Control on The Squeeze's ipod touch. I've been getting quite high scores. I don't like any of the other games. I don't play computer games at all, usually.
I was hardcore into sourdough recently, but my interest has waned. I am now interested in ... well, nothing much else, food-wise.
On other fronts, I've been doing an awful lot of reading about jazz, jazz history and jazz studies. Soon my brain will blow up. I think I'm procrastinating about another book I have to read and review for a journal. I'd better get onto that one quick-smart. But I just can't be arsed - I know how it'll end, it's not hugely well written, and while the content is very interesting, I just can't stick with it.
My foot has been much, much better. But yesterday and today it was a bit sore. Podiatrist in about a week for an update, and a verdict on whether or not there'll be dancing again in my future, ever. Let's cross our fingers, shall we?
There is a cafe on the main drag of Newtown called Funky which made me a freaking wonderful prawn raviolli the other night. It was home made pasta, in large sheets, folded around some perfectly prepared prawns, in a light, fresh tomato, tiny-bit-of-cream and smidge-of-butter sauce. It was simple and perfect. I was amazed. The manager is a lovey and always seats me carefully when I come in on my own every other Friday evening for a quick before-DJing dinner. It is a delight to eat there. Especially as the cafes on that strip can suck bums. But it's really too nice to be called a cafe. And on the last few Fridays they've had a small, very excellent latin combo playing in their tiny restaurant. They had a double bass, guitar, bongos, vocals and ... something else last Friday. They were so good I wished I could dance salsa. I didn't even feel I needed to read my book, they were so nice to watch and listen to. And I do like a quiet sit-and-read on my own over a nice meal in a restaurant. I know it's not cool, but it's one of my greatest pleasures - eating alone in a restaurant.
That's all I've got for now, I'm afraid.
"every day is blog amnesty day for me" was posted in the category djing and dogpossum and fewd and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
May 4, 2009
the trouble with linear jazz narratives + more
Posted by dogpossum on May 4, 2009 6:33 PM | Comments (2)
In the earliest parts of my researching into jazz history, I tried to set up a sort of 'time line' or map* of musicians and cities and bands. Who played with which band in what city at what time? Then where did they go? This approach was partly based on the idea that particularly influential musicians (like Armstrong) would spread influence, from New Orleans to New York and beyond.
But drawing these time lines out on pieces of paper, I found it wasn't possible to draw a nice, clear line from New Orleans to New York, passing through particular bands. Musicians left New Orleans, went to New York, then back to New Orleans, then off to France, then back again to New York. The discographies revealed the fact that a band recorded in different cities during the year - they were in constant motion, all over America. Furthermore, musicians didn't stick with one band, they moved between bands, they regularly used pseudonyms and even the term 'band' is problematic. The Mills Blue Rhythm Band, with its dozens and dozens of names, was in fact a shifting, changing association of musicians, and did not even have a fixed 'core' set of players. Perhaps this is why the MBRB is so important: many people played with them, and they were a band(s) which moved and changed shape, a loose network of musicians who really only existed as 'a band' when they were caught, in one moment, on a recording. Or perhaps on a stage (though that's far more problematic). I wonder if that's why it's so hard to find a photo of them? Perhaps the 'Mills Blue Rhythm Band', as a discrete entity didn't really exist?
The more I read about jazz and 'jazz' history, the more convinced I am by the idea of 'jazz' as a shifting series of relationships. I think about cities not as fixed locations, but as points on a sort of 'trade route' or even as a complicated web or network of relationships between individual musicians (which is, incidentally, how I think about international swing dance culture - the physical place is important, but it's not binding).
Right now I've followed some references backwards to an article by Scott DeVeaux called Constructing the Jazz Tradition, which is really interesting. It not only outlines some of the political effects of a coherent 'narrative' history of jazz, but also the economic and social effects of positioning jazz as a 'black music', with interesting references to consequences of the 'jazz musician as artist' for black musicians. Read in concert with David Ake's discussion of creole identity and ethnicity in New Orleans as far more complicated than 'black' and 'white', this makes for some pretty powerful thinking.
I'm very interested in the idea of a 'jazz canon' and of the role of people like Wynton Marsalis, the Ken Burns Jazz discography, jazz clubs and magazines developing during the 30s and 40s devoted to New Orleans recreationism and the whole 'moldy figs' discussion. The tensions surrounding the Newport jazz festival also feed into this: the Gennari article (which I discuss in reference to its descriptions of white, middle class men rioting at Newport here) pointed out the significance of a festival program loaded with 'trad' jazz - for black musicians and for the popularising of jazz generally. I've also been reading about the effects of this emphasis on trad jazz for superstar musicians like Louis Armstrong.
O'Meally and Gabbard have written about the way Armstrong's public, visual persona is marked by ethnicity.
Armstrong was known for his visual 'mugging', or playing the 'Uncle Tom' for white audiences, particularly on stage. Eschen writes
...as the struggle for equality accelerated, Armstrong was widely criticized as an Uncle Tom and, for many, compared unfavourably with a younger, more militant group of jazz musicians (193)This, as Eschen continues, despite the fact that Armstrong was actually an active campaigner for civil rights in America, and overseas.
The trad jazz movement - or 'moldy figs' pushing for the preservation of an 'authentic' jazz from New Orleans - effectively pushes Armstrong to continue as Uncle Tom - unthreatening black man clowning for white audiences. A narrative history of jazz which emphasises a beginning in New Orleans and a consistent, clearly defined lineage of musicians and styles also, more subtly, relies on an idea of the black musician as powerless or unthreatening. DeVeaux makes the point that positioning jazz (and jazz musicians) as artistic loners who do not 'sell out' with commercial success:
Issues of ethnicity and economics define jazz as an oppositional discourse: the music of an oppressed minority culture, tainted by its association with commercial entertainment in a society that reserves its greatest respect for art that is carefully removed from daily life (530)In this world, the 'true' jazz musician is 'black' (in a truly singular, homogenous sense of the world), he is poor and he is mugging for white audiences.
Billie Holiday becomes a particularly attractive representation for this idea of the 'jazz musician': poor, black, addled by drugs and alcohol, a history of prostitution, yet nonetheless, a creative genius pouring out, untainted in recording sessions (and I'm reminded of the 'one take' stories) and tragically cut short.
All of this is quite disturbing for someone who really, really likes jazz from the 20s, 30s and 40s. Am I buying into this disturbing jazz mythology? It's even more disturbing for someone who found similar themes in contemporary swing dancers' development of 'narratives' and geneologies of jazz dance history. As DeVeaux writes (about jazz, not dance), though, this is
The struggle is over possession of that history, and the legitimacy that it confers. More precisely, the struggle is over the act of definition that is presumed to lie at the history’s core (528)I wonder if I should suspect my own critique of capitalist impulses in contemporary swing dance discourse?
I don't think it's that simple. Gabbard discusses Armstrong's work with Duke Ellington, including the filming of Paris Blues (in which Armstrong starred, and for which Ellington contributed the score) and the recording of the 'Summit' sessions:
…at those moments in the film when he seems most eager to please with his vocal performances, his mugging is sufficiently exaggerated to suggest and ulterior motive. Lester Bowie has suggested that Armstrong is essentially “slipping a little poison into the coffee†of those who think they are watching a harmless darkie….Throughout his career in films, Armstrong continued to subvert received notions of African American identity, signifying on the camera while creating a style of trumpet performance that was virile, erotic, dramatic, and playful. No other black entertainer of Armstrong’s generation – with the possible exception of Ellington – brought so much intensity and charisma to his performances. But because Armstrong did not change his masculine presentation after the 1920s, many of his gestures became obsolete and lost their revolutionary edge. For many black and white Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, he was an embarrassment. In the early days of the twenty-first century, when Armstrong is regularly cast as a heroicized figure in the increasingly heroicising narrative of jazz history, we should remember that he was regularly asked to play the buffoon when he appeared on films and television (Gabbard 298)
You can see a clip from Paris Blues here.
Armstrong's performance gains meaning from its context, from the point of view of the observer, from his own actions as a 'real' person (Armstrong was in fact openly, assertively critical of Jim Crowism and quite politically active) and from its position within a broader 'body' of Armstrong's work as a public performer. Pinning it down is difficult - it's slippery.
The idea of layers of meaning is not only interesting, it's essential. This physical performance of identity, tied to the physicality of playing an instrument reminds me of the layers of meaning in black dance. And of course, of hot and cool in dance, and the layers of meaning in blues dance and music. Put simply, what you see at first glance, is not all that you are getting. Layers of meaning are available to the experienced, inquiring eye. Hiding 'true' meanings (or more subversive subtexts) is important when the body under inspection is singing or dancing from the margins. Tommy DeFrantz discusses meaning and masculinity in black dance during slavery:
serious dancing went underground, and dances which carried significant aesthetic information became disguised or hidden from public view. For white audiences, the black man’s dancing body came to carry only the information on its surface (DeFrantz 107).
Armstrong's performance is more than simply its surface. As with any clown, the meanings are more complex than a little light entertainment. Gabbard continues his point:
In short, Ellington plays the dignified leader and Armstrong plays the trickster. Armstrong’s tricksterisms were an essential part of his performance persona. On one level, Armstrong’s grinning, mugging, and exaggerated body language made him a much more congenial presence, especially to racist audiences who might otherwise have found so confident a performer to be disturbing, to say the least. When Armstrong put his trumpet to his lips, however, he was all business. The servile gestures disappeared as he held his trumpet erect and flaunted his virtuosity, power, and imagination (Gabbard 298).
This, of course, reminds me of that solo in High Society that I mentioned in a previous post. There's some literature discussing the physicality of jazz musician's performances, but I haven't gotten to that yet (though you know I'm busting for it). I have read some bits and pieces about gender and performance on stage (especially in reference to Lester Young), and there're some interesting bits and pieces about trumpets and their semiotic weight, but I haven't gotten to that yet, either.
Sorry to end this so abruptly: these are really just ideas in process. :D
To sum all that up:
- The idea of a jazz musician as 'isolated artist' is problematic, especially in the context of ethnicity and class. Basically, the 'true jazz musician who doesn't sell out by making money' is bad news for black musicians: it perpetuates marginalisation, not only economically, but also discursively, by devaluing the contributions of black musicians who are interested in making a living from their music. Jazz musicians are also members of communities.
- Linear histories of jazz are problematic: they deny the diversity of jazz today, and its past. Linear histories with their roots in New Orleans, insisting that this is 'black music' overlook the ethnic diversity of New Orleans in that moment: two categories of 'black' and 'white' do not recognise the diversity of Creole musicality, of the wide range of migrant musicians, of the diversity within a 'white' culture (which is also Italian and English and American and French and....), of economic and class relations in the city, and so on.
- 'linear histories' + 'musician as artist' neglect the complexities of everyday life within communities, and the role that music plays therein. These myths also overlook the fact that music is not divorced from everyday life; it is part of a continuum of creative production (to paraphrase LeeEllen Friedland and to refer to discussions about Ralph Ellison - which I will talk about later on).
- Music and dance have a lot in common. They carry layers of meaning, and aren't simply discrete canvases revealing one, singular meaning to each reader. They are weighted down by, buoyed up by a plethora of ideas and themes and creative industrial practices and sparks.
DeFrantz, Thomas. "The Black Male Body in Concert Dance." Moving Words: Re- Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 107 - 20.
DeVeaux, Scott, “Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography†Black American Literature Forum 25.3 (1991): 525-560.
Eschen, Penny M. “the real ambassadorsâ€. Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 189-203.
Friedland, LeeEllen. "Social Commentary in African-American Movement Performance."
Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: The Visible and the Invisible in
Movement and Dance. Ed. Brenda Farnell. London: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 136 -
57.
Gabbard, Krin. “Paris Blues: Ellington, Armstrong, and Saying It with Musicâ€. Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 297-311.
Gennari, John. “Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: the Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival.†Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 126-149.
Lipsitz, George. “Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz,†Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004: 9-26.
O’Meally, Robert G. “Checking our Balances: Louis Armstrong, Ralph Ellison and Betty Boopâ€. Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 276-296. (You can see the animated Betty Boop/Armstrong film O'Meally references here.
*The jazz map was found via jazz.com, but they don't list the url for the map in context.
There's something seriously addictive about historic 'jazz maps'. I think it's because they're imaginary places. My latest find: New Orleans 'jazz neighbourhoods'.
"the trouble with linear jazz narratives + more" was posted in the category academia and djing and lindy hop and other dances and maps and music and research and thesis
Marty Grosz and his Honoris Causa Jazz Band, Hooray for Bix!
Posted by dogpossum on May 4, 2009 1:09 PM | Comments (2)
Marty Grosz and his Honoris Causa Jazz Band, Hooray for Bix! Despite the scary album cover (this was released in 1957), there's some nice stuff on this album. I'm getting a bit tired of New Orleans revival bands (especially the ones from the 50s and later), but Marty Grosz is a guitarist, and this is reflected in the music - there's a little less emphasis on the brass. Well, comparatively speaking. I'm still not liking the shuffle rhythm from the drummer on some tracks (it's just NOT RIGHT for NO stuff), but there are a couple of songs I really quite like and will play for dancers. In an ideal world I'd stick to the originals, but some of those originals are really scratchy.
In an interesting turn of events, emusic is now releasing the Chronological Classics albums as well as the 'Complete Jazz Series' albums, though they seem to be the same albums. I'm not sure whether there's a sound quality difference, but even CC wasn't perfect sound quality - it's more for people who're looking to collect everything from an artist during a particular year. Which you can do with these series.
"Marty Grosz and his Honoris Causa Jazz Band, Hooray for Bix!" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
May 3, 2009
recent emusic adventures
Posted by dogpossum on May 3, 2009 8:41 PM | Comments (2)
My emusic account ticks over on the 19th, and I've managed to hang onto some of my downloads til today... and there are still some left! It's too easy to use them up, though, especially when you're an ob-con tempted with the option of 'going complete' with an achievable artist... such as Jimmie Noone or the McKinney's Cotton Pickers. But I find I really can't absorb much more than my download limit per month. Well, not if I also want to keep listening to my existing collection and knowing it well enough to DJ with any sort of competence.
But this is what I've downloaded recently:
Lavern Baker Sings Bessie Smith. Just a few songs. I had a couple of tracks from this already from compilations, but I noticed it'd been added to emusic lately (that 'music you might like' thingy is very convincing) and figured I'd download a few things. Namely 'Gimme a Pigfoot'. I've just come across a really slinky Billie Holiday version and thought I'd like the Baker one. And I do. She's no Bessie Smith, but she don't suck. There are moments, though, when I wish Baker'd follow through on her big, arse-kicking intros; she tends to back off a bit a few bars in. Bessie wouldn't.
Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra 1941: The Complete Standard Transcriptions. Just a couple from here, but versions I didn't have. I've really enjoyed a few tracks from the Bob Crosby album in this series, and thought I'd give these a punt. Nice. No surprises, but slightly better quality than some versions of these I already have, and 'John Hardy' is a bit quicker (and snappier) than the one I had. Transcripts are interesting because they were recorded for the radio, some of them live. Digging through the discographies has made me realise just how important broadcast radio was to jazz and to music in the early days. Live broadcasts were de rigeur, and important to musicians' careers.
Jimmie Noone, Wingy Manone, Doc Cook and His 14 Doctors Of Syncopation, Andy Kirk and other scratchies. Mostly obsessing over these doods.
But I can never go past a little hifi or good quality saucy blues.
Big Mama Thornton's 'Ball n Chain'. Just the song 'Gimme a Penny'. Because that's all you need, really. Well, that and 'Hound Dog', because some skinny-arse white boy ain't got nothin' on this sister.
The Bluesville Years Volume 11: Blues Is A Heart's Sorrow (you don't need a photo for this one). I've downloaded various bits and pieces in this series. The quality is fab. The artists are amazing. The songs are super, excellently saucy. Not at all G-rated.
There are lots more, but this is the sort of thing I'm enjoying at the moment. Gotta go eat pizza now. :D
"recent emusic adventures" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
some things about djing that other DJs've taught me
Posted by dogpossum on May 3, 2009 3:12 PM | Comments (0)
Here are the most useful things I've learnt about DJing, from other DJs:
1. Begin as you mean to go on. Russell from Canberra used that line, and it's useful. If I don't want the tempos to be too low during the set, I try to make my first song the slowest I'll go during that set. No lower. From there, the only way is up.
2. Come in loud and proud - get that party started. Andy from Melbourne taught me the most useful tip for DJing blues I've ever learnt. He plays a loud, spankin' blues set - no quiet kissing and cuddling. I once heard him start a set in the back room at a late night at MLX by yelling "let's get this party started!" and playing some loud, chunky hippity hop. Only Andy could get away with that shit - his energy and enthusiasm is infectious.
3. Be really into the music you're playing.
Trev from Perth is a big, fat music nerd. He loves the music he plays. Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated with DJing for dancers because I'm not happy with the music I'm playing. I feel like I'm playing stuff I don't really like as a way of compromising between what I do like and what I think they like. But Trev doesn't seem to compromise - he plays what he likes. What he loves. I find that I do a better set and have a much better time DJing when I play music I love, and when I (consequently) really get into the feel of dancing. I figure, if it's good music, people will dance despite themselves. And as DJs, we're really doing this as a community service (as well as as a chance to show off), so why not buy and play music we like?
"some things about djing that other DJs've taught me" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
May 2, 2009
djing report
Posted by dogpossum on May 2, 2009 1:31 PM | Comments (0)
Last night I did one of the funnest sets ever. It was the first night of the balboa weekend (there are a couple of big name bal couples in town) and I was given a 'lindy/bal' brief. I figured I'd play hot jazz that makes for spankin' lindy hop, with some more 'complicated' ones in there for bal. I have only ever DJed for bal dancers once before, but I've been asking people and looking up the sorts of things that bal people like to dance to. From what I can gather, they like hot jazz that makes for spankin' lindy hop. There used to be an emphasis on New Orleans revival stuff, but I think that's shifted a bit.
2nd set, 9-10pm Fri 1 May, Roxbury, Sydney Balboa Festival 2009
(title artist bpm year album last played)
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 1/05/09 9:10 PM
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 160 1946 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 1/05/09 9:13 PM
Whoa Babe Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra with Lionel Hampton, vocal 201 1937 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 1) 1/05/09 9:16 PM
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 153 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 1/05/09 9:20 PM
Truckin' Henry 'Red' Allen and His Orchestra 171 1935 Henry Red Allen ‘Swing Out' 1/05/09 9:23 PM
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and his 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 1/05/09 9:25 PM
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 1950 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 1/05/09 9:28 PM
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 135 1945 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 1/05/09 9:32 PM
St. Louis Blues Ella Fitzgerald 183 Ella Fitzgerald In The Groove 1/05/09 9:37 PM
Call Me A Taxi Four Of The Bob Cats 175 1938 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 1/05/09 9:40 PM
Bearcat Shuffle Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy with Mary Lou Williams 160 1936 The Lady Who Swings the Band - Mary Lou Williams with Any Kirk and his Clouds of Joy 1/05/09 9:43 PM
Jive At Five Count Basie and his Orchestra 174 1939 The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 03) 1/05/09 9:46 PM
Shortnin' Bread Fats Waller and his Rhythm 195 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 1/05/09 9:48 PM
Algiers Stomp Mills Blue Rhythm Band with Henry 'Red' Allen, J.C. Higgenbotham, George Washington, Edgar Hayes, Lucky Millinder 219 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Harlem Heat 1/05/09 9:51 PM
Mr. Ghost Goes To Town Mills Blue Rhythm Band 192 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: 1933-1936 1/05/09 9:55 PM
Seven Come Eleven Benny Goodman Sextet 234 1939 Charlie Christian: The Genius of The Electric Guitar (disc 1) 1/05/09 9:58 PM
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 1/05/09 10:01 PM
Peckin' (-3) Duke Ellington and his Orchestra with Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams 164 1937 Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936-1940 Variety, Vocalion and Okeh Small Group Sessions (Disc 2) 1/05/09 6:09 PM
(that's the Mills Blue Rhythm Band there (well, part of), stolen from the internet)
I started with some NO revival stuff to follow up from Sharon's set (she'd just played some Boilermakers and something else in the same vein). I'm also a bit nuts about that Bob Crosby album atm, especially that great 'Rag Mop' song. I've never played that version of Jericho so early in a set before - it was interesting to see how it went down. I've found that this NO revival stuff doesn't work at the Roxbury, ever. But Sharon had warmed the room and the bal nuts (including a lot of out of towners) were up for it. Yay.
Then I played 'Whoa Babe', which I freakin' love: it makes me feel like dancing like a crazy, manic fool. Kind of dodgy transition from Bechet, but I wanted to ditch the NO stuff and get back to the Savoy. Then 'Viper's Moan' to drop the tempos a little, but get us towards the sort of sound I'm really into atm (that song isn't as overplayed here as elsewhere). Plus, Willie Bryant = A1. I love 'Truckin'' and Henry Red Allen. I love the lyrics. This was sort of my homage to all that truckin' business that's been getting about in the US at gigs like ULHS, etc. Plus, I was half planning to play 'Peckin' next, for the comedic value. 'Truckin' is actually a bit mellower, and feels more laid back, which I think the crowd needed as they were getting a bit frenetic and the non-hardcore-bal doods were looking a bit forlorn. That mellower feel tricks people into thinking the song is slower than it is, and I didn't want to let the tempos get below 160 if I could help it.
But then I played 'Back Room Romp'. It sounds and feels higher energy, even though it's slower. Again, I wanted to get the people on the sidelines up with something a bit slower. I'd also noticed the people dancing every song were looking a bit shagged. 'Solid As A Rock' and 'Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop' were crowd-pleasing favourites. I wanted a 'newer' sound (funny how 1950 and 1945 are 'new' in this context) with the 'smoother', hardcore swinging sound of that later classic swing period. Lower tempos to revive people, higher energy to get them up and dancing.
'St Louis Blues' is still my fave from that Ella album. I'm not sure what's happened to the date on that one - gotta chase it up now I'm home. It's mid-30s, though, or perhaps '38, '39, after Webb had died and Ella was leading his band. It's a fucking great song: high energy, live at the Savoy, absolutely A1. I keep meaning to play other stuff from that album, but I'm not sick of this one yet. And I rarely get to play faster stuff. It got people pumped.
'Call Me A Taxi': my 2nd Crosby song of the night, and perhaps a mijudgment. People were still dancing, but I'm not sure it did what I wanted. I should have stayed mega highenergy. But this is a great song for bal as well as lindy and it has lots of rinkytink piano, which I love, and which I wanted to use to get to Mary L Williams and Fats. 'Bearcat Shuffle' is lighter and feels kind of friendly - it's not a big wall of sound. It has a lovely piano line that makes me want to shorty george. It also screams 'swing out, bitch!' This was a resting tempo song.
'Jive at Five' because I was thinking of Frankie. This is a nice song - lighter and friendly, and while it's a bit quicker than 'Bearcat Shuffle', it actually feels a bit slower. It went down with bal doods really well last time I played it, so I gave it another whirl. Also, I love it. And: more piano-centred stuff.
Fats and my overplayed version of 'Shortnin' Bread'. Which I still freakin' love. It starts mellower and tinklier (like the last few songs), but it ends with a nice, fat, full shouting chorus that makes people crazy.
'Algier's Stomp' is so great. I'm not sick of it yet. Lighter, but chunkier than the previous songs. Less with the piano, more with the chunky rhythm section (yeah! great dancing!) and the brass, incl best baritone sax solo ever (well, after Zonky). Why, hello there Mr Henry Red Allen, it's good to see you again. This is something I know bal doods have liked in the past, plus it screams 'lindy HOP MOTHERFUCKERS!' to me.
Then 'Mr Ghost Goes To Town' by the MBRB again. Russ was hanging shit on me for thinking about playing a 2nd song by Fats earlier, so I was all 'HA! I mock your DJing rules!' The hi-fi Mora's Modern Rhythmist version of this song gets played a lot (esp up here), so I played this original, chunkier, aweseomer, faster version. It was familiar for the crowd (so they got up to dance if they hadn't been), it feels a bit slower, but it's actually chunky and driving. I have some reservations about the bunch of solos in the middle, but the sax solo redeems it.
Energy was way up in the room by then, so I went hardcore with the Benny Goodman sextet and 'Seven Come Eleven'. I love this song more than anything. It's a bit too complicated for lindy hop, and doesn't really have that badass, driving energy that makes you swingout. But I figured it's just right for balboa. It went down well. At this point Dave said to me "Hammy! In their face!" because it was so quick. It's not _that_ quick, for baldoods, but it's complicated so it feels like hard work.
Then I played 'Stomp It Off' because I wanted some Lunceford. This is another lighter sounding song, but it's still quite quick, so it doesn't drag. This is one I've played a lot, and tend to play after something very fast because it sounds slower and allows me to keep the tempos up but also keep people dancing. Bal doods like it.
Then I closed with 'Peckin' because it's GREAT and in honour of Ellington's birthday this week. I didn't get to play it directly after 'Truckin', but still, it rocks ("well you talk about the truckin' when the peckin' is (ill?)!" At this point Russ and I were heckling the crowd and demanding pecking. They failed, so we obliged ourselves.
Ah, DJ humour. How sophisticated it is.
This was a really, really fun set to play. I love the bal doods: they eat up the tempos. I get to play the more complicated stuff I tend to leave off for lindy hoppers. They're also interested in the early 30s stuff I really love. This is where my musical passions lie atm. It was a crowded room with lots of crazy dancing. I had an absolute ball.
I did worry that I was playing too much fast stuff, but people told me I wasn't. And reviewing the set, I did vary the tempos more than I thought I did. I think it was lots of fun to DJ because I was actually in the set properly. I worked the tempos in the wave, but I also worked the energy levels in the songs, and this is something I haven't had the brain to do lately. I felt like I did a much better job last night than I have in ages. It was a bit tricky to see the crowd, though (the lights were on over our heads in the DJ booth, but the floor was dark) and sometimes I felt I couldn't quite work the people who were sitting down.
Seeing as how it was MayDay, I was thinking 'fight the power' and 'for the workers!' but I'm not sure how well that came through. But I figure 2 tracks by the Mills Blue Rhythm Band - the hardest working gigging band of the 30s - were a pretty good flag-flyer for that.
And while I didn't get to play 'Shiny Stockings' for Frankie (Russ handled that - phew), I figured he'd have dug a hardcore Savoy set like that. Also, I saw some knickers when the follows were twirling, and I _know_ he'd have liked that.
Then Russ played a fun set that worked a different vibe, which was really nice - I think he did a lot of stuff I didn't in my set, so between us we managed to cover a wide range of styles. Also, I danced TWO SONGS and then danced some solo stuff a bit. I'm paying for it today, but man - those endorphines!
BTW, this is a useful site for info about early jazz. Thing is, it's about the worst, most terribly un-userfriendly site in the universe. This is the problem with a lot of jazznick sites: crappy layout. But if you do manage to navigate it, you'll find some fab pics, info and even sound.
"djing report" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
April 29, 2009
magazines, jazz, masculinity, mess
Posted by dogpossum on April 29, 2009 1:51 PM | Comments (3)
This is another in-progress bit of writing in response to things I've been reading lately. I've found some nicely critical engagments with jazz and jazz study, and am suddenly wishing I was in the US. This isn't the most coherent of posts, partly because I lost part of it with an inadvertent page refresh. Shit.
I've been thinking or wondering about the relationship between Esquire magazine and jazz, partly as a result of my work with the jazz discography (and following Billie Holiday). There were a few concerts in 1944 and 1945 featuring the 'Esquire All Stars' - a group of truly big names: Roy Eldridge, Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey and others.
There are some albums released from these concerts, including one interesting one called At the Met, the cover of which is particularly provocative when you consider the issues I raise below.
I've just found this in a paper about Miles Davis:
By the 1950s, American had become aware of subtle shifts in social and gender roles. Sociologists and psychiatrists were talking about men trapped in gray flannel suits, the age of conformity, the weakening of the superego, the other-directed person. The concern was that a new postwar economy was creating a society in which people were externally motivated, too well adjusted, too sociable. Scarcely concealed behind the jargon of social science was the fear that it was not women who were changing, but men, who were becoming soft, emotional, and expressive - that is, more like women rather than like the rational and task-oriented patriarchs who had built and protected America. More often than not, such ideas were dressed up as if they were the received wisdom of the ages, but their sources were transparently pop.
Elsewhere, Playboy magazine was wrestling with the same anxieties and assuaging them with a particular kind of male hedonism, promoting the good life for the single man: money, imported cars, circular beds, top-of-the-line stereos, chicks. And like Esquire before it, Playboy championed jazz, as a male music, to be sure, but the music of a certain kind of male, as the couture, decorations, and genderized illustrations of the jazz life in its pages made clear. Then there were the Beats, detested by Playboy, but sharing some of its fantasies by celebrating freedom, male bonding, drugs, art, and the hip lifestyle, one of their inspirations being the nightlife of the black musician (Szwed 183).
This article "The Man" discusses Miles Davis' masculinity, positioning him in the 1950s as both 'a man' and as a jazz musician. There's lots of talk about 'masculinity'. We can also draw some conclusions about white, middle class men and their interest in black masculinity as some sort of 'free', 'sensual' and 'vibrant' ideal. Particularly in reference to the Beats.
It's been interesting reading this article after one about the Newport Jazz Festival, “Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: the Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival" by John Gennari. Particularly in reference to this section:
At the Newport Jazz Festival on the fourth of July weekend in 1960, thousands of white youths described by Life magazine as "more interested in cold beer than in hot jazz†spilled from the jazz concerts into Newport’s downtown, attacking policemen, kicking in store windows, and manhandling the town’s residents and visitors. Press reports noted that many of the drunken rioters screamed racial epithets while rampaging through the town. State police used billy clubs and tear gas to stem the riot, then called on the marines for help in restoring order. When the air cleared, over two hundred of the marauders found themselves in local jails, while more than fifty of their victims required medical attention. One witness told the Providence Journal: “I’ve experienced fear twice in my life. Once was in combat during World War II; the other was Saturday night in Newport.†Scheduled to end on Sunday night, the festival was ordered shut down on Sunday afternoon by the Newport city council. The last act was a program of blues narrated by Langston Hughes. Anticipating the city council’s action, Hughes penned a set of lyrics on a Western Union sheet. He handed them to Otis Spann, who sang them slowly as the crowd quietly departed.Among a rash of press reports on the riot, one commentator blamed the allure of Newport, a “resort area which hold[s] a fascination for the square collegian who wants to ball without running the risk of mom and dad stumbling across his prostrate from on somebody’s lawn.†Mordantly noting the contrast between the Newport gentry “in the front row with their Martini shakers†and the youngsters “squatting in the back, their heads between their knees, upchucking their beer,†journalist Murray Kempton wondered, “Was there anything in America at once so fashionable and so squalid?†To many who had embraced Newport as jazz’s City on a Hill, a sterling model of New England Brahmin philanthropy, more disconcerting than the spectacle of loutish yahoos profaning the festival was the rioter’s identity. These were not switchblade-wielding rebels without a cause, nor pothead beatnicks in overalls. These ‘young hooligan herrenvolk of the Eastern seaboard,†as Village Voice jazz critic Robert Reisner dubbed the rioters, were students from the elite colleges, fraternity brothers on a fast track to the corporate boardroom. “You could tell the students from Harvard and Yale,†wagged one man on the street: “They were throwing only imported beer bottles.†(Gennari 127)
I'd previously thought about the Newport Jazz Festival in reference to the film High Society and the documentary film Jazz on a Summer's Day, both of which suggest class tensions, but in the politest way. Neither references these sorts of middle class men rioting (!). In fact, JOASD is, as Gennari discusses, a more than a little arty, genteel and restrained. Here's a gratuitous clip to illustrate:
For many dancers Newport is significant for the albums recorded there by Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Gannari discusses the racial tensions at work in the Newport Jazz Festival, particularly in its later years and in reference to Louis Armstrong's performance in JOASD which is a little too uncle Tom to be precisely comfortable (and Gannari complicates this with references to Armstrong's own ability to subvert this stereotype). Unlike the idealised descriptions in Beat literature (including some sections in On the Road, which have always bothered me, especially when read in conjunction with Anne Petry's novel The Street), in JOASD black masculinity is carefully contained.
I guess what I'm trying to do here is make some distinctions about representations of race and class in mens' magazines, in music magazines and in films like JOASD. Mens' magazines and Beat writers presented an idealised black masculinity with was free, undomesticated, independent - an artist unbound. Films like JOASD and High Society present black masculinity as safely contained as an item of novelty by the bandstand or (as in JOASD) safely receptive by chairs in the audience. Both of these disconnect them from the broader community of which they were a part... the communities, I should say.
I always think about stories about Nat King Cole in these sorts of discussions. About an anecdote I heard on a TV doco. Cole, financially and artistically successful, bought a large house in a wealthy white suburb. His lawn was set on fire/painted with racial epithets. Though he sought the trappings of middle class security, he was still tagged as 'other'.
Let's talk a bit more about High Society.
This is my favourite part of the film. Armstrong is, effectively, the narrator of HS. It is his voice which anchors the film. I like the way he introduces us to Newport, and his presenting jazz as the most important part of this narrative. I like the casual setting of their playing - playing for fun, for their own enjoyment rather than for an audience. Armstrong's story is for the guys in the band. I kind of like the idea of the band on the road because it echoes the idea of bands and jazz as music in transit. Travel and jazz are also buzzing about in my head at the moment (and I've talked about it before). Their place on a bus is interesting, too, as it clearly marks their class later on, when we see characters like Samantha zipping about in their flash, private cars. Again, buses are a space I think of as 'public', and I'm really interested in the way musicians and dancers make public places 'space' - they occupy it aurally and physically and socially, cutting down invisible lines between individual people with a song or a dance step.
But this contrasts with the following clip (one described in Gennari's article).
This is such a great song. And a fascinating scene. Armstrong and the band are actually introduced to the very white, very upper middle class Newport gentry by Crosby (I can't remember why, exactly). The point is that they're introducing this crowd to jazz. And, we can assume, to black musicians as more than servants. It's pretty radical to have a white singer on stage with a black band, but not that crazy. The band are, of course, matching in their suits. The part I like most is where Crosby's perfectly articulated, wonderfully modulated voice is upstaged by Armstrong's badass trumpet solo. Crosby is perfect; Armstrong is perfectly badass.
This song is popular with dancers, but this version isn't so great for dancing. It's a little too mannered. There's another version where Armstrong sings all the lyrics and the song, generally, has a little more kick. It makes you want to dance. I wish I could find it on the internet, but I can't. Having Armstrong sing as well as play trumpet anchors the song in quite a different way. Armstrong is more comfortable with improvising, and the subtext feels a little saucier. There's a greater element of call and response. And improvisation, of course, is the best way of escaping and adding creatively to a song without it collapsing into random noise.
This clip is significant for its role in introducing the Newport Jazz Festival to a white, straight crowd. And Newport was largely, as one of the promoters George Wein insisted, about popularising jazz. Or about introducing jazz to mainstream America. Debates about the types of jazz on display at Newport, about work practices, pay and the general culture of the festival during a period of Jim Crow legislation make it particularly interesting. Because, remember, the fact that Louis Armstrong and his band are sitting at the back of the bus is very important. Segregation meant that where they traveled and how they traveled and how they played music was managed by law. In this context, what does it mean for Armstrong's solo to bust right out of the carefully mannered, modulated frame set up by Crosby and his 'introductions'?
Of course, in the film HS the white crowd return immediately to 'not-jazz' music and dancing after the performance; this was a moment's entertainment.
I'm not really sure where I'm ultimately going with all this, but there's something niggling me about the connection between men's magazines, masculinity in the postwar (1940s-60s) period, jazz and jazz performances - big jazz concerts in particular.I've also come across an interesting discussion of gender and masculinity in jazz by David Ake in the article "Regendering Jazz: Ornette Coleman and the New York Scene in the Late 1950s". I'm also thinking about jazz clubs in the 40s and 50s, their (predominantly male) membership and their effects on the jazz scene. There's something about big jazz concerts in there too, I think, that I have to follow up. Especially since I noticed just how many live recordings Billie Holiday did in the last decade of her career. The 50s saw her do a whole lot of television shows as well as large concerts, and recordings made from these. I want to follow up these ideas about the 'popularising' of jazz in regards to the status of jazz as 'art' music today. There's a tension between 'classic jazz' as 'art' and later jazz (from bebop to avant garde) in the jazz literature that I want to explore, especially in regards to the Ken Burns' documentary film Jazz. In fact, I always have something to say about that film, especially in regards to its positioning of the jazz musician as isolated 'artist', and jazz history as one of artists prompting cultural change. I am, of course, far more of the opinion that jazz was and is very much a product and process of community and local cultural context.
I know that there's something to be said about individualism and masculinity and the freedom from consequences that comes from the idea that 'jazz' is about isolated artists without community responsibility and ties. How connected was that rioting by young, white middle class college men with a 'freedom from responsibility' associated with the black jazz musician by mens' magazines and writers?
George Lipsitz presents the book Songs of the Unsung as an alternate history of jazz, one firmly embedded in local community, with jazz musicians as necessarily participating in everyday community life, rather than isolated with their 'art' in some rarified space:
Songs of the Unsung presents jazz as the conscious product of collective activity in decidedly local community spaces. The modernist city and the nation pale in significance in Tapscott’s account in comparison to the home, the neighborhood, and the community. Physical spaces far more specific than the ‘city’ shaped his encounter with music, and these spaces had meaning because they were connected to a supportive community network (Lipsitz 17)
I think I like this approach because I want to talk about jazz in the context of contemporary swing dance culture, where dancers read a history of jazz not as a history of art, but as a history of music for dancing. And this history of music for dancing as a collaborative, community history, perhaps too complicated to be told with a simple temporally linear narrative.
I was absolutely delighted to find this section in Lipsitz's book:
Instead of modernist time, this would be a history of dance time, starting with ragtime, not as a showcase for the personal ‘genius’ of Scott Joplin but as a site where African attitudes toward rhythm (and polyrhythm) became prominent in U.S. popular culture. The difference between the rhythmic concepts in ragtime’s right-hand melodies and left-hand bass accompaniment and the genre’s additive rhythms (eight semiquavers divided into 2/3s and 1/2s) evidenced a tasted for multiple patterns at the same time that it opened the door for future rhythmic innovations. Rather than the era that gave to Dixieland and swing, the 1920s and 1930s could be see as a movement from the fox-trot to the jitterbug and the lindy hop. More than a away to distribute music more effectively to a broader audience, the development of electrical recording techniques would be seen as a shift that enabled bass and drums to replace tuba and banjo as the key sources of rhythm. Such a story would feature the tap dancing of John “Bubbles†Sublette, who was dancing “four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating†fourteen years before the Count Basie band came east and popularized swing. This narrative would honor the moment in 1932 when Bennie Moten began to generate a different kind of rhythm and momentum for dancers by replacing the banjo with the guitar and substituting the string bass for the tuba. The transition from swing to bop in this story would not focus on the emergence of the saxophone over the trumpet or the small ensemble over the big band as much as it would highlight how string bass players and frontline instrumentalists began to assume responsibility for keeping time so that drummers could be free to experiment with polyrhythms and provide rhythmic accents for soloists.
The distinctive creators of ‘dance time’ would not be the virtuoso instrumentalists of modernist time but rather virtuoso ‘conversationalists’ like drummer Max Roach and dancers Earl Basie (better known by his stage name, Groundhog) and Baby Laurence. (Lipsitz 22)
I'll see how we go after a bit more reading...
Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. U of California Press: Berkely, 2002.
Gennari, John. “Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: the Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1954-1960.†O’Meally, Robert, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin, eds. Uptown Conversation: the New Jazz Studies. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 126-149.
Lipsitz, George. "Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz" O’Meally, Robert, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin, eds. Uptown Conversation: the New Jazz Studies. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 9-26.
O’Meally, Robert, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin, eds. Uptown Conversation: the New Jazz Studies. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004.
Szwed, John. "The Man" O’Meally, Robert, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin, eds. Uptown Conversation: the New Jazz Studies. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004. 166-186.
Many of these books are produced by members of the Jazz Study Group at Columbia. You can find some of their articles in full-text form online here at jazzstudiesonilne.org. It's a fab resource.
"magazines, jazz, masculinity, mess" was posted in the category academia and fillums and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 27, 2009
waiting to understand what the other is doing
Posted by dogpossum on April 27, 2009 4:55 PM
In the comments to my last entry, Jac writes that she likes the Billie/Louis duet:
It's like listening in on a conversation... :)
And I replied
Yeah - that's what I like about it. I think that's what people like about the Ella and Louis duets as well - a conversation between really gifted musicians.This is something I like about really good small group instrumentals as well - it sounds like a conversation between friends. The better the musicians, the better it sounds; they can echo and build on the contributions of others, keeping or building on the feel and topic. The Oscar Peterson trio do some really good stuff like this.
Reading through Ake's book Jazz Cultures I've found this quote from Sidney Bechet about rag time:
Bechet made it clear that his joy and creativity were piqued when playing among musicians like those mentioned above who were his peers in improvisational-interplay abilities. And it was the continual challenge of creating sounds that complimented and inspired bandmates that he found to be most satisfying.That's the thing about ragtime... It ain't a writing down where you just play what it says on the paper in front of you, and so long as you do that he arranger, he's taken care of everything else. When you're really playing ragtime, you're feeling it out, you're playing to the other parts, you're waiting to understand what the other man's doing, and then you're going with his feeling, adding what you have of your feeling.(Ake 33)
This is exactly the way I feel about lindy hop. When you're working in a partnership, it's not a matter of performing or completing choreographed moves. It's about responding to your partner, 'waiting to understand what the other is doing'. That's what makes social dancing to live music so freaking damn good. You don't know what's happening next. You don't know what the musicians'll do next. You just have to listen and move and make it up and respond. It's wonderful. Just wonderful.
"waiting to understand what the other is doing" was posted in the category dulwich hill massive and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 25, 2009
billie and louis again
Posted by dogpossum on April 25, 2009 7:08 PM | Comments (2)
In the spirit of my last post, have a listen to this lovely version of 'My Sweet Hunk O'Trash'. It's Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong singing together a couple of years after that film New Orleans was released.
Recording details:
Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday with Sy Oliver's Orchestra: Bernie Privin (trumpet) Louis Armstrong (vcl) Sid Cooper, Johnny Mince (alto sax) Art Drellinger (tenor sax) Pa Nizza (tenor sax, Baritone sax) Billy Kyle (piano) Everett Barksdale (guitar) Joe Benjamin (bass) James Crawford (drums) Billie Holiday (vocal) Sy Oliver (arranger, conductor)
New York, September 30 1949
7543 My sweet hunk o'trash De 24785, DL8701, Br (E)05074, De (F)MU60363, AoH AH64, Br (G)10159LPBM
It's a lovely example of two musicians playing with timing and phrasing. It's a nice song, but it's their delivery, their to-and-fro that makes it nice. The rest of the band isn't terribly interesting; this is a song showcasing the vocals.
I probably wouldn't play this song for dancers. The emphasis on the vocals means that you really have to listen properly to what they're saying and how they're saying it, and that's not really something you can do when you're dancing. It's also really slow, not juicy enough for blues dancing, far too slow for lindy hop. The vocal showcasing means that the rest of the instrumentation is understated. There's not much going on behind Louis and Billie. This can make for fairly dull dancing; when you're dancing, you look for a range of rhythmic and melodic layers. The more aural interest, the more interesting the dancing. Sometimes it's nice to dance simply, but when the tempos are this slow, you're really looking for something more.
Having said that, there are worse songs you could play for dancers.
Btw, if you're as concerned about the racial subtexts at work in New Orleans as I am, check out this article, which goes a little way towards addressing those issues (let's not talk about my desire for 'owning' jazz just yet. This white girl knows she's got some work to do).
I am currently reading my way (very, very slowly) through David Ake's book Jazz Cultures. There's a refreshingly sophisticated approach to race and ethnicity in this book, and though I'm only in the first chapter (I keep stopping to chase and note references), he's already upsetting black/white dichotomies with a discussion of Creole music and culture in New Orleans and complicating issues of whiteness and blackness which are going a long way to reassuring me about jazz studies literature. I don't have much to write about that yet, but I will eventually.
"billie and louis again" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 24, 2009
billie holiday and louis armstrong
Posted by dogpossum on April 24, 2009 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
This is a nice clip of Louis Armstrong (and amazing band) playing 'Dixie Music Man' from the 1947 film New Orleans.
The woman with the flowers in her hair is Billie Holiday. The band features Kid Ory, Bunny Berigan and Zutty Singleton (with others) - musicians I've been following through a range of bands lately.
This clip was posted by Rayned on faceplant, and it's timely because I'm obsessed by Armstrong and Holiday at the moment. Yesterday I photocopied all the bits of the Discography referring to Holiday. I'm not going to even try that with Armstrong - there's an entire, huge book devoted to his recordings alone.
It's fascinating to follow these guys through different bands. Both were really amazing musicians with a sense of swing that's really incomparable. You can pick Armstrong's trumpet in any recording, no matter how crappy and crackly. and Billie... her later stuff is really tricky to dance to because she's so clever with phrasing and timing. Sometimes she's so way, way back there behind the beat you're sure she's just about to be out of time completely. I like listening to the way she shapes a band when she's singing with them - with live recordings. She can work around a straight, uptight band and make them sound like they're actually hot. Same goes for Louis - these guys have a sense of timing that's impeccable. Like really good comedians.
('Fireworks', Louis Armstrong & His Hot 5 with Earl Hines, Zutty Singleton 1928)
For my money, Armstrong was really rocking with this small groups in the late 20s. This was a collection of great New Orleans jazz musicians, many of whom began with King Oliver, and most of whom moved on to Chicago and then New York (and further afield). I'm a massive fan of Kid Ory, but I'm also digging Zutty Singleton. I'm a bit of a nut for rhythm sections generally (I think it's because I listen to this stuff as a dancer), and Singleton just keeps popping up in the bands I like.
(That pic of the Armstrong Hot Five is from the Louisiana State Museum site, which is just fascinating.)
I was a little sceptical of the claims made about Armstrong's Hot fives and sevens until I actually sat down and listened to them in chronological order - after the stuff he did supporting singers like Bessie Smith (! powerhouse combo, much? An example: St Louis Blues 1925)), after his work with King Oliver. But before his Orchestra stuff of the 1930s (some of which is a bit dodgy, I've found). I'm not really interested in his stuff after the 50s (though I bet I'll change my mind on that too), and I really don't like 'Hello Dolly' and all that vocal rot. I quite like him doing nice, silky groovy duets with Ella Fitzgerald (many of which included Oscar Peterson), but my real interest in his music is in his late 20s and early 30s stuff when you really hear his approach to timing and nuance signaling musical change: the swing era's coming. But nobody else is really there yet.
(That pic of the Hot five to the right is from this interesting blog)
These Hot Five and Seven bands were really one of the the first real opportunities for Armstrong to experiment with music and musicians on his own terms in his own bands. I think the smaller group allows the sort of group or ensemble improvisation that you just can't keep under control with a big band. The best example of this sort of improvisation usually comes in the final chorus when it sounds as though everyone's doing their own thing (because they are), but are still working together, playing within a particular framework. That's the sort of thing I LOVE as a dancer and DJ because it reminds me of lindy hop - improvisation within structure. I love playing this sort of stuff for dancers because the energy suddenly leaps in that final chorus, and you can end a song (or a set) on a high energy point. I especially love Fats Waller for this. He might begin with a quieter song whose clever lyrics make you listen up carefully, but he ends with a loud, raucous shouting chorus that makes you bust out like a fool on the dance floor.
In a smaller group, Armstrong lets the musicians play in their own ways, but still works as the lynchpin in a fairly complicated musical machine. The ensemble improvisation allows each musician to shine with improvisation, but still maintains a sense of group or collaborative wholeness; it's not just random noise. The musicians were all amazing, including Louis Armstrong on trumpet, Lil Hardin (who became Lil Hardin Armstrong) on piano, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo. The band's membership changed a little, and the group also recorded as the Hot Seven (there are a range of other names for similar groupings, including a special Savoy small band). Additional musicians included Kid Ory (cornet), Lonnie johnson (guitar), Earl Hines (piano), Zutty Singleton (drums) and a few different vocalists (May Alix is one who catches my eye because she also did work with Jimmie Noone, who I love). The Hot Fives and Sevens recorded between 1925 and 1928 (you can read more about the Hot 5 here on redhotjazz.com).
Just in case you're wondering where the Billie Holiday talk is...
I really like this recording of 'Fine and Mellow'. The musicians are, of course, amazing. It's from 1957, when Billie was already more than a little trashed by drugs and alcohol. But she really was a phenomenal singer. Even as her voice became more and more ragged, her technique and sense of music were indefatigable. The Decca collection liner notes mention that she was the sort of musician (or artist is the term I think they use) who used one or two takes to record songs. She could simply get it right the first time. As the liner notes say, she had an idea of how she was going to do the song, and then she did it. Holiday didn't have the length of career that Armstrong did (he was recording from 1923 (at least) til 1971), she had only a couple of decades), but her music spread from that hot, swinging jazz moment in the 30s and the pop/ballad/jazz feel of the 50s and 60s.
And of course, I've just written a post which presents the history of 'jazz' in terms of two 'artists'. But I think it's important to note that Armstrong's Hot Five were just that - five (or seven, or six) musicians working together. The collective improvisation is really important, this isn't the showcasing of solos of the swing era. This is a group of people working and listening together to make something together. Holiday's work as a vocalist was primarily as a response to the bands and musicians she was working with. Her close friendship with Lester Young is perhaps the best example. There's plenty of anecdotal (and evidence based) discussion of their musical collaboration as a process of listening to and learning from each other. Young is often quoted as being most inspired by vocalist's technique. Holiday is often referred to as emulating Young's saxophone technique. Their musical relationship was indubitably one of collaboration and mutual inspiration. After all, it's very difficult to be a jazz musician all on your own.
"billie holiday and louis armstrong" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 23, 2009
savoy
Posted by dogpossum on April 23, 2009 11:09 AM | Comments (2)
This is a song called 'Savoy' by Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra, recorded in 1942. Millinder was with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band before he led this band.
The Savoy ballroom is the most famous ballroom in contemporary swing dance culture. Opened in 1926, the ballroom was leveled late in 1956. A plaque now commemorates the ballroom on the spot. Many dancers visiting New York pose for a photo on the grounds of the old Savoy. The Savoy had 10 000 square feet of dance floor and was the length of a city block. It was not segregated.
Two bands would play in the Ballroom, one at each end, swapping sets. Chick Webb's band played there for years, and it was with Webb's band that Ella Fitzgerald developed her reputation. Webb died in 1939 and Fitzgerald took over as band leader. Fitzgerald's earlier work (in the late 30s) is often dismissed as too heavy on the novelty songs, but it was in the period immediately after Webb's death that the band (with Fitzgerald) produced a series of fabulous radio broadcasts from the Savoy.
Live at the Savoy 1939-40 is promoted as an Ella Fitzgerald album, but she sings very little. We can hear her cheering and calling solos, but this is not an album showcasing her voice. It's all live, and it's all from the Savoy. It's also really, truly fabulous.
It's an interesting example of the sorts of tempos played at the Savoy during this period. There's nothing under 180bpm, and most are over 200. It's also great, high energy, and it makes you want to dance. When I play this for dancers, I find people can't help but dance, even if they think it's too fast for them. It's just great music.
The Savoy often hosted dance competitions between rival dance troupes. Frankie Manning (who's having birthday next month) is popularly credited with inventing the first air step in one of these competitions. A step he developed with his partner Freida Washington (you can see a clip of Frankie and Willa Mae Ricker dancing this over-the-back step here). While lindy hop isn't all about aerials, it's best known for these sorts of acrobatics.
Here's a clip of the Silver Shadows (one of the best lindy hopping teams in the world today) dancing as part of the Savoy Ballroom 80th Anniversary celebrations. This is hard core lindy hop at the sort of tempos on the Ella Fitzgerald album.
(If you're interested, I wrote a bit about this routine in an earlier post).
"savoy" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
April 22, 2009
mills blue rhythm band madness
Posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2009 1:33 PM | Comments (0)
Here is an experiment with embedding media players. The trouble is, very few of these have the music I'm after. But here's a Mills Blue Rhythm Band song, in honour of 'going complete' and posters on SwingDJs' obsession with the band.
E-36992-A Savage Rhythm (Br 6229, 10303, CJM 23, TOM 57, GAPS (Du) 130, Decca GRD2-69 [CD]
Recorded by the Mills Blue Rhythm Band in New York on the 31st July 1931. Musicians included: Buster Bailey (clarinet), Wardell Jones, Shelton Hemphill, Henry Red Allen (trumpet), George Washington (trombone, arranger), JC Higginbotham (trombone), Gene Mikell (sop, as, bar, clarinet), Joe Garland (ts, bar, clarinet), Edgar Hayes (piano), Lawrence Lucie (guitar), Elmer James (bass), O'Neil Spencer (drums), George Morton (vocal), Benny Carter (arranger), Lucky Millinder (dir).
Note: Date used here as given in Storyville #108 (Rust listed date as July 30, 1931).
Brunswick 6119, 6229 as 'Mills Blue Rhythm Boys'.
Decca GRD2-629 [CD] titled 'An Anthology of big band swing, 1930-1955'; rest of this 2 CD set by others.
Title also on Hep (E)1015, CD1008 [CD].
Title also on Classics 676 [CD] titled 'Mills Blue Rhythm Band 1931-1932'.
NB: below are some very preliminary thoughts I've had after very little research.
I've been spending an awful lot of time in the library lately. It began with the Con's copy of the Tom Lord Jazz Discography. That's twenty-odd volumes of dry and boring nerdery. According to The Squeeze. For a jazz nerd, that's twenty-odd volumes of orsum. I have spent hours in there already. Days. Doing what? Going through my music, adding in dates, full band names, band personnel, recording locations. Extra, extra nerdy. But also quite interesting.
(that's the Wolverines in the Gennett Records studio from this interesting site)
I've gotten much better at identifying when a song was recorded, and I'm getting to know how a band changed or an artist changed over time. And I'm recognising not-so-big-name band members now, which is fascinating. I'm also beginning to be curious about things like travel. A band might have recorded a song on one day in one city, but another song in another city on the next day. This information alone gives you and idea of just how hard these guys worked - travel, travel, record, record, live show, live show. But when you consider the fact that they usually didn't use planes (in the early days especially) and that segregation meant that these musicians were traveling in pretty shitty conditions...
I'm also interested in the way songs were often recorded only once in a session (or ever) in the early days. No time (or money) for second takes. This makes me think about the mad skills these guys had. Or the cost or difficulty of recording. And all one track as well - everyone just playing along all at once, just recording then and there as the technician heard it.
I've just come across a quite from Mary Lou Williams (from a book called The Jazz Scene: an Informal History From New Orleans to 1990 by W. Royal Stokes, 1991) where she talks about just how poor Andy Kirk's band was in Kansas during the depression. The band simply wasn't getting paid for gigs, so the musicians went days without eating. All that, and they're still producing truly amazing, inspired music. Or perhaps because of that?
Though the discography is just awesome (and I will continue to make return trips as my need for detail increases - at first dates were enough. Now I need everything), I have moved on. I want to know who was where in what years. Why did people leave a city at a certain time? What was the relationship between the northern migration, Jim Crow laws and the development of jazz in Chicago, New York and Kansas? What was New Orleans like, exactly?
(that image above is of Canal St, New Orleans in the 1920s from wikipedia. If you're a big map nerd like me, you'll love this collection of historic maps)
So I've been up the university library looking at books. Now, though, I'm thinking more critical questions. How come all the jazz book are written by men? Even the later ones? And what's the significance of jazz scholarship having its roots in jazz criticism? What role did jazz music clubs (clubs for listeners not musicians) play in the New Orleans 'revival' (I'm wary of that term - my thesis has made me suspect a 'revival' is really another word for white middle class folk appropriating black culture)? What are the effects of researching a music using only recordings? Where ARE all the women in these stories?
I'm also wondering about jazz scholarship itself, in bigger ways. Where is the critical reflection? What are the effects of research so focussed on autobiography? The emphasis on auto- and biography is interesting; it suggests that some musicians were simply so great, so awesome, so influential, they created in a cultural and social vacuum, simply churning out greatness for the rest of the world to admire. But that simply isn't the case, of any art; art is created in cultural and social context. So to divorce a musician from the rest of his life (and it is 'his' - there are no women here) suggests that the rest of this life was unimportant. As I've read recently (and I can't find the ref, sorry), this lack invites an immediate investigation.
One of the things that comes up time and again in the oral histories of the period is that, for musicians, listening to other musicians is as important as playing. Young musicians (no matter how 'gifted') would seek out experienced teachers to learn from. Musicians would spend as much time listening to other bands as playing themselves. There's this great bit in one book (the one I ref'd above) where the musician describes listening to a band at the Savoy: there were as many musicians as dancers there, drooling over the amazing band (Savoy Sultans? I can't remember).
And of course, every great musician needed a band. These early jazz recordings are about the relationships between musicians in the band. They don't - cannot - work alone. In fact, no matter how great one musician, they cannot lift an ordinary arrangement or recording to greatness if the rest of the band isn't there, or if they aren't working with the band. At the end of the day, the goal is to produce a great song, a great bit of music. That is the point of a lot of this stuff: it's about collective improvisation in earlier jazz (where everyone mustwork together - order out of chaos) and about collectivism in the more tightly orchestrated big band swing of the 30s and 40s (where musicians must play together, perfectly, must step in at just the right moment for their solo).
This is of course, all besides the point that being a musician was about earning money to buy food or pay rent. This point makes me think about gender and travel. Linda Dahl (in Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen) makes the point that travel, while so central to the live of post-emancipation black men (who's right to travel had been so viciously curtailed under slavery) was impossible for many black women. Women, as the carers of children and the aged could not uproot and travel with a band or to become a musician:
It was in the years of elation, confusion and turmoil following the Civil War that jazz began to take shape. The war brought an end to slavery and to the isolation it imposed, which had prevented among blacks the free exchange of ideas that fertilizes art. With abolition came mobility, if not equality. Many black men wandered, looking for work or luck or new vistas, and music traveled with them. But black women, history tells us, were more likely to stay put and hunker down for new roots. These were women who, as slaves, had carried double, even triple burdens. Not only did they work in the 'big house' or in the fields - as cottonpickers, eve as logrollers and lumberjacks, - but they of course did their own housework, bore their children and cared for their men. After abolition they were hungry for stable family environments, and it was easier for them to find work as cooks, laundresses or maids than for black men to find employment. Although circumstances dictated that they were often the breadwinners, they deferred to their men, especially in matters political. Above all else they devoted themselves to the hope of better lives for their children. Great were the physical and emotional demands upon them, and most found few opportunities and little time or energy for goals beyond survival (Dahl 1992:4).
For women, cultural and social context was absolutely clear and absolutely present in everything they did. While jazz historians can imagine a Sidney Bechet leaving New Orleans and gadding off to Chicago, New York, Paris, a free agent following his art, it is a little more difficult for them to write the stories of women who played and sang music from the home or the family or their (less romantic) place of work. There are many stories of the 'whore house pianists' but far fewer stories of the whores, who were occasionally musicians in their own rights.
Dahl also makes an interesting point about 'anonymous' music:
And black women certainly contriuted their share to the development of this music [jazz]. During slavery they made up songs that both drew upon and became part of everyday experience. 'Anonymous' was often a slave woman who crooned lullabies to the babies she birthed and the babies she reared, who made up ditties at quilting and husking bees or while she planted in the fields and tended her garden, who created music in her capacity as midwife and healer, at funerals and dances and in church, who developed distinctive vendor calls as she sold her wares. 'Anonymous' invented music to meet the occcasion out of a communal pool of musical-religious traditions. Women and men stripped of their names passed on standards and tribel memory to those who came after (Dahl 1992:4).
That point, of course, leads us to a discussion of black women blues singers in the 20s. But I don't have the time now, and I haven't read the books I have here. But I was very interested in this link between 'jazz history' and race and class and gender. I need more information, though.
This anonymity was the product of domesticity and 'everydayness'; simply made invisible through its very ordinariness and ubiquity. It was not framed or positioned as 'art', and so it was invisible. This reminds me of discussions about vernacular dance. It's only when it takes to the stage (and away from its mutability and use-value in everyday life) that it becomes visible to mainstream or elite audiences. This is perhaps the greatest problem with reading white histories of black music: these observers could only 'see' jazz or black music when it was on a stage, or in a recording, stripped of its everydayness. And these spaces were not accessible for many black women.
Reading jazz as a history made up of one great 'artist' after another is, then, highly problematic. I'm also wondering about the other, dominant approach: reading jazz as a history of a series of cities (New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas, New York). What about the 'territories' of the midwest, a series of smaller towns and cities strung together on the route of itinerant bands which played only to these towns and rarely (if ever) recorded? Perhaps, as the territories suggest, it's more useful to think about these cities as sites in a network of 'jazz place/space'. I want to follow up the idea of travel in early jazz - from the northern migration to individual bands and musicians migrating between cities and countries.
(There are some nice pics in this neat little article about territory bands).
Note: I've just found this interesting interview with Tim Brooks, author of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890 - 1919. This book is on my list of 'things to find'. And of course, if you're interested in the early days of the American recording industry, the David Suisman article 'Co-workers in the kingdom of culture: Black Swan Records and the political economy of African American music' is a great resource.
"mills blue rhythm band madness" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and research
April 13, 2009
what is the lindy hopper wearing today?
Posted by dogpossum on April 13, 2009 7:13 PM | Comments (0)
Remind me to post about current fashion trends in the swing world, will you?
Though I guess I could do it here and now...
1. tattoos. If from Seattle, or spending time with Peter Loggins, the 'high end' lindy hopper is sporting serious ink. Most of it is 'vintage' ink - no tramp stamps or tribal arm bands here.
2. piercings. Not as many as you'd expect from such seriously inked yoof - safety first.
3. body fat. Not. Fast music = lean, athletic, long distance runners' bodies.
4. skirts. Short. On the girls.
5. satin shirts. On the girls. Not as many as last year, but still making a presence.
6. vintage, but not foofy-skirt, zoot-suit vintage. Thank god. Discrete, tailored, clean lined vintage. Think early 30s rather than early 50s. Thank god again.
7. nice, high waisted trousers, collared shirts, ties, tie pins, cufflinks, waist coats. Jackets on arrival. Young men with serious ink and serious tailoring do not displease. Fewer stupid white dress shoes, but still a few too many.
8. generally quite kewl casual wear. Tshirts with stuff on, jeans (tight/baggy/whatever's cool), fashionable hair cuts.
For evidence, check out the camp jitterbug pics (the jump session show stuff is probably most interesting). That's a crew that cares. Mostly because they're young and haven't yet realised the finest lindy hopping accessory is a very large arse, worn low and wide for comfort and facilitating the uses of the internets.
All of this, as per usual, escapes me. I am wearing the only outfit that fits my shrinking body: shorts (The Squeeze's), cuffs folded up as they get longer and bigger on me; tshirts (home made or bought, from a selection of about 4); hiking shoes with sports socks. Hair... big. We have entered the season of the Long and the humidity is running amok with my curls. I am off the hair colour for a while. I am quite grey underneath, and it's come as a bit of a surprise. I might colour it. If I can find a hairdresser who can cut curly hair decently.
So I'm not really the best example of lindy hopping fashion. Hells, I'm ten years older than most of them. And they're mostly teenagers or in their 20s. Give them time, and they'll also realise comfort trumps form. For the internet, anyhow.
"what is the lindy hopper wearing today?" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
April 9, 2009
walking bass lines are reassuring
Posted by dogpossum on April 9, 2009 1:55 PM | Comments (0)
Listening to HCCT the other night I was struck by a particular song. Or, rather, part of one song. It had people clapping.
It's the walking bass line. People like it. Dancers like it. I've heard hardcore DJs refer to the walking bass line as something for beginner dancers. But I think we all like a walking bass line. Sometimes we just like the simple, bomp-bomp-bomp of a walking bass line telling us exactly where the beat is. Sometimes it's just reassuring to have the rhythm pointed out to us. And sometimes it's a clever point of reference for a more complicated melody. And if you're feeling a bit tired, you can ignore the fancy stuff going on around it, and just step with that walking bass. Walk with it.
The most-used example of a walking bass line is from Nina Simone's version of My Baby Just Cares For Me:
"walking bass lines are reassuring" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
another round-up post
Posted by dogpossum on April 9, 2009 12:27 PM | Comments (1)
Today I have a heavy cold and feel a bit rough. The Squeeze blames a trip on the train. I blame post-allergy secondary infection. Means I spend some time on the couch with Dr Who, so it's not all bad.
The other night we went to see Hot Club of Cowtown.
It was great. I'm not sure I'm struck on the venue, though. The Basement is kind of a sit-down supper club type situation. The sort of venue that I associate with jazz - a jazz club. Which means it's full of people with money who like to sit down and Be Entertained. Which is, of course, inimical to good, hot jazz. Hot jazz should be played to a crowded room full of partyers looking for a good time. Not straights sitting and eating overpriced, uninspired food.
But Cowtown did a fairly good job overcoming the venue. They're friendly sorts, who like a little audience participation. And it was a little tricky at first; they needed the crowd relaxed and engaged. Guess this is when a support act comes in handy. But eventually they had the audience engaged. Took about five songs, but then they had them. They were, musically, as amazing as I remember. And there's something really pleasing about western swing, the western swing they play. It's friendly and cheery and makes you want to dance about like a fool. And sing along.
Before the "likkermission" they invited us to come up and chat and give song requests. Then they wandered down into the main room and mingled. I was excited and also too afraid to go up and gibber like a fan. Though I really, really wanted to. They seemed really nice and friendly, and talked with all sorts of crazy fans. They were happy to sign CDs as well. I made three trips to the souvenir table, trying to work up the guts to say hello. But I'm shy (sometimes). After the show, one of them (the one I love) stood near the door saying goodbye to people. And I managed to squeeze out a little smile and a 'thank you'.
I'm such an idiot. I'd have loved to request Pray for the Lights to go out, but I couldn't get it out.
I did find myself cheering and clapping along mid-set, just as I would for a dance performance. And people looked at me. But it slipped out accidentally. They were giving the 'engage now!' vibe, and jazz has taught me nothing if not how to respond when someone calls.
Overall, it was ace. I bought myself a tshirt (which I'm going to cut up to be my size and just my style) and a sticker (which I think I'll put on my laptop). I had a great time.
On other, slightly related fronts, I have a pair of orthotics in my shoes now, care of the podiatrist. The podiatrist is a friendly, chatty bloke, who takes up most of our sessions yapping. He loves to talk. Which is ok, because I do too. If I didn't know that he sat in there interacting with people all day, I'd suspect he too spent his time making up crap to fill his unemployed days. But I'm happy to chat.
The orthotics, though. They freaking ROCK! We had to walk a bit to get to the HCCT gig the other night, and I didn't get any pain! Well, I got a bit of abrasion from the new shape of my shoe sole - blisters a-coming. But there was no pain inside my foot. And none later that night after we'd gotten home. It was wonderful.
Basically, they change the way I walk. The bit under my arch, just in front of my heel is a bit raised, and this means I put the weight on the outside of my foot more. And this means that I don't put so much pressure on my big toe - I don't put so much weight on my toe, I don't stretch the plantar fascia so much (yay! - less pain!) and I don't then have to roll the weight over to the outside of my foot when my bung ankle can't bend any more. This means I'm just putting the weight down straight onto the main part of my foot, and I don't roll my foot. This will be great when I get dancing - it'll make my weight transfers clearer and easier to follow/lead. It also means that I'm not in pain.
It's all a bit exciting. I haven't been able to walk without pain in four months. And now I can. Of course, part of me wants to run out and go dancing NOW. But the podiatrist headed me off at the pass on that one: no dancing. No experimenting with movement. No! I have to give it six weeks to test it out. Then we talk.
Part of me wonders what effect this new way of walking will have on the rest of my body. I hope it eases the bit of ache I get in my right knee (which is largely a result of the rolling-foot problem). And I hope it eases my right hip a bit (which is similarly affected by my foot). But I hope it doesn't do other things to me which cause problems. But that's what the check up is for. I have noticed that the orthotic changes the way I pedal when I'm riding my bike. All of a sudden, I'm much more efficient.
Because my ankle doesn't bend as much as it should, I have to roll my foot to get enough bend in my leg to pedal properly. But the orthotic starts me off in the right position, so I don't have to roll my foot (or my knee). This means that instead of all the energy I put into pedaling sort of flying off or being wasted in my knee/foot rolling, it goes straight down into the pedaling, moving the wheels around. So riding my bike is suddenly a heap easier and more efficient. It's wonderful.
I'm not sure whether I'll have to use orthotics forever or not. I think it's more that these will teach my muscles how they should be working, and in combination with my exercises, I'll eventually be able to do away with the orthotics. My legs will eventually be working properly and I'll be able to use my muscles and tendons and bones and joints more effectively.
I think one of the most important lessons from all this plantar fascia stuff, is that it's important to pay attention to the aches and pains in your feet and body. If I'd realised I was in pain from the plantar fascia earlier, I could have done something about it. But you get so used to aches and pains when you dance, it's difficult to tell when something important is going on. I guess that's why it's also a good idea to keep in contact with a decent physiotherapist when you do a lot of sport. Even if you're not an elite athlete. :D
"another round-up post" was posted in the category bikes and lindy hop and other dances and music and old sew and sew
March 26, 2009
i like pie
Posted by dogpossum on March 26, 2009 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
Here's a little round up:
Western Swing is ME.
I am currently in love with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. This is in preparation for the Hot Club of Cowtown tour next month. I saw them in the UK (at the Marlborough Jazz Fest) in 2004, and they were freakin' GREAT. The next week I saw Casey McGill's band at a dance camp and they told me that their bass player had absconded for the HCCT. I'm not sure whether that's a tragedy or an awesomey.
Bad foot is still ME.
My foot is still bung. I have been to see a podiatrist to strapped me up. That helped the first time, but not the second time. I am also doing exercises to strengthen the muscles in my calves/shin to help out my plantar fascia (ie so it's not overloaded). I am down to get orthotics next week, but they mightn't work. Basically, these fibroids in my foot are never going to go away and they can't be cut out. So I'm looking at pain management and impact reduction. I danced two half dances on the last weekend and it HURT. The problem is not so much the impact (which hurts and hurts normally), but the fact that there's pivoting and my foot actually twists when we do lots of turns and things. That's where the pain is at. It sucked to find out how much it still hurt, but at least I know where I'm at. Though I think I'd have preferred to continue in blissful (and hopeful) ignorance. If I can't dance again, I'm really not sure what I'm going to do. If it's not lindy hop, it could have been something else - I come from a long line of dancing, lumbering folk, and I can't fight my DNA. Perhaps I'll learn an instrument. Any suggestions? Maybe the drums? Bass? I did a lot of singing at school, but that was a long time ago.
Allergies are GO.
I am having trouble breathing and my ear is all glued up. Again. Still, I've had much less trouble with my health since I moved to Sydney, so I'm certainly not complaining. It is melaluca flowering season, and there goddamn paper barks all over every street in every inner city suburb in Australia, so I need to deal. Won't be long now, though, and I can come off the antihistamines.
Library is MINE.
I have been back to the Con's library this week. It is a joyful place. Though it is full of students, now, and that sucks. They're almost uniformly middle or upper class, supernerds and 70% male. Guess that's what a career in hardcore arty music requires. The jazz section was all dusty when I first got in there. Now it has at least some use. The refec near the library is SHITHOUSE. The actual room is quite nice - it has a lovely little stage (with nice piano), and would be perfect for a dance gig. The acoustics are magical. But the food is inedible. I was reduced to pre-made sandwiches. Most of the students in this (actually quite nice) mini-refec were eating packed lunches. There you go.
emusic is not all mine. Yet.
I am blowing through my emusic downloads ridiculously quickly. Even when I ration them. There're simply not enough.
Quickflix is suspended.
Since we moved to Sydney the DVDs have been slower to arrive, have almost always been terribly scratched, and we never get anything in the top 50 of our list. I have suspended our account until we've decided what to do. We're still on one of their unlimited DVD accounts, but I'm not sure it's worth it, as we only get about 3 a week, which isn't much better than getting 12 a month max, is it? The video shop here is pretty good, so we might just go old school. Though using a video shop means I have no natural limit on my DVD viewing.
Dr Who and Farscape rule my world.
Screw BSG with its upsetting gender politics and ridiculously FAILED science. I am all about rebooted Dr Who and Farscape. I didn't dig either the first time I saw them, and never really got past the first couple of episodes. Now I love them. Farscape passes the Bechdel Test. Dr Who does not. Rose + her mum. Talking about the Doctor. Though every now and then Rose gets to discuss a drama with another female character, there's not much woman-to-woman action. I think it's partly to do with the newer format - story arcs only last an episode, rather than a week's worth of episodes. There's not as much character development. And a bit too much kissing. I like Eccleston, but I'm not struck on Tennant. His bottom jaw sticks out too far. I liked Eccleston's big nose and ears a whole lot. And was the Doctor always this manic? I'll have to rewatch some old ones (I liked brown, curly haired, long-scarf, jelly baby Doctor best).
I am a crocheting demon.
I should post some pictures to prove it. But I love complicated afghan patterns, and have been compulsively crocheting as I watch my way through the Commonwealth's greatest contributions to popular culture. We went to Spotlight in Bondi Junction the other weekend so I could stock up on yarn. That joint was totally trashed on Saturday afternoon. I need another supplier; perhaps I could order online in bulk? The poor Squeeze is buried in gorgeously three dimensional flowers, in various combinations, so perhaps it's time to stop.
...
No.
I am bike YAY!
Yesterday we rode down the Cook's River after work for a quick ride. It was overcast, humid and coming up a storm. It was great. The sun set over the river, we saw wildlife, we dodged nonnas out walking and talking and planned a longer down-stream walk for a future date. This river goes to Botany Bay, you know.
I am still dealing with the fact that we live in Sydney.
I'm surprised by the historical weight I'm carrying in Sydney. It's like all these suburbs and places are full of all the post-Invasion history of this country. Every bit of history I remember has something to do with Sydney. And most of it is narrated by songs from the Peter Coomb's song book which delighted so many good little Australians in the 1980s.
Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-attidy,
Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-ay,
Singing too-ra-li-oo-ra-li-attidy,
And we're bound for Botany Bay.
I'm sure that that song has celtic roots as well. One of the strangest moments of my post-MA European travel was being shut in at a Cornish pub where a heap of drunken ... Corns? Cornishpeople? sang one of those sorts of 'traditional Australian songs'. But with celtic names. My Irish grandfather used to sing The Wild Colonial Boy. So even though I'm caught up in all this Australian music, it's just as Irish as the American folk music I dig.
I did arrive in Australia in 1982, straight into rural Wagga Wagga, so moving to New South Wales is far more familiar than moving to Melbourne did in 2001. The humidity is lovely. It's not as heinous as Brisbane's, but it's nicer and wetter than Melbourne. And my skin loves it. The Squeeze declared last night, as we rode up the hill towards the lightning and iron-grey sky: "Moving here was the best thing we've done!" He's delighted by the tropical storms. So am I - I've missed them. There's something wonderful about a good, heavy-like-a-hot-shower rainstorm, complete with lighting and crashing thunder. Far, far better than drizzly, wingey bastard Melbourne weather. Even if it didn't rain, it'd be cloudy and overcast forever. I don't miss that shit. Though I'm thinking the Victorians are.
Dollhouse sucks arse, Pushing Daisies is delightful.
That's it in a nutshell, really. I'm not impressed by DH.
1. The FBI/BSG guy is a crap actor. He's so crap I can hardly watch him on screen. That scene in the last episode where he and the 'dead wife' DH client chatted in the kitchen? It was so, so, so bad. I groaned. I gnashed my teeth.
2. The opening credits are incredibly, crappily bullshit.
3. I'm still not entirely sure about the gender stuff. There's an awful lot of talk about the women 'dolls' as sexualised bodies. And though there're references to their missions which don't involve sex, we spend a lot of time looking at them having sex or wearing very high heels or tight, booby shirts, or generally packing a whole lot of very conventional, bullshit femininity. It's a bit too Alias for me, but with less self-determination on their part. I had hoped there'd be a clever twist to undo some of this, but I'm beginning to lose hope. Joss Whedon is hyped, but, really, Buffy was his pinacle. I didn't mind Serenity (look, I'm losing the italics, ok?), but it wasn't great. The film wasn't great cinema. The series wasn't that good - a little too heavy on the patriarchal family structure for my liking. Yes, I get the whole male captain/father parallel, and that Mal might perhaps have been overcompensating for his wartime mistakes with other people's lives, but still... Actually, it takes Buffy an awful long time to lose her patriarch. I've rewatched a bit of season 5 lately, and she's STILL got Giles there, Watchering. So perhaps Buffy isn't so great either... God, if this is the best we can do, this string of compromises.
Anyways, I'm not impressed by DH
4. Did I mention the terrible acting by FBI guy?
Pushing Daisies, though, is wonderful.
It's charming. It's clever. It's lovely to look at. Its visual style has a lot in common with Tim Burton's brighter, more colourful stuff. It's a bit surreal and hyper-colour, but not dark like Burton. Well, except for the premise of the series: the pie maker protagonist can bring dead things back to life. For a minute. If he touches them within that minute, they go back to being dead. If he doesn't, they stay alive and something has to replace them in the deadness. The point of the series: Emerson Cod (finally, a show with a not-white central character!), a private detective, works with the Pie Maker to solve murders. For profit. Pie Maker brings his childhood sweetheart, Chuck, back to life in one of the earliest eps, so they can't touch. They love each other. The other main character is Olive, who, by the end of season two, is the very best character.
Why do I like this program?
1. The hyper-colour, phantastical mise en scene.
2. Passes Bechdel Test.
3. Olive. With her pet pig Pigby.
4. The male protagonist is a pie maker. There's a lot of talk about food and baking pies and comfort food. It's very lush. Here, have a look.
5. The singing scenes. Olive sings a couple of songs. One of which is 'Eternal Flame'. Yes, a Bangles singing scene. The other is 'Hopelessly Devoted to You'. It's wonderful.
Also, there's singing.
6. Chuck's spinster aunts (who raised her) are cheese fans and also used to be synchronised swimming super stars: Darling Mermaid Darlings. One has an eye patch.
7. Most of all, I love the dialogue. It's very, very wordy. Lots of fast talking. But it's all puns and onomatapeia (sp?) and all those other lovely wordnerd things. It looks good, it sounds good, and it's funny. It makes me giggle.
8. It's not horrid. There are some pretty gross deaths, but it's not upsetting. Most of the programs I like these days are horribly dark. But Pushing Daisies is not. It's lovely. The Pie Maker and Chuck love each other. Olive is tiny and super tough and awesome. She can bake pies or solve crimes. She's great.
9. I watch it before bed, when I'm tired, and it helps me get to sleep. It's nice.
The only thing I don't like about it is that it was cancelled before the end of its second season. Apparently they're screening the finale in the US in their summer, so at least we'll get that degree of closure. But still. It's really great telly. Here's the first bit to prove it:
"i like pie" was posted in the category bikes and crafty bastard and digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and sydney and television
March 23, 2009
while we're talkin' balboa...
Posted by dogpossum on March 23, 2009 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
Swing Time are running a Balboa weekend in May (for more details clickhere). The teachers are pretty dang good: Valerie Salstrom and Nick Williams from the US and Zack and Maryse from Canada. Full passes are only $210, which is quite reasonable for two days of workshops and social dancing with top notch international teachers.
"while we're talkin' balboa..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
March 22, 2009
korea for the win
Posted by dogpossum on March 22, 2009 2:17 PM | Comments (0)
Korea wins the Frankiefest shim sham:
It's Frankie's birthday this week. He's 95. The lindy hopping world is in a tizwoz, with people making videos of themselves doing the shim sham and putting them on youtube. It's really lovely to see how many thousands of people respect and value this bloke. I wish we were in New York this week - the Frankiefest celebrations are just amazing.
The work part of my brain is also pretty excited about the way people are using Faceplant, Youtube, etc to get together and organise the shim shamalong.
We did Sydney's yesterday afternoon. It was a glorious day, the FREAKIN OPERA HOUSE was all glisteny in the sun, and everyone was keen to get together and celebrate Frankie's birthday. As the Koreans say in that clip "Dear Frankie. Happy birthday to you!"
Who's Frankie Manning?
He's an old school lindy hopper. Watch this iconic clip from Hellzapoppin' to see Frankie (in the overalls) dancing. He choreographed this scene. Frankie is important not only as a dancer and teacher today, but as a choreographer and film star from the Olden Days. He's 95 this week, did I mention that? And he's still dancing. Here he is leading the shim sham in 2007, when he was 93.
Frankie was a badass lindy hopper in the Olden Days, but he retired in his 60s (or maybe earlier. Actually, I think it was earlier. He worked for the postal service, then retired from that). Then he became lindy hopping teacher extraordinaire in the 80s, when he was in his 70s. Now he is still teaching and traveling the world. He had a hip replacement years ago, then last year had that replacement replaced with new technology. He is borg lindy hopping bomb.
It's become a tradition for scenes to film themselves doing the shim sham for Frankie's birthday. It's almost the one event where even warring local factions come together and do something creative for a bigger purpose. Not even bush fire appeals or tsunamis get this sort of cooperation.
So, "Dear Frankie. Happy Birthday to you!"
"korea for the win" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and lolfrankie
March 21, 2009
djing bal for the first time
Posted by dogpossum on March 21, 2009 2:54 PM
So I DJed for balboa dancers for the first time on Thursday night. It was really interesting. I really liked the crowd, and I really enjoyed figuring out what might work with bal dancers. I don't dance bal (well, if I'm led, but not by preferences), so it was kind of challenging.
I'm a bit tired now, so I can't say much, but here's the set I played.
Some songs worked (Jive at Five, plus the other bal faves), some didn't. I misjudged a couple of times and played songs that made people want to lindy. Which can't be too bad a thing, huh? ;D
One of the nice things about this set (and preparing for it), was being able to use a wider section of my music collection. The tempos are quite high - 160bpm is the base. I've been playing for lindy hoppers at an average of about 140bpm these days, and I'd like to take that higher. Sydney lindy hoppers seem less interested in higher tempos. Or I could simply be reading them wrong (which is entirely likely). With lindy hop, I often feel that I need to build the energy in the room before I raise the tempos. Most of the events I've been DJing have been smaller or less intense social events, so the energy level doesn't quite get up there to critical mass.
Balboa, though, is a different animal. What does it look like? Well, it looks like this:
(Kelly and Mickey, ABW 1st place 2008)
This clip is interesting for the fact that it really emphasises the style and 'feel' of many balboa dancers, in contrast to lindy. It's a 'tighty whitey' dance (as I've heard it described by bal dancers): white kids dancin' white. The couple spend more time in closed position. It's really amazing stuff - intricate footwork, a real 'dancer's dance'. I like this couple - it's pretty good stuff. I just find them a little... cloying. And straight. Watch them dancing lindy hop here for some contrast. Bal gives you some sweet-as weight commitment, which really helps your lindy.
I like to watch bal, I quite like dancing it, but it doesn't set me on fire the way lindy does. Lindy makes me feel crazy. Bal makes me feel a little... constrained. I also have some trouble with the fact that the follow really has to _follow_, and the trend seems to be for follows to dance a little more passively than in lindy hop. This, of course, is not always the case. But this is what I see most frequently. Probably because I simply don't get to too many bal gigs. Can you see why it's not really my type of dance?
While I'm talkin' gender, I think it's worth checking out Kate Hedin. Notice anything different about her body shape?
I think it's worth pausing here for a little Sylvia Sykes time:
(linky)
Sylvia was one of the earliest revivalist lindy hoppers. She's also one badass follow. She's older than the other flibberyjibbets getting around, she's phenomenal, technically, and she has the sort of confidence and presence that makes you think 'why aren't there more of the sisters getting this sort of recognition?' She is one of the few female teachers who's billed 'with partner' (though, btw, Nick is top shelf (young man) bal lead action).
From watching just those clips, you can see how bal is quite a different dance to lindy hop. It's amazing to watch - like really fast, really sophisticated knitting. I'm just not... all that into it. I definitely prefer to lead it rather than follow it - boooring. Leading is technically challenge, intellectually exciting and physically a lot less demanding than lindy.
This is one last example, for the sake of illustrating the range of styles and approaches to balboa:
(linky)
That's Mia and Todd. Todd is better known for his lindy hop. Mia is badass bal Sistah, who usually dances and teaches with Peter Loggins.
I quite like this clip for the way we see Todd's phenomenal musicality demonstrated. But it's less pleasing as an example of this couple's communication. Todd is very much an 'in control lead' - Mia is _following_. Sometimes he doesn't quite give her time to finish what she's doing - we feel as though he's cutting her off before she finishes her sentence. There are some points, where they're out at maximum extension (holding just one hand in open) that I think 'eeek' - it goes beyond rubber band and out to too-far, too-extended. It takes a badass follow to make that sort of waaay out there extension work. Which is what Mia is. But Todd's bal has an energy that I really like. I like the bounce, I like the flamboyance. But it's probably a little further from hardcore balboa and a little closer to lindy hop.
FYI 'pure bal' is danced all in closed position. Not so much of a spectator sport, unless you're into really hardcore technically precise, close dancing. Which I am. At times.
So you can see what bal's about, a bit, from those clips. The music is high energy, but it feels as though balboa dancers (with their small, precise steps and footwork) have a greater capacity or - or at least interest in and emphasis on - music which is technically precise and 'smaller', more intricate. With bal dancers, I feel as though I don't need to get the energy really high before I get the tempos high. Bal dancers are generally comfortable at at range of tempos, though most bal dancers dance to higher tempos (this is a local trend rather than an historical 'accuracy'). Technically, they do the things lindy hoppers should: small steps, clear weight transfers, traveling less at higher tempos. But they can also add in lots of intricate, time-consuming stuff that most lindy hoppers just don't have the time or skill to do at higher tempos. Also, because the follow isn't traveling as much on her own (as in lindy), there's less pressure on her at higher tempos.
DJing for this crowd last week, a friend made this interesting comment: music for bal is 'less in the pocket' (or 'not as deeply in the pocket' - I can't remember the exact line). This means, basically, that the music doesn't 'swing' as much - it doesn't feel as though the musicians are as far behind the beat. This gives it a great 'uppy downy' feel (now I need Trev to chime in with the bit about forward/horizontal propulsion and vertical propulsion in swing being closer to equal). To me, this screams 'lindy hop!'. But to a crowd brought up dancing to super groove (which tends to be super in the pocket), this isn't the case. Peter mentioned a while back that 'if it feels good to lindy to, it'll feel even better to bal to'. But it's not as simple as just playing stuff that 'makes me feel like lindy hopping.' At least not for this crowd.
There were a couple of songs which didn't work for this crowd (who were relatively flexible) - 'Main Stem' and 'Who Stole the Lock' were two of them (both of which are, coincidentally, songs Todd and Naomi have danced to in quite well-circulated clips). They felt 'too lindy'. 'Jive at Five' went down a treat, but this is a song I think of as _quintessentially_ lindy hop. Same goes for 'Stomp it Off' (though I have played this for both lindy hoppers and balboans and had good responses from both). Fats Waller also went down a treat, and he's my go-to man for lindy hop. That song 'Twenty Four Robbers' is drilled into my brain as 'that Frida and Skye song', so I associate it with skankin'ly badass lindy. In summary, the songs that I think of as 'tinkly' or 'light' or 'cheery' work well for balboa dancers in this town. Goodman and Ellington small group stuff goes down a treat. Olden days early 30s/late 20s works well for them as well, but not all the time.
I'm looking forward to more experimenting on those poor balboa doods. :D
Also, this was the first time I've ridden to a dance gig since moving to Sydney. I have MISSED it!
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:15
Call Me A Taxi Four Of The Bob Cats 175 1938 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:13
Mr. Ghost Goes To Town Mills Blue Rhythm Band 192 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: 1933-1936 3:24
Jive At Five Count Basie and his Orchestra 174 1939 The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 03) 2:51
C-Jam Blues Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 180 1942 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 13) 2:39
Tar Paper Stomp Mora's Modern Rhythmists 174 2000 Call Of The Freaks 3:32
Whoa Babe Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra with Lionel Hampton, vocal 201 1937 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 1) 2:53
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 3:09
Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Part 1 Benny Goodman Quartet with Martha Tilton 176 1937 RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (Disc 2) 3:27
Chris And His Gang The Cairo Club Orchestra 180 2004 Sunday 2:40
Minor Swing Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five 202 2003 Jammin' the Blues 3:24
Jungle Nights In Harlem Charlestown Chasers 213 1995 Pleasure Mad 2:49
Swingin' On That Famous Door Delta Four 190 1935 All Star Jazz Quartets (disc 2) 3:00
Stompin' At The Savoy [take 1] Benny Goodman Quartet 166 1936 RCA Victor Small Group Recordings (Disc 2) 3:19
Twenty Four Robbers Fats Waller and his Rhythm 196 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 2:43
Who Stole The Lock (On The Henhouse Door) Jack Bland and his Rhythmakers with Henry 'Red' Allen 243 1932 I Was Born To Swing 2:40
All The Cats Join In Benny Goodman 176 All the Cats Join In 4:23
Main Stem Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 207 1942 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 13) 2:50
Hittin' The Bottle Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 211 1935 Rhythm Is Our Business 2:57
"djing bal for the first time" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 17, 2009
sigh
Posted by dogpossum on March 17, 2009 3:08 PM | Comments (3)
Lat night, after a promising trip to the podiatrist that afternoon, I had a dream about dancing. I was dancing and dancing. And it didn't hurt.
"sigh" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
March 9, 2009
an awesome jazz doco from 1961
Posted by dogpossum on March 9, 2009 9:57 PM | Comments (3)
...in six parts, on youtube (can't find number 2, sorry).
#1
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ86ohwbjVA)
#3
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWyByntsaw)
#4
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mq6i0IjBFI)
#5
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9p-ukqMWcM)
#6
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwlmoNjPdVo)
"an awesome jazz doco from 1961" was posted in the category clicky and lindy hop and other dances and music
recent djing
Posted by dogpossum on March 9, 2009 10:03 AM | Comments (7)
I've been doing quite a bit of DJing in Sydney, more than I did in Melbourne. I quite like it - I need the money for CDs (or downloads), I like keeping my hand in, DJing-wise, and DJing gets me out to see dancing people while I'm injured and not dancing.
I can't say the actual DJing has been awesome. This is partly to do with my own less-than-awesomeness, but also to do with my adjustment to a scene which doesn't have the sort of crowded, hard core dancing I'd DJ for in Melbourne. Sydney actually has more social dancing nights than Melbourne, it's just that this greater number of (diverse) gigs means that the dancers are spread across more events, leaving you with fewer people at individual events. There are also the usual issues RE teachers and troupe dancers - they don't go social dancing as much.
I suppose (though it's impossible to generalise) that the usual factors contribute: these guys are already dancing three nights a week and not interested in another social dancing; they value performing and teaching over social dancing; they're involved in tight knit social groups which make them reluctant to explore social events without their homeys. What this means for me as a DJ, is that there are fewer of these more experienced, hard core dancers out social dancing when I'm DJing. Which means that you're left with a crowd who have less dancing stamina, less experience with more complex rhythms and patterns, and less interest in hard core dancing. This isn't an entirely bad thing - I've always liked DJing for new dancers, if only because they haven't developed a rigid set of dance and music preferences - they're just in it for the fun. But it does mean that I have to take more care with the tempos and song selections. But I'm not complaining - I am still enjoying DJing. And there are still quite a few experienced dancers out there on the floor - the types of people who aren't interested in the teaching and performing, but are interested in gettin' jiggy on the dance floor.
I DJ one night at a pub which is heaps of fun. Pub or bar gigs are always good, as there's alcohol involved, and that usually loosens the dancers up a bit. But at this gig there's a larger number of older dancers who don't really have the dance fitness required for hard core lindy hop. When I say older, I'm talking people in their mid to late 40s and higher. I know, it's not actually 'older' at all, but once you get over 20, if you're not actually dance-fit, lindy hop is really challenging, especially at higher tempos. As Frankie Manning says, "Get in shape to do lindy hop, don't do lindy hop to get in shape." I also find that this crowd has more interest in talking and socialising than dancing; they tend to do things like dance two songs in a row then stand on the dance floor talking rather than moving off the floor. This discourages other people from dancing, and means that I'm left with an empty floor for a song. So I have to 'start from scratch' with the next song. They do this regardless of the type of song I'm playing in that third spot. They just want to talk.
As you might expect, this makes this gig the most interesting and welcoming, socially speaking. As new folks in town, we've always preferred this gig, just for hanging out and meeting people. But it's a very difficult crowd to DJ for. There's also a large number of rock and roll dancers there, and these tend to be the older dancers. Who really aren't into old school swinging jazz. And seeing as how that's where my DJing preferences lie - right back there in the 30s, well before the shuffle rhythms and un-swingness of rock and roll. And I've even been easing off the jump blues lately, so I'm not really offering much to this particular crowd.
I have played some really bad gigs at this venue. But I have also done some good sets. Last gig I did there the sound set up was seriously fucked, so I had trouble getting anything to sound ok, let alone being able to concentrate on the combination of songs. But I have, finally, figured out that a combination of tempos and eras works with this crowd: old school for the lindy hoppers, 50s jump blues and later swing for the rock and rollers. I refuse to play rock and roll (mostly because I don't own any and don't really want to buy any), but I will play 50s Basie, Witherspoon, etc, leaning on their later, less-swingy, more-jumpier stuff. It's not ideal, and I really hate seeing what it does to people's lindy hop, but I do breathe a sigh of relief when the floor fills up again.
To make it work at this gig, I need a mix of dancers - I need younger, hard core lindy hoppers. I need the drinking, less-dancing rock and rollers for the social, party vibe. I simply don't have the skills to work this crowd as-is. I find it frustrating. And while I'd usually muddle through for a paid gig, I do this one pro bono for mates, so I'm a little less happy about the deal. It's mostly that I'm frustrated with myself for not being able to make it work. And I'm frustrated because I can't play the sort of music I really love, all the time. I do get to play it, just not in a big, solid block. And I certainly don't get to experiment with even early (ie late 20s) stuff or with things like recretionist New Orleans doods like later Bechet - that stuff goes down like a ton of bricks with this crowd. The problem is really that they simply don't have the musical experience that I need to be able to play a really diverse set. But then, these sets remind me that that stuff (the 20s and NO revivalist) isn't that great for lindy hop - it doesn't quite swing properly, it often doesn't have the right 'feel'. Frankie wouldn't like it.
So I don't think of this gig as a 'crap gig'. I think of it as the most challenging gig on the calendar, and I'm stretched to make it a successful one. I'm not quite there, yet.
Beyond this one, I also play a blues night. It's once a month, and the only blues night on the calendar. It's pretty well attended, but the venue is a little big for blues dancing, so you don't get the right vibe in the room. Blues really needs a crowded, smaller room that feels like a crowded bar. Well, that's what I like for blues - I like to play a rollicking, rolling blues room where people are shouting and sweating and partying hard. Lots of energy and fun. I'm not interested in playing cuddle-blues gigs at all. Boooooring. But this set isn't too bad a gig. The dancers are new and enthusiastic, and blues is simple enough (because it's slower and it's taught in a simpler format), easier than lindy hop, so dancers feel more confident. I don't have a very big collection of music for blues dancing, so I'm not actually all that specialised - I tend to play across styles. Though I avoid soul and funk (because that's not blues, and because there are specialist soul and funk DJs in the broader music community who use original vinyl and make swing/blues DJs look like lame amateurs), I don't lean as heavily on olden days stuff as I do for lindy. This means I have a better chance of pleasing more people. Or rather, I have a better chance of pleasing them with less effort. When you're playing old school, I think you have to work harder to draw people in. With a mixed set, you eventually find something someone likes, even if it's just the right 'style' for their tastes. This is how I started DJing lindy hop. I think it can be the mark of a newer DJ, but I also know experienced, truly top notch DJs who play fabulous mixed sets. It's just that DJs often specialise after a few years as their own musical interests follow particular trails and historical periods or particular artists.
As a dancer, I like both types of DJs. Though I loathe a DJ who changes gears without the clutch: smooth transitions are essential for making this work.
But I like the blues sets. The crowd is enthusiastic and supportive, the set up of the room lets them get physically close enough to talk to me (and let me know whether they like what I'm playing), they like looking over my shoulder from the raised mezzanine behind me to see how I'm DJing (blokes like this especially - they like seeing the technical side of DJing), and like hearing their responses to my music and knowing whether I'm doing what they're interested in. I would like to use a smaller room, but I'm not going to bitch about that when the crowd is so enthusiastic and welcoming. It's also in a bar, and bar + blues = good news for the DJ.
I also play a couple of other lindy gigs. One is a twice-per-month larger event in a church hall, another is a fortnightly, smaller event in a smaller bar venue. The larger one is tricky. The sound set up isn't adequate for the large, echoey, high-ceilinged church hall. It's a large space, and not particularly 'nice'. It's fine once the lighting's fixed, or if there's a large crowd. But otherwise, it's fairly 'church hally'. There's no bar, either, which is bad news at this event, which is already in pretty dire need of some loosening up. One of those two monthly gigs is also explicitly marketed as a 'beginners' night'. This is a mistake, I think. It means that anyone who doesn't think of themselves as 'beginner' doesn't turn up. And of course, with dancers being as status conscious as they are, we see no troupe members or teachers of any type at these 'beginner' nights. Ordinarily, this wouldn't worry me - I quite like a packed room of beginner dancers high on their own endorphines, discovering the headiness of physical contact with strangers. But this gig doesn't pull a large crowd at all, and it'll have to pull a massive crowd to fill that hall. So it ends up kind of quiet and empty. Tricky stuff. I'm not all that good at working smaller crowds (though I am improving), so this night is really challenging for me.
The last social dancing night is fast becoming my favourite. The venue is the same as for the blues night, but it works better for lindy hop. It has a good set up, with the sound desk facing the speakers rather than being behind them (it makes me crazy that lindy hoppers can't seem to grasp the fact that sitting behind the speakers sucks for DJing - I want them on the opposite wall so I can hear what's going down!). The venue is the right size for the crowd. I can get there easily on the bus, or catch a train (rather than only having the train option for the church gig - which requires my walking to the station, which hurts my foot a lot). The sound set up is generally pretty good (not perfect, but the best in this town). There's also a bar! I found this crowd tricky at first as it's a mid-week, mellower gig. But I've gradually figured out that that does not mean that I should only play low-energy music. I need to mix it up and work the energy just as I would with any other gig. But because the crowd is smaller, it requires a little more work.
In general, this town dances to very, very, very low tempos. We're talking between about 110bpm and about 150bpm. That's super, super low. When we get to 155bpm, they switch to balboa. There are a number of reasons for this. 1) the DJs play a lot of groove, which is often lower in energy - the uppy-downy bounce of the big band is smoothed out by super-behind-the-beat smaller bands. 2) the DJs play the same music every set - they don't have large enough collections to really push their DJing, and encourage them to explore new music. 3) the DJs tend to all play the same songs. This could be a result of music sharing or simply sharing similar tastes. 4) the transitions between tempos isn't terribly smooth - there are often blocks of faster music for 'balboa', moving straight back down again to 110. So we hear 110, 120, then suddenly a few at 200, then down again to 110. And of course, everyone sits down at those 'balboa' tempos, unless they do dance balboa. I do like balboa, but it's not as exciting to watch at 200 as badass lindy.
My comfort zone for dancing lindy hop is about 140-200bpm. I am comfortable at 180, start to work at 200, then am challenged above 200. Well, when I'm dance-fit and not injured. But I have been dancing for a while. Though I'm certainly not a badass lindy hopper or competitor extrovert; I'm actually pretty conservative. In the olden days (ie at the Savoy in the 30s), 180 was average. At Herrang the DJs aren't to play under 160bpm. This is quite fast - most contemporary 'disco' music is about 120 bpm.
These higher tempos are very challenging if you're very tight in your upper body, or if you don't do triple steps or simply don't have very solid technique. Smaller steps, stay relaxed, do your triple steps (because followers need them to travel!) - all that helps you lindy at higher tempos. But these are often things that are neglected in class. And many dancers don't hear older music (which tends to be faster) in class, so they're not used to the structures of the music. They want to do their smaller, subtler body movements, when big band 30s action and faster music want you to do larger movements (as in, swing outs rather than body rolls), and to think of musicality in terms of combinations of these larger moves, thinking of the music in terms of phrases, rather than thinking of musicality in terms of responding to each individual note or sound. But if the moves you're taught in class are about smaller, finer movements, you're going to be kind of at a loss when you hit the social dance floor and hear faster, older music.
At any rate, when I started DJing in Sydney, I came in swinging, just as I would have in Melbourne, starting at about 130bpm. There isn't terribly far to go from 130 to 150bpm. I am finding that the dancers are stretching a bit, but things are still pretty slow, generally. I used to play much faster gigs at the mostly-beginner Funpit in Melbourne. But I try to 'begin as I mean to go on' - so if I don't want to sit on 110 all night, I need to start higher. I like 130 as a beginning tempo, though I'd really prefer to start on 140 and not drop below that. I won't start on 120 any more - it's just too freakin' slow. As you can see in the set list below, I started at 140 and was actually doing relatively higher tempos at first. This was in part because the music in the class was higher than usual (they were doing charleston).
The preponderance of balboa is both a blessing and a challenge. On the one hand, balboa lets dancers get used to dancing to faster music (they're really not much beyond 200 for faster music here), but on the other, it means that they default to balboa as soon as they hear slightly higher tempos. And balboa is less physically exhausting than lindy at these higher tempos, so they don't work up that dance fitness that you need for faster music. I'm not disparaging balboa here - it's a craft. It's a challenging dance. It's an awesome dance. But the movements are smaller. Though I do like what balboa has taught a lot of Melbourne dancers - bounce (or pulse as they call it). Smaller steps. Leading 'with the body' - by moving their body to move their follower's body (rather than using their arms to move a follower). A more relaxed upper body, especially at higher tempos. All this is fabulous for lindy too. I also have some frustrations with the type of music Sydney people hear as 'balboa music'. Someone's obviously been teaching a lot with Mora's Modern Rhythmists, Campus Five and Sydney Bechet. They hear revivalist New Orleans as 'balboa music'. This drives me nuts when I'm trying to play this stuff for lindy hoppers; the lindy hoppers sit down, the balboa dancers get up. From what I can learn, balboa dancers in the olden days were into the same types of music as lindy hoppers. So there was a lot of big band action in ballrooms. I can't really see them getting into revivalist New Orleans action... but I could be wrong. Either way, it niggles me to see balboa dancers hear one type of music as 'balboa music', especially within the broader swinging jazz family: that's way to rigid a definition, even for a purist like myself.
But this will change as balboa dancers travel more and get more experience with a wider range of music. It'll also help the lindy hoppers to travel a bit more too.
For me, DJing, I have to take the long term view. I can't just jump in and play with an agenda and expect them to DANCE. I have to gradually add stuff in and move the general vibe of my set in a particular direction. As a new DJ in town, all my music is 'new' to them - they haven't heard me overplaying my favourites for the past few years. So I do have some liberties. But it's also been important to find out exactly what they're dancing to otherwise. Basic research tool? My getting out there and dancing. So you can see how my DJing might have lagged a bit since I've been off the floor. At any rate, because I'm DJing so much, I can start adding in 'new' songs, while also building up a body of music which is 'familiar'. While I type this, part of me is shouting, "Hey! Arrogant, much?" I'm not sure I actually have a solid grasp of what dancers are into in Sydney - I can't see them when they're sitting down behind me. I'm not getting out to social dance and hear and see what they're dancing to in other DJs' sets. And I'm not in class, hearing the teachers' music. So I'm not entirely sure my instincts are tuned in properly. It's all a bit frustrating, and I do worry that the longer I'm out of dancing, the more my DJing will decline. I've seen it in other DJs: if you don't dance, your DJing inevitably declines as you get disconnected from what actually feels good for dancing. It's a struggle if you're generally someone who only dances within one particular style or one particular tempo range, but it's impossible to stay on top of things if you're neveR dancing to anything.
In that vein, I'll be doing my first set for balboa dancers next week. I've tried to score a balboa set in the past in Melbourne, but have been knocked back a few times. This could be because I suck, because I'm not a hardcore balboa dancer, or because I'm just not in the loop. But we'll see how I go. I'm looking forward to it - I think I'm going to learn a lot. I'm putting together a list of 'maybe' songs (as I usually do before a gig), and I'm looking forward to playing a wider range of tempos. I have a lot of faster stuff that I rarely, if ever, get to play for dancers. Thing is, I have absolutely no idea what these guys play at a regular balboa night, so I'm not going to have any idea what their 'normal' music is like. I will make it clear to the dancers on the night that I have no experience, and that I'd like feedback. The organisers also know I haven't done this before, so they're going to be ready with suggestions (hopefully). It's not a paid gig, either, which is good... although it's not, really. I'm going to enjoy it, I think. Once I stop being nervous.
Anyways, here's the set I did last week at the fortnightly gig in the smaller blues/bar venue. It's a 'lindy hop' set. The tempos are higher than I usually hear at that venue. At one point a guy asked "can you play something slower?" This was while I was playing 'Chimes at the Meeting' which is 245bpm, so I was "of course - I was just about to drop the tempos a lot. This next block will be much slower." And it was. I'm kind of working the wave here, but I think that these days I'm focussing a bit too much on the transitions between musical styles, and not enough on the tempos. It's almost as though I've lost touch with how dancing to four songs at 150 in a row can feel (bit boring, mostly). I think this is a consequence of my not dancing these days. But it's also a consequence of my DJing for people who like a wider range of tempos. If you're happy at 180bpm, three songs at 150 are a 'rest'. But if 160 is your max, then three 150 songs is a real stretch. Sigh. These are the little things that I'm worried about, as a DJ. And I do wonder if I'll be able to continue DJing if my foot never recovers (which the specialist says is a real possibility - though I'm going to address that again at our appointment this week). Three months off dancing already, and I'm having trouble with the thought of no more dancing ever.
If you've ever seen any of my other sets or heard me DJ, you can see from the set below that I didn't play terribly much new or challenging stuff. An awful lot of old favourites, stuff I overplay. There are a few new things that I've bought from emusic or on CD lately (mostly emusic, though - hence the incomplete details). That Bob Crosby song 'Rag Mop' is fully sick. I love that MBRB version of 'Mr Ghost Goes To Town' - I will never play the Campus 5/MMR version (which does it?) again. MBR's version just has more pep and zing to it. It's also a little faster (maybe 10 or 20bpm - enough to spice it up a little). The musicianship is certainly far better. There was a birthday/farewell dance at 'Jersey Bounce', hence the sudden style change. After that, I suddenly had the urge to go all groovy and hi-fi. I really like that Ernestine Anderson album atm, even though Gene Harris is involved. That version is way better than the live one we hear a lot. Then I decided I was over this slumpy, low energy groovy stuff (it was also making people sit down rather than jump about like fools). So I played 'Smooth Sailing' because everyone knows it, and because I like to pair it with 'Lemonade'. Note the tempos there - boooringly 110 or so. The dead zone. So we went up a bit with the Jay McShann one. That song 'Blue Monday' is on my overplayed list, but it has lots of shouty energy. From there I did drop down with the Basie, but it's another high energy, live song that's good for building a sleepy room. The inclusion of CJam Blues there should let you know just how badly I was leaning on the overplayed list. That song is overplayed everywhere in the lindy hopping universe. The last two songs were requests. Then I had to RUN for my bus.
While I am leaning on the overplayed stuff, I'm not sure if it is actually overplayed here in Sydney. Many of these songs I know I've played a lot and still do play a lot. I try to avoid them at exchanges, as people are at exchanges to be challenged and to experience something new and exciting. But at a smaller gig like this, familiar stuff is often welcome, and it's hard to resist the way people respond to something they know, especially if they're finding the other stuff a bit challenging or unfamiliar. I do tend to DJ lazy and lean on the familiar, and I will try to fix that up. Thing is, some of these songs I know I'm the only one playing, so I never get to dance to them, so they don't feel overplayed to me - I know them well, but I don't know them well with my body.
Any how, here's the set. name, artist, bpm, year, album, length, last played (the last played will vary - I did the set on the 4th, starting at 9pm, so ignore the last played times/dates on the ones I've listened to since).
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan 147 1956 A Tribute To Andy Razaf 3:19 4/03/09 8:58 PM
My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone 120 The Great Nina Simone 3:38 4/03/09 9:02 PM
Bli-Blip Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five 140 2007 Moppin' And Boppin' 2:44 4/03/09 9:05 PM
Rag Mop Bob Crosby and the Bobcats 164 1950 Bob Crosby and the Bobcats: The Complete Standard Transcript 2:15 4/03/09 9:07 PM
Savoy Blues Kid Ory 134 1945 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 3:01 4/03/09 9:10 PM
Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller and his Rhythm 134 1941 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 3:10 4/03/09 9:13 PM
Summit Ridge Drive Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five 128 1940 Self Portrait (Disc 2) 3:21 4/03/09 9:17 PM
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 153 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:26 4/03/09 9:20 PM
Mr. Ghost Goes To Town Mills Blue Rhythm Band 192 1936 Mills Blue Rhythm Band: 1933-1936 3:24 4/03/09 9:23 PM
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and his Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 1950 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 3:04 4/03/09 9:26 PM
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 146 1949 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 3:01 4/03/09 9:29 PM
Oh I'm Evil (05-01-41) Una Mae Carlisle 158 1941 Complete Jazz Series 1938 - 1941 2:25 4/03/09 9:32 PM
Turn It Over Bus Moten and his Men 148 1949 Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) 2:38 4/03/09 9:35 PM
Did You Ever See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball? (06-29-49) Count Basie and his Orchestra 155 1949 Complete Jazz Series 1947 - 1949 2:15 4/03/09 9:37 PM
Cole Slaw Jesse Stone and His Orchestra 145 Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 2:57 4/03/09 9:40 PM
Bearcat Shuffle Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy with Mary Lou Williams 160 1936 The Lady Who Swings the Band - Mary Lou Williams with Any Kirk and his Clouds of Joy 3:01 4/03/09 9:43 PM
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and his 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 2:49 4/03/09 9:46 PM
Chimes At The Meeting Willie Bryant and his Orchestra with Teddy Wilson, Cozy Cole 245 1935 Willie Bryant 1935-1936 3:01 4/03/09 9:49 PM
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra 165 1937 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 3:10 4/03/09 9:52 PM
Walk 'Em Buddy Johnson and his Orchestra 131 1946 Walk 'Em 2:53 4/03/09 9:55 PM
Hungry Man Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 135 1949 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6) 3:08 4/03/09 9:58 PM
Four Or Five Times Woody Herman Orchestra 141 The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) 3:09 4/03/09 10:03 PM
Jersey Bounce Ella Fitzgerald 134 1961 Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! 3:36 26/01/09 9:50 PM
Goin' To Chicago Blues Ernestine Anderson with Ray Brown, Gene Harris, Red Holloway, Gerryck King 135 1984 When the Sun Goes Down 4:53 4/03/09 10:11 PM
Smooth Sailing Ella Fitzgerald 118 Ken Burns Jazz: Ella Fitzgerald 3:07 4/03/09 10:15 PM
Lemonade Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 117 1950 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6) 3:17 4/03/09 10:18 PM
Blue Monday Jay McShann and his Band with Jimmy Witherspoon 125 1957 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 3:40 9/03/09 8:58 AM
Every Day I Have The Blues Count Basie and his Orchestra 116 1959 Breakfast Dance And Barbecue 3:49 9/03/09 9:01 AM
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 3:34 4/03/09 10:29 PM
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie 144 1958 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 3:13 4/03/09 10:32 PM
All The Cats Join In Benny Goodman 176 All the Cats Join In 4:23 4/03/09 10:37 PM
Shake That Thing Mora's Modern Rhythmists 227 2006 Devil's Serenade 2:58 30/09/08 3:31 PM
"recent djing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 26, 2009
what a lovely pic
Posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2009 8:47 AM | Comments (0)
I just had to share this lovely photo of two of my friends. I would have blogged it straight from flickr, but couldn't. You can see it here, but make sure you check out the rest of this photographer's amazing pics.
This is a good bud of mine who's living in New York, though she's been living in London for a few years now (four?). The guy is another friend, an American who was living in Melbourne but now lives in the Netherlands. I love this pic because of the shapes and pose (they weren't actually posing - just dancing), but also because I love the expression on D's face. She's having so much fun. We miss her a lot, but we're also proud she's off being jetsetting Woman of Business. This photo also makes me a little bit sad, because it's all the things I love about dancing - having fun, being creative, figuring things out, making beautiful shapes, experimenting with weight commitment and leading and following. I also like the way G hasn't dragged D over too far - he's actually extended his arms. And that's something a lot of guys can't seem to manage (often because they carry far too much tension in their shoulders and just _can't_ extend that far). I also like it that they're wearing normal clothes, not vintage gear - this is everyday dancing for everyday people.
So I like this photo a lot. Nice framing, nice light - just the perfect moment capturing two lovely people doing something they both love very much. Sigh.
"what a lovely pic" was posted in the category clicky and lindy hop and other dances
February 11, 2009
yay yoga
Posted by dogpossum on February 11, 2009 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
Well, things are kind of boring over here in boring town. If only boring people are bored, I guess I must be pretty damn dull. I like it that the weather's cooler, and it makes me want to get outside and ride my bike. But it's also raining, and that's not much fun in a hilly town when you ride a bike with skinny, slick tires. It's weird to be wearing trousers again. It's been months and months.
On Monday I went to yoga for the first time since I've been here. It was so nice to be yogaring again, I smiled involuntarily all through the class. That could have been the endorphines speaking. The studio is very close to our place - only 10 minutes door to door (including time spent wrestling with the garage door and my bike on our steep drive way). I do have to ride down a very steep hill, then up another very steep hill, but I'm hardcore now, so that's ok. In fact, I can't believe what a baby I was about hills in Melbourne - there's no way I could ride _anywhere_ here if I couldn't handle hills. But I can, now, because I am badASS.
So yoga rocked. It's Iyengar, and it's a baby class, but I need that babyness. I am so out of condition. My poor foot got a bit of a workout, though, which is ok. Lots of standing poses which I usually love, but which were a bit intense for my poor plantar fascia. They did give my ankle a good stretch and flex, though, which is really important. Now I understand why back bends (where you sit on your feet, knees bent, bum on your heels) hurt so much - my ankle doesn't bend enough. So some of those sort of poses freakin' hurt, but my ankle needs to be worked a bit so I can get greater movement and - consequently - ask less of my plantar fascia.
The studio was small, which is ok. The cost was only $15 per class, which is good. The class itself was nice, but we didn't do any partner work (waaah!) and we moved through poses a bit quickly for my liking. I like taking a long time to get into a pose, holding the pose for ages, then getting out of it slowly. I like the slow, careful movement because it makes me really _think_ about the way I'm using my body. It's also a lot harder and makes my muscles really work. It was strange having a female teacher. You know, men and women have different bodies? And their muscles are differently proportioned? That's some wacky shit.
Basically, I feel freaking GOOD in my body today, even with the second-day-after soreness. It's a good soreness.
At any rate, I'd like to go back tonight, but I should probably give my foot a bit more of a break between classes. Though I think it'd probably be ok. Heck, I could justify my way into going back. So long as it isn't raining when I want to leave.
What do I like about Iyengar?
I like the precision and emphasis on alignment. I am a big old biomechanics nerd, particularly in regard to dancing, and I'm fascinated by the way Iyengar develops your awareness of your muscles and tendons and fascia and bones and bits. I like the way it micro-focusses on poses, and the way you learn to do them perfectly. Because I have a bunch of knee and hip problems usually, I like the way Iyengar's emphasis on having everything properly aligned (foot under knee under hip under...) teaches my body to hold itself properly and get over bad habits.
I like the props. I like using all the blankets and bolsters and belts and things. Partly because I like making cubbies, but also because props actually make poses easier. A belt holds you in place so that you can get used to how a pose feels. But you can adjust the belt to a hold that's comfortable, so it's not freaky. Bolsters and blankets can help you with a pose that might otherwise be too strong - they give you an easier version of a pose.
I like being adjusted by the teacher. I like having that one-on-one attention because it helps me learn. It's also nice to get that attention in class and to have someone put their hands on you. I like working in pairs for that same reason. I like the physical contact because it's helpful to have someone actually put your body in the right position, and because it's just nice to work skin-on-skin with someone like that. I like working in pairs because it helps me learn - you see how someone does the pose, then you work together to make the pose work properly. I also like assisting the person doing the pose and seeing from the outside how it's working. I like having a partner when I'm in the pose because it makes it easier. It's also nice to work with other people on this stuff - you can talk through a pose and experiment. It's less scary as well, and it's reassuring to have someone else to work with. And it reminds you that everyone has completely different issues, so it's ridiculous to compare yourself to anyone else. And that reminds you that yoga is about developing your own awareness so that you can be on better terms with your own body.
I like the slowness and the emphasis on holding poses rather than rushing through them. I like the challenge of holding a pose for a long time - it's like resistance training and lifting weights, but without props (ironically). It's challenging. But it's also really satisfying. I like it that my own body is enough to provide a really challenging work out. And that I can learn to use my body in a way that lets me lift my own body weight.
I like it that yoga thinks about muscles (and bones and so on) as a complex system of parts. Unlike doing weights at the gym, where you tend to think of muscles individually. When we lift our arms out to the side in yoga, we think not only of our arms, but of how our feet are placed on the ground, how our legs are positioned, how our pelvis is sitting, how the muscles in our sides, back, neck and so on are working. All this to hold our arms out straight to the side. And of course, because you're holding all these muscles in place, you're really working, so your heart pumps and you're generally giving good 'resistance training' style effort. I really like the way yoga makes you use the right muscles for the right job. Just as with dancing, you use big muscles for big jobs and small muscles for small jobs. And you always start from the ground up. I think this is why my foot injury upsets me so much - it makes it so very clear that you can't dance properly without proper weight commitment. Your feet are so very important.
I like it that Iyengar is good for injured people. Injuries at dancing mean sitting out for a few months. Injuries mean going to yoga to help heal. I like it that everyone can go to iyengar yoga and participate, no matter how old or infirm or injured they are. It can be as gentle or as strong as you need or can bare. I think this is the most important thing for me at the moment. I've been spending the last few months thinking of my body as fucked up and an impediment to my independence. But yoga reminds me that it's not actually fucked up, that I can still get on and do things and be in it and enjoy it. I just have to respect its limitations. So with yoga I can still go and spend an hour sweating and working really hard, and not be told that I'm 'broken' by those same limitations. I think it's this sense of confidence and respect for my body (rather than resentment) that is most important for me at the moment.
I like yoga very much.
It makes me feel so good. It stops me thinking for a couple of hours.
It's gentle and non-competitive, which is nice after dancing.
It's intellectually stimulating and I learn a lot. But it's learning about myself.
"yay yoga" was posted in the category bikes and lindy hop and other dances and yoga
February 10, 2009
Bud Freeman- Chicago/ Austin High School
Posted by dogpossum on February 10, 2009 5:10 PM | Comments (0)
... featuring my new love, Jack Teagarden. A little hi-fi 'trad' jazz... (more details here.
"Bud Freeman- Chicago/ Austin High School" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
January 23, 2009
swing dancers movin' on up
Posted by dogpossum on January 23, 2009 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
Recent clips from the Swing and Soul weekend in the US.
Check out those hardcore lindy hoppers gettin' all into the soul.
...incidentally, three of those blokes (Steven Mitchell, Manu Smith and Peter Strom) are teaching at Camp Oz in Adelaide this week.
"swing dancers movin' on up" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 19, 2009
mercy dee walton's Pity And A Shame and mildred anderson's No More In Life
Posted by dogpossum on January 19, 2009 6:05 PM | Comments (0)
Finally, my emusic month rolled over, and there was goodness to be had. Unfortunately 50 songs doesn't go that far when you have a wish list as long as mine. At the moment that list is divided equally between spankin' olden days jazz from the 20s and 30s and saucy hi-fi blues from the 50s and 60s. Well, actually, the list is weighted towards the olden days stuff. Because I just can't get enough of the Chronological Classics - it's a little bit exciting to have them available.
Mercy Dee Walton's Pity and a Shame is making me very happy. Hi-fi 60s blues, piano + harmonica + vocals. Kind of sparse instrumentally, but with a big, fat hi-fi sound. Perfect for blues dancing. Also, fixing my need for saucy blues.
Mildred Anderson's No More In Life
This woman has an amazing voice. I'm also enjoying the superior quality of these recordings: stereo! It's been a long time since I bought something in stereo. It's a bit exciting. And caught be my surprise, the first time something different came out of the second speaker. Both are from the Fantasy/Prestige label on emusic. This is some special stuff.
I'm also thinking of both these with blues dancing in mind. Not mine (as I am still MIA with fuckingshit injury), but other people's.
You know, it's actually a lot easier finding music for blues dancers. The time period is looser - I'm working between the 20s and the current day, though I'm heavier in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. There was just such a wealth of nice, fat blues action recorded. The swinging stuff I need for lindy hop (mostly late 20s, 30s and 40s, with some time in the 50s) is a lot harder to find, and it's also a lot trickier to judge the quality. Quality as in recording quality, but also (and more importantly) quality for actual dancing. Perhaps my standards are just lower for blues dancing. Or perhaps Australian blues dancers just have lower expectations of their DJs. At any rate, with all this lovely blues music available (and relatively easy to find - both online and in music shops), why is it that we have to listen to bullshitty 'blues fusion', trance, etc at blues dances? I know other people are into it, but it just shits me. If I wanted that action, I'd go listen to some decent DJing by hardcore trance/fusion DJs who really knew their shit. And I wouldn't be dancing the naff blues partner dancing to that shiz. No way.
... I guess I'm a little cranky about this stuff at the moment - I can't dance to anything, so it's horrible watching people waste their lucky dancingness on bullshit music.
Sigh.
I am cranky.
"mercy dee walton's Pity And A Shame and mildred anderson's No More In Life" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
oh goodness me
Posted by dogpossum on January 19, 2009 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
This is one kickass band of stars. I'm still on my Willie Dixon kick. Watch for his seriously saucy vocals and bass action.
(clicky)
"oh goodness me" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
January 17, 2009
Introducing the Rhythm Club All Stars
Posted by dogpossum on January 17, 2009 3:40 PM | Comments (0)
I can't really be bothered writing about this, beyond "want!".
From the site:
Introducing the Rhythm Club All-Stars . . . a brand new, super swingin collective specializing in jazz from the 1920s and '30s. True to its name, the RCAS is an all-star aggregation that features some of the top professionals on the Southern California scene. Led by internationally renowned drummer Daniel Glass (Royal Crown Revue, Bette Midler, Gene Simmons), the RCAS also include guitar wizard and vocalist John Reynolds (Cab Calloway, Janet Klein), bassist John Hatton (Brian Setzer Orchestra), and horn master Corey Gemme (Johnny Crawford, High Sierra Jazz Band) on cornet and trombone.Combining vintage instruments and a classic look with a period-perfect sound that swings like crazy, the Rhythm Club All-Stars offer an authentic, high energy retro experience that has quickly become a favorite among Los Angeles area swing dancers and corporate clients alike.
The band's debut CD features a wide variety of classics, from the familiar ("Honeysuckle Rose," "Blue Skies") to the obscure ("Old Joe's Hittin' the Jug," "Digga Digga Doo"). But it's the band's hard swingin' approach and unique arrangements that bring new life to this material. Check out the moody cadence of "Caravan," the fiery brushwork on "Jeepers Creepers" or the virtuosic banjo playing on "Digga Digga Doo" and you'll find yourself screaming for more. This is one disc not to be missed!
CDbaby pleases me: wonderfully prompt service, great products. Yes.
"Introducing the Rhythm Club All Stars" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
January 12, 2009
sigh. dance torture.
Posted by dogpossum on January 12, 2009 6:44 PM | Comments (1)
Sitting here, drowning in self pity for my own inability to dance, I've been torturing myself watching dance clips. Of all the competition footage I saw from/during last year, this one of Stefan and Bethany at ILHC is the one I keep watching. Not so much on the lindy hop, but chock full of interesting (dare I say eccentric?) jazz. I like the way they've used a fairly unconventional song for a fairly unconventional routine. One of the trickiest parts of dancing a revivalist dance is coming up with new and interesting choreography (actually, I guess that's the hardest part of any dance). But this one is really interesting. It's not perfect - there are a few things I'd have liked to be a bit tighter - but it really reflects the dancers' personalities. I tend to watch Bethany more than Stefan (as Pat said, all those years ago, "Don't wear black to a performance" - you just blend into the background, especially on a night with bright lights and serious contrast between the lit and unlit parts of the floor), but Stefan's really lovely in this as well.
Sigh. At least I'm back on the bike now, though - fitness will return and I'll be ready for a return to uninjuredness. I am, incidentally, off for an MRI on Tuesday (tomorrow) followed by another appointment with the specialist on Wednesday. If the plantar fascia is torn (as is suspected), then I'll be wearing a corrective boot to keep it immobile for a while. If it's not torn, then I'm to get to some cortizone. I should be on anti-inflamatories, but I just forgot to pick them up on Friday. I am a dumbarse for that, of course. Either way, no dancing for a couple more months. This is excruciating. I haven't gone this long (four months) without dancing in ten years. But I'm trying to be philosophical - perhaps this prolonged break will bring me back with renewed enthusiasm and inspiration. Perhaps I can come in rough and do some serious learn, side stepping my bad habits. Perhaps. Either way, I'm glad I'm back cycling, as it was killing me going without exercise. I'm also back into yoga next week (had planned last week, but the doctors' appointments have managed to screw with my Wednesday evenings).
"sigh. dance torture." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 1, 2009
al minns
Posted by dogpossum on January 1, 2009 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
Here's an interesting clip - Al Minns dancing in 1980 in NY. I'm not sure who the dancers in the background are. There's another one of Minns in the 80s here. It's interesting to compare his style with Frankie Manning's:
...and it kind of blows my brain that they're both in about their 70s in the later bits of the clips. Frankie is 95 this year (check the site for more info) and it's a really big deal - as you might expect.
I'm more of a Frankie fan (guess that makes me second generation) - I like the bounce and the low, 'flying' style Frankie has.
"al minns" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 31, 2008
the girl said no!
Posted by dogpossum on December 31, 2008 4:45 PM | Comments (0)
"the girl said no!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 29, 2008
self pity
Posted by dogpossum on December 29, 2008 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
I haven't danced in five weeks and listening to dancing music is making me crazy. It's horrible. Can't get to the specialist til after the 5th January. Poor me. :(
"self pity" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 21, 2008
willie dixon and memphis slim's Willie's Blues
Posted by dogpossum on December 21, 2008 10:08 PM | Comments (3)
Willie Dixon and Memphis Slim's 'Willie Blues'.
Emusic has me by the throat.
The Deadwood soundtrack* is, once again, fascilitating my unhealthy desires.
Not to mix a metaphor...
*more specifically, the (songs played over the credits of Deadwood)
"willie dixon and memphis slim's Willie's Blues" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
December 20, 2008
ballin' the jack
Posted by dogpossum on December 20, 2008 12:29 PM | Comments (1)
If I ever get full use of my limbs back, I'm totally ballin' the jack.
"ballin' the jack" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 12, 2008
swingstyrke 7 Right On!
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2008 5:30 PM | Comments (0)
Danish Goodness continued. This Swingstyrke 7 album was recorded live in 2007 and it's great. Still lots of late Basie, but some other action as well, including a version of 'Doodlin'', a song I'm quite partial to. I've put this in the 'groovy swinging lindy hop' category in my collection, which means that it's not for people who only like old scratchy. But if you like a little hi-fi and a little super groove, then it is for you. I like this stuff for the quality, I like the super laid-back swingingness of it, and I like it that it's super groove, which I think of as high powered groove. It doesn't make you sit down and listen, it makes you get up and dance. As with the other Swingstyrke 7 CD, the songs can be a bit long. This is ok when the tempos are lower, but I'll have to watch it when I'm DJing them for dancers.
This CD is good, but the 70s band gave good moustache. European, tight-jeaned flare-legged moustache. And that's sweet.
"swingstyrke 7 Right On!" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
leo mathisen 1941-42 To Be or Not to Be
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2008 5:12 PM | Comments (0)
More crapped on about before, which Scotti and I have a shared love for, and which I heard a couple of different versions of over the MLX8 weekend. I love the Hamp version, but this Leo Mathisen version is pretty spankin' good.
In fact, this whole CD is pretty awesome. He's kind of like a Danish version of Fats Waller. Which is weird, but to which I couldn't possibly object. I also liked the version of 'My Baby Just Cares for Me' which was written in the 20s, but which I had assumed was a modern one. It was made super-famous by Nina Simone.
Those of us who grew up with Rage remember this clip with fondness:
(linky).
Leo Mathisen doesn't look anything like Nina Simone, and neither of them are anthropomorphised cats. I imagine they also had quite different politics. But this Mathisen CD is a neat contrast to the Swingstyrke 7 one. It's olden days music, it has a chunky base and rhythm, which is just right for dancing phat lindy hop, and it's got that nicely saucy, self-reflexive humour which I adore in my jass.
"leo mathisen 1941-42 To Be or Not to Be" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
swingstyrke 7 1978-82 Count's Place
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2008 4:33 PM | Comments (0)
Last week I emailed the people at Little Beat Records (meaning, Peder at LBR) and bought a heap of CDs (you can see the catalogue here). Then The Squeeze paid a bunch of money into their paypal account. Then Peder sent me the CDs (6 of them). He very kindly gave me free postage (well, I did buy a bunch of CDs) and sent them without the jewel cases, which meant that the whole lot fit into one package. They arrived today. It's been raining for ages, but they were ok (phew).
Little Beat is pretty special. They're a small operation (as in one or two blokes) and they basically get olden days Danish music and make it sound nice. Then they put it on CDs and sell it to nerds like me.
So far I've listened to some Harlem Kiddies and some Swingstyrke 7. It's all really fabulous. The quality is magical. And the musicianship is amazing.
Swingstyrke 7 really rock my boat (I'm in the mood for some of this). Crudely, I'd typify them as a 1950s Basie tribute band recording in the 1970s and 80s. So they were a small band making Basie music. And it's freakin' great. I will _definitely_ be playing this next time I DJ. I thought the Paul Tillotson stuff was pretty good (and they're doing similar things with a smaller band), but these Danish guys are the fushiz.
It has that laid back, hi-fi, in-the-pocket feel of late testament Basie, but also smells like Europe. It's a little chunkier in the rhythm section (which is nice for dancing) and makes me want to get up on my (still, stupidly sore and injured) foot and dance about like a fool. DJing it will just KILL me.
Anyways, I'm only just onto the second CD, so I'll be a while yet. I'll write about the Harlem Kiddies next.
"swingstyrke 7 1978-82 Count's Place" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 9, 2008
exchanges are great
Posted by dogpossum on December 9, 2008 3:18 PM | Comments (0)
when you're a DJ.
It was really nice to hear some quality DJing from DJs with extensive collections and mad skills. It really makes a difference.
One of the nice parts of the MLX8 weekends was hearing DJs playing from albums/collections I own, but taking songs I'd never have thought to play.
Trev played a neat song from the Chu Berry Mosaic collection (Chasin' Shadows, with Putney Dandridge and his Orchestra) which I'd missed, and now I'm revisiting the collection. It's so very, very good.
I think, if I were to buy just one Mosaic set, that'd be the one. Actually, I'd probably buy that one and the Lionel Hampton one and the Duke Ellington small group one.
But if I could buy any now, I'd get the Kid Ory one and the (early) Louis Jordan one.
"exchanges are great" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
December 7, 2008
waaaaaah
Posted by dogpossum on December 7, 2008 4:05 PM | Comments (1)
In the two weeks I was in Melbourne I read three of these young adult books. They're called 'Pretties', 'Ugglies' and 'Specials' and they're by some guy whose last name starts with W. I want to read the last one, 'Extras'. They're not very good, but they're quick reading. I am very into young adult fiction (YA for those of us in The Trade) atm, mostly because of 'Titus Groan'.
Now I am reading this other dumb YA book called 'City of Bones' or 'Bone City' or whatever. It's kind of crap. No Diane Wynn Jones, that's for freakn' sure. Also, finishing off 'Tehanu' the other day (go Ursula Le Guin, go!) has ruined me for anything less. Jeez, that's some good shit. Also, has anyone read the other 'sequels' in the Earthsea series? I think I might.
Basically, this big binge on books (I'm also reading '1984' for the first time) is the product of a trip to that giant second hand book shop in Newtown and some time in Melbourne with Galaxy. She made me buy books (well, I bought the two Buffy season 8 volumes I was missing, but didn't go with the Angel because it was all FREAKING EXPENSIVE. No more Minotaur bookshop for me). I also went to a game shop and bought some more Cheap Ass games (NEED GAME PLAYING FRIENDS! NOW! min. 2 players for my 3-player games). And I bought a broach. And then, because I was obviously ridin' HIGH on the crazy horse, I stopped. But the ride, while it was on, it was so good.
So now I am all about buying books. Usually I wait for The Mother to bring up a shipment or I re-read, but I can't re-read those bastards any more. I can't even count how many times I've read them, but we're over 10. So now I'm buying the buggers.
Also, I am thinking about emusic again.
And, I haven't bought anything for anyone for christmas except my little brother's kids. Because I am crap. But I'm not sure anyone but me wants Chronological Classics CDs, jewelry by local artists, squids of YA fiction (actually, I'm not sure about that one - I think one of my nieces is into books. Because she is into adolescence, almost, and has turned into the nerd of the family. Finally - another nerd is born. She aims to be a chef when she grows up, so I figure that's a win).
Anyways, I hate buying christmas presents. I'd rather make them, but the fabric shop is TOO FUCKING FAR AWAY. It makes me crazy.
And, I have injured my plantar fascia, so I am hobbling around in pain or sitting on my arse watching DVDs (Heroes is less than A1 second time through, but it fills the gap). Or reading YA fiction. Can I just say: YA was better in My Day. Which was about the 70s, apparently, as that's when all the YA books my Ps had were published. Considering I was born in 1974, I guess they were planning ahead. Phew.
Have I mentioned the pain in my foot? Physio has hopes for me and a big dance camp in January, but I'm not so sure. It's a lot of pain. I blame MLX. I can't walk without pain. I can only just walk without a limp. Most days. I do the exercises, though, and I hope. I'm not sure about this getting older thing. It was better when I could just drink drive and get into pakour. Now that I am old, I am reaping the effects of my ill-spent youth. Which, actually, was mostly spent wearing docs and shaving my head. Oh, and going nuts in the university library. With the books. Because, you know, the UQ library had a fair few more books than the Sandgate High library. And you could just _borrow them out for free_!
Anyway, with that and all the disco dancing, I think I damaged myself a bit. The physio reckons fracturing something in my ankle horse riding when I was in my early 20s is responsible for a dodgy ankle today. At the time, I shrugged it off. Today, I suffer. Also, the once-fractured right wrist is also giving me trouble. So this is the lesson: breaking limbs has long term consequences. Which SUCK ARSE.
I am not coping well with the enforced home-stay. I want to go out. Into the world. I hadn't realised just how much walking I do in my day to day life. To the train station, down hill (excruciating on the home trip). To Ashfield for groceries (returning home to empty house, home alone til the weekend, local shops CRAP for veggies, partner working full time so can't go to shops: shitful!). To Marrickville to explore the local fabric shop. To the train station for a 2 part trip to the fabric shop in Green Square. Around Circular Quay, just to look.
Not to mention dancing.
Anyway, if I had a car, I could probably get around. But I'm relying on the bus, and it's not so good. It's just about driving me MAD.
A trip to Burwood yesterday to see a (terrible) film was really hard. I wanted to look in the Burwood shops and eat dumpling. No. Go straight to the cinema. Once I got there, I was in real pain. Then I had to stop off in Ashfield for our veggies. That was ok, but by then I couldn't imagine getting home from the train station in Summer Hill. So I caught a cab. It was so frustrating and painful - ordinarily the 20minute walk to our house from Ashfield would be delight. I'd walk through the park and pick some rosemary. I'd sticky beak in people's gardens. I'd think about things. But yesterday, it was a big piece of crap. Getting a cab felt like a failure.
The physio says riding a bike would be a bit less painful. But I have this stupid left over cold from MLX which is also making me very tired and weak. Which is probably why yesterday was so hard. But I'm also still scared of the traffic.
Fucking hell, this sucks. Injuries: be over! But the physio says we're in for a month of work before I can dance. Which makes me cry. No christmas performance :( No social dancing at three christmas parties. Nothing.
I think I'll buy myself another book. Or perhaps a few million more songs on emusic. I deserve them.
"waaaaaah" was posted in the category bikes and books and domesticity and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and mood swings
November 6, 2008
hey look
Posted by dogpossum on November 6, 2008 6:45 PM
an ad with actual, real lindy hop and bal, not fake cabaret crap.
but you totally have to be a nanna to dance de lindy hop. that's a given.
"hey look" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 31, 2008
firehouse five
Posted by dogpossum on October 31, 2008 1:09 PM
My desire for the Firehouse Five (specifically this album) has forced me to think, even more seriously (as in, will probably do it) about emusic.
This band is in the vein of the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, the Firecrackers and other recreationist bands. Excepting the Firehouse Five are actually from the revivalist period (mostly). I've just bought this CD, but I think I could go on and on and on. I know it's tighty-whitey cultural appropriation, but dang. The quality is good. And, well. You know. I want it. And thinking about music means I don't have to think about the masses of reading I have left to do.
But the sudden plummeting dollar has meant that buying CDs is expensive, mostly because of the postage. I like to have the liner notes, emusic will hit me with an extra bill each month, but... instant music. Sweet. Cheaper music. Double sweet. I think I will use it for 'taster' songs, finalising my departure from itunes, and for albums by newer artists where I don't need the liner notes. I think I'll also keep back up copies on CD with copies of the album cover (just in case, and because I'm a bit ob-con).
"firehouse five" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music and objects of desire
October 30, 2008
teaching, dancing and making place space
Posted by dogpossum on October 30, 2008 1:57 PM
Only half way through an article on taste (G. Hawkins ‘TV Rules’ UTS Review 4.1 May 1998, pp 123-139), I'm struck by the discussion of the ways in which 'place becomes space'. How does a room become a 'living room', or a house become a 'home'? Specifically, Hawkins is discussing (in the quote below) the ways in which children living in our homes force us to articulate the 'rules' of living in shared space. Or, in line with the discussion she presents, the ways in which articulating these rules gives us the chance to become reflexive about the way place is made into space by use. This isn't exactly new stuff (this article alone was published ten years ago, and develops Barthes' even earlier discussion of the cinema as place), but it suddenly seems important to me. Here's the section that made me think:
Rules, then, are systems of order - they allow us to project ourselves into the world and project the world back to us. Rules are guides for how to act, how to be in t his space. Rules discipline in a productive sense: they produce meaning, they organise, they are creative, they make inhabitation possible. Rules are embodied in things and actions, they communicate. Rules are also specific, they take place in situ, each room is a unique system of rules and a unique network of power because rules and regulatory practices are provisional, they constitute objects for their own practice. And children elicit rules, for Wood and Beck they are the ultimate barbarians, they have to be domesticated and in the process of prescribing rules, adult values and meanings become manifest. Adult order is constituted and so too is the never ending struggle to establish it as dominant (Hawkins 128).
The thing that struck me, here, is the way in which pedagogy - teaching - makes us articulate and become aware of our assumptions about space/place. Teaching in universities forces me to think about the ways the material I am teaching 'work' in a broader social and cultural context. The most difficult parts of teaching cultural studies (for me) lie in teaching 'class' or 'power' or culture as articulation of/space for the negotiation of identity, class, power, etc etc etc.
The part I have trouble with is teaching this stuff in the context of the old school neo-Marxist cultural studies tradition. In that context, this discussion is, ultimately, geared towards social change. Teaching or study or research is not (and should not, it is implied), be neutral. It should be a part of a broader social project. Or, more plainly, activism. For me, one of the ways I justify what I do is by framing it as activism. Women's studies doesn't make sense, for me, without feminism.
I am excited by the idea of this stuff as having value or usefulness. It's not simply ideas or theory in space - it has a job to do. It is a tool. It's something we can use. Being raised by the sort of people who didn't tolerate cruelty or injustice (social worker, decent person, animal activist...) has made me particularly aware of my responsibilities as a person. Simply, if I'm going to live here, I have to play nice. I have to do what I can to make things better for other people (and for myself as well). More clearly, I have a responsibility to play nice and be useful and helpful. I am sure there's some scary gender stuff in there (isn't that the way little girls are raised? To care, to be useful, to be helpful, to assist? Perhaps I should think more about leading or inspiring caring or begin project which require help?). But I find it makes me feel good to give a shit, and it also gives me purpose; it gives me reason for doing the things I do.
At any rate, teaching cultural studies has been difficult when I've been teaching wealthy kids at big, rich unis. I have found myself articulating this stuff in terms of 'responsibilities'. When I was teaching this stuff to less privileged kids, I found that that approach was just plain bullshit. It became a matter of 'rights'. This is one of the stickiest sticking places for me, teaching this stuff. And teaching - the breaking down and remaking and exploration of ideas - forces me to become aware of and to engage with my ideas and the ideas of authors at hand.
In another, connected point (where ideas must have practical applications), I'm absolutely struck by the way teaching works (in this context) in dance. I wrote quite a bit in my thesis about institutionalised pedagogy as a way of shaping ideology, or making ideology flesh. I placed it in opposition to vernacular dance practice - or learning on the social dance floor through more osmotic modes. Both are ideologically shaped and shaping practices. But I have trouble with pedagogy as capitalist practice - dance classes as product to be sold and bought... well, when it happens within a broader institutional context. Mostly because 'selling dance' on a larger, organised level demands homogeneity, and demands the disavowel of heterogeneity. In other words, it's difficult to teach dance (in this context) without creating right/wrong binaries. The right way is, of course, the product you are buying. Everything else is wrong, and hence undesirable; you wouldn't want to waste your money on it. Brand loyalty thus achieved.
But, continuing with this, I'm interested in the way dancers make 'dance floors' out of ordinary places. Hawkins refers to the role of emodiment (or bodies) in this process, largely via Barthes and his discussion of the bodily experience of the cinema (and at one point there was a reference to Frith** and taste, and there is of course reference to de Certeau). With dancers, this sense of embodiment is explicit.
The whole notion of 'floor craft', for example, where dancers learn (or choose not to demonstrate) the ability to dance 'safely' on the floor, not kicking or bumping into other dancers. Floor craft is a story of sociability and communitas, but it is also a story of social power. Which couples have the greatest liberty to ignore these rules? The most advanced. When is the idea of 'sharing the floor' set aside? In jam circles, where dancers display their abilities and status.
There are countless other examples. Lindy bombing involves groups of dancers descending on a 'non dance space' with music and dancing spontaneously (and often illictly). DJing functions as a way of making a place 'space'. DJs often speak of the 'feel' or 'vibe' or 'energy' in a room - a palpable, physical emotion and sensation - and the ways in which they manipulate that experience. The very act of dancing, therefore, not only creates space, but - far more importantly - creates an emotional, social space as well. Sharing a dance floor is about engaging in a non-verbal social discourse which is all about the body. In fact, without the body, the space collapses back into place. It might carry echoes, but it is, essentially, nothing without the dancers.
I'm suddenly reminded of way I think about DJing the first set of the night: I imagine it as 'warming' the room. Sometimes this is a physical warming, but most of the time it's a social, ideological, emotional, cultural, creative warming. I need to build the vibe or energy before I can manipulate it.
And to bring all this back to rules and articulating rules and teaching... dance classes are one step in the process of socialising dancers and teaching them how to make space out of place. I could argue that formal dance classes are in fact directly contributing to the breaking down of space - busting the vibe - because they insist on hierarchies and formalised, articulated modes of communication, but I'm not sure it's that simple. I do know, though, that the discourse of formal, institutional, commodified pedagogy is an impediment to the process of making dance places spaces. This is because teaching is about verbalising dance and about shifting the way we 'think' dance from the body to the brain and language. And any dancer will tell you that the sweetest, most satisfying moment of dancing comes when you stop thinking or articulating and become thoroughly and completely in your body.
Roland Barthes 1989 “Leaving the Movie Theatre†The Rustle of Language Uni of California Press, Berkeley, pp 345-249.
Michel de Certeau 1984 The practice of everyday life University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. xi-xxiv.
Simon Frith 1996 Performing Rites Oxford UP, London.
Gay Hawkins ‘TV Rules’ UTS Review 4.1 May 1998, pp 123-139
"teaching, dancing and making place space" was posted in the category academia and djing and lindy hop and other dances and teaching
October 16, 2008
i have little to say about this, and so a little post
Posted by dogpossum on October 16, 2008 5:12 PM
I'm still a little surprise that many Australian lindy hoppers think of blues dancing as passive, over-sexed, late-night and low-interest. But then, I think that I was lucky in Melbourne to have access to a vibrant local blues dancing community. A community (or should that be sub-branch of the swing dancing community? I think so. Just as we might include balboans for our swing dancing census, blues dancers also Belong To Us) whose social dancing component was at the time far more vibrant, interesting and live-music focussed than the wider local lindy hopping scene. But even in Melbourne, I was surprised that so many lindy hoppers would dismiss blues dancing in the above terms. Particularly when it was blues dancing (and balboa) that made such significant contributions to the groundedness and general movement away from 'arm leads' in many leads' dancing.
For my part, blues dancing was - in late 2007 at least - the most interesting and creatively stimulating part of social dancing in Melbourne. Live bands. A variety of DJs. Lots of leads and lots of follows, of all levels, out social dancing regularly. A pumping party vibe to every social dancing night. There were a number of factors contributing to the health of the Melbourne blues scene (not least of which were enthusiastic and ambitious events-organisers working within the unenviable constraints of school-based teaching and discourse), but I'm not particularly interested in discussing them here.
Really, I don't have terribly much to say, beyond sending you here to look at this very interesting image. I'll also add it as a popup image, just in case the site disappears:view image. This image really captures the way I think about blues dancing. Heck, I had trouble writing that - it feels a bit too much like the first year essays I've been marking, too close to a dull old semiotic analysis. But really, it is. Firstly, it's black and white. Or rather, black on white. Kind of unusual for webdesign, but particularly important for a dance which has its roots in black and white media: news print, pre-colour magazines, phonograph records, vinyl, shellac, photographs, early cinema. The white lines are kind of challenging on the eye, adding vibrancy and 'pop' to the title 'blues SHOUT!', as does the uneven lettering. All of this contributes to the sense of energy and dynamism which I tend to associate with blues dancing. For me, it is not dull or lifeless or passive or low-interest or over-sexed (though some blues dancers - as with lindy hoppers - are!).
Well, I have nothing more to say about this, except perhaps that I'd really like to go to this event. Pity it's in Chicago, huh?
"i have little to say about this, and so a little post" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 14, 2008
and finally!
Posted by dogpossum on October 14, 2008 5:22 PM
There're more Showdown clips!
This one is AMAZING
Because the music is so freakin' fast. Check out those tiny little bodies running about at such high speeds! In the air! On the ground! Go!
I'm not entirely sure this is lindy hopping music (it's a bit early - tuba, etc, not enough four on the floor action), but it's freakin' great.
I especially like the angle this clips shot at - it puts us amongst it.
(btw, you can see the 'Revolution' finals here).
note to self: write diatribe about high heels, the patriarchy and gross deformities of the foot.
"and finally!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
ilhc v ulhs
Posted by dogpossum on October 14, 2008 3:48 PM
Because the ULHS clips are still disappeared (with only some very boring 'official' clips to be found), I present this neat clip instead.
It's from the ILHC (International lindy hop champs - wtf? I challenge the legitimacy of that claim!) and features the awesome Boilermaker Jazz Band, some rock star dancers, some big schnapps, some jammin'. It's fun. I think I like it because things go wrong, there's some overexcited spastic dancing, some leads all caught up in the moment and forgetting about their partners, some lovely jam etiquette and just some random jazz fan 'I love music!' action.
"ilhc v ulhs" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 12, 2008
liveblogging showdown... from sydney...
Posted by dogpossum on October 12, 2008 12:06 PM
[EDIT: sadness of sadnesses, the clip I was referencing has been taken down from youtube already. I wish I'd downloaded it :( ]
The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown is on right now, as I type. Check out that website for interesting site design, sweet pics, interesting judges' essays, outlines of competition formats.
This year is interesting, not simply for the dancing (which I shall set aside with the aside that it is really quite GREAT), but for its teknikkal mediation.
I have faceplant friends whose updates are letting me know that they are at Showdown, getting ready, resting up, watching clips, catching up with friends and about to go dancing (one of the frustrations of faceplant's updates and twittering is that you can never tell people, honestly that you are actually dancing at that moment - you are always about to dance or have just been dancing or are thinking about dancing). And I've just been watching some of the very first bits of footage from the event on Youtube. Here's one:
This is the finals of a jack and jill competition. Jack and Jills are perhaps the most interesting competitions if you're looking for real leading and following. These guys don't usually dance together (though the pool of dancers frequenting this event is really quite small at this 'elite' level), and they're certainly not dancing choreographed sequences - everything you see is improvised. There is, of course, a large shared pool of steps - both 'modern' and 'historic' - which each dancer knows. And each dancer is of course expected to bring their own particular flavour.
The competition involves a number of heats:
- dancers enter as individuals
- dancers are paired up with a partner, randomly (usually a die is thrown)
- dancers dance with that partner
- dance partners are 'shuffled' randomly and the new partners dance together
- dance partners are shuffled again and paired with a final partner, with whom they move through too the finals and will dance with for the rest of the competition.
The number of shuffles and new partners depends on the specific competition, though a couple of shuffles is usually required - one isn't really enough (you want to see people dance with at least three partners).
The fun of this competition lies in the partner shuffling. And in seeing just how well dancers adjust to and work with their new partners. Familiar partners offer an immediate - or faster - pathway to creative rapport. But an unfamiliar partner must be adjusted to. Will the lead allow the follow to 'bring it'? Will the follow know when to bring it and when to 'listen'? There are moments when both partners are 'listening', when both are 'shouting' and when the happy conversational midground is met. Jack and Jills can be awkward, they can be magic and they can be just plain old good fun.
They're my favourite type of competition, and I enter them whenever I can. I find it's much easier to lead than follow in a Jack and Jill - you're setting the tone and choosing the steps. You can leave the follow some space if you feel her wanting to bust out. As a follow, you really have to wait and wait and wait for your partner to hear your contribution, and it's more than likely that he won't. Or that when you finally get some space, you come in shouting and it all dissolves into one of those bad arguments you have at 1am when you're overtired and really should be in bed.
Any how, back to Showdown and some really nice Jack and Jilling. The one thing I've noticed about Showdown in recent years is how similar the dancers are all becoming. I wonder if it's because they're all dancing and working together now more than ever? But at any rate, the diversity in dance styles has diminished in recent years - even Frida is looking like 'just another follow', when she always was 'FRIDA' (this is not to suggest that she sucks: she is still the Queen, the Boss and my favourite).
If you check out that clip, you'll see some interesting things going on in the filming and competition structure, both things which mediate your viewing or experience of the competition from a distance. If we were there to watch, we'd be caught up in the adrenaline of the live performance. There is no sitting calmly and objectively by in this type of competition: dancers need your energy, your shouting, your vocal and visual feedback. The band is live, and they're also in on the performance - they're responding to dancers, to the audience, to what they see and hear. And as a member of that audience, we're caught up in that loop. We're also all dancers, so we're 'dancing along' with the people in the competition.
But when you're watching via youtube, from the other side of the planet from the other side of the day, the experience is a little different. If you're still a dancer, and used to this social competition format, you're still 'living' the competition along with the dancers and audiences, especially if you're watching without fast forwarding or pausing, and if your interwebs connection is speedy. You're reading what you see as a dancer would - you're watching for the highlights, for the points of connection between partners, the missed leads, the dancers' reactions to these errors and moments of miscommunication. Do they laugh? Do they cringe? Do they panic? Do you laugh with them? Do you cringe in sympathy? Do you panic with them?
And where is the camera in all this? I read an article* on the Warlpiri media collective the other day where the author described the ways in which the camera itself must be given a 'skin' (or at the very least a specific, proscribed viewing position) when filming important stories. For the persons being filmed and involved in the filming process to know how to relate to the filming process, and for the final film's audiences to know how to watch the filming, the camera must be slotted into a specific social position and set of relationships within the community. When we watch a dancer's amateur filmclip of a dance competition, we are similarly identifying with the 'author's' social viewing position. We are 'the audience' - both at home in front of the computer, and squished into a spot on the dance floor watching the competitors. We are also dancers. It's been interesting to see how the technicalities of filming a competition like this affect the way we inhabit these positions as audience. When I say that we are watching as dancers, it is not just that we are watching with the physical, social, emotional and musical memories of our own dancing experiences.
Let me take one example.
This type of competition is a relatively recent incarnation of the lindy hop competition format. Let me describe an earlier, alternative format. Over the SLX weekend I participated in and watched some 'serious' lindy competitions. Dancers would dance to one song, all together on the floor in an 'all skate' 'warm up'. Then they would be seated along the back of the 'stage' area, watching as couples took turns dancing for one minute, alone in a 'spot light' to one song. Then there was another all skate, and we were done. As an audience member, the format was not only seriously dull, it was also frustratingly lifeless. The seated competitors provided no visual or emotional interest: they couldn't dance or move along with dancers, filling in the background with extra layers of rhythm and visual interest. They couldn't interact with the audience and competitors - there was no cheering, no visual or physical 'response' to what they saw. As a competitor, I found it stifling to sit so inactively on the sidelines, waiting for my turn to show off. I also found it emotionally confusing - first I was 'on', when I was dancing, then I was 'off' as I waited for my turn. It was, in the sense of spoken discourse analysis, a very 'white', very masculine example of formal turn taking. There was no collaborative meaning making or supportive 'interaction' as you might hear from a group of women gossiping. There was no logical and cumulative emotional development as each heat progressed - we couldn't build energy and emotion from the start to the climax. We were up/down/on/off. Boring and frustrating for both audience and dancers.
But compare this with the Showdown format in the clip above. All dancers begin on the floor in an 'all skate'. Four phrases - 8 bars - later (at about 1.08) all but one couple move off the floor. This is, I think, a new development - usually the first couple begins at the first phrase while the others watch and wait in an line in order of entry. I like this new version. Immediately, the couples must show that they a) understand phrasing, and b) that they have the visual and spatial sense to know how to move themselves (and their partners) off the floor and out of the way of the first couple. This isn't a trick for new dancers, but it's certainly something any dancer should have if they've been dancing for a little while. It's interesting, musically, because it suggests that the band should be using a 4 phrase introduction: "hello, here's the head/theme, here're the instruments, here are the dancers." It's a lovely way of bringing everyone together, musically, thematically, physically. It's also very much a marker of swinging jazz structures.
The first couple then dances for four phrases (until 2.06), coinciding with the first solo (a trumpet). Sweeeeet. I'm not sure if there was a confusion in how long each couple had to dance, as that lead looks up at about two phrases and makes as if to clear the way for the next couple. Either he didn't realise he had four phrases, or the next couple failed to make their entrance after the second. Musically, it makes more sense for a couple to have four phrases rather than two. It's more common for a couple to take one phrase (in a traditional 'jam' format) if the music is slow, and two if the music is faster.
The part that interests me is the way the camera begins to turn at the end of the second phrase 'looking' for the next couple. Is it following the first lead's lead? Or does it also know that the couples were to have only two phrases and an error has been made? The camera's movement encourages our thinking - from the other side of youtube - that there's been an error or miscommunication. Whether there has or not.
Either way, the fascinating part of all this is the way the format is sufficiently flexible that it can adjust for these errors and miscommunications. It's all still 'fair' because each couple will have a few turns, and their later 'turns' will be more interesting, as they and the audience 'warms up'. It's also fun - as audience and competitor - to see how a couple adjusts to these on the spot changes. They must be sufficiently cool and relaxed to not get all freaky and anal about the changes. They must have the musical skills to hear and respond to these new changes (if I were leading, I'd think 'ok, we're using 4 phrases now, not 2' and adjust my leading and combination of moves to suit), and they must also begin listening for new things in the musicians' playing to suit these new parameters.
[I have to point out: that first lead, Todd Yannacone, would have to be my pick for most musically amazing lead. He not only embodies the smaller musical embellishments, but also the broader structures of the song. He can hear and dance and lead the phrasing, the notes, the musicians' emphases and embellishments... and he functions as an instrument in himself, bringing another layer of rhythm and chromatic interest to what he hears. As a dancer, it's like synesthesia - we see what we hear and feel. And when it works, it's like taking a hit of ecstasy it's so pleasurable... which of course implies that a dancer's ignoring the musical structures is jarring and uncomfortable - both aesthetically and socially. And it is.]
At 3.05 that couple leaves and the next enters. But if you watch the competitors lined up in the background, you can see that they're all dancing with the competitors - they're completely invested in what they see. This is in part because they're 'on' - they're about to compete and they've already begun working and listening to the music. It's helpful, when you're competing, to be 'dancing' to the music, invested in the structures and relationships within the band, and so already 'dancing' and 'making' music. You're not starting cold. For everyone - audience, competitor, musician - the mood can be developed, cumulatively, over the course of the song. The band can pass around solos, everyone having a go at bringing their thing to the song (sounds a lot like the dancers - who take turns doing 'solos' in the 'jam', bringing their thing, contributing to the general 'dance' or 'song'). Each lead - each couple - brings their own, unique style and visual embodiment of the music. The couple would not work if the follow didn't also contribute to the lead's contribution - she not only adds her own styling, but maintains the momentum of his moves, carries his rhythm in her body, reflecting it, adding to it, developing and re-working it within his creative structures. It's not that he's the boss, but that they have to work together to make it work - left and right hands on a piano, two musicians within a band, etc etc etc.
It's interesting at about 4.05 that you see how a jack and jill pairs up two dancers with disimilar personalities. The lead is exuberant, exaggerated, comedic, big. The follow is less extroverted - her following is wonderfully accurate and reflects what her lead follows. But when it comes to that moment when he looks to her and asks her to do as he does - large, exaggerated, silly, comedic arm and leg movements - she hesitates. She no doubt has a moment of 'omg'. She likes to watch him, to see his styling, but she's not quite ready to commit to that level of uninhibited performance. She's obviously really enjoying dancing with him, but this moment, this type of movement... it's not really her thing. But I like it that he 'asks' her - he looks to her, moves and then invites her to join it. It's not an error or a screw up, it's a nice moment of 'would you like to...?' and 'oh man, this is crazy!'
This is the sort of public negotiation of leading and following that makes jack and jill comps so interesting and so much fun: we get to see new couples negotiate the terms of their relationship in public. It's kind of like getting to watch a new couple dating - will she laugh at his jokes? Will he know when to stop teasing her? Will they laugh at the same things? These are all things that I wrote about at length in my thesis. When we imagine dance as public discourse, and social dance (or improvised dance) as social discourse, we can read dance as a space in which public social identities and relationships are negotiated.
Throughout this, it's interesting to watch the camera work. The camera shakes and moves more when the dancers are doing larger, more emotionally exuberant movements. If this were a 'proper' film, we'd say that this was to emphasise the emotion of the moment. But this is not choreographed camera work - it is a dancer filming dancers, and we can almost feel their emotional and physical response to what they see - the camera moves with the dancers. The dancer filming is moving with the dancers they're watching.
I was reading somewhere (goodness knows where**), that one of the satisfactions of watching elite dancers dancing is being able to work through the complex movements with the people we watch, feeling some emotional, problem-solving pleasure in their (superior) ability. I'd argue that it's more than simply the pleasure of seeing a movement competently executed; it's about the pleasure of a social conversation resolved without conflict or embarrassment. There is a special pleasure in watching a lead leading their follow kindly and with social sensitivity - they do not allow their follow to be publicly embarrassed by an inappropriate or socially discomforting step. They allow their follow to 'speak' and do not frustrate them by speaking 'at' them for the duration of the dance. This is something that follows in particular respond to when they watch leaders with good 'social dancing skills' - they will remark that that leader looks 'fun' or 'gives the follow space' or 'nice'. This positive reading of accomplished social interaction (in a public space!) might be transferred to or complimented by an acknowledgement of their physical appearance and appeal. In other words, a lead who is reasonably ok looking will get hotter by the minute if he's leading generously. More generally, I've heard women dancers remark many times that they didn't like a lead until they danced with him. I myself have felt previous animosities or resentments mediated by a 'nice' dance with an attentive lead. It's not too surprising, really - it is all social interaction, really. And we are social animals.
I have to point out a lovely moment in the phrase beginning about 4.34. The leader moves into a wide, sliding slide. The follow follows. Often, at these moments, there's not a lot a follow can do beyond watching and letting the lead have his moment to 'shine'. There is some interesting gender performance at work here: women as crutch to male performance in public space? Lindy hop is, thankfully, a dance that requires both male and female 'performance' - the swing out is fundamentally dependent on both partners taking advantage of the time in open to 'bring it' - swivels, jazz steps, whatever. So when we see this lead (and I think it's one of the Italian or French leads - his movements scream European masculine swank) pull his stunt, it could have been a moment all about him: she could simply have stood and waited, doing something small to showcase his showing off. Or she could have done the (socially unthinkable) less nice ignoring or defusing of his movements by bringing her own fancy shit. But as it plays out, there's some nice cooperative play happening here.
He pulls his stunt. She lets him complete it, then echoes his posture with a wide legged on-her-heels pose (both of which, incidentally, nicely echo the sustained note of the violin), which she concludes with some funny foot-waggling. She's looking down at her feet (and his, initially), and this draws our attention down with her gaze, as does her lifting her skirt (international lindy hop symbol for 'look at me!'). As she wiggles her feet, he's giving her time to stand there (offering some support with his stable upper body), complementing with some stomp offs. His moving lower body reminds us that the music is moving on, our gaze moves up, following his arms, and we see his lovely 'twittery' hands echoing her twittery waggling feet and the twittery waggling violin (in a call and response). And these two 8s (just 16 bars!) conclude with some nice 'together' movements, her lifted head and moving gaze freeing us from her feet, his calm waiting bringing us back to his (lovely, stable) body, and then there's a little flourish from them both, and it's done.
The crowd dig it. It feels really nice. This is the magical part of lindy hop - the dancers make shit up. The musicians make shit up. People listen to each other, talk to each other. The audience signals its approval and participation. And then it's done and we move on. That's the stuff that brings me back to lindy hop. And this isn't even the most amazing or fabulous stunt. It's just a little something that makes jack and jills fun - they don't dance together, it's not rehearsed, it's just lovely cooperative musical creative play. And we're all there with them.
Unfortunately this clip ends before the end of the competition. But, as in the Revolution finals, there will have been an all-skate to finish it off. One last chorus where everyone - dancers, musicians, everyone - comes together to finish off the song. The energy usually peaks just about there - the music is pumping, the dancers are all dancing - our eyes and minds and bodies are super-stimulated by all that sound and movement. It feels really good. It looks kinda messy and jumbled if you don't read dance, but it sounds sweet.
I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the clips from the weekend. I'm very sorry we can't have live streaming Showdown to watch here in Sydney, but delayed youtubing will have to do (and goddess bless the folk who post their stuff on youtube).
This post is, I guess, an example of the type of work I did in my thesis, and the type of things that pound through my brain when I watch footage of dancers (though I'm very rarely thinking at all when I'm dancing in these things - when I was leading in the J&J final at SLX all I could possibly think was 'don't pass out now and let your follow down' as we passed over 230bpm and my systems started to shut down. Sometimes all that you have room for in your body is sensation.
*That article was one of these, probably the second one (I can't be arsed checking):
Michaels, E. (1987) “How Walpiri People Make Televisionâ€, For a Cultural Future, Artspace: Melbourne, pp 18-28.
Langton, M. (1993) “Cultural Specificity in Aesthetics and Productionâ€, from Well I heard it on the Radio and I saw it on the Television, Australian Film Commission: Sydney, pp59-73.
**but probably here (thanks to Dust For Eyes for original linkage)
"liveblogging showdown... from sydney..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 7, 2008
i wish i could shimmy like my sister kate
Posted by dogpossum on October 7, 2008 11:39 PM
shake it like jelly, on a plate.
The SLX was on this past weekend. I am too trashed to post much. There are some gorgeous pics of The Squeeze about, though.
"i wish i could shimmy like my sister kate" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
September 22, 2008
lovely blooz action
Posted by dogpossum on September 22, 2008 3:34 PM
Firstly, I just wrote a decent version of this post then deleted it. Shit.
Ok, so I'll see what I can remember.
Firstly, you have to watch this clip below.
I think a lot of people think that blues dancing is just standing about cuddling to really slow music - sort of frottage on the hoof. But it's not. It's not that boring (and I have to say, there's nothing more boring than DJing that type of blues gig - booooring. Unless you're into voyeurism. But I guess even then you'd lose interest after about 4 hours). It's not. There's lots more fun stuff going on.
I think Blues Shout is on the top of my list of American camps I'd like to go to, right now. There's lots of interesting stuff going on there.
I blogged about this a little while ago with this great clip from 2007.
So what do I like about that latest clip?
1. body shapes. There's a lot more going on there than the muscle and sinew action we've been seeing in lindy hop lately as the tempos get really high. But there's no silly barbie frou-frou rubbish either. I keep thinking 'built for comfort'.
2. sass + sauce. The extreme sensuality, but also the radical parody. The snicker with the shimmy. I like the way you really have to bring it to make this work - you have to commit, physically and emotionally, and really perform to make the tension between humour and sexuality work.
3. hot and cool. The relationship between extremely hot bodies and very cool faces.
Well, with all that in mind, here's the set I did last night. It was quite a long set, which was nice (though a bit scary, as I really don't have that much music for blues dancing - just what I find on my 'lindy' CDs... hahahah... well, really, this is a good argument for buying CDs rather than downloading individual songs - with an album you get the whole emotional spectrum and a selection of songs by an artist, with one song you get ... just one song).
It was a lovely set to do, though I was fanging for a dance. I would have, perhaps, as this crowd is pretty laid back, but I don't feel confident enough to line up a few songs and then dance, with blues. I'm just not experienced enough to be sure it'll work. I ran through a whole range of styles, partly because my tastes are quite varied, but also because I think it's a better idea with a group of dancers who are newer to a style - give people a general taster. Also, I'm not sure I have enough music to do a solid speciality set. People really seemed to like it... I think. There's a lot more socialising and drinking here in Sydney than at Melbourne dance events, and that makes it harder to judge the crowd. Also, there were about six zillion chicks there last night, so there'd always be a lot of people sitting and watching.
A couple of notes about the music:
I've been exploring Taj Mahal lately. He's not my number one favourite, but you have to respect a legend. I've downloaded a couple of songs from his greatest hits albums from itunes, but I'm not sure I really need entire albums just yet. I'll think about it though, especially if I see them cheap at a shop.
I came in loud and proud, partly because I wanted to get the energy up and fun, rather than coming in all quiet and kissy. Most useful thing I've ever learnt about DJing blues was from Andy: keep it loud, like a party. Loud as in high energy. I also favour a little humour and sass in my blues, so I'm not much good with the overly earnest artists (though I do like a little Nina Simone).
There was a birthday dance, for which I chose 'Miss Celie's Blues'. I had a feeling the birthday girl would be into that Sistah action, and she was very happy with the choice.
People seemed to like 'New Orleans Bump'. I mean, I've played it before, but the reaction of dancers last night was more interesting than in the past. They were warmed up, which helped. They were feeling 'up', which helped. They'd had a couple of drinks, which helped. The class before hand (which was really quite interesting) was all about dancing to the music, and how to combine moves and types of movements to illustrate the music, and the dancers were all trying out the ideas all night. It made DJing a whole lot more interesting. But anyhow, people were experimenting with stuff in the percussion intro, and then they really seemed to dig the tango rhythms, and then were totally digging the 'drama' of the song - there were many campy dips and uber-emoting. Which is just perfect for Jelly Roll, who's all about making shit up and showing off.
I still don't feel that I'm a terribly good blues DJ. I feel as though I ignore tempos too much, and tend to ram songs together based on style, rather than working for a longer-range emotional wave. But there's a much smaller tempo range to work with (about 45-120bpm as opposed to 120-300 bpm for lindy) and you can't apply the usual rules about giving dancers a break 'cause they're tired. It's all slow, so you can just dance every single song, forever. I think I jump about, 'mood' wise, and that's not so cool. But I guess I just need more practice.
I don't much like Molly Johnson, but I do like it that she sounds like Masie Grey (sp?). She's really not as good as the old school chicks. But she doesn't suck. I bought a few of her songs from itunes after listening my way through most of her albums on amazon.
Every time I play Dinah Washington a woman asks me who that artist was. She goes down well with ladies. Because she rocks. I own a lot of Washington, but I still want this Mosaic set. Because.
Carol Ralph also always goes down well. People can't believe she's local. But she is. And that album is really very good - the musicians are top shelf. Not many Australians can pull off the sass/humour of those old school blues queens. But she can.
[title, artist, bpm, year, length, album, last played - NB there are some inaccurate dates as I just can't keep up with that data - I can't keep up with making sure all the dates are actually the recording dates and not the album release date. This is especially tricky because sometimes CDs' liner notes don't include recording details, especially if they're a cheap CD (like that Aretha greatist hits).]
Sleep in Late Molly Johnson 86 2002 2:47 Another Day 21/09/08 9:55 PM
Built for Comfort Taj Mahal 98 1998 4:46 In Progress & In Motion (1965-1998) 21/09/08 10:00 PM
Blues Stay Away George Smith 82 1955 3:10 Kansas City - Jumping The Blues From 6 To 6 21/09/08 10:03 PM
Confessin' The Blues Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 92 1957 4:16 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 21/09/08 10:08 PM
Bargain Day Dinah Washington 89 1956 2:55 The Swingin' Miss "D" 21/09/08 10:11 PM
Jealous Hearted Blues Carol Ralph 80 2005 3:48 Swinging Jazz Portrait 21/09/08 10:14 PM
Reckless Blues Velma Middleton with Louis Armstrong and the All Stars 88 2:30 The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 06) 21/09/08 10:17 PM
Rosetta Blues Rosetta Howard with the Harlem Hamfats 103 1937 3:00 History of the Blues - disc2 21/09/08 10:20 PM
Kitchen Blues Martha Davis 80 1947 3:05 BluesWomen Girls Play And Sing The Blues 21/09/08 10:23 PM
I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl Nina Simone 65 1967 2:33 Released 21/09/08 10:26 PM
Rangoon Cootie Williams 63 2:12 In Hi-Fi 21/09/08 10:28 PM
Goin' To Chicago Count Basie and His Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing 79 1952 3:22 Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings (Disc 2) 21/09/08 10:31 PM
Incoherent Blues Clark Terry, Ed Thigpen, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown 64 1964 2:41 Oscar Peterson Trio + One: Clark Terry 21/09/08 10:34 PM
My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More Alberta Hunter 76 1978 3:49 Amtrak Blues 21/09/08 10:38 PM
I Feel Like Layin In Another Woman's Husband's Arms Blu Lu Barker 89 1946 2:57 Don't You Feel My Leg: Apollo's Lady Blues Singers 21/09/08 10:41 PM
I Ain't No Ice Man Cow Cow Davenport 89 1938 2:51 History of the Blues - disc2 21/09/08 10:43 PM
Tin Roof Blues Wingy Manone and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings 92 1934 2:58 The Wingy Manone Collection Vol. 2 21/09/08 10:46 PM
New Orleans Bump Wynton Marsalis 128 1999 4:36 Mr. Jelly Lord - Standard Time, Vol. 6 21/09/08 10:51 PM
St. James Infirmary Henry "Red" Allen 98 1991 3:45 World on a String - Legendary 1957 Sessions 21/09/08 10:55 PM
Wild Man Blues Louis Armstrong and the All Stars 75 3:58 The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 05) 21/09/08 10:59 PM
Do I Move You? (Second Version) (Bonus Track) Nina Simone 70 2006 2:20 Nina Simone Sings the Blues 21/09/08 11:01 PM
Shave 'em Dry Asylum Street Spankers 131 1997 4:21 Nasty Novelties 21/09/08 11:05 PM
Son Of A Preacher Man Aretha Franklin 77 3:16 Greatest Hits - Disc 1 21/09/08 11:09 PM
Soul of a Man Irma Thomas 121 2006 3:02 After the Rain 21/09/08 11:12 PM
Telephone Blues George Smith 68 1955 3:03 Kansas City - Jumping The Blues From 6 To 6 21/09/08 11:15 PM
Miss Celie's Blues Molly Johnson 97 2002 3:46 Another Day 21/09/08 11:19 PM
Back Water Blues Dinah Washington with Belford Hendricks' Orchestra 71 1957 4:58 Ultimate Dinah Washington 21/09/08 11:24 PM
Wee Baby Blues Count Basie with Mahalia Jackson 64 1968 3:14 Live In Antibes 1968 21/09/08 11:27 PM
Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams 68 1957 2:32 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2) 21/09/08 11:30 PM
When The Lights Go Out Jimmy Witherspoon 100 1998 3:01 Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon 21/09/08 11:33 PM
The Mooche Michael McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers 117 2006 3:41 Rhythm Of The Day 21/09/08 11:36 PM
Blue Leaf Clover Firecracker Jazz Band 111 2005 4:59 The Firecracker Jazz Band 21/09/08 11:41 PM
Sweet Home Chicago Taj Mahal 93 1998 3:15 In Progress & In Motion (1965-1998) 21/09/08 11:45 PM
Young Woman's Blues Loose Marbles 102 4:22 21/09/08 11:49 PM
"lovely blooz action" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 17, 2008
way better than ikea
Posted by dogpossum on September 17, 2008 8:13 PM
Swedish engineering at its finest:
"way better than ikea" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
don't lindy hop when you've got your rags
Posted by dogpossum on September 17, 2008 6:14 PM
I like the way this helpful clip doesn't even mention vaginas or blood, or well, actually give any useful information about menstruation itself. Apparently, your ovaries aren't really connected to your vagina in any way at all.
...the best bit, though, is where you're encouraged not to lindy hop when you've got your rags - just waltz. Certainly no tranky doo.
"don't lindy hop when you've got your rags" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
September 15, 2008
more cranky poo!
Posted by dogpossum on September 15, 2008 1:32 PM
"more cranky poo!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
badass monday
Posted by dogpossum on September 15, 2008 12:43 PM
"badass monday" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
September 14, 2008
why didn't anyone tell me?
Posted by dogpossum on September 14, 2008 12:15 PM
that Be Kind, Rewind is, essentially, an homage to Fats Waller?
I'm a big fan of Michel Gondry's films, and knew I'd like this one, but I've only just had a chance to chase it down on DVD. First, Mos Def + Jack Black = yes! But then, BKR is far more than just a dumb film about videos: it's a film about Fats Waller!
Also, it's a story about the way people tell each other stories. I really liked the emphasis on people enjoying telling each other stories - made up or not - to which everyone can contribute.
And, then, even more awesomely, the characters make a fan-fic film about Fats Waller's life. It's fully awesome.
My other favourite bit was the montage filmed in 'real time' - omg.
I recommend watching the extras on the DVD - they have a full version of the Fats film.
Also: the Fats film references real archival footage of Fats - little soundies he made. And that is absolutely fully sick, because of course, the BKR is all about a couple of blokes (and then more people) who 'remake' famous films from memory and on a tight budget - so the film is all about 'remaking' found footage.
It's all so close to my stuff on what swing dancers do with archival footage, it just about made me swoon.
Sigh.
...also, I'm sorry this post is only semi-coherent. It seems today is not a day for words. It is a day for action.
"why didn't anyone tell me?" was posted in the category fillums and lindy hop and other dances
September 12, 2008
it could just be that nerds - no matter their flavour - love to talk to other nerds about stuff they love
Posted by dogpossum on September 12, 2008 6:15 PM
I've been crapping on about DJing on the SwingDJs board. I started a thread called mad skillz: mentoring, encouraging and skilling up (new) DJs. As with all threads I've begun with long, expository posts that don't really make much sense and which tend to be far to theoretical, the thread has been languishing. Kind of like my tutorials when I ask a long question which is really a bit of exposition or otherwise impossible to answer.
But someone asked a question which caught my interest, so I'm going to answer it here, at length.
I made this comment (in a post that was far too long):
One thing I've noticed - if a scene values social dancing and has quite a tight community vibe, there's a strong emphasis on skilling up new DJs. But the local culture dictates how this skilling up is achieved.(Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 20:40, first page of the thread at URL above)
And Haydn replied:
Can I ask you - in practice, how does this 'tight community vibe' translate into DJs helping each other?
I'm going to answer this at length here, rather than cluttering up that discussion board with my own opinions/rambles.
I have to reiterate: I'm working largely from an Australian perspective, with only a bit of international experience. I'm sure things are vary in different places.
'A tight community vibe' needn't actually translate into DJs helping each other. I don't see it very often, but I'm sure there've been times when a DJ has made it difficult for a new DJ or experienced DJ to 'break into' a scene - to preserve their own status, to preserve their own profits, etc.
Also, definitions of 'community' (and who's actually considered part of that community) are ideologically and politically loaded. Do you count west coast swing dancers as part of your 'swing' community? Rock and rollers? People from other dance schools/studios? Musicians? People you don't know?
When I say a 'tight community vibe', I'm thinking about scenes where people articulate some sense of 'communitas' or identify themselves as part of a scene or community with some sort of pride, protectiveness, etc.
But how might that translate to DJs helping each other?
Well, if a local scene has an active social club or organisation who also run social events, then that club might have an incentive to manage DJs quite carefully - so new DJs will get a bit of mentoring or coaching. I've noticed that gigs run by a smaller more coherent group - or by one person, or coordinated by someone who really cares about the DJing/social dancing - often manage the DJs more carefully. If the night is only one of many, is managed by an inexperienced dancer (or DJ) or isn't actually 'valued' terribly highly, the DJing might be less strictly managed. Also, interestingly, if an event (or club) has a particularly fervent revivalist bent (ie they're really really really into historical 'accuracy'), they're also pretty anal about music and about 'teaching' their DJs to like the 'right' music. But people might 'manage' DJs for other reasons - nepotism, interpersonal rivalries, failed romances, burning desires, professional networking, etc - all might affect who hires whom for which gigs.
I've noticed that these trends increase as a scene develops - in a newer scene, for example, where there are fewer DJs, there's less 'regulation' of DJing: people are just happy to have someone play some music. As DJing becomes increasingly 'professionalised' or formalised in a scene (eg introducing pay rates, introducing a DJ roster, introducing preferences for particular types of music), then it becomes more 'regulated'. It can also become less accessible. I've wondered if this is as a scene or community grows it also develops increasingly complex modes of cultural production and management (whether we're talking DJing, dancing, dress making, event management, website design, whatever). Also, people figure out that formalised ways of working together can be useful on large projects - a camp has 'rules' for teachers (whether unspoken or not), an exchange is run by a group who become a nonprofit organisation to deal with tax and insurance, a social night has formal (or informally enforced) 'no aerials' rules for public safety.
What I've noticed (and I guess I'm talking about Australian examples, and only very vaguely in reference to the US, etc) is that if a local scene has quite a close community - ie people volunteering their time for events, events run by committees with a 'community development' agenda and ethos rather than (or in addition to) a profit motive, etc - then there's a greater interest in 'skilling up' DJs - for the community's benefit. More experienced DJs are more likely to volunteer to mentor new DJs in that context out of a spirit of 'communitas' or 'doing good stuff for the community'.
There are other reasons for managing new DJs, though - profit motive is a good one, especially if you're in a scene where dancers really value or care about the quality of DJing. Or plain old competition for cultural capital - a DJ might feel it's in their interests to discourage new DJs or to not open their night to new DJs (ie they want to keep their status and ward off competitors). If a particular event has a specific musical focus (eg it might want to showcase a particular musical style or moment in history), then there'd also be reason to manage the DJs - if you were (for example), interested in running a 'neo revival' night, you might favour DJs who play BBVD, etc, and not hire DJs who play old school exclusively. I've even played gigs where what I've looked like - on stage - has been important: wearing vintage gear was specifically requested... which leads to interesting questions about the 'performance' of DJing. And how we might 'perform' the role of 'vintage music fan' or 'swing dancer = vintage costume fan' for an audience of non-dancers, for example. [That last bit is interesting in the light of things like the Facebook group 'Embracing my embarrassing swing adolescence' which seems largely to be about aesthetics and protocols of swing dance fashion - ie what not to wear]
There's also another interesting aspect to all this. Throughout much of the academic literature dealing with online communities, authors note the importance of 'answering questions', especially in an established and well-moderated online 'community'. People might answer questions for a number of reasons: to help out; to demonstrate their own knowledge (and status); to test their own knowledge; to enter into the discussion (and hence participate in the community - basically, answering simply as a way of getting into the conversation and enjoying the process of answering and discussing questions); etc etc etc.
I've always been interested in noticing what type of people answer what types of questions in swing dance discussion boards. In the years I was gathering data for my doctoral thesis (and before), I was really surprised by some of my findings. Sure, the data suggested all this stuff, but I was really hoping to find that how we play online wasn't so tightly bound to gender. But I found that female posters tend to be quicker to offer assistance (eg hosting, info, etc), but that they mightn't do so publicly (they're almost always over-represented in offering condolences, giving positive feedback, compliments and proffering kind words generally). Men are more likely to post 'information' or 'facts', and to disagree. There are exceptions, but on the whole these tropes are consistent, and they also correlate with the way we talk in groups face to face. I'm also interested in the way the threaded discussion echoes 'formal turn taking' in a meeting - which is something all-male groups tend to favour (whereas women tend to favour a more casual, more interrupting/cooperative meaning-making approach). There are also ethnic issues at work here - I was at a fascinating book launch the other day for indigenous literacy day: the speeches and discussion was very very different to the usual middle class 'literati' book launch: a room full of koori ladies don't really do formal turn taking :D.
This is partly to do with how we're socialised (which of course will result in regional variations), but also to do with the social/cultural context of online communication, especially on something like a discussion board. I've been wondering how Facebook changes all that, especially as it's far more accessible than something like a discussion board.
All this might mean, in the context of DJs helping each other, that women are more likely to answer questions via private message or to ask for help via private message, and less likely to post publicly on the board generally. It also suggests that people post answers and 'help each other' for a range of reasons.
SwingDJs is a tricky case study as DJing generally is so male-dominated: there are more men posting regularly here than women, for example (which could be a result of the culture of online communication rather than directly correlating to the number of women DJs IRL).
Something I've noticed: experienced DJs, no matter what their gender, are generally very helpful and welcoming to new DJs. They mightn't be very good at actually helping or communicating their welcome, but they certainly want to be helpful and care about this stuff. This might be a trickle-on effect from the revivalist impulses of contemporary swing dance generally - there's this impetus towards 'recruiting' new dancers, so as to 'preserve' historic dance forms.
Or it could just be that nerds - no matter their flavour - love to talk to other nerds about stuff they love.
" it could just be that nerds - no matter their flavour - love to talk to other nerds about stuff they love" was posted in the category djing and ideas and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 10, 2008
speed on!
Posted by dogpossum on September 10, 2008 1:37 PM
The doc suggested I try some decongestants to help my inner ears clear up (they regularly fill up with goo after I get heinous cold). So we went old school and now I'm taking Sudafed during the day. I can't take it at night.
Basically, it's turned me into a speedfreak. I'm trembling, I feel like I'm just about to deliver a lecture all the time and I have a few anxiety issues. Well, not real ones (I'm actually feeling pretty mellow), but I'm trembling, my heart is thumping and... well, my nose is running.
The most interesting part of all this? I can breathe through both nostrils, no wucks. I hadn't realised til yesterday that I haven't been able to breathe freely through both nostrils with my mouth closed in years. It's a bit weird. I can't help but wonder how this will help my dancing. Will I become an oxygen-rich bio-machine? Will I run faster, jump higher? And then crash, as my system compensates for this excessive performance, systems going into fuckdown mode, body eating its own muscles to replace the energy used in brief bursts of supersonic, arsekickingly sweet solo jazz?
Thankfully, the doc also checked my blood pressure - it's perfect. So perfect, she commented a few times. I think that my winter-padding led her to believe I was actually At Risk. But she, of course, is unaware of the fitness-inducing effects of the cranky poo.
Also, I have gotten back into the cranky poo. I now remember the first half. I will work on the second half today, now that I've done the prep for teaching this week. Then I will be a gun.
Then I will go back to the Big Schnapple and see if I can finally figure out the second half of that.
It's kind of nice having a memory like a sieve - everything old is new again.
And while we're talking endorphine-charged speedfreakin' old-is-new badassery... the jitterbug contest from Keep Punchin'. If you look real close, you can see me:
"speed on!" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and mood swings
September 3, 2008
oh goodness me: the new orleans jazz vipers
Posted by dogpossum on September 3, 2008 12:25 AM
But I do like the New Orleans Jazz Vipers.
They play olden days music with a nasty olden days energy that gets me all excited. I can't wait to DJ this stuff.
I couldn't help but buy all their CDs from www.cdbaby.com. And I love shopping at CDbaby - they got these kids to me in about 10 days from the States, they send nice thank you emails, and they pimp indy music. There're quite a few artists I like DJing who sell their gear through CDbaby - Gordon Webster, who's a really great pianist and also a nice guy and a lindy hopper. I've had my eye on that CD for a while - that's some sweet action for blues dancing. His other half (oh, how they'd hate me describing them that way), Solomon Douglas is also sold through CDbaby... I can't think of any others just now, but I've bought a few CDs through them.
And I love love love these Vipers CDs. I also have my eye on a Tshirt.
"oh goodness me: the new orleans jazz vipers" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
August 15, 2008
round up
Posted by dogpossum on August 15, 2008 12:24 PM
Enough of the random posts. Just join them all together and make one long stream of consciousness post.
Right now my stomach is feeling unsure. It began feeling unsure yesterday after I had chicken salad from the joint in Summer Hill. I wouldn't have eaten there if it hadn't been 4pm and I hadn't forgotten to have lunch. I'd also walked to the hardware store (again - I freakin' love that place) and then round the long way to the shops, mostly so I could look at the flour mill that's up for redevelopment. I am fascinated by the fact that there's a giant flour mill just down the street, and that it's joined to another flour mill in Dulwich Hill by a special-duty train line. That one's been made into flats, though. But I'm still really interested in it. It seems I'm not the only one into flour mills. There's always someone leaning over the railing on the bridge over the railway, staring at the giant white flour mill (the one in Summer Hill). It's a pretty good view - a long view, from a height. And it's so freakin' big. And you just know that the people having a stare are thinking about what they'd do with the site if they owned it. I don't know why they're bothering - it belongs to a gang of crows who've been terrorising the pigeons in that neck of the woods, and they're not likely to cede it to a bunch of no-winged two-leggers who'd like a little light industrial inner-city living.
So yeah, my stomach feels a bit odd. I can't decide if it's dodgy chicken salad or anxiety. It could quite possibly be low level anxiety. This is the first day I've had to myself in the new house with no real jobs to do. I guess I need to go up to Ashfield to get groceries (we have none). I'd really like to get into the city to a) go to see some Art, and (more importantly), b) find that tapestry speciality place. But I'm apparently crippled by... that thing that makes it difficult to leave the house. I think I might chalk all this up to hormones, as I've actually been feeling quite wonderful ever since we got here. I really like traveling and I love being in a new city. I like all the walking. Plus Sydney's fabulous weather is making me feel so good. I hadn't realised just how draining Melbourne's grey skies and nasty cold were until we left. I am remembering how nice it is to live in a warmer climate. But I'm not so struck on the increased humidity - I am also remembering its effects on my allergies.
It's not so much that I've been shouting at innocent blokes, but more that I've been trying to rub my nose off my face and had trouble concentrating. It could be PMS, but I actually am pretty sure it's allergies screwing with my mood. I'm trying not to take antihistamines as I seem to be on them every single day, but it's not really making me feel nice.
I'm also at home because I'm waiting for tradesmen #62 000. Actually, it's more like tradesman #9. Really. I am liking living in a house where the owner actually fixes things. The things we've needed fixed have been fairly inconsequential... well, except for the River of Effluent... but they've been fixed immediately.
1. windows painted shut? fixed (Charlie, from Greece - my favourite)
2. fence built? done (whatsit from Malta - initially my least favourite, but later one of my top 5)
3. forgotten bathtub spout? done (young fulla who's name I can't remember. ok)
4. garage door doesn't close? not quite fixed, but at least a couple of blokes came to look at it (one of whom was Mal, whose parents were from Italy).
5. garage door still not closing? still not fixed (another bloke who failed to return and give me his life story, though he did provide a few interesting tips on the tensile strength of various metals).
6. sound proofing? quotes done (including.... can't remember his name either. But he was Greek by descent and he lives in the outer suburbs but works in Marrickville. He recommends the cakes in Leichardt)
7 and 8. River of Effluent? dammed. ("Maria! Send tradesmen, please! The garden is full of effluent!" 2 young fullas of skip descent, up to their knees in human waste, giving our drains a good routing. White neighbour-cat carefully discouraged from helping)
9. Today it's another sound proofing guy. Apparently the owner is going ahead with it (which is wonderful). He was supposed to be here between 9.30 and 10, but it's 10.39 now. He and the garage door guy have failed to return.
Part of me is worried about all this tradesman action. I don't want to use up all my credit now when I'll certainly need it in the future... or will I? We have obviously moved up a rental bracket, to that wondrous place where wiring isn't illegal and life-endangering (we have a trip switch! No plug points have caught fire! We have had electricity for at least three weeks!) and where plumbing is generally sound, barring the usual hiccups of a house that's over 100 and recently had new pipes installed. No water mains have burst, filling our veggie patches with boiling water. No windows have broken, letting in arctic winds. And the stove works wonderfully. There are no mice (knock on wood), but I have seen one large cockroach in the house. I remembered why I actually wear thongs. After I dealt with it The Squeeze proceeded to sing 'la cocka roacha!, la cocka roacha!' around the house for about five minutes in a Tom Waits voice. It was entertaining, but perhaps too entertaining so close to bed time - it was difficult to sleep with the thought of Tom Waits serenading me in a Mexican cantina.
So I'm wondering if we're tempting fate with all this tradesmen action.
This hasn't stopped me asking if it's ok to dig up the garden and plant zillions of herbs. Ordinarily I'd just do it, but the landlord seems pretty house-proud, so the rules are different. Our back neighbour (who lives in the back part of this federation home) is a chef, so he's also quite keen on a herb garden/veggie patch. He is now My Friend, partly because I am still in post-move aggressive friendliness mode and will not allow otherwise. He is also the owner of aforementioned friendly white cat (Alby).
Alby is convinced he actually lives in our part of the house as well, and follows me around all day. He divides his time between sleeping in front of the front door in the sun, trying to climb into my laundry basket, romancing me with quite lovely accapella and playing in Rivers of Effluent. I am mightily allergic to cats, so there's no physical contact, a lot of "No! Don't go in there! Get out of there!" This has, of course, made me both the most interesting and the most appealing part of our neighbourhood.
The other day Alby was joined by Fluffy Tailed Black Cat from round the corner, and they both proceeded to play in the mulch and attempt domestic incursions. Alby failed (I think he's a bit dumb - he's very pretty, being white with pale blue eyes and a pink nose - but he's not so smart. He's also quite young), but FTBC had a little more luck. I was making the bed when a pair of large black ears was followed by a goofy black face over the other side of the bed. As I picked him up (physical contact! Aaaargh!) he let out a sort of 'mrprrft' purr-burp and kept up the chainsaw action as I clamped him under the armpits and hefted him outside.
I have also seen a giant orange and white tom with a mangled up face. Both Alby and I gave him a deal of distance as he marked out the new trees as his territory. We were both willing to concede him sovereignty.
On other fronts, I am working at Gleebooks doing functions (thanks Glen!). I like it a LOT. I was too late for sessional teaching this semester, but have lined up some contacts for next year. I have already DJed one set here in Sydney and am set for a blues set this Sunday. It seems there aren't too many DJs here, which is a shame. But I'm really enjoying dancing, so I'm not sure I'm ready to DJ a whole lot. I will set limits.
Last weekend we went to Canberra for Canberrang, the Canberra lindy exchange. I bought a Tshirt and DJed one set. We stayed with an old school friend of mine and only attended two night's worth. I think I prefer shorter events - Fri, Sat, Sun nights max. Any more is kind of too much. We went on the bus and it wasn't too bad. It was also very cheap. On the way back it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. It was like Europe. With eucalypts and kangaroos. We had a good time, over all.
We have quite a few friends here in Sydney, and have already had interstate visitors. Next week we get more. And the next week The Squeeze's matriarch arrives, so we will get our tourist on, big time. Which I'm looking forward to. I feel like the OPERA HOUSE is out there doing fun things without me every day. Then we have people coming up for SLX in September. Then my mother in October (perhaps). Then we're down in November for MLX. Then it's christmas, which we may spend in Melbourne, but we aren't sure. So it's all systems go. Sydney is apparently one of those cities people really like to visit. Partly because it rocks - there's just so much to do. And also because the weather is nice. Which is where it pwns Melbourne.
I like Sydney, but I am a bit sad that there are so few fabric shops. I have seen two in Marrickville, and I have been given the sweet lowdown by a dress making Hollywood lindy hopper, and will get on into the city (Haymarket) to find more. Then there's Cabramatta, but that's miles away. At any rate, none are a short bike ride away, so it seems I will have to find new hobbies. Or rediscover old ones. I have also found a yoga studio quite near by, but it is some sort of arty made up bullshit yoga, and not straight out iyengar. I need to get on that ASAP as I miss yoga already. Also, I haven't ridden my bike once. This means that I'm getting more exercise, but I am missing my bike. Poor blacky, stuck in the shed all day, bored and lonely. The Squeeze has been riding to work in the city and comes home with stories about having his arse kicked by the hills and making friends with other bike riders. This city is disturbingly friendly. Everyone seems so delighted that we've left Melbourne for Sydney - there're lots of "How do you like it?"s and chats with strangers about cake. There are fewer conversations about the weather, but I suppose that's because it's so nice here there's really nothing to say beyond "pwoar - another freakin' beautiful day, hey?"
Alright, that's enough blathering. I have to go.... well, not do anything, really, but I might as well think about doing something other than making internet. You know the rules: get out of bed, change out of your pajamas (or pa-yamas! if you're Tom Waits a la cantina), leave the internet alone after a couple of hours. It is, unsurprisingly, a beautiful day, and there're fabric shops to stalk.
"round up" was posted in the category bikes and djing and domesticity and greenies and lindy hop and other dances and old sew and sew and sydney and yoga
August 7, 2008
more lovely swedish action
Posted by dogpossum on August 7, 2008 10:01 PM
(From here).
That's Hanna, Mattias and Sakarias. No girly girl action there.
I realise I've been spelling Sak's name incorrectly. These guys are all members of the Harlem Hot Shots, and I think they're the best of the post-revival (or revival) generation.
Speaking of no girly action...">!.
While I'm at it, here're some of the Hot Shots doing some Tranky Doo/Keep Punchin' Big Apple action. Sweeeeeet.
And finally, of course, Frida takes no prisoners:
"more lovely swedish action" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
more youtube 'blogging'
Posted by dogpossum on August 7, 2008 3:59 PM
Herrang is home to the bestest vernacular jazz dance camp/festival in the world. Last few years they've followed up the camp with a competition in Sweden - the Battle. I use a clip from a previous year for teaching and papers at conferences.
This year the lindy hop didn't really blow my brain, but there is some sweetness in the 'authentic jazz competition'. Mostly in the person of one Zacharias Larsson. This boy is a giant, young Swede - quite possibly the sweetest thing. And my personal jazz dancing hero.
Check out the first clip below. That's Zach in the white shirt and beige trousers.
(From here).
For my money, he's the only one really bringing it - less with the show pony, more with the dancing (though he's certainly not shy of a little showing off).
Look, here's some more - from the finals:
(From here).
Oh yeah, that's the action. Try to look past the flailing in the foreground (sorry, friends, but that's not very interesting stuff - better than anything I could pull, but still... I really am tired of girls dancing dancing sexy and twirling their hands about like belly dancers - HARDEN UP!).
And, finally, peer past (even more) flailing to see him pull some serious sweet action here:
He really is pulling some sweet dancing there. If we were to get all nit-picky, he's definitely working the 'authentic' stuff - as in dance steps which have some historical weight. Technically, he's a dream. Musically, he's awesome. And aesthetically - as a package - he makes it all work. My favourite in that last one is the way he works it quite small until the music gets big, then he brings out the nice high kicks (a la cake walking goodness).
He's not only a nice person and a fabulous dancer, he's also a fully sick teacher. He and Frida have been long term dance partners (though she's getting more into the American scene these days). Here's a photo The Squeeze took in Melbourne in 2002:
That's them at full stretch, kickin' it lindy hop style.
"more youtube 'blogging'" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
August 6, 2008
trev got pwnd
Posted by dogpossum on August 6, 2008 4:36 PM | Comments (5)
But this image pwns all.
"trev got pwnd" was posted in the category
djing
and
lindy hop and other dances
and
music
August 3, 2008
barbara morrison does sydney
Posted by dogpossum on August 3, 2008 5:24 PM | Comments (2)
Sparingly: Barbara Morrison rocks. Her music is very popular with swing dancers (though I'm always surprised that so few go see her shows when she's in town - she's a seasoned musicians who specialises in playing for dancers), and she's doing a few shows in Sydney and one in Melbourne. She's doing one special show for dancers with specially-priced tickets: only $30 for the first 100 tickets. She'll be playing with the Brad Child Orchestra & John Harkins Trio. I met Brad Child last week at the Unity Hall Pub (where we'll be this afternoon... quite soon... if you like jass) and he's quite keen on the gig. I'm curious and looking forward to it.
From the site...
US Jazz/Blues Vocalist BARBARA MORRISON RETURNS BY POPULAR DEMAND in “MEMORIES of ELLA, SARAH & BILLIEâ€
The undisputed first ladies of Jazz Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday are being saluted by US acclaimed jazz/blues vocalist Barbara Morrison, who is returning by popular demand to Australian stages in August 2008.
“The Captivating Ms. Morrison just tears ‘em up!†(LA Scoop)
“A joy! At Carnegie Hall, Barbara Morrison delivered one song a la Esther Phillips and another with Ella Fitzgerald’s blithe scat singing.†(New York Times)
and “She can be as playful as Ella, as thoughtful as Sarah, as naughty as Etta. Barbara Morrison, has an international following with her big personality and delicious sense of swing†(The Jazz World Magazine).
Where and when?
Thursday, August 21 from 7:30 pm
Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Road, Enmore, Sydney, Australia
"barbara morrison does sydney" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
jazz on a winter's day
Posted by dogpossum on August 3, 2008 1:45 PM | Comments (0)
1. I am full of snot because I forgot to take my antihistamine yesterday and our house is full of moving dust.
2. I got up late because we went dancing at the Roxbury. Yes, we had a night at the Roxbury. It was wicked fun - a crowded, pumping room with lots of dancers and lots of fun. There's a lot of dancing in Sydney, and a lot of dancers. So far we have been out dancing four times (in two weeks!), and had to beg off a fifth because we were wrecked from house hunting. It wasn't just a heap of fun because there were so many dancers there, it was also a heap of fun because there's such a range of dancing styles on the floor. There're two major schools in Sydney, one which is an off-shoot of a Melbourne school, another which also has an interstate presence and which teaches 'Hollywood' style. I have to say that there were some leads there last night that blew my brain - they were so good I just thought 'just follow, just follow - don't muck this up with any fancy business'.
They weren't just technically good dancers, they were also socially 'good' - they'd smile and respond and interact with their partners and did nice things like say "thanks for that dance!" and ask for another with enthusiasm. They were also more musically interesting - not just dancing the same old boring steps in the same old combinations, regardless of phrasing or energy or the structure of the song generally. And then they were great because they did things like include interesting jazz steps, experiment with the connection and really make me pay attention.
First night in town dancing I was suddenly struck by how obstructive my own bad habits are to my following. And when I danced with someone who 'felt' like a Melbourne dancer (yanking me in on one, rather than using a more mellow lead in), I suddenly thought 'oh, this is why I have this bad habit of running in one, rather than waiting to be led - I'm trying to protect myself and avoid yank'. But that same protective rush is also impeding my following - it's like I'm interrupting and yapping on without listening to their idea; I'm finishing their sentences. And in turn this makes it difficult for us to actually have a proper conversation where we're both contributing equally.
A nice thing about dancing in a really diverse scene with lots of leads who take very different approaches is that I have to pick up my game and I feel inspired and really interested in actually dancing. Another nice thing is that it's really nice to watch the floor. In fact, it feels like we're at an exchange - even The Squeeze is dancing a lot. We're possibly going dancing again tonight (a big band squeezed into the Unity Hall pub in Balmain this afternoon) and while I'm a bit hesitant as we have more house stuff to do, he's all "yep, we'll be there!"
There're actually quite a few live bands to see in Sydney. In fact, there's not much of a DJing culture at all here, and most people are into live music for their dancing. This is really very nice - we've only seen one band so far, but it's always exciting to see new musicians. The year we went to SLX (the Sydney Lindy Exchange) the exchange coincided with the Manly Jazz Festival - now that was special.
3. Which is a nice segue to my next point. Right now I'm watching Jazz on a Summer's Day, a 1960 film made about the Newport Jazz Festival. FXH recommended it in his comment to this post, but I'd mistaken it for another film. Any how, I ordered it on our Quickflix account and I'm watching it right now, while I wipe my nose and The Squeeze has a long, deliciously decadent lie-in (the first he's had in about a month). It's a great film, the music is really fabulous and the visuals are really neat - lots of crowd footage, scenes from the yacht race and of course, really, really amazing footage of musicians. 
Newport looms large in my mind for a number of reasons. Firstly, because there are so many freakin' amazing albums featuring performances from the festival.
My most recent purchase in this series was the Mahalia Jackson live in 1958, and that really is fully sick. Beyond that, there's the Count Basie at Newport album, and of course, the Ellington at Newport in '56. Both of these are really neat. What makes them so neat is the fact that these were really big stars live in front of a massive crowd at an outdoor festival.
Beyond these, Newport is also an important character in a film I've always loved, High Society. Louis Armstrong stars in High Society, and the protagonist Dexter is played by Bing Crosby. Dexter is set up as a patron/organiser? (I can't remember which) of the Newport Jazz Festival, and the entire film is set in Newport. There're some interesting class things going on in the film, the one that always catches my interest being the way Armstrong is set up as the 'narrative' of the film in the opening scene as he and his band arrive in town in a coach (a nice contrast with Samantha's sports car). Armstrong also sings the really great song 'Now You Has Jazz' with Bing Crosby, a song which is popular with dancers (and good fun for dancing). There's a sweet scene where Armstrong and the band introduce the very straight, very white crowd of Newport socialites to jazz. They play the one song then it's back to straighty-one-eighty unswing, unjazz for the rest of the party. I really like the idea of a black man (and such an important man in the history of jazz) introducing a bunch of straights to jazz at a Newport society house party. The crowd are apparently completely unaware of the festival and its significance - oblivious to the world beyond their high society manners and conflicts. Crosby's role is kind of problematic, set up as he is, as the 'patron' for the festival.
It's interesting to watch High Society in reference to Jazz on a Summer's Day, and in the light of the festival's history more generally. And I'm very grateful to FXH for getting me onto this film in the first place.
"jazz on a winter's day" was posted in the category fillums and lindy hop and other dances and music
August 1, 2008
lindy hop 80s style
Posted by dogpossum on August 1, 2008 9:55 PM | Comments (0)
I know it's wrong to just post youtube clips, but I had to. This is some dancing from the 80s - I'm sure I recognise some famous doods there, but I'm confident enough to specify. But you HAVE to watch through to see two chicks dancing together - they rock.
In a similar vein, here's some more 80s lindy. This time it's the Harlem Hot Shots (Swedish superstars) doing a fully sick recreation of very famous routine(s). These guys are really tight, pulling out shit that's tres chic with the kids today... and to think, some of those kids were all 'I only dance smooth' five years ago. Sigh.
FYI: here's the original routine referenced by the Hot Shots:
...and of course, the Hellza routine:
"lindy hop 80s style" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
camp jitterbug 08
Posted by dogpossum on August 1, 2008 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
The Camp Jitterbug clips are always really nice - some wonderful editing (evidencing a dancer's understanding of tempo, rhythm and, well, wonderfulness), and this is teaser for this year's DVD:
My favourite part of any competition (and CJ is a comp weekend), is the solo charleston. Here's this year's final:
That girl in the final there, that's Sharon - she's Australian. I especially love the dynamic between competitors and between competitors and crowd in this type of competition. There's a real to-and-fro - the dancers dance better with encouragement. And you can hear the crowd's response when they like something - not just louder, but an increase in intensity. And of course, this type of competition requires dancers know something about phrasing - they send themselves in at the end of a phrase and have to get themselves out. And of course, with a live band all this communication and creative reciprocity is even more exciting.
"camp jitterbug 08" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
June 6, 2008
maybe i should stick to dancing
Posted by dogpossum on June 6, 2008 1:45 PM
Goodness me, I've gotten up late this morning. I played a very ordinary set last night that went down very ordinarily. Here it is:
Froggy Bottom Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 155 1957 2:37 5/06/08 10:06 PM Goin' To Kansas City Blues
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie 144 1958 3:13 5/06/08 10:09 PM Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks]
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra 154 1943 2:42 5/06/08 10:12 PM After You've Gone
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 135 1945 3:21 5/06/08 10:15 PM Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings
Hungry Man Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 135 1949 3:08 5/06/08 10:18 PM Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6)
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and His 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 2:49 5/06/08 10:21 PM The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2)
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and His Orchestra 165 1937 3:10 5/06/08 10:24 PM The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2)
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant And His Orchestra 153 1936 3:26 5/06/08 10:28 PM Willie Bryant 1935-1936
Stompy Jones Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 200 1934 3:03 5/06/08 10:31 PM The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 07)
Jive At Five Count Basie 174 1939 2:51 5/06/08 10:34 PM The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 03)
Good Queen Bess Duke Ellington 160 1940 3:00 5/06/08 10:37 PM The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10)
The Basement Blues Nobel Sissle with Sidney Bechet 153 2000 3:16 5/06/08 10:40 PM Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Sidney Bechet
Krum Elbow Blues Mora's Modern Swingtet 162 2004 2:46 5/06/08 10:43 PM 20th Century Closet
Effervescent Blues Mora's Modern Swingtet 122 2004 3:07 5/06/08 10:46 PM 20th Century Closet
New Orleans Bump Wynton Marsalis 128 1999 4:36 5/06/08 10:50 PM Mr. Jelly Lord - Standard Time, Vol. 6
Charlie's Prelude Mora's Modern Swingtet 128 2004 2:49 19/04/08 7:19 PM 20th Century Closet
Digadoo Firecracker Jazz Band 247 2005 5:20 5/06/08 10:56 PM The Firecracker Jazz Band
All the blues dancers were in town and they were afraid of a) tempos over 120 and b) old music. I think I might actually suck as a DJ, mostly because I just didn't want to play any new groovy rubbish. I just don't have any interest in that stuff any more. Thing is, most of the stuff I really am interested in just goes down like a lead balloon. Sigh. I have to stop playing that 'Froggy Bottom' - it's not good lindy hop.
I'm doing that other set on Sunday - blues - so I hope that goes ok. We'll have to see about that. I've been asked to play 'old school' blues because not many other people will be, but that's not really all that great an idea - after a weekend of groove and soul, old scratchy stuff that's actually higher tempos won't go down well.
I'd like to play some Harlem Hamfats, some early Ellington with Bessie Smith (!!!), some more Bessie Smith, some skanky Kansas doods (Walter Brown with Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, Juliea Lee, etc), some odd people like Cow Cow Davenport, some dirty chicks like Blu Lu Barker, some rowdy neworleans people like Jelly Roll Morton, some Jimmie Noone (of course!), some Bix Beiderbeck, some Sam Price, Bechet, Wingy Manone, etc etc etc... heck, lots of stuff. Really, just the stuff I'd like to play for lindy hoppers, but slower.
But I find people can't hack the sound quality (especially after a weekend of lovely hi-fi supergroove)...
I like this stuff because it screams 'DANCE BY YOURSELF! DO THOSE JAZZ STEPS, YOU BABY!!!' and it has an edge - it's not so serious, it's dark and quite scary, but it's also winking at you, inviting a bit of black humour...
Well, we'll just have to see. I might end up playing emergency Aretha Franklin and late testament Basie as a compromise.
But I'm not feeling hugely confident in my abilities right now. Maybe I should stick to dancing.
"maybe i should stick to dancing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
May 5, 2008
extreme DJing nerdery
Posted by dogpossum on May 5, 2008 2:04 PM
I've had a busy DJing fortnight... well, month, really. I've done 6 sets this month, including a blues set. The week before last I did a double on Thursday, then a set on Friday, and then last week I did a set Wednesday and one Thursday. I'm about done with this. Remind me to talk about my sore ears, ok?
Any how, here're the sets I played that are kind of interesting.
This next set is the double from Thursday 24th April. It was a last minute double set, and for once the gig (CBD) actually had some people. It was the night before a public holiday, so there was an almost full room. Not the biggest ever, but much bigger than other weeks. And a mixed crowd, so I could play a mixed set. But I'd had a pretty horrible day, and wasn't feeling terribly inspired or great. So I played the most ordinary set of overplayed favourites ever. But people really liked it. They were dancing like fools, over-energised, over-adrenalined. Which was nice. I started at 8.30 and finished at 11. Here's the set:
Moten Swing Count Basie 135 1958 25/04/08 12:07 PM 4:50 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks]
Jump Ditty! Joe Carroll and The Ray Bryant Quintet 134 25/04/08 9:49 PM 2:54 Joe Carroll Sings
I Diddle Dinah Washington 153 1/05/08 10:15 PM 3:05
Tain't Me Roy Milton and his Solid Senders 158 1992 1/05/08 10:17 PM 2:34 Vol. 2: Groovy Blues
Fine Brown Frame Nellie Lutcher 123 2006 25/04/08 12:18 PM 2:54 Fine Brown Frame
Big Fat Mama Lucky Millinder 135 25/04/08 12:21 PM 3:09 Apollo Jump
Be Careful (If You Can't Be Good) Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 121 1951 1/05/08 10:12 PM 3:09 Walk 'Em
My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone 120 25/04/08 10:49 PM 3:38 The Great Nina Simone
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan 147 1956 25/04/08 12:32 PM 3:19 A Tribute To Andy Razaf
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 25/04/08 10:23 PM 3:34 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 148 1937 25/04/08 9:59 PM 2:41 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford
Pan Pan Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 152 1941 1/05/08 10:20 PM 2:54 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 2)
Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker 134 1949 25/04/08 9:56 PM 3:24 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and His Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 30/04/08 11:20 PM 3:04 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 146 1949 30/04/08 11:17 PM 3:01 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950
Pound Cake Count Basie and His Orchestra with Lester Young 186 1939 24/04/08 9:23 PM 2:46 Classic Columbia, Okeh And Vocalion Lester Young With Count Basie (1936-1940) (Disc 2)
Good Queen Bess Duke Ellington 160 1940 1/05/08 10:39 PM 3:00 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10)
Six Appeal (My Daddy Rocks Me) Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian 150 1940 1/05/08 10:36 PM 3:13 Charlie Christian: The Genius of The Electric Guitar (disc 2)
Bli-Blip Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 140 2007 1/05/08 10:29 PM 2:44 Moppin' And Boppin'
Jersey Bounce Ella Fitzgerald 134 1961 24/04/08 9:36 PM 3:36 Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!
Blue Monday Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 125 1957 1/05/08 10:05 PM 3:40 Goin' To Kansas City Blues
Hallelujah, I Love Her So Count Basie 145 1959 24/04/08 9:42 PM 2:36 Breakfast Dance And Barbecue
Tickle Toe Count Basie and His Orchestra 234 1960 24/04/08 9:45 PM 2:36 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2)
Hop Skip and Jump Mora's Modern Swingtet 191 2004 24/04/08 9:47 PM 2:44 20th Century Closet
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and His 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 1/05/08 2:17 PM 2:49 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2)
A Viper's Moan Willie Bryant And His Orchestra 153 24/04/08 9:54 PM 3:26 Willie Bryant 1935-1936
Apollo Jump Lucky Millinder 143 30/04/08 11:08 PM 3:27 Apollo Jump
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra 154 1943 24/04/08 10:00 PM 2:42 After You've Gone
The Heebie Jeebies Are Rockin' The Town (Alt Tk) Red Allen & Lionel Hampton, vocal, & His Orchestra 141 1939 24/04/08 10:02 PM 2:44 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 3)
Walk 'Em Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 131 1946 25/04/08 10:04 PM 2:53 Walk 'Em
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 136 1945 24/04/08 10:09 PM 3:22 Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
Savoy Blues Kid Ory 134 24/04/08 10:12 PM 3:01 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band 160 1946 1/05/08 2:42 PM 3:13 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46
Shake That Thing Vince Giordano 230 2004 24/04/08 10:18 PM 2:59 The Aviator
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Sidney Bechet 140 1951 30/04/08 10:49 PM 5:44 The Blue Note Years
Tishomingo Blues Carrol Ralph 128 2005 1/05/08 2:27 PM 4:15 Swinging Jazz Portrait
Going To Chicago Barbara Morrison 126 2002 24/04/08 10:33 PM 5:35 Live At The 9:20 Special
Every Day I Have The Blues Clark Terry Quintet and Carrie Smith 122 2001 24/04/08 10:38 PM 5:12 The Clark Terry Quintet: Live On QE2
Mumbles Oscar Peterson 188 1964 24/04/08 10:40 PM 2:02 Ultimate Oscar Peterson As Selected By Ray Brown
Froggy Bottom Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 155 1957 25/04/08 10:13 PM 2:37 Goin' To Kansas City Blues
Sent For You Yesterday Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams 163 1960 25/04/08 10:16 PM 3:10 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2)
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie 144 1958 1/05/08 10:08 PM 3:13 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks]
Lavender Coffin Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James 134 1949 25/04/08 10:07 PM 2:47 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings
On Revival Day Lavern Baker 144 25/04/08 10:10 PM 3:16 Lavern Sings Bessie Smith
As I said, it's very ordinary. Nothing new except a Carole Ralph track and a Jimmy Witherspoon, neither of which are actually new.
Any how, the next night I played the Funpit gig. The room was absolutely solid. You couldn't push your way into the room, let alone the dance floor. It was all beginners, too - people who'd only had a lesson or two. Plus a few other people with more experience. But no one who'd been dancing more than a year or two besides me, the teachers and one or two other people. In a room that was the crowdedest gig I've ever played in Melbourne. It was heaps of fun to play. But I was coming down with a cold, so when I got up to dance after my set I was too tired to dance more than a song. I spent the weekend being very ill, but I still had fun that night.
Here's the set (Friday 25th April, 9.30-10.45pm, Funpit):
Splanky Count Basie 125 1957 3:36 Complete Atomic Basie, the 25/04/08 9:47 PM
Jump Ditty! Joe Carroll and The Ray Bryant Quintet 134 2:54 Joe Carroll Sings 25/04/08 9:49 PM
Hungry Man Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 135 1949 3:08 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6) 1/05/08 2:11 PM
Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker 134 1949 3:24 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 25/04/08 9:56 PM
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 148 1937 2:41 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 25/04/08 9:59 PM
Are You Hep To The Jive? Cab Calloway 160 1994 2:50 Are You Hep To The Jive? 25/04/08 10:01 PM
Walk 'Em Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 131 1946 2:53 Walk 'Em 25/04/08 10:04 PM
Lavender Coffin Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James 134 1949 2:47 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 25/04/08 10:07 PM
On Revival Day Lavern Baker 144 3:16 Lavern Sings Bessie Smith 25/04/08 10:10 PM
Froggy Bottom Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 155 1957 2:37 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 25/04/08 10:13 PM
Sent For You Yesterday Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams 163 1960 3:10 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2) 25/04/08 10:16 PM
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie 144 1958 3:13 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 1/05/08 10:08 PM
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 3:34 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 25/04/08 10:23 PM
Be Careful (If You Can't Be Good) Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 121 1951 3:09 Walk 'Em 1/05/08 10:12 PM
Pan Pan Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 152 1941 2:54 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 2) 1/05/08 10:20 PM
Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller & His Rhythm 134 1941 3:10 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 1/05/08 10:27 PM
Laughing In Rhythm Slim Gaillard and his Peruvians 142 1951 2:56 Laughing In Rhythm: The Best Of The Verve Years 25/04/08 10:35 PM
Bli-Blip Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 140 2007 2:44 Moppin' And Boppin' 1/05/08 10:29 PM
A Viper's Moan Mora's Modern Rhythmists 143 2000 3:30 Call Of The Freaks 1/05/08 10:33 PM
Squatty Roo Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 173 2003 3:43 Jammin' the Blues 25/04/08 10:45 PM
My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone 120 3:38 The Great Nina Simone 25/04/08 10:49 PM
Again, nothing new or exciting. I'm really quite a boring DJ these days. Partly because most of the stuff I'm buying (helloooooooo Jelly Roll Morton!) is completely inappropriate for lindy hop. Not so bad for blues dancing, though.
Then this week just passed I did my first set at Madame Dynamite's. This is what I played:
Blue Monday Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 125 1957 3:40 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 1/05/08 10:05 PM
Hungry Man Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 135 1949 3:08 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6) 1/05/08 2:11 PM
Give Me Some Skin Lionel Hampton and His Sextet 138 1941 3:16 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 5) 5/05/08 12:06 PM
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and His 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 2:49 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 1/05/08 2:17 PM
Just Kiddin' Around Artie Shaw and His Orchestra 159 1941 3:21 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 1/05/08 2:20 PM
Bli-Blip Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 140 2007 2:44 Moppin' And Boppin' 1/05/08 10:29 PM
Tishomingo Blues Carrol Ralph 128 2005 4:15 Swinging Jazz Portrait 1/05/08 2:27 PM
The Blues B Artie Shaw And His New Music 122 1937 2:59 Self Portrait (Disc 1) 1/05/08 2:30 PM
Deep Trouble Jimmie Noone 161 1930 2:49 The Jimmie Noone Collection 5/05/08 12:09 PM
The Basement Blues Nobel Sissle with Sidney Bechet 153 2000 3:16 Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Sidney Bechet 1/05/08 2:36 PM
Ballin' The Jack Bunk Johnson's V-Disc Veterans 156 1944 2:45 Bunk And The New Orleans Revival 1942-1945 1/05/08 2:39 PM
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Sidney Bechet 140 1951 5:44 The Blue Note Years 30/04/08 10:49 PM
Stuffy Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 153 2003 3:46 Jammin' the Blues 30/04/08 10:53 PM
The Grabtown Grapple Artie Shaw and His Gramercy 5 178 1945 2:57 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 30/04/08 10:56 PM
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and His Orchestra 165 1937 3:10 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 30/04/08 10:59 PM
The Heebie Jeebies Are Rockin' The Town Red Allen & Lionel Hampton, vocal, & His Orchestra 139 1939 2:44 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 3) 30/04/08 11:01 PM
Pan Pan Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 152 1941 2:54 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 2) 1/05/08 10:20 PM
Apollo Jump Lucky Millinder 143 3:27 Apollo Jump 30/04/08 11:08 PM
Half Tight Boogie Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 150 2003 3:13 Jammin' the Blues 30/04/08 11:11 PM
Bogo-Jo Lionel Hampton and His Sextet 158 1940 2:55 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 5) 30/04/08 11:14 PM
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 146 1949 3:01 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 30/04/08 11:17 PM
Solid as a Rock Count Basie and His Orchestra with The Deep River Boys 140 3:04 Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 30/04/08 11:20 PM
Till Tom Special Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 158 1940 3:24 Tempo And Swing 30/04/08 11:23 PM
Summit Ridge Drive Artie Shaw and His Gramercy 5 128 1940 3:21 Self Portrait (Disc 2) 30/04/08 11:27 PM
Easy Does It Big 18 129 5:14 30/04/08 11:32 PM
B-Sharp Boston Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 126 1949 2:55 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 30/04/08 11:35 PM
It Takes Two to Tango Lester Young and Oscar Peterson 104 1997 6:09 Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio 1/05/08 2:04 PM
It was the second set (Wednesday 30th April, 9.30-late), there weren't many people there at all and the floor was really slippery. I really struggled to find the right vibe that night. I'd expected a crowd who'd want old school, and mostly faster. I was looking forward to playing some of my newer, more obscure stuff. But that didn't happen so much. I'm not sure if it was because I sucked or because the dancers just weren't in the mood. I find it really difficult to work smaller crowds - I just need critical mass to really make them do what I want... or to get where I want to go. This crowd was also really into a bit of talking rather than dancing as well. So this set is more of the same, especially at the beginning, then there's some newer stuff. I did play that 'Give Me Some Skin' song from my new Hampton Mosaic set (which I adore), I screwed up and played 'Bogo-Jo' instead of ... some other song from that same set, and it didn't work so well. So I recovered with a safety song, 'Joog, Joog'. Overall, I wasn't too happy with that set, but it didn't suck. I mean, I liked the music a lot, and would have liked to dance to it, but it didn't really work the crowd properly. I also learnt that it's important to be able to see the people sitting down not dancing as well as the dancers when I'm DJing. At the Funpit I couldn't see anyone because it was so packed, but that's kind of easier to work. At MD's I couldn't see the people sitting down, so I couldn't judge their body language to see how they were feeling. Oh well.
I quite liked the bit from 'The Blues B' to 'Ballin' the Jack'. I'm especially fond of 'Deep Trouble'. But that stuff doesn't make for good lindy hop. It's too early. I'm really loving 1927-1930 right now (incidentally, that's the period the third season of House of Eliot is set, and I'm loving THAT - the skirt hems are so HIGH (knees! knees!)), but even though I know that's when lindy began, people in Melbourne can't dance to it. There's not enough swing, and it still feels a bit too oomp-a, oomp-a for proper lindy. D says that that type of music is good for 'one and five' dancing, and that people overseas dig it atm. I dig it, I'd like to dance to it, but it simply doesn't make for nice lindy hop. People at MD's seemed to like it, but they weren't really sure what to do with it.
In fact, I'm finding that people generally quite like the songs, but that they don't really know how to dance to it. Some of the songs I played at the blues night had a similar effect. People really liked them, but their dancing looked pretty awkward. And I could hear an awful lot of stompy, clattering feet during a few tracks.
Anyhow, here's that set list:
Do I Move You? (Second Version) (Bonus Track) Nina Simone 70 2006 2:20 Nina Simone Sings the Blues
Save Me Aretha Franklin 122 2:19 Greatest Hits - Disc 1
Get Back Temptation Ollabelle 80 2004 2:50 Ollabelle
I Left My Baby Kansas City Band 83 1995 7:24 Kansas City: A Robert Altman Film
St. James Infirmary The Cairo Club Orchestra 109 2004 3:33 Sunday
Reckless Blues Velma Middleton with Louis Armstrong and the All Stars 88 2:30 The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 06)
Back Water Blues Dinah Washington with Belford Hendricks' Orchestra 71 1957 4:58 Ultimate Dinah Washington
Cloudy Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 69 1957 3:16 Goin' To Kansas City Blues
Wee Baby Blues Count Basie with Mahalia Jackson 64 1968 3:14 Live In Antibes 1968
Amtrak Blues Alberta Hunter 95 1978 3:24 Amtrak Blues
Long John Blues Dinah Washington 97 1948 3:10 Dinah Washington:the Queen Sings - Disc 2 - Stairway to the Stars
My Daddy Rocks Me Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra 114 1929 3:09 The Jimmie Noone Collection
New Orleans Bump Wynton Marsalis 128 1999 4:36 Mr. Jelly Lord - Standard Time, Vol. 6
Black And Tan Fantasy Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 88 1999 4:36 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke
Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho Mahalia Jackson 130 1958 2:13 Live At Newport 1958
Goin' To Chicago Count Basie and His Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing 79 1952 3:22 Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings (Disc 2)
I Want A Little Girl Big Joe Turner with Pete Johnson and Freddie Green 91 1956 4:19 The Boss Of The Blues
It's from the SP blues night, 13th April, 10.30-11.30. I especially love that song 'My Daddy Rocks Me'. I've heard a more recent version played lately round town - something hi-fi. But this version is the BEST. The older versions always sound so much dirtier. I wonder if it's because the contemporary singers, today, don't know what the words mean? Or if they can't make it work because they don't use those expressions themselves in their everyday talk (vernacular much?), so they can't give it the right weight....? Any how, Jimmie Noone is my man. My homey. My main squeeze. We are having a Thing. If you read the Red Hot Jazz entry about him you'll see where my musical taste is at at the moment - I am still really keen on Kid Ory (and following him through Jelly Roll's bands), nuts for Johnny Dodds and chasing some Earl Hines.
This blues set was quite varied, moving from an excellent (truly great) set by Leon. But Iiked the part from Long John Blues onwards especially. I played the Winton Marsalis version of 'New Orleans Bump' rather than the Jelly Roll one because I needed to get up out of the scratchy sound quality for the room to get a bit of energy. People really have trouble with those blues tracks with tango type rhythms, though. Me, I lubbs them, because I have experience with Argentinian tango. And because I really like blues music which makes you feel like moving around the floor rather than just standing there getting your frottage cheeze on. Also, the guy who wrote 'St Louis Blues' said in an interview I read somewhere that he wrote the song with a 'tango' intro because tango was so cool with dancers at that moment, and he wanted to get them on the floor before hitting them with the blues action.... now I think about it, I'm not sure it was 'St Louis Blues'. But whatever, it's an interesting point. And I really should look up the quote so I can get it right. But I like the late 20s for all the interesting stuff that was going on. We see early labour movement stuff. Women's movement stuff (where women were beginning to reap the benefits of the suffragette movement of the late 19th century). Sweet-as music stuff. It was just an interesting period.
Any how, I played the LCJO version of 'Black and Tan Fantasy' rather than a bit of sweet Ellington because of the scratch factor. This crowd isn't all that used to or comfortable with really old stuff - they prefer the hi-fi. And the sound gear and room just wasn't working with so much lo-fi, scratchy, messy sounding music. Which is a real shame.
Some day I'd like to do a set that played all the music from a particular period, regardless of tempo or style, just working it all together to make for an interesting night of dancing. I'd like to play the really slow stuff and the really fast stuff, working it all together so it kind of flowed, but not having to think 'oh, these speed freaks won't dance slow' and vice versa.
Sigh.
-- Note: all pics are from this interesting site, www.mainspringpress.com. --
"extreme DJing nerdery" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
April 9, 2008
jook joint pics
Posted by dogpossum on April 9, 2008 1:35 PM
There're more of these wonderful images here.
"jook joint pics" was posted in the category clicky and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 30, 2008
djing by remote
Posted by dogpossum on March 30, 2008 8:45 PM
Argh. This Yehoodi set is killing me. I've been working on this set off and on for ages and it's really not a very great thing. I've finally put together 4 hours of music that I think could work and I'm listening to it now, back to front. The last hour (currently the first hour) or so is pure cop out - I suddenly decided I needed to take the tempo extremely low and the tone equally so. This was cheering on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, but it sounds a bit odd to suddenly drop like that at the end of the session.
What I've been trying to do is work between different styles, much as I would while DJing, but perhaps on a longer 'curve' - so I can spend more time with each style. I'm also playing fast and loose with the tempos - I'm not tempering things for the physical limitations of a real, live crowd of dancers.
This is, of course, playing havoc with my internal DJing instincts. Playing 9 or 10 songs at 250bpm and higher in a row is wrong. Only balboa doods could hack that tempo. Similarly, it feels wrong to go from 200 to 160 to 60 within 4 songs. And then to move on up. Historically, it's fairly accurate - a band playing for a crowd in 1928 would move between subsonic and supersonic speeds ad libitum. But lindy hoppers today get all freaked out by that. Speed freaks in particular have trouble with songs at about 60bpm. Babies.
Anyhow, it's making me feel kind of anxious to break the rules like this.
But it's also quite nice - I'm playing songs I really, really like but hardly ever get to play. And I'm playing them in clumps that I know would never work for dancers. There's a particular lump of about 8 songs which are quite fast but also quite low energy - they're more along the 'chamber jazz' sort of line, which is really nice for listening, but would be ordinary for dancing.
... I had to resist the temptation to try to be as obscure as possible. Thanks for the tip, Trev - it's been very useful. It's not difficult to remind myself that I don't have anywhere near as large a collection as some of the supernerds out there, so there's no way I'm going to be able to pull off some esoteric collection of completely obscure and unknown gems. So I'm going for 'songs I freakin' love' and 'songs I love to play for dancers'.
That means there are quite a few favourites ('Jumpin' at the Woodside' is in there), I've played a couple of versions of a couple of songs (oh no! gasp! rule breaker!), but I figure it's a really nice way to contrast and compare. I don't play them one after another, of course, but it's a nice way to show how songs have stuck around for decades, in and out of the popular repertoire, given different treatments and flavours by different musicians. I have to say, all this stuff is chugging along in my head but is probably completely unnoticeable to most listeners - most people simply wouldn't notice or care. Which is ok by me. I certainly don't want to come off sounding as though I'm trying to take the listener to school. I just figure, while I'm breaking some rules, I might as well break others.
I'm also doing some shifts between songs that are purely for my own enjoyment. Yes, that is Freddy Green there in that Joe Turner song following that Count Basie song. And that's certainly not the only time I use a common artist to segue between songs/groups.
I've noticed that I over use a few different artists. But frankly, how can it be wrong to play a lot of Ellington? Or Basie? Those guys are the bread and butter of the swing dancing world, they recorded a jillion songs, they played for a jillion dancers and they really shaped the popular music world of the day. So I'm going to rock on with those mens.
Not so many ladies in the list, though. That's hardly suprising - how many lady rock stars are there in your average 'rock and roll' set list? Not a whole lot.
...more updates as I go. And I'll let you know when it's on the radio so you can listen - it's an internet radio station, so you'll be able to hear it (and me talking!) on your computers. If I have time I'll see if I can make some sort of read-a-long thing for this blog, so you can read my thinking along with the music. Or not, if you happen to have, well, a life. Ok, gotta ping ding chicken wing now - blllooooooz dancing!
"djing by remote" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 21, 2008
last night's set
Posted by dogpossum on March 21, 2008 12:40 PM
There's a thread on the SwingDJs board called 'last night's playlist' which I'm not sure I'm brave enough to post in yet. So I'm going to post last night's set here. I've been listening to the set again this morning, so the 'last played' times are a bit off. It was a fun set - I'm enjoying listening to it now!
I played a fair few newer songs (new to me), which was really nice - I'm using all the new music I've bought lately. All this purchasing has been very inspiring and made me very happy. I'm loving the Lionel Hampton Mosaic set very much. It has quite a few nice, medium tempo songs which are great for newer dancers... or nannas like myself.
Last night was interesting as it's the second night of a new door cover charge for the venue. I think $5 (or is it $6?) is kind of crap for a venue where the drinks are really expensive and you're still not allowed to bring your own water ($1.50 for a glass of water!). I wouldn't mind a cover charge, but I need to drink a lot of water... it's also a fucking disgusting place. The toilets leak everywhere and stink, the taps don't work on the sink (of course - it's a scam to keep you buying water), it stinks, the floor is inconsistent, the DJing podium thing is a bit scary (a giant crevasse down behind it, etc), and it just generally has a nasty vibe. Plus the bar staff are surly bastards.
Anyhow, the door charge has cut the people through the door by 25% at least. This kind of sucks. But it means that those people who are going are there to dance rather than drink, which means it's easier to work the crowd - you get a greater proportion on the floor at any one time. The crowd should have been bigger, and the night should have been pumping because it was the Thursday before good Friday, but it wasn't - and that's a sure sign that the door charge is having detrimental effects.
But most of the people there were from the classes before, and the retention rate was higher than usual. It felt like a Funbags night - more 'beginner' dancers. Which is actually very nice, as they just want to DANCE and they're not as picky about musical style. They like a solid beat, and they really like the older music that I play, and they're totally unfazed by higher tempos - they just get out there and shake it, regardless.
But they don't have a lot of stamina, so you get everyone in the room dancing for 3 songs, then an empty floor (except for more experienced people), then 3 songs of packed floor, then an empty floor. They just don't have the stamina, the basic fitness and - more importantly - the body awareness and basic muscle memory/awareness to move efficiently and energy-savingly. Which means that they kind of get out there and thrash around, limbs all over the place, wasting energy. They're having fun, but they're killing themselves. So they need a rest. But they're still really keen to dance, so as soon as they've caught their breath, they're back out there, dancing like fools. Which is really very nice.
So I'm happy with the job I did last night, and I enjoyed it. It's about my fifth set this month (what with the 3 gigs over the MSF weekend just passed), so I'm steadily saving money for more CDs. Yay! I'm also getting my DJing in now before the second semester starts and I have to go back to being working stooge who has to keep normal hours. But I'm down to do a blues set next month, which I'm looking forward to (I only do one a year these days, not counting exchanges). Oh, and excitingly, I've been asked to do a set on Yehoodi radio soon. So I'm getting myself a bit worked up about that. I'm not sure whether I should play stuff I usually play for dancers (which could get kind of dull), stuff I'd like to play for dancers, stuff that's not necessarily for dancing but rocks, a lindy set, a blues set, a combination of the two... I'm also finding part of me is trying to find the most obscure stuff I can. It's a show off thing. And this obscure stuff is the older, more unusual stuff. And most of that is pre-lindy hop. Which probably isn't the best way to go. But I'm looking forward to it. All four hours of it (!!).
The Comeback 20/03/08 8:41 PM Barbara Morrison 134 2002 7:41 Live At The 9:20 Special
Froggy Bottom 20/03/08 8:43 PM Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 155 1957 2:37 Goin' To Kansas City Blues
Walk 'Em 20/03/08 8:46 PM Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 131 1946 2:53 Walk 'Em
Give Me Some Skin 21/03/08 11:08 AM Lionel Hampton and His Sextet 138 1941 3:16 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 5)
Apollo Jump 21/03/08 11:12 AM Lucky Millinder 143 3:27 Apollo Jump
Summit Ridge Drive 21/03/08 11:15 AM Artie Shaw and His Gramercy 5 128 1940 3:21 Self Portrait (Disc 2)
Don't Be That Way 21/03/08 11:17 AM Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 136 1938 2:36 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 2)
I'm Beginning To See The Light 20/03/08 9:02 PM Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five Featuring Hilary Alexander 126 2007 2:57 Moppin' And Boppin'
Massachusetts 21/03/08 11:21 AM Maxine Sullivan 147 1956 3:19 A Tribute To Andy Razaf
Shoutin' Blues 21/03/08 11:24 AM Count Basie and His Orchestra 148 1949 2:38 Kansas City Powerhouse
For Dancers Only 21/03/08 11:26 AM Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 148 1937 2:41 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford
Afternoon of a Moax 20/03/08 9:14 PM Charlie Barnet 132 2004 3:24 Charlie Barnet
The Heebie Jeebies Are Rockin' The Town (Alt Tk) 21/03/08 11:30 AM Red Allen & Lionel Hampton, vocal, & His Orchestra 141 1939 2:44 The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-1941 (disc 3)
Laughing In Rhythm 21/03/08 11:33 AM Slim Gaillard and his Peruvians 142 1951 2:56 Laughing In Rhythm: The Best Of The Verve Years
Ain't Nothin' To It 21/03/08 11:36 AM Fats Waller & His Rhythm 134 1941 3:10 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2)
Oh Red! 20/03/08 9:26 PM Sam Price and his Texas Blusicians with Sam Price 182 1940 3:05 1929-1941
A Viper's Moan 20/03/08 9:29 PM Willie Bryant And His Orchestra 153 3:26 Willie Bryant 1935-1936
My Baby Just Cares For Me 20/03/08 9:33 PM Nina Simone 120 3:38 The Great Nina Simone
Bli-Blip 20/03/08 9:35 PM Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 140 2007 2:44 Moppin' And Boppin'
Gotta Do Some War Work 20/03/08 9:40 PM Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 150 2004 4:10 Crazy Rhythm
Savoy Blues 20/03/08 9:43 PM Kid Ory 134 2002 3:01 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho 20/03/08 9:46 PM Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band 160 1946 3:13 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46
I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate 20/03/08 9:49 PM Muggsy Spanier and his Ragtime Band 155 1939 2:56 Great Original Performances 1931 & 1939
Moppin' And Boppin' 20/03/08 9:53 PM Fats Waller & His Rhythm 173 1943 4:29 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 3)
Flying Home 20/03/08 9:56 PM Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 197 1942 3:11 Lionel Hampton Story 2: Flying Home
Good Queen Bess 20/03/08 9:59 PM Duke Ellington 160 1940 3:00 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10)
The Back Room Romp 20/03/08 10:02 PM Rex Stewart and His 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 2:49 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2)
Tippin' In 21/03/08 11:04 AM Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra 144 1942 3:20 Tuxedo Junction
"last night's set" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 17, 2008
happy day
Posted by dogpossum on March 17, 2008 2:58 PM
This lovely thing just arrived! Sure, it was a little embarrassing opening the door to the post dood wearing only a (very) short, light cotton dress, but I like to think I made his afternoon a little more interesting. But it was just GREAT to see a giant Mosaic cardboard box under his arm.
I love Lionel Hampton very much. He's one of those guys I got into when I was first interested in DJing. In fact, I think his album Tempo and Swing was one of the first I bought thinking 'this is DJing music'. I'm still a massive fan. He made great dancing music - stuff that's really stompy and makes you want to get up and stomp around. Probably has something to do with his being a percussionist.
Anyhoo, it was interesting to see Ziggy Elman's name on the first page of the first CD's liner notes. Elman's interesting, not just because he's responsible for the freakin' awesome solo at the beginning of Tommy Dorsey's song 'Well git it!'. He caught my interest initially because he was a Jewish musician 'performing' whiteness - he changed his name.
This is something that Dean Collins also did (Saul Cohen originally). And all of this rings a bell with me because I keep coming across articles about Jewish musicians and actors who performed 'blackness' in the early days of radio and vaudeville - putting on 'black' accents and black face paint. It's something I'd like to follow up in greater depth at some point, not only because of the interesting Jewish history of American show business, but also because of the ideological ramifications of 'performing' ethnicity in swing culture generally.
Because, of course, when we lindy hop, we are dancing what was an African American dance. Dancers who are into historical recreationism are particularly keen on emulating 'black' ways of moving and movement aesthetics. Which is problematic, when you remember that these are predominantly white, middle class kids (especially in America). But all this gets even more interesting when you take into account the fact that lindy hop is getting very popular in places like Korea. A recent exchange guest was telling me that there are thousands of swing dancers in Seoul, and that he social dances every single night of the week - far more often than we can here in Melbourne. And then, remember that not all Australian dancers are white - we see an increasingly multicultural local swing community here in Melbourne (though still not entirely multicultural or diverse).
But back to Ziggy Elman. His solo in 'Well Git it!' has particular cultural resonances for contemporary lindy hoppers, as mediated by the internet. The Mad Dog people performed a routine in Danvers to this song in 2002 which proved very popular with Australian dancers, particularly in the then-very-introverted Melbourne scene. Here was a group of young people dancing crazy, wild lindy hop without rules or costumes! Suddenly, there was an alternative to the carefully 'safe' teaching of the larger school, dancers who weren't the 'old' recreationists ('old' being over 30, mind you). Suddenly, lindy hop got cool. Coolness which seemed to manifest in dancers wearing jeans in performances. And, most refreshingly for olden days music nerds like me, an increased general interest in music from the 1930s rather than 50s and 60s.
The Mad Dog troupe featured a bunch of young dancers who're now rock stars, some of whom learnt to dance in Ithaca with Bill Borghida (and other teachers), and some of whom were in the Minnie's Moochers dance troupe (circa 1999, 2000), which I remember being very influential. In fact, I remember watching this 2000 comp performance in my first year in Melbourne. This is as white a lindy hop performance as you're going to see, but holy smokes, it's tight. And these guys were young teenagers. If you're familiar with Borghida's teaching, you can see his sound technical foundations in there, and you can't help but envy those kiddies their early start on lindy hop.
This performance is an interesting contrast with the Mad Dog routine in part because it is so tight and carefully choreographed - each dancer is attempting to dance and move in exactly the same way (here's an interesting clip of the girls doing solo charleston). In the Mad Dog routine we see choreographed steps, but each couple (and dancer) is quite unique. And of course, if you watch this composite clip of old school lindy hoppers, you can see that though the routines are really tight, each dancer has a unique style. The Big Apple contest is probably the best example of this. So this representation or performance of 'individuality' through improvisation and 'styling' signalled a shift away from very white, studio ballroom/concert dance aesthetics and towards a more 'vernacular' dance ethos. Vernacular in that people were actually dancing how they felt, in clothes they wore every day, with their own particular 'accents'. And of course, lindy is just made for young people - it's fast music, it's crazy dancing, it's irreverent, it's badass*.
It's probably worth pointing out that the American lindy hop competition culture in 2000 was very strictly regimented. The scoring was complicated, there was a whole range of weird rules about what you could and couldn't do or wear in the competitions, and the type of dancing produced by these competitions was kind of... well, boring.
Competitions were kind of the same in Australia at the time, though there were no competitions run by lindy hoppers with specific 'lindy hop' categories. The biggest Australian competition at the time was 'Best of the Best', run by the VRRDA (Victorian Rock and Roll Dance Association), similarly constrained and rules-bound. It was also very much a 'rock and roll' competition - it was unusual to see 'real' lindy hop performances until about 2002.
In 2002 the MLX hosted the first Hellzapoppin' competition, a model borrowed from the American Hellza competition - no rules, an impetus towards historical 'authenticity', run as part of an African American cultural history festival in Harlem. Though the American Hellza comp has been largely superseded by the ULHS (Ultimate Lindy Hop Show Down) competition for wild, crazy, 'authentic' lindy hop - not to mention popularity - Hellza is the only competition in Australia which actually carries on this particular ethos. All other large competitions in Australia are run by one school, and this school's teachers tend to dominate the field, with the general tone being a little... straight.
So the 2002 Mad Dog performance is important as it signaled a diversion from the rules-bound competitions of previous years. The Mad Dog routine is probably more significant in American lindy as it was a very public diversion from the supergroove style that was popular at the time. I recently heard one of those dancers make a general comment about how 'we' used to dance 'groovier, smoother' and are not into 'rawer' dancing. It struck me as an example of how American dancers often generalise their experiences to the international community. But this is important stuff because these dancers were very young (and still are - under 30) and have been very influential in Australia.
So Ziggy Elman's name probably carries a little more interpretive weight for me than for most people, and one day I'm going to read up on all that stuff on Jewish showbiz history. I promise.
For now I'm busy filling up the last tiny bits of space left on my hard drive with Lionel Hampton goodness. Yeah!
* old people like it too. Frankie is 93 and he still likes it.
"happy day" was posted in the category cat blogging and digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 9, 2008
i like to move it move it
Posted by dogpossum on March 9, 2008 2:44 PM | Comments (2)
I did a late night gig last night that was very excellent fun. Starting at 2am and finishing at 4, I had to follow 15 minutes of heel slide competition (if ever there was a showing of hegemonic masculinity, that'd be it) to the Rocky theme, so it was a bit tricky starting out. But who does a better job representing The Man than Jimmy Witherspoon?
It was really nice to play a large crowd of dancers from all over Australia (and some overseas places) who were keen to dance hard and fast. Even after a long day of workshops, on the fourth day of an exchange, they were ready to lindy hop like it was 1937. Actually, it's nice to play a set later in the weekend as the dancers are kind of relaxed and warmed up. The DJ before me had set up a high energy vibe which was really nice to step into - it spoils me to have a DJ do all that work to establish a crazy, fun dancing energy in the room, and to be able to just step on in (or sit right down, rather) and take advantage of that.
It's a large room, and I'm not all that fond of the sound in there (the speakers are at one end of the room, so that end gets really crowded, really hot as the dancers squeeze up against the speakers). I think I should have gotten up and walked about the room a bit more to check the sound more often, but I was tired and I my buddies were mostly clustered towards the back (where it was cooler and there was more room for stunts). They're not shy of letting me know if the sound is bodgy, either.
Half way through, though, I had to sprint off for a wee break. Took me literally 45 seconds, even having to squeeze through a crowd. I guess I shouldn't have drunk all that water while I was DJing. But it was so hot up there at the front of the room I felt a bit dehydrated (didn't help that I'd been up til 4 dancing like a freak the night before, then ridden up for lunch during a hot afternoon).
The weekend isn't over yet, though. I have a set on tomorrow night (lindy hop from 12 - 1.30am) and there's blooz dancing tonight (though I've just checked the roster and there's apparently lindy on tonight as well - YAY!). A female friend asked me to dance the night before and mid-way through I was reminded of how great leading is. So I led most of that night. There are just so many fabulous follows in town - so many great chicks who're totally fun to dance with. And there's a bit of a shortage of leads (of course), so I'm laughing. I am still working up the guts to dance with Hanna. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow.
Froggy Bottom Jimmy Witherspoon With Jay McShann And His Band 155 1957 2:37 Goin' To Kansas City Blues 9/03/08 2:08 AM
Jump Through The Window Roy Eldridge and his Orchestra 154 1943 2:42 After You've Gone 9/03/08 2:11 AM
Lopin' Count Basie, his instrumentalists and Rhythm 190 1947 2:29 Kansas City Powerhouse 9/03/08 2:13 AM
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 148 1937 2:41 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 9/03/08 2:16 AM
Moppin' And Boppin' Fats Waller & His Rhythm 173 1943 4:29 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 3) 9/03/08 2:20 AM
I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate Muggsy Spanier and his Ragtime Band 155 1939 2:56 Great Original Performances 1931 & 1939 9/03/08 2:23 AM
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band 160 1946 3:13 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 9/03/08 2:27 AM
All Star Strut Metronome All Star Nine 176 3:12 Charlie Christian: The Genius of The Electric Guitar (disc 4) 9/03/08 2:30 AM
The Back Room Romp Rex Stewart and His 52nd Street Stompers 152 1937 2:49 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 9/03/08 2:33 AM
Peckin' Johnny Hodges and His Orchestra 165 1937 3:10 The Duke's Men: Small Groups Vol. 1 (Disc 2) 9/03/08 2:36 AM
Shortnin' Bread Fats Waller 195 2005 2:41 The Panic Is On 9/03/08 2:38 AM
Laughing In Rhythm Slim Gaillard and his Peruvians 142 1951 2:56 Laughing In Rhythm: The Best Of The Verve Years 9/03/08 2:41 AM
Turn It Over Bus Moten and His Men 148 1949 2:38 Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) 9/03/08 2:44 AM
The Grabtown Grapple Artie Shaw and His Gramercy 5 178 1945 2:57 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 9/03/08 2:47 AM
Lavender Coffin Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James 134 1949 2:47 Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings 9/03/08 2:50 AM
Cole Slaw Jesse Stone and His Orchestra 145 2:57 Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 9/03/08 2:53 AM
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 3:34 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 9/03/08 2:56 AM
Sent For You Yesterday Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams 163 1960 3:10 The Count Basie Story (Disc 2) 9/03/08 2:59 AM
Shoutin' Blues Count Basie and His Orchestra 148 1949 2:38 Kansas City Powerhouse 9/03/08 3:02 AM
Just Kiddin' Around Artie Shaw and His Orchestra 159 1941 3:21 Self Portrait (Disc 3) 9/03/08 3:05 AM
The Jumpin' Jive Chu Berry with Cab Calloway, vocal, & His Orchestra 177 1939 2:52 Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions 9/03/08 3:08 AM
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 190 1934 3:09 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 9/03/08 3:11 AM
Loch Lomond Chu Berry with Wingy Mannone & His Orchestra 153 1938 2:36 Classic Chu Berry Columbia And Victor Sessions Vol. 4 9/03/08 3:14 AM
Massachusetts Maxine Sullivan 147 1956 3:19 A Tribute To Andy Razaf 9/03/08 3:17 AM
Blues In Hoss's Flat Count Basie 144 1958 3:13 Chairman Of The Board [Bonus Tracks] 9/03/08 3:20 AM
A Viper's Moan Mora's Modern Rhythmists 143 2000 3:30 Call Of The Freaks 9/03/08 3:24 AM
Good Queen Bess Duke Ellington 160 1940 3:00 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) 9/03/08 3:27 AM
Mutiny in the Parlor Chu Berry with Gene Krupa's Swing Band; Helen Ward, vocal; 137 1936 3:06 Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions 9/03/08 3:30 AM
Joog, Joog Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 146 1949 3:01 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 9/03/08 3:33 AM
Ain't Nothin' To It Fats Waller & His Rhythm 134 1941 3:10 Last Years (1940-1943) (Disc 2) 9/03/08 3:36 AM
B-Sharp Boston Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 126 1949 2:55 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 9/03/08 3:39 AM
Lemonade Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five 117 1950 3:17 Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five (vol 6) 9/03/08 3:42 AM
It Takes Two to Tango Lester Young and Oscar Peterson 104 1997 6:09 Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio 9/03/08 3:46 AM
Blues For Smedley Clark Terry, Ed Thigpen, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown 137 1964 6:57 Oscar Peterson Trio + One: Clark Terry 9/03/08 3:53 AM
Christopher Columbus Maxine Sullivan 156 1956 2:21 A Tribute To Andy Razaf 9/03/08 3:55 AM
Smooth Sailing Ella Fitzgerald 118 2000 3:07 Ken Burns Jazz: Ella Fitzgerald 9/03/08 3:58 AM
Over all, the set went pretty well, I think. A few people came up to tell me they really liked it, which is always so nice. It's just so flattering to have people take the time to tell you that, especially if they don't know you. It makes me feel really good and encourages me to do my very best.
I played a few old favourites, mostly to hang a bit of shit on Trev, and I did think about doing a very mediocre set for all those people who've asked me to 'play something good' in the past. It maybe wasn't the very best I've ever done, but it felt like a good job. The floor was packajammed til 3am, and I kept a dozen couples on the floor after 3.30, which was pretty good. There were workshops this morning, so the numbers were bound to drop off, but I did a decent job keeping them up and lindy hopping. It was nice to see the floor suddenly fill up again when I played Blues for Smedley and then Christopher Columbus. That's a little super groove mini-set right there at the end. Two songs with chunky bass action a la Ray Brown at the end there (Two to Tango and BFS) for Jaymee to thank him for driving us home the other night (couldn't quite manage Blues for Stephanie, though).
Overall, it was a very fun set to do and I'm enjoying myself this weekend. Yay.
"i like to move it move it" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 27, 2008
old school pakour
Posted by dogpossum on February 27, 2008 5:21 PM | Comments (0)
"old school pakour" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
February 18, 2008
fats waller v duke ellington
Posted by dogpossum on February 18, 2008 11:18 AM
It's been tricky fitting in all my listening this past weekend.
Will it be Fats, or will it be Ellington? Witherspoon and Sam Price don't even get a foot in the door, I'm afraid.
I have 8 Ellington CDs to get through, and 3 Fats CDs to get through, and I'm not rushing, mind you. I like to listen to new CDs really slowly, lots of repeat listens to individual songs, lots of skipping back to check out a particular section.
So I'm not exactly running through my new goodies. And when I'm reading, I simply don't hear the music at all, so I never know when a song's finished. Or a CD's finished. I think this is partly why I hate having music on when I'm working - it's a waste. Music also tends to stop being music and just turn into the odd sound or bump or squeak which I catch every other minute as my attention shifts back to the aural world. I also really hate having that annoying background buzz distracting me from ideas when I'm thinking. So I like Total and Complete Silence when I'm working.
But I was all about Fats at first:
Fats Waller and His Rhythm the Last Years ( 1940-1943 ) to be precise. This is the other goody that came for me last week. It's really, really wonderful. I adore Fats, and this is perhaps the best collection I have (so far - there's no end in sight). So, seeing as it was the first collection that arrived, this was where my listening was at. But then the Ellington Mosaic arrived, and now I'm all about Ellington.
It's not a real competition, not really. But I'm finding it tricky getting through all these. And it feels like every single song on this Mosaic set is wonderful - I have to keep stopping to put songs into my 'should play' list for DJing. Luckily there's quite a bit of stuff I don't already have (I love, love, love the smaller group stuff, and have the Columbia 2-CD 'Duke's Men' vol 1 and vol 2.
I really should get my finger out and properly research all these guys, get a proper idea of who recorded with which companies when. Get some sort of clue as to who was in whose band at what time. But I really can't be arsed devoting valuable research time to something that's meant to be fun. There's so much other stuff I should be researching (let's not talk about reality TV, ok?), I just don't want to ruin music for me. I have read bits and pieces, but I just don't have a sensible, comprehensive set of facts and figures and names at my disposal.
I mean, I am totally crap with that sort of thing normally (my memory is so crap it's a joke), and I find it really difficult to remember the names of songs. I can pick the musicians or the bands (mostly because they tend to have quite distinct musical 'styles' or 'accents', so you can guess who's playing what), but names of songs? Nope. I can generally guess the era (30s, 40s, etc), but not reliably. This means that it's always a nice surprise to discover I actually own that song that such and such just DJed. But it also means my learning curve re jazz history is more of a plateau.
I've also noticed that a song seems to sound completely different when you're dancing to it than when you're DJing it or sitting at home listening to it. I think it's because when you're DJing or listening, you pay really close attention, in a conscious-brain sort of way. But when I'm dancing, I'm responding unconsciously, not actually consciously thinking 'oh, muted trumpet' or 'huh, chunky bass'. Plus there's a bunch of other things going on when you're dancing that distract you.
Anyways, the bottom line is, Ellington is winning, but Fats is kind of niggling in my hindbrain. It's high-brow versus visceral, bodily goodness - Ellington is clever, Fats is fun (Ellington is fun too, and Fats is clever, but Ellington is telling you he's smart and Fats is telling you he'd like you to sit a little closer and pass him a drink).
"fats waller v duke ellington" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 15, 2008
Sam Price and His Texas Blusicians 1929-1941
Posted by dogpossum on February 15, 2008 1:02 PM
Sam Price and His Texas Blusicians 1929-1941 is the other CD that came this week, part of the Big Binge. It's a Chronological Classic, which is important because this series of albums feature artists in chronological order - so you get a series of Duke Ellington CDs featuring songs in the order they were originally recorded.
It's the most comprehensive series of albums, and they're quite sought after. You can pay zillions of dollars for the rarer ones. But I've picked up ones that are cheaper and really great. My favourite is the Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 one, which I picked up quite cheaply. It featured a song called B Sharp Boston which I really like and play quite often at late nights (it's a bit slower). It also features Joog Joog, which has some nice female vocals (again, the CD's in the other room, so I can't check the name for you, sorry, but I think it's a combination of Ivie Anderson and someone else [EDIT: I just checked and I think the notes are screwy, or I don't understand, as it has a bloke's name for the vocals, when I'm certain it's Ivie Anderson and someone else...]). It's quite an interesting album because it's later Ellington (round about the time of some of the late testament Basie stuff that I really like), but Ellington is quite a different band leader. Most of these songs aren't that wacky arty stuff he got into in the later period, but are much more popular songs. So it makes for interesting listening. And some great dancing.
Any how, this Sam Price action was drawn to my attention by Trev, king of fun scratchy music. And I'm quite in love. He apparently played with Lester Young's band (or at least Lester - this is another CD I have to check the liner notes on. It's only new, so I'm totally clueless on specifics). Sam Price, not Trev, that is.
One of my favourite bits of this album is in the song 'Do you Dig My Jive?' where he sings:
Ain't nothin' new about jive,
Believe it or not,
I know when jive first started,
The time and the spot,
Way back yonder,
In the year one-ty-one,
You can bet your sweet life,
That's when jive begun.
I like 'onety-one' - the first year. It makes me giggle.
So, of course, I'm swimming in lovely music today. And trying to pretend I don't have a dentist appointment this afternoon. I think I'll follow that up with a nice film. Probably Jumpers rather than the more serious things I want to see (There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, American Gangster), as I'm always a bit traumatised after the dentist. Thing kind thoughts for me, will you?
"Sam Price and His Texas Blusicians 1929-1941" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 12, 2008
slim gaillard's Laughing in Rhythm and Fats Waller and his Rhythm, the Last Years 1940-1943
Posted by dogpossum on February 12, 2008 10:22 AM
Two new arrivals:
Slim Gaillard's Laughing in Rhythm. Can't believe I've only just bought this. I am so the slowest, uncoolest DJ on the block. I mean, I've bought bits and pieces from places like itunes, but still. It's a bit late. I'd still like the giant Gaillard Proper set, but I just can't bring myself to buy all that nonsense singing...
Fats Waller and his Rhythm, the Last Years 1940-1943. I now own about 60 million Waller CDs. And I'm not quite sure that's enough.
"slim gaillard's Laughing in Rhythm and Fats Waller and his Rhythm, the Last Years 1940-1943" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 5, 2008
20s partner charleston
Posted by dogpossum on February 5, 2008 1:04 PM
This is a cute charleston routine.
"20s partner charleston" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
February 3, 2008
phew
Posted by dogpossum on February 3, 2008 11:32 PM
That horrible program is over and we've just watched our way through the lovely Billy Elliot (not Billy Holliday) and are now beginning with the divine Staying Alive. Directed by Sylvester Stallone, no less. And starring John Travolta. "Do you dance?"
"phew" was posted in the category fillums and lindy hop and other dances and television
oh man
Posted by dogpossum on February 3, 2008 8:48 PM
I am trying to watch So You Think You Can Dance, and it's really hard. It's really crap.
But there are fleeting glimpses of dancers I know (Trev! Trev! Trev!), and I'm half thinking of writing a paper on it. Maybe doing some interviews with dancers. Maybe something about the way ethnicity and dance and bodily aesthetics are represented in SYTYCD.
But it's really freaking painful. The worst bit is the way the judges have a small group step forward to be humiliated. It's all a bit lame. I know it's all orchestrated for a specific reality TV formula, but it feels far more forced than the American versions. So I'm really not sure I can manage much more of this.
But there are a few lindy hoppers who made it through to the final 100. But man, I've been watching for almost an hour and a half. And it's horrible.
The other really annoying part is the way it's cut up and stuck back together - lots of short, snappy bits. No where near enough long, long sequences where we just watch the dancers and assess their abilities. Which of course suggests (like we really need it suggested) that the dancing is really only important for brief moments of spectacle and that the real drama is in the judging and backstage stuff.
It's all a bit painful. I'm also a bit sceptical of comments about including the young aboriginal bloke because he brings 'diversity' to the program. Hm. And the woman from El Salvadore telling her (quite terrible) story to a pretty wet soundtrack.... kind of clumsy and chunky and nasty.
[good news: there's a new series of Good News Week coming. Bad news: it's on channel 10]
Ok, it's supposed to be over now, and we're supposed to be watching Billy Holiday. But it's not. Oh man.
"oh man" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and television
January 29, 2008
retuning for white audiences - more sister rosetta tharpe
Posted by dogpossum on January 29, 2008 11:23 AM
Helen has asked for specific details about the tuning of Tharpe's guitar in her comment here. Below is a big fat quote from an article called 'From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover' by Gayle Wald (published in 'American Quarterly', vol 55, no.3 September 2003), pgs 389-399. This is where I read that note about Tharpe's tuning - hope it's useful, Helen.
Wald's article is mostly about Tharpe's movement from black gospel music to the white jazz/blues/pop mainstream. Tharpe is taken as an example illustrating wider points about culture and music during this period. It's a really interesting read.
Although Tharpe arrived in New York already highly credentialed in Pentecostal terms, Sammy Price, Decca's house pianist and recording supervisor at the time Tharpe recorded "Rock Me," apparently wasn't feeling any of this joy. Tharpe, he recalled in his 1990 autobiography, "tuned her guitar funny and sang in the wrong key." In all likelihood Price was referring to Tharpe's use of vestapol (sometimes called 'open D') tuning popular among blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta region. (Muddy Waters is among the many blues guitarists, for example, who learned vestapol technique in the 1930s, when he was growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi.) As common as it was in the South, however, vestapol tuning could sound distinctly crude and out-of-place in the context of northern jazz bands. By his own account, Price, who later went on to record several hits with Tharpe, refused to play with her until she used a capo, the bar that sits across the fingerboard and changes the pitch of the instrument. "With a capo on the fret," he explained, "it would be a better key to play along with, a normal jazz key."
Price's brief story of the carpo as a normalizing technology is rich with implications for the discussion of what 'crossing over' to the realm of popular entertainment might have meant for Tharpe. Resonant of southern black communities and of musicians who honed their craft in churches as well as on back porches - musicians Hammond quite unself-consciously called 'unlettered' - Tharpe's 'funny' guitar playing introduced, to Price's ear, an apparently unassimilable element into the prevailing sounds of urban jazz. It's also possible that Price was demanding that Tharpe sing at a higher pitch, to conform with popular as well as commercial expectations that high pitch evidences a correspondingly 'higher' degree of femininity. In any case, and as Price suggests, Tharpe quite literally had to adjust her guitar and singing techniques to make commercially popular, 'secular' records that would earn her an audience beyond the relatively small market of consumers of 'religious music.' The 'makeover' of Tharpe's sound also has important gender and class implications less obvious from Price's comment. In bringing her sound more into line with the sounds of commercial jazz, Tharpe would not only have to change her tuning, but 'change her tune' as far as her performance of femininity was concerned.
The 'Hammond' referred to in the article is John Hammond, an important figure in the promotion and management of a number of big jazz musicians. Gunther Schuller's book 'The Swing Era' reads almost as a history of Hammond's career. I think it's important to note that this one white man was important for his influence on the developing jazz and swing music industry. His selection and then promotion of specific artists shaped the recording industry, popular tastes and the white mainstream's understanding of and access to black music during this period. As the race records and black-run radio stations were forced out of the industry by white competitors and blatantly racist media regulation, black artists had less and less control of their own representation in mass media, and black musical culture was mediated by white corporate and cultural interests.
All of this makes for fabulous, fascinating reading. It is, though, all about America. I'm not sure how much (if any of it) can be translated to the Australian context. But that would make for interesting research in itself, particularly when you keep in mind that jazz in Australia is necessarily the product of cultural transmission - black music filtered through mainstream American recording and sheet music industries to white mainstream audiences and musicians and white Australian musicians and audiences. Sure, there were musicians making jazz in Australia (people like Graeme Bell of course), but I've been thinking about 'authenticity' and jazz in such a transplanted context... particularly as I've read recently somewhere (goddess knows where - I'd have to retrace my steps) that music tends to reflect the vocal patterns and intonations and rhythms of the culture in which it develops. So, we could draw from this the conclusion that we Australians would play jazz with an Australian accent. It wouldn't sound like American - or black American - jazz. I'm hesitant to make comments about the relative value of localised jazz, but it's an issue hanging in the background there...
But back to Hammond. John Hammond of course organised the concert 'From Spirituals to swing' at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1938 (you can see the artists here, in a recording of the concert) . This concert featured a bunch of super big artists (Jimmy Rusher, Joe Turner, Mitchell's Christian Singers, Albert Ammons, Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Benny Goodman). It's goal was a combination of musical 'education' for the white mainstream and - indubitably, considering Hammond's impressive business sense - promotion of black music to new white audiences/consumers.
I'm interested in this concert and in Tharpe's cross-promotion to the mainstream as an example of cultural transmission - I'm fascinated by the way music and dance move between cultures. I'm also really interested in the uses of power in this process. Is it appropration? Stealing? Poaching? To quote (ad nauseum), Hazzard Gordon, we have to ask "who has the power to steal from whom?" when we're looking at this process.
I''ve been writing about the way different cultures not only 'take' dance steps or songs from other cultures or traditions, but also the way they then adapt these 'found' texts to suit their own cultural/social needs, values, etc.
I've argued all through my work that we can see the social heirarchy of the US in the reworking of dances and songs. What did they need to do to make these texts palatable for white audiences? With Tharpe it was 'retuning' her guitar and voice. With lindy hop, it was 'desexualising' and 'tidying' up the basic steps. Or at least presenting a different type of sexual performance.
Some interesting references
There's a really great page discussing race records that includes audio files, images and written text here on the NPR site.
There's also a pbs (US) site attached to the Ken Burns Jazz doco discussing race records.
For a (very nice) academic discussion, see David Suisman's article called 'Co-workers in the kingdom of culture: Black Swan Records and the political economy of African American music' (The Journal of American History vol 90, no.4, March 2004, p 1295-1324) which discusses the 'race records' of the period and the racialised nature of the American recording industry.
You can also walk through this article via the JAH's fantastic site (complete with images, sound files and other wonderful things). This is one site that really ROCKS.
Derek W. Vaillant has written a really interesting article about black radio in Chicago in the 20s and 30s which discusses these issues in greater detail ('Sounds of Whiteness: Local radio, racial formation and public culture in Chicago 1921-1935', American Quarterly vol 54 no. 1, March 2002 p25-66).
Katrina Hazzard Gordon has written quite a bit about African American dance culture. Here are a couple of references:
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. "African-American Vernacular Dance: Core Culture and Meaning Operatives." Journal of Black Studies 15.4 (1985): 427-45.
---. Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Read more about John Hammond, look at photos and listen to music here on this Jerry Jazz Musician page.
Wald, Gayle. "From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover" American Quarterly vol 55, no.3 (September 2003): 389-399.
"retuning for white audiences - more sister rosetta tharpe" was posted in the category academia and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 12, 2007
ok...
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2007 10:44 AM
If Drinkle could do anything with a troupe, anything at all, it would be this:
"ok..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 10, 2007
copying is easier than creating
Posted by dogpossum on December 10, 2007 10:13 AM
Mz Tartan has posted a post about conferences that applies quite nicely to lindy exchanges. So I will now infringe her intellectual copy rights with some select copying and pasting.
- thinking of holding a
conferencen exchange? Best not. It is a far, far better thing to receiveconferencesexchanges than to give them. I can't really rememberwhat people actually saidthe dances I had, in most cases. I do vividly remember various people telling me that it is incredibly anxiety-producing to organise aconferencen exchange. That's the truth. And all the while one is industriously producing anxiety one is well aware that the anxiety is ridiculous: one is not actually the person whoseacademic standingDJing or dancing has attracted people to this event, nor the one behind the microphone giving thetalkgood oil which is being intentlylisteneddanced to, let alone the person who wrote these exquisitenovelssongs and/or dances in honour of which everyone has gathered. - But here is a specimen of the type of situation which feeds anxiousness.
I did not mention this en blog at the time, but back in April of this year, I came into my office one morning to find six or seven messages on my answering machine from a person who seemed to be saying she'd showed up at LTU on the weekend for the conference, and she was standing outside the venue right now and could I call her back straight away to tell her why nobody was around - where it had been moved to? Oh, and she'd come from Italy to attend. FROM ITALY.I was DJing at set in one room when the DJ from the other appeared at my side to ask where the DJ for the set following his was at. Can you imagine the abyss of horror which opened up beneath me? Can you? I'm sorry, but you can't.The original call for papers, sent out eighteen months earlier, had indeed mentioned this weekend as the probable date, but we'd changed it very quickly to coincide with the English Teachers' meeting. And of course nobody else had turned up. And of course ALL the subsequent promotional stuff very clearly gave the proper date. And of course it is incredible to simply turn up to a conference without at least re-checking that it's on, or even attempting to register, or looking at the conference website. Yet, still, here she apparently was. FROM ITALY.All of the DJing rosters had been sent out ages ago and approved by all DJs concerned. We did manage to find the DJ (asleep somewhere), but it was a near thing, and yet another opportunity for public humiliation before an audience of my peers and international and interstate guests. She apparently turned up again last Friday afternoon. The person on the conference desk said she'd appeared and wanted to know where her name tag was. Then we lost track of her again. I would have liked to sight her, from a safe distance (from inside a bird observation hut perhaps) but it was not to be...next time, no doubt.- If, in spite of this potent warning, you still want to do a
conferencen exchange, overbook yourspeakersDJs. Out ofthirty-fivetwo dozen, two will withdraw for good reasons and in plenty of time for you to make other arrangements; two will courteously let you know that they won't be coming in time for you to pull them out of the program, one will pull out a week before, and one will pull out by email at 6:24pm on the evening before the day theirpaperset is scheduled at10:451:30 am.This person will be emailing you not from the Australian city where she resides, but from a country that is nine hours' flight away. How did she get there? you will wonder. Didn't it occur to her as she got on the plane....etc - The sick feeling you will acquire as you contemplate what looks like the complete disintegration of your carefully assembled program will make it impossible for you to
writeplay your ownpaperset with any degree of competency, so you willwithdraw it,bash it out any way thus making you feel like a total hypocrite and poser. Nevertheless, there will actually be more than enoughpapersDJs, and you will eventually realise that all the agonising and your own self waswere unnecessary. - Don't cancel the wildlife tour/shopping tour/olden days architecture tour. It is what the internationals are looking forward to. You may think possums/shopping/old buildings are boring, but they do not.
Despite the extreme anxiety of previous MLXs, this year wasn't actually all that bad. The above are really just par for the course, and what I think of as 'inevitable screw ups'. The issue becomes not whether or not they happen, but how you deal with them when they do happen. The difference between a conference and an exchange, though, is that a couple of hundred dancers are there to have fun, and it takes quite a bit to dissuade them of their intent. Conference attendees, however, have a few more issues going on, and can be far less forgiving.
I only had one freak out during MLX, and that was on the Thursday of the weekend. My good friends and hostees took me for cake and I got over myself and it.
I find that the very most important thing about coordinating a dozen or so events over one weekend for a few hundred visitors is to remain calm. Freaking doesn't help. I also have a rule: "no shouting". Unless you're shouting with delight. Shouting at people is never productive, and definitely not when the shouter is feeling angry/upset/etc. Remain cool. If you do feel a good shout/cussing out is in order, take it out the back so as to avoid broken furniture, exorbitant bar tabs and embarrassing guest DJs.
I have another solid rule: say thank you to anyone who has in any way been helpful, kind, accommodating, interested or otherwise a force for good rather than a force for inertia*. It doesn't hurt to say thank you three or four times, but it does hurt if you don't say it at all. Saying thank you makes you feel good, too, and so it's a win-win deal for everyone involved.
And another rule (which is related to the previous): volunteers are the most valuable creatures at your event. DJs are generally a bit precious and high maintenance (with exceptions!), rock star dancers are a pain in the freaking arse (organise exchanges for beginners - they're far less annoying) and fellow organisers can drive you nuts. But volunteers are gold. Love them, respect them, buy them drinks, thank them, squeeze them and underwork them. They will come back next year and figure out how to work the vacuum cleaner all on their own again.
*yes, I know.
"copying is easier than creating" was posted in the category conferences and lindy hop and other dances
December 3, 2007
west brunswick toodle-oo
Posted by dogpossum on December 3, 2007 11:18 AM
So November is over. It was ok.
- I had a birthday (that was ok)
- I liked all the moustaches (I don't think there's enough facial hair in the world, and it made dance partners extra interesting)
- we did mlx and it went well (biggest ever, zillions of interstaters and internationals, the usual reluctance on the part of Melbournites to play nice with guests)
- we had galaxy plus a round of dancers stay with us (and that was very nice)
- I did all my marking and got it in with plenty of time to spare
- I got a job interview for a postdoc (argh! next week!)
- I got a small grant to get me to the CSAA conference this week (double argh! paper not written! flights not booked! accommodation not sorted!)
- I've had a few punters ringing me offering DJing gigs (I am resolute about only taking paying gigs - I've done enough freebies to know I never want to do one again, unless it's for a real charity)
- Galaxy and I met up with Mz Tartan pre-GG and the Austenauts (dang, I'm sorry I missed that! blogged with excellence here) and she was surprisingly cool, calm and collected
I've also met another dancer doing a phd on dance stuff, but she lives in Perth, so we're squeezing in a natter-fest tomorrow before she flies out. She's into sociology and anthropology and I'm not sure she's up there with the hardcore sister action. But we'll see. It'll be neat just to sit and have a nice, nerdy chat.
I'm planning to meet up with the Adelaidean dancers during the conference visit this week (Wednesday). So I'll be able to say I've danced in every scene in Australia. Except Launceston. That should be nice.
My paper is pretty much done - just some tidying up to do. It's a combination of bits from these three posts, but obviously with far less detail, seeing as how I only get 20 minutes. 20 minutes kills me, especially when I want to play some music and clips of dancers to actually make clear what I'm talking about. It's ridiculous to talk about dancing without showing any, particularly when you're talking about gender performance in dance. In fact, it's so ridiculous I should just show 6 clips and provide an exercise sheet to stimulate group discussion, a la tutorials past.
I've also noted I'm in kind of a dud session, parallel with papers I'd really like to see, and which everyone else would really like to see as well. Not a big deal, really, and just desserts for someone who fucked the programming around at the last minute (I'd missed out on another grant and cancelled on the organisers, then been offered one by someone else, so squeezed back into the program - people who pull that shit deserve to get dud sessions). But it's parallel with an old buddy's paper and in a session of licorice allsorts, so we'll have trouble asking each other questions. It is in the last session of a day, but this time it's not the last session of the last day, so I guess it's ok.
I don't mean this to sound like a big old bitch - I really am very lucky to be going at all, and I don't want you to think otherwise. But the part of me that's trying to get a job keeps saying 'how will you pimp your fine self out if there's no one in the audience?' But really, it only takes one. And there'll be plenty of afternoon teas for me to pimp myself about. I'm cringing, writing that stuff. I hate the thought of such aggressive self aggrandising, but at the end of the day, in such a competitive job market, I have to be a bit pushy.
So I'm going to experiment with performing pushiness, and pretend like I'm one of those blokes who, obliviously, introduces himself to all the Names at conferences. It's the sort of thing chicks tend to be reluctant to do. And as a consequence, those pushy blokes get remembered, simply because the chicks have been to shy to step up.
But I'm going to focus on Names that mean something to me - you know, the Old Girls network. The ladies who do. The sorts of women academics who I admire and want to work with and be like. They're the ladies who'll call me on bullshit pushiness and demand some sort of fer real talk. No bullshit (unless it's a story about my career as a stunt woman and there are Tasmanians in the room), all kick arse Sister. No pathetic arse-kissing. No sycophancy.... like I'd have the patience for that. And for sure I'd forget that it's not cool to swear in polite company. Must remember that for the job interview, actually. Swearing = not cool.
But we'll see. No doubt I'll forget all these plans and end up talking shit and eating all the chocolate biscuits with the homies from UQ. Awesome.
Galaxy asked me the other day if I'd written a 'why dance is important to cultural studies' paper, and I haven't. I'm not sure I really, hugely care - if you don't dance you don't understand why it's important. Words won't help convince you - you have to feel it to understand why it's good stuff. But I do have a short list of reasons which include things like 'class' and 'not needing literacy' and 'ethnicity' and 'faster than words' and 'freakin' great fun!' I'll have a think, though. Perhaps it'll be a paper I write when I actually have a job or a book or more than half a dozen papers. Right now I think I'd get more from a paper called 'Why cultural studies needs dogpossum' which is so effective it gets me lots of jobs. But I'll work on it.
"west brunswick toodle-oo" was posted in the category conferences and djing and lindy hop and other dances and travel
July 25, 2007
Rudolph Valentino: tango legs
Posted by dogpossum on July 25, 2007 8:30 PM
Ok, so I'm a bit of a tango nut (kinda lapsed). I've been reading about Rudolph Valentino and how popular he was for ages - it's a stock story in cinema studies: Valentino was so hawt, the chicks dug him, he was the first real male star, chicks really really thought he was hawt, etc etc etc.
I've looked at the photos and thought 'yeah, whatever. dood wears too much makeup for me but whatever floats your boat, 20s chicks'
UNTIL
I went and watched some clips of him to find one for a lecture I'm doing on celebrity.
Check THIS out. They used to call him 'Tango Legs' and now I see why. He is one hot dancer. He's all rough and manly, but he can dance like a mo-fo. He's all about that good, sweet connection and the smoldering facial expressions.
Valentino is so hawt in this clip I'd totally have him. And spurs! He's tangoing in spurs! I love the way his partner is so overcome by his hawt dancing body that she almost swoons... and then he grabs her and kisses her and I am so with her.
Dang!
"Rudolph Valentino: tango legs" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
June 5, 2007
go lindy hoppers, go
Posted by dogpossum on June 5, 2007 7:33 PM
I just had to post this fun clip from 2006 (linkage). There's some of the world's best lindy hoppers dancing in the cold on the street. The best bit is all the oldies giggling and having fun while the young people take themselves too seriously.
"go lindy hoppers, go" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
friends, i am still alive
Posted by dogpossum on June 5, 2007 7:10 PM
I'm just not near the computer much.
I haven't written anything important in weeks.
But I have sewn SO much. I am sewing clothes that aren't for any particular project - I'm just sewing things for the challenge. Stretch satin? Yes. And when you wear it with a skirt, you're convinced you actually are one of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. Especially if you've been doing a bit of solo jazz lately and have your fitness up a bit. Not to mention a big fat repertoire of neat steps.
I have also been... well, not much else. Work on MLX7 continues - just wait til you see the incredibly cute logo Scotty did for us. Wait til you see how cheap passes are (finally we are in the financial position to offer an insane amount of the best social dancing in the country for the lowest price in the country! Go hippies, go!).
I am also about to start a new teaching job next semester at a new university. I won't write any more about it, other than to say 'what a great opportunity', and 'how wonderful is the Supes for giving me an amazing reference - unsolicited - so I get the job, even though it means she's suddenly tutor-less for her big fat undergrad subject?!' Goddess bless the Old Girls' Network - without it we'd never get jobs.
But this does suggest that we'll be in Melbourne for a while longer, which I'm not keen on - I'm so desperate to leave town and travel, travel, travel. No freaking UK, though, I hope - somewhere else in Europe. Canada. The US. Wherever. But it's a catch 22 - I have to take the work I can get.
It is cold here, and I don't much like it. Though we've had an unseasonably warm autumn (doesn't that seem like an oxymoron?), prompting the final, desperate ripening of the second crop of passionfruit, it's now properly winter. I don't much like the winter.
I promised I wouldn't write here until I had something to talk about beyond dancing and DJing, but things are pretty quiet round here these days, so....
I am doing lots of jazz stuff.
Tranky doo? √
Big Apple from Keep Punchin' √ (mostly)
Shim Sham Shimmy, a la Frankie Manning √
(I get the most raised eyebrows for this one - "boring!" and "baby stuff!" But it's the best, best, best routine - simple, yet a fabulous sudy in weight transfer. And people seem to forget that it's the shim sham shimmy, which is the part I like most. And those boogie forwards? I hate to tell you this, world, but you're doing them WRONG. Ask yourself: what would Frankie do? And, also, this routine sucks bums to anything under 200bpm. But slap on the action and it's oh-yes-mumma. I reccommend Chick Webb's Stompin' at the Savoy. Burn the George Gee.
Shim Sham Shimmy, a la Al Minns and Leon Jones √
(absolutely yes - I've used this version, but it doesn't have the extra steps Frida and Sakarias have here, or Gina and Mike have, or Mike and Adam have. I will follow up those couple of steps, but really, my heart is with Al and Leon. They've taught us that when you're really, really comfortable with a step, you can start making it interesting. The Shim Sham break? Why just do it facing one direction and moving one direction? Why not move it around? And half breaks? Hard? Maybe, but not when you've done them a million times).
I have had the most fun with the shim sham shimmies, I have to say - simple yet really, really fun.
I have to tidy up my Big Schnapple, but my Cranky Poo kicks arse. And from there? Well, there's the Dean Collins Shim Sham, and about a zillion other jazz routines to learn....
"friends, i am still alive" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 21, 2007
because i'm on that jazz kick...
Posted by dogpossum on May 21, 2007 7:15 PM
Al and Leon demonstrating some jazz, beginning with the Tranky Doo and ending with a bit of lindy.
(from here).
But this is far more wonderful:
A couple of doods pretending to be Al and Leon (from here).
"because i'm on that jazz kick..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 18, 2007
think of me, will you
Posted by dogpossum on May 18, 2007 10:35 PM
I have started back on the Cranky Poo/big Schnapple/jazz step kick again.
Mostly because I have had to make all new clothes to deal with my increasing girth.
But also because I adore old school jazz routines so much.
Here's a new one:
(from here).
This is the shim sham, a seriously old school jazz routine which has its roots in tap and the shim sham shimmy.
Most lindy hoppers know this version - in fact, you can see a bunch of Australians in this clip (btw that's Frankie Manning there in that clip - I've decided that he's the dancer I actually want to be. Him or Al or Leon, I can't decide which. But probably Frankie. I ask myself, when I need some inspiration, "What would Frankie do?" and the answer is usually 'shimmy so the lady will shake her boobs at me' or 'shimmy my butt so the lady will shake her booty' or 'bow reeeeal low so I can see the lady's undies when she swivels in a swing out'. I feel these are all admirable goals for a young feminist-about-town.
So I think I'll get onto this version of the shim sham. I've spent a couple of days sorting out the timing and reminding myself of the Cranky Poo this week, and I need a bit of inspiration before I get back to the Big Schnapple. It's hard to do the schnapps on my own - you really need a partner for the last bit.
So it'll go:
- tidy up Cranky Poo
- start learning Al and Leon's shim sham from clip (which will take me ages as I'll need to transcribe it and I'm a shit transcriber)
- work on Big Schnapple again til it's perfect
- pull the boring old shim sham out and become superheroine good at it.
Think of me at about 3pm during weekdays this week, will you?
"think of me, will you" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 2, 2007
hullabaloo round up
Posted by dogpossum on May 2, 2007 7:17 PM
So a couple of weekends ago we went to Hullabaloo.
Thursday
We flew in on Thursday, taking a midday flight because we're sensible. I was really excited and had trouble sitting still on the plane. I took my laptop and headphones and copy of The Swing Era so that I could prepare for my sets over the weekend, but ended up far too excited to concentrate. The Squeeze slept the whole way. I ended up watching a dumb Hillary Swank film called the Freedom Writers which made me cry.
We arrived at about 6pm, and headed off to Chez Chez to dump our gear and change clothes. Chez's flat is quite small, and we filled it up with a Taswegian and us and Chez. But we're used to each other - they stay with us at MLX time each year.
From Chez's house we went off to a pub in Cottesloe to do some dancing. But first we ate fish and chips, and I was very pleased.
Then we went up to start the dancing, but got sidetracked by a lot of old friends who needed squeezing and teasing. I was delighted to see Dust For Eyes, who taught me how to do Snake Hips dancing and snaps.
After a lot of dancing there, we moved on to the late night venue so I could set up for my first set (eek!) at 2am. The late night venue was an interesting dance studio space with hiiiigh ceilings. The sound set up was not ideal. In fact, it was pretty damn ordinary and I really struggled to make things sound good. Well, to make them sound ok.
People straggled in slowly and I was mostly playing to a very small crowd (ie 5 or 10 people) for a while, but that was ok because I just played stuff to test the limits of the sound set up and to please myself. And those 5 or 10 people.
Once the rest of the punters arrived I stepped it up a bit.
I can't really remember how the set went, other than that I wasn't really happy with it, but it didn't suck. It was probably a combination of nerves and adjusting to an exchange crowd. This is what I played (title-artist-bpm-date-album-length-date/time played if it's accurate):
I'm Comin' Virginia- Maxine Sullivan - 110 - 1956 - A Tribute To Andy Razaf - 2:48 - 20/04/07 2:13 AM
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - 120 - 1957 - Ella And Louis Again [MFSL] - 4:15 - 20/04/07 2:17 AM
I've Got A Mind To Ramble - Alberta Hunter - 112 - 1978 - Amtrak Blues - 4:13 - 20/04/07 2:21 AM
It Takes Two to Tango - Lester Young and Oscar Peterson - 104 - 1997 - Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio - 6:09
B-Sharp Boston - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 126 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:54
Jive At Five - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 147 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) - 3:02 - 20/04/07 2:30 AM
Easy Does It - Big 18 - 129 - 5:14
Every Day I Have The Blues - Count Basie - 116 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 3:48
C-Jam Blues - Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - 143 - 1999 - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke
Blues In Hoss' Flat - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 142 - 1995 - Big Band Renaissance Disc 1 - 3:13
Good Queen Bess - Duke Ellington - 160 - 1940 - The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) - 3:00
Flying Home - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 197 - 1942 - Lionel Hampton Story 2: Flying Home - 3:10 - 20/04/07 2:52 AM
Lavender Coffin - Hampton, Lionel and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James - 134 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 2:47
Cole Slaw - Jesse Stone and His Orchestra - 145 - Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 - 2:57
Four Or Five Times - Woody Herman Orchestra - 141 - The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) - 3:09 - 20/04/07 3:01 AM
Stomp It Off - Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra - 190 - 1934 - Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford - 3:08
Savoy Blues - Kid Ory - 134 - 2002 - Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 - 3:00 - 20/04/07 3:07 AM
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho - Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band - 160 - 1946 - Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 - 3:12
Perdido Street Blues - Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra with Sidney Bechet - 148 - 1940 - Blues In Thirds 1940-41 - 3:00 - 20/04/07 3:13 AM
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo - Michael McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers - 152 - 2006 - Rhythm Of The Day - 3:21
Jungle Nights In Harlem - Charlestown Chasers - 213 - 1995 - Pleasure Mad mediumenergy - 2:48
Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee - Hampton, Lionel and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker - 134 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 3:23 - 20/04/07 3:23 AM
Till Tom Special - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 158 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 3:23
For Dancers Only - Jimmie Lunceford and His Harlem Express - 178 - 1944 - 1944-Uncollected - 2:22
Shoutin' Blues - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Powerhouse - 2:38
Turn It Over - Bus Moten and his Men - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) - 2:38
Jump Session - Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart - 162 - Slim & Slam, 1938-1939 - 2:35
Don't Be That Way - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 137 - 1938 - Lionel Hampton Story 1: Hot Mallets great mediumenergy 2:35
Massachusetts - Maxine Sullivan - 144 - 2006 - A Tribute To Andy Razaf - 3:18
We don't have any photos from that night.
Friday
The next day was Friday, and The Squeeze was determined to get up in time for the tour of Fremantle. I was tired. But we bundled into the car with K (Chez was off to work - suckah!) to start our tour at the Round House. The Squeeze had heard there would be some kick boxing action to start off with, but this proved to be erroneous.
The tour was fun. We met up with some people, saw a cannon fired, were told a few lies by whiley Perthlings (I have discovered being lied to is as good as telling lies) and moved immediately to the best cafe in the area for sustenance. By this time it was at least 2pm and we were in need of caffeine and fewd. You can see some photos from the tour here at George's site. I'd like to say we saw more of Fremantle than a series of pubs and cafes, but that would be lying. We've seen Fremantle before, and we had people we needed to talk to.
Then DFE, The Squeeze and I sat in a nice cafe and ate a lot (I had a FABULOUS fettucini pescatore!) and talked a whole lot of shit. After a couple of hours The Squeeze got bored and went away. Then he came back. Then we walked to a pub where we saw more dancers drinking and eating. Then we went to another pub the Little Creatures Brewery and saw more dancers. And some of us drank a whoooooole lot. And some of the rest of us caught up with lovely friends.
By this stage I had already talked so much about music and DJing I had almost grown my own pocket protector. But that part of the weekend was far from over.
After the beer had been drunk and the sun had gone down, we left that pub and went home to change our clothes nap. We accidentally missed the Friday night dance at a local pub gig. So we went straight to the after party where I had another set lined up. That's the gig where I did that (look right). 
I have no excuse for my ineptitude. I thought I could DJ for blues dancers. But apparently this crew weren't into old music. In fact, they weren't really into much except standing on the spot, really close to their partners or make human waves with their torsos. I ordinarily like blues dancing, but this was dull. But enough of that! Let's see the terrible set I played:
Harvard Blues - Kansas City Band - 83 - 1997 - KC After Dark - 6:50 - 21/04/07 3:36 AM
Wee Baby Blues - Big Joe Turner with Pete Johnson and Freddie Green - 79 - 1956 - The Boss Of The Blues - 7:18 - 21/04/07 3:43 AM
Hear Me Talking To Ya? - Ella Fitzgerald - 98 - 1963 - These Are The Blues - 3:02 - 21/04/07 3:46 AM
Back Water Blues - Dinah Washington with Belford Hendricks' Orchestra - 71 - 1957 - Ultimate Dinah Washington - 4:58
I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl - Nina Simone - 65 - 1967 - Released - 2:33 - 60 - 21/04/07 3:54 AM
I'm Gonna Take What He's Got - Etta James - 57 - 1967 - The Best Of Etta James - 2:35 - 21/04/07 3:56 AM
Son Of A Preacher Man - Aretha Franklin - 77 - Greatest Hits - Disc 1 - 3:16
When I've Been Drinkin' - Jimmy Witherspoon - 71 - 1998 - Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon - 3:38 - 21/04/07 4:03 AM
Slow Down Baby - Walter Brown with Jay McShann and His Kycee Stompers - 73 - 1949 - Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) - 2:56
Hamp's Salty Blues - Lionel Hampton and His Quartet - 86 - 1946 - Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop - 3:10 - 21/04/07 4:09 AM
Minnie The Moocher - Cab Calloway - 97 - 1994 - Are You Hep To The Jive? - 3:16 - 21/04/07 4:13 AM
St. James Infirmary - Henry "Red" Allen - 98 - 1991 - World on a String - Legendary 1957 Sessions - 3:45 - 21/04/07 4:16 AM
Reckless Blues - Velma Middleton with Louis Armstrong and the All Stars - 88 - The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 06) - 2:30
Willow Weep For Me - Louis Armstrong - 90 - 1957 - Ella And Louis Again [MFSL] - 4:21
Rocks In My Bed - Ella Fitzgerald - 68 - 1956 - Ella Fitzgerald Day Dream: Best Of The Duke Ellington Songbook - 3:59 - 21/04/07 4:27 AM
Amtrak Blues - Alberta Hunter - 95 - 1978 - Amtrak Blues - 3:23
Resolution Blues - Dinah Washington - 65 - 22 Original Classics - 3:14 - 21/04/07 4:34 AM
It Takes Two to Tango - Lester Young and Oscar Peterson - 104 - 1997 - Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio - 6:09 - 21/04/07 4:37 AM
Smooth Sailing - Ella Fitzgerald - 118 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Ella Fitzgerald - 3:07 - 21/04/07 4:40 AM
Happy Go Lucky Local (Night Train) - Oscar Peterson - 103 - 1962 - Night Train - 4:52 - 21/04/07 4:45 AM
Easy Does It - Big 18 - 129 - 5:14 - 21/04/07 4:50 AM
B-Sharp Boston - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 126 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:54
Jump Ditty! - Joe Carroll and The Ray Bryant Quintet - 134 - Red Kat Swing 1 - 2:53
The Deacon - Count Basie - 110 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 5:52 - 21/04/07 5:02 AM
It was round about "Minnie the Moocher" that things were at their lowest. I had trouble getting the feel of the room (I'd actually been told I'd be playing an hour later than I ended up starting, so I hadn't had a chance to be in the room and get a feel for things) and those kids - I don't really think they were ready for blues dancing just then. So I took the energy up with some "St James Infirmary" (though I should have gone straight to the Louis Armstrong), but it didn't help. Finally, things picked up at "Willow Weep for Me", and I decided to ooze into a bit of groovy lindy hop, then up the bpm ladder til the room was working again. It immediately improved numbers on the floor.
I tried some lower tempo stuff with Dinah again a bit later (because I felt I should play a blues set if I was booked for it), but that crashed. So I recovered with dirty Lester Young action.
And fled Mt DJ after "The Deacon".
Not my finest hour (and a half), and if you take a look at the set list of the DJ before me (lovely Jason from Perth), you'll see there were some double-ups.
In fact, there were quite a few repeats over the weekend - "Savoy Blues" was played by every single DJ on Thursday night up til me. If I'd been dancing more and talking less at the dance I'd have noticed.
So, thank god that set was over.
We went home after that - The Squeeze was tired and so was I.
Saturday
The next day we slept til 1 or 3pm. I forget which. We went and bought some fewd for dinner and drove and saw some sites. Then we went home and got ready for the dance, which was fun. I really liked the band at the dance, and had some fun dances with fun people. Trev won the Jack and Jill and I heard some good DJing action. Then we went to the after party. First we tried to organise a trip to eat nice Chinese fewd, but we failed. So we just went on to the after party, which was at the better two-room venue.
Some of us went in a team battle. At the time I was really regreting entering, and I didn't really have a good time at all. But in retrospect (ie, after watching the clip), it wasn't so bad. I was in Team Brunswick (named for Chez' shirt) - you can even hear me answering Trev at the beginning. We were ok. The best bit (in my mind) was where we (entirely by coincidence) did a 'waterfall' of swingouts to just the right bit in "Flying Home". I'm not a big fan of team battles (sorry Trev), and I've never seen one go really well or really inspire me. The secret to a good lindy battle is actually dancing lindy. But mostly people do dumb stuff, which I'm not all that interested in. Because I am a boring straighty-one-eighty stooge.
After that was all over, things got fun. There was a band (I think - or was that the night before? I can't remember). There was a lot of dancing fun, and I did another set (my best of the weekend, I think). Here's the set list (title - artist - bpm - date - album - time/date stamp (minus 2hours because I was working with Melbourne time, not Perth time):
Blues In Hoss' Flat - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 142 - 1995 - Big Band Renaissance Disc 1 - 3:13 - 22/04/07 4:19 AM
C-Jam Blues - Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - 143 - 1999 - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke - 3:33 - 2/05/07 1:15 PM
Sent For You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today) - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 172 - 1952 - Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings (Disc 2) - 3:13 - 22/04/07 4:26 AM
Back Room Romp - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - 151 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington - 2:49 - 22/04/07 4:29 AM
A Viper's Moan - Willie Bryant And His Orchestra - 153 - Willie Bryant 1935-1936 - 3:25 - 24/04/07 4:31 AM
Good Queen Bess - Duke Ellington - 160 - 1940 - The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) - 3:00 - 22/04/07 4:35 AM
Stomp It Off - Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra - 190 - 1934 - Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford - 3:08 - 22/04/07 4:38 AM
Four Or Five Times - Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra - 140 - 1935 - Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford - 3:07 - 22/04/07 4:41 AM
Turn It Over - Bus Moten and his Men - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) - 2:38 - 24/04/07 4:34 AM
Easy Does It - Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra - 155 - 1939 - Yes, Indeed! - 3:15 - 22/04/07 4:47 AM
Apollo Jump - Lucky Millinder - 143 - Apollo Jump - 3:26
Krum Elbow Blues - Mora's Modern Swingtet - 162 - 2004 - 20th Century Closet - 2:45
Blues My Naughty Sweetie - Sidney Bechet - 140 - 1951 - The Blue Note Years - 5:43 - 22/04/07 4:59 AM
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho - Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band - 160 - 1946 - Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 - 3:12 - 22/04/07 5:02 AM
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo - Michael McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers - 152 - 2006 - Rhythm Of The Day - 3:21
Jungle Nights In Harlem - Charlestown Chasers - 213 - 1995 - Pleasure Mad - 2:48 - 22/04/07 5:09 AM
Lavender Coffin - Hampton, Lionel and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James - 134 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 2:47
Cole Slaw - Jesse Stone and His Orchestra - 145 - Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 - 2:57 - 22/04/07 5:14 AM
Shoutin' Blues - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Powerhouse - 2:38 - 22/04/07 5:17 AM
For Dancers Only - Jimmie Lunceford and His Harlem Express - 178 - 1944 - 1944-Uncollected - 2:22 - 22/04/07 5:19 AM
Just Kiddin' Around - Artie Shaw and His Orchestra - 159 - 1941 - Self Portrait (Disc 3) - 3:21
Don't Be That Way - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 137 - 1938 - Lionel Hampton Story 1: Hot Mallets - 2:35
Chicken Shack Boogie - Lionel Hampton and His Sextet - 124 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 3:16 - 22/04/07 5:29 AM
Hey Now, Hey Now - Cab Calloway - 121 - 1994 - Are You Hep To The Jive? - 2:56 - 22/04/07 5:32 AM
Effervescent Blues - Mora's Modern Swingtet - 122 - 2004 - 20th Century Closet - 3:07
B-Sharp Boston - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 126 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:54 - 22/04/07 5:38 AM
Massachusetts - Maxine Sullivan - 144 - 2006 - A Tribute To Andy Razaf - 3:18 - 22/04/07 5:41 AM
Splanky - Count Basie - 157 - 1966 - Live at the Sands - 3:52 - 22/04/07 5:45 AM
Hallelujah, I Love Her So - Count Basie - 145 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 2:36 - 22/04/07 5:47 AM
King Porter Stomp - Kansas City Band - 170 - 1997 - KC After Dark - 4:38 - 22/04/07 5:52 AM
Till Tom Special - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 158 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 3:23 - 22/04/07 5:55 AM
Shout, Sister, Shout - Lucky Millinder - 140 - Apollo Jump - good medium tempo dancing 2:44 - 22/04/07 5:58 AM
Le Jazz Hot - Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - 144 - 1939 - Lunceford Special 1939-40 - 2:41 - 22/04/07 6:01 AM
My Baby Just Cares For Me - Nina Simone - 120 - The Great Nina Simone - 3:38 - 22/04/07 6:05 AM
Bli-Blip - Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - 134 - 1999 - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke - 3:16 - 22/04/07 6:08 AM
I started a bit earlier than expected because Russ had technical troubles and I had to take over. After the first three songs he gave up and introduced me. I was really happy with those first three songs - I had the room on fire. It's a pity Russ had to interrupt to introduce me, as we lost quite a few people then. But them's the breaks. I should probably have continued with hi-fi action to keep the room, but now I've learnt something useful.
I actually consciously chose to play a fair proportion of hi-fi because we'd heard a lot of old scratch so far that weekend. I wanted to change the vibe a bit and catch people's attention. It worked well, and I found that a useful thing to remember through my set. This was my first real late-late night set at a hardcore lindy exchange and I learnt a lot. I discovered that you need to change the energy in the room a bit to keep people dancing - from slow to fast to hi-fi to scratchy - and change more regularly than I normally would. The most important thing I learnt was that if you give people a chance to remember how tired they are when they're dancing at 2:30am (take two hours from those time stamps) they sit down and then they go home. So you have to keep the tempos above 120, or the energy levels nice and high.
Round about "Effervescent Blues" I let the tempos get lower and noticed a distinct drop in the room's energy. So I did a bit of stunt work with Maxine Sullivan. That version of "Massachusetts" is really swinging and energising. It's pretty hi-fi and hitting on the groove barrier, but it feels like fun. The band she's working with are so freaking good, you just want to dance.
From there I decided we needed more hi-fi action to wake people up. So I used some old favourite action - "Splanky" is a real swinger favourite, and that version is nicely uptempo and upenergy - and hi-fi. But it doesn't feel too crazy - people also think of "Splanky" as being slower, as many of the most popular versions are about 130bpm. That's the advantage of different versions of favourites - you can exploit people's expectations. By this stage I had the room really cooking, but I wanted to get the tempos much higher. Thing is, the dancers were actually a bit tired (it was 3:45am) so I gave them a bit of break with the hi-fi favourite "Hallelujah" (not my favourite song, but very effective and live which always feels good). Then I chucked it up with "King Porter Stomp", another hi-fi (but sounds old school) live song. It's a longish song, so I had to drop it down from there.
From there I went with an oldie but a goodie - "Til Tom Special" is upenergy, but it creeps up on you. It starts with a more mellow feeling, but builds. So I could get the kids who were sitting down (but ready to dance) up on the floor. Then another very safe favourite.
And I decided to change things again completely with Nina Simone at 4:00am. Hi-fi, super favourite, nice easy tempo. And I had 100% strike rate - everyone in the room dancing (which was about 30 or 40 people? I'm not sure). From here I was to hand over to the closing DJ, so I couldn't do much more than close up with a fun favourite. I really could have gone on a bit longer, I think, and had just begun to hit another wave of inspiration - "Blip Blip" could have gotten us to other, more interesting places - but that was the end of my set.
Then I wanted to dance and dance and dance and dance. The Squeeze was long gone by then - he was tired and had gone home to bed. But I was feeling all energised by a successful set, and thought I was the dancing queen. So I had some dances, proved - despite all that thinking - that I wasn't the dancing queen. And then I was taken home.
To Deb and Glen's home, where seven of us had toasted sandwiches and hot chocolate at about 6am. The Squeeze turned up with Chez who'd dropped home to pick up cheese (really), and he impressed people with his fleecy pajamas. Then Glen, Trev and I had a really lovely, nerdy music talk.
Then we went home as the sun came up and went to BED!
Some more things I've learnt about DJing at exchanges:
- the stuff that's old and boring at home isn't necessarily old and boring somewhere else. People at exchanges are from all over, and you can't be sure of what's cool in their home town (though it helps to know who there local DJs are and what they play). So songs like "Lavender Coffin", which I'm really sick of was new to the Perthlings. And "Cole Slaw", which is newish (ie new for new dancers and the groover crowd, old for people like me who learnt with old school teachers) for Melbourne is old for Perth.
- Perth DJs play a lot of scratch, so hi-fi was novel there. I had to be careful what I played, though - stuff that Melbourne kids would adore, Perthlings (especially Perthlings who'd been around for awhile) wouldn't like.
- The Squeeze reckons exchanges are the place to play safe favourites, because dancers are dancing with strangers and want each dance to be good. But I reckon it's also a place to experiment with more challenging stuff because you tend to have a more experienced crowd. Really, though, it's a combination of both, and depends on what time you play (that time slot was a really choice set), where you're playing, what the crowd is like and how the room feels.
- Having workshops affects how late people stay and how much energy they have. Workshosp can often leave people feeling trashed about their dancing, so 'safe' songs can be nice.
- Hullabaloo wasn't like MLX - it was a bit smaller and had more new dancers. At MLX you can really play the most hardcore stuff, because you have the most hardcore music. But Hullabaloo is a more mixed crowd. Having said that, Hullabaloo has a crowd of older dancers with more sophisticated taste - there's little they haven't heard and they want to be pushed.
Overall, I was happy with my sets in an okish way, but I don't think I pushed any envelopes and have certainly done better sets in the past. But it was lovely to DJ in a new town, far, far away from the bullshit politics of Melbourne. It was especially nice to be DJing in a town where set times and numbers weren't determined by whether or not you're in with the 'cool crowd' or best friends with the organisers. I was just one DJ in many, and I had to prove myself on the night - no pre-existing rep to protect or prove.
Sunday
On Sunday we got up at 3pm, and then looked for some food. It was hard because the shops are all closed in Perth on Sunday. People have been telling me that this is 'cute' and 'nice' and gives workers a break. I say it's BULLSHIT. We saw some more sites. Some by accident.
But after a bit we got some stuff. We made dinner for the crew and spent some time getting ready for the ball. I'm not a big fan of balls generally - I don't like the dressing up or the big, echoey barns they're held in. I like a more intimate venue and casual vibe for hardcore dancing. I'd also made a particularly crappy dress, which didn't help. But there was free food, I did more talking and that was nice.
After that we went to the late night party, which was at the first venue. There was some sort of DJ mix up and the music wasn't good for lindy - apparently the DJ'd been booked for a blues set, and was determined to play that no matter what. Which didn't make the mixed crowd happy (who were predominantly lindy hoppers).
Later I was asked to fill in at the end of the night with some stuff, so I ended up DJing some lindy then blues as the lindy crowd had pretty much gone home by then. It was an ok set, a bit dull, really. Kind of the 'greatest hits' of 2004/2005. The first lindy bit (up until "Smooth Sailing", then I swapped with a buddy, then we swapped back and I closed the night) was good, but it was really too late by then to catch the lindy crowd.
But here's what I played:
Every Day I Have The Blues - Count Basie - 116 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 3:48 - 23/04/07 6:28 AM
Lavender Coffin - Hampton, Lionel and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James - 134 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 2:47 - 23/04/07 6:31 AM
Solid as a Rock - Count Basie and His Orchestra with The Deep River Boys - 140 - Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 - 3:03 - 23/04/07 6:34 AM
Everybody Eats When They Come To My House - Cab Calloway - 151 - 1994 - Are You Hep To The Jive? - 2:46 - 23/04/07 6:36 AM
Oomph Fa Fa - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five - 129 - 2003 - Jammin' the Blues - 3:35 - 23/04/07 6:40 AM
Jump Ditty! - Joe Carroll and The Ray Bryant Quintet - 134 - Red Kat Swing 1 - 2:53 - 23/04/07 6:43 AM
Smooth Sailing - Ella Fitzgerald - 118 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Ella Fitzgerald - 3:07
Get Back Temptation - Ollabelle - 80 - 2004 - Ollabelle - 2:49
Heartattack and Vine - Tom Waits - 90 - 1980 - Heartattack and Vine - 4:50 - 23/04/07 7:10 AM
Son Of A Preacher Man - Aretha Franklin - 77 - Greatest Hits - Disc 1 - 3:16 - 23/04/07 7:13 AM
My Chile - Jay McShann Trio - 145 - Hootie - 3:20 - 23/04/07 7:16 AM
Organ Grinder's Swing - Jimmy Smith - 168 - 1996 - Talkin' Verve - 2:15 - 23/04/07 7:19 AM
My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More - Alberta Hunter - 76 - 1978 - Amtrak Blues - 3:49
Reckless Blues - Velma Middleton with Louis Armstrong and the All Stars - 88 - The Complete Decca Studio Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars (disc 06) - 2:30
Do I Move You - Nina Simone - 53 - 1967 - Released - 2:46
I Never Loved A Man - Aretha Franklin - 90 - Greatest Hits - Disc 1 - 2:51
Dead End Street - Lou Rawls - 75 - Best Of Lou Rawls - 3:33
Please Please Please - James Brown - 74 - 1991 - Sex Machine - 2:45
When The Lights Go Out - Jimmy Witherspoon - 100 - 1998 - Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon - 3:00 - 80 - groovy blues - 25/04/07 7:22 PM
Slow Down Baby - Walter Brown with Jay McShann and His Kycee Stompers - 73 - 1949 - Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) - 2:56 80 - 25/04/07 7:25 PM
I Feel Like Layin In Another Woman's Husband's Arms - Blu Lu Barker - 89 - 1946 - Don't You Feel My Leg: Apollo's Lady Blues Singers - 2:56 - 25/04/07 7:28 PM
How Long, How Long Blues - Ella Fitzgerald - 80 - 1963 - These Are The Blues - 4:00 - 25/04/07 7:32 PM
Willow Weep For Me - Louis Armstrong - 90 - 1957 - Ella And Louis Again [MFSL] - 4:21 - 25/04/07 7:37 PM
Amtrak Blues - Alberta Hunter - 95 - 1978 - Amtrak Blues - 3:23 - 25/04/07 7:40 PM
Back Water Blues - Dinah Washington with Belford Hendricks' Orchestra - 71 - 1957 - Ultimate Dinah Washington - 4:58 - 25/04/07 7:55 PM
I'm not sure what happened to the date stamp there - it was all on the morning of the 23rd/ late night of the 22nd, but the times are accurate if you minus 2 hours for Melbourne/Perth time differences.
I don't have much to say about this set as it was uninspiring to DJ and is kind of dull to think about (though it was very popular on the night - which just goes to show, considering it's almost the same as the other blues set I did that weekend - that timing is everything). That Ella blues album? Don't bother with it - Ella can't sing the blues. It's a nice album to listen to, but lacks emotional veracity.
I went home from here a bit tired and over it.
Monday:
We got up at about 12 to go to the picnic in the park, which was nice. They had GREEN GRASS!
That night we went to the final dance, and I have to say, I was kind of over the whole thing by then. It was fun, but I was bored and tired and actually more interested in interesting conversations that lasted longer than three minutes. I did hear some sweet DJing though (Trev and Glenn esp, with nice work by Russ).
It ended, then there were two rival after parties at people's houses. The teenagers' party blues party and the nanna party lindy party. I decided I wanted to go to a party where some lights were on, decent conversation was likely and the room didn't smell like heavy petting (yes, I had to say it - blues dancers stink, and not in a healthy exercise sweat way). That was fun. From there we went to the blues party to close up, and it was exactly as expected. The Squeeze was very disappointed - he was looking for the party where people were drinking and laughing and doing stunts. So we watched other people rub up against each other very slowly dance and went home to bed.
The next day we had a 1pm flight which we caught quite happily, then flew back to Melbourne to our beds.
Overall, it was really really nice to catch up with interstate friends and hang out. I think I prefer the day time stuff to the night time stuff, but I do like the late nights more than the evenings - there you just put on your comfortable hardcore dancing clothes and dance and dance and dance. I will get a bit fitter for next time so I can go harder and I will get hardcore with vitamins - the first day home I had a cold which had no doubt been brewing the last few days.
It was great to get a chance to talk nerdy DJ talk with other DJs, and I do love catching up with friends.
"hullabaloo round up" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and perth
April 17, 2007
current favourite songs
Posted by dogpossum on April 17, 2007 8:58 PM
I really love Stompy Jones (Ellington 1934 200bpms), but only played it for the first time last Thursday. It went down well. But I was playing such a shitty set I miscombined it and it didn't work as well as it should.
I love love love the song Jungle Nights in Harlem (Ellington again, 1930 202 bpms) but have only played the Charleston Chasers' version, which swings less and is more 'charlestony' (and is 213bpm). I like the trumpet. Of course.
On a completely different tack, I really like Turn it Over by Bus Moten and his Men (1949, 148bpm). I'm sure it's in a minor key (I'm sure JNIH is too, which is why I like it), it has a mellow, laid-back feel which makes it sit well with Slim and Slam, has a sparse instrumentation (on a quick listen - electric guitar, sax, piano, trumpet, drums, bass) and simple vocals. It's probably a song about sex (though the words are about playing records - "flip it, flop it, don't drop it, flip it flap, don't you slap it - turn it over on the other side") and has a nice hummy melody. I play it later at night when people are over their crazed energy but still have some juice in them - it starts mellow but gets more energetic. I like to sing along.
Four or Five Times - Woody Herman, Jimmie Lunceford, Lionel Hampton, McKinney's Cotton Pickers - any version is good. I really like the lyrics and the feel of it. This is definitely a song about sex, and how if you can manage 4 or 5 times the ladies will looooove you. Or possibly the fellas - the McKCP are a little more ambiguous. Because they are naughtier. I like the Herman version for high-energy, crazy lindy, the Lunceford one for mellower dancing, the McKCP one for crazy loungeroom dancing. And the Hamp one is just plain neat dancing.
Jimmie Lunceford
Is whetting my whistle. Again. I especially love his versions of Blues in the Groove (1939 205bpm) (surely a song about sex - groove being a euphemism for vaginas after all - and it's a fun, highenergy number that sounds like great, sweaty fun).
Stomp it Off (190bpm, 1934) - possibly another minor key, but great fun. Sounds lower energy so it gets people dancing, but is actually quite quick and energising. But 'light'.
Hittin' the Bottle (1935, 211bpm - the early-mid 30s were good to Lunceford) - great fun. I like the way they 'call' steps: "move it around, keep going to town, now make a break and wiggle like a snake" (the last two in 'the break'). I've always thought it would make a fun jazz routine song.
Organ Grinder's Swing (120bpm, 1936). A mellow, nice song that I love dancing to and singing as I ride home - it's the perfect bike riding song. I like it because it reminds me of the Mills Brothers (who do a version) and their version of Walking Stick (1938, 158bpm), which I also like. Mostly because it has humming, a really nice bit of Louis Armstrong singing (and I'm not a fan of his vocals), and a sparse bit of instrumentation - maybe just guitar? - with novelty 'instrumental' vocals.
"current favourite songs" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
DJing talk
Posted by dogpossum on April 17, 2007 8:03 PM
The Thursday night before the easter weekend I did the second set at CBD, starting at 10pm and finishing at 12.30. I was rostered til 11.30, but the crowd were in partay mode. It was a great set, I was very pleased with it, and I had lots of happy dancers complimenting me on it (which is the absolute height of pleasure and satisfaction - nothing makes you feel better than dancers rushing up, all covered in sweat, with their hair in their eyes and their clothes disheveled, telling you that they loved your set. That's happiness). A few people have asked me to post it on the swing talk board, but I'd rather do it here as it helps me keep track of when/what I played without cluttering up the discussion board with massive posts.
I can't really remember many of the specifics of the set, other than that I came in swinging with a crowd-favourite, hardcore, hi-fi, big band wall-of-sound Basie, lindy hopping track. Blues in Hoss's Flat is great stuff. Followed by another. And then a less common version of another. It was cheating, really.
I have to say that Dan set up the set perfectly. He played a mellow, groovier first half of the first set - very noob friendly - and then kicked it up a notch with a great combination of old school, nu skewl, hi-fi and lo-fi lindy hopping action. I just slid on in to a partyhardy room full of crazy dancing spastics. I also totally ripped off his idea for a stroll - he asked "do you think the shim sham would go down well now?" and he didn't end up doing it. But I did steal the idea and play the Big Apple song. There were so many people doing the routine they had to form two lines opposite it each other, and it was GREAT. I was dying of jealousy up on the DJ stand.
I was very happy with the way I worked the energy in the room over 2 and a half hours. I called it at 12.30, even though we could have gone on longer and the crowd was still dancing, but I was buggered. And an hour unpaid while the bar makes money is kind of galling. It was nice to end with a bit of supergroove medium tempo stuff.
But out of 43 songs, only 10 were above 160, which isn't good. Especially when 13 were under 140. We should be a bit more hardcore. But I didn't feel I could push it much higher - people were kind of crazed as it was.
One weird thing that happened: when I played the Charleston Chasers track (which is more 'charlestoney' than the Ellington one), people danced lindy, and the floor was full. Every other time I've played this, it's been solo 20s charleston city. But I think it was because I moved from a New Orleans/trad sound (which I had gotten to from some swinging stuff), and people were tricked into continuing with their lindy. It was unusual, but gratifying to see people trying such high tempos without resorting to bal or solo dancing. But the Giordano track really called 'charleston' to them, and they obliged.
Oh, and Disco Keith commented that Dan and I were playing the same songs a number of times - ie I played a song Dan had played, but a different version, and Dan (apparently) had played 2 versions of one song. After I heard that I went out of my way to find more repeats. Because I like to see Keith squirm (Keith is a wedding DJ with some strict Rules - one is no repeats. Another is 'only one song by each artist - don't play 2 or more in a row'. I like to break that second one a lot. Brian once played an entire set of Basie at the Funbags and no one noticed. That was ace).
I also have to mention that the George Gee stuf was a plug. A visiting dancer is giving out Gee's earlier albums as promotion for the new one (which I've also scored), and playing this artist was a thankyou plug. But it wasn't forced: that's a great album, and the new one is equally great dancing music.
This set was pretty heavy on the late testament Basie. Because I am in love again. It was heavy on the hi-fi and later recordings of things (rather than the older orginals) and newer bands because CBD has shitful sound and I wanted the high energy of newer recordings. Plus that's how I felt.
I'm actually having a 'classic swing' moment - I'm really into stuff from the late 30s, 40s and some 50s stuff (and 60s with Basie, really). I just like music that makes for great, swinging lindy hop. I still love that older stuff a whole LOT, but I've been hankering for the beautiful quality of some of the later stuff. And I really prefer Basie's band in the later years - that's some good shit.
But I still prefer Ellington's earlier stuff.
I adore Hamp, and he's a good indicator of my current tastes.
I am also on a Jimmie Lunceford kick. I just can't get enough. I need more. More.
I'm also having a Kansas City jump blues moment. I don't know if any of the Melbourne dancers will be able to handle many more hand-clapping, foot-stomping, shouting-about-food jump blues songs. I will certainly get punched if I play Cole Slaw again any time soon - even a noob dancer noticed that I'd played it in my last 4 sets (ie last night, last Thursday, the Friday before, and the Thursday before that). It's time to let it rest.
I also did a really fun set at the Funpit last Friday. It's mostly a new dancer crowd, and the numbers were up last week. We were also in the room with a better vibe. And I had a hankering to play hi-fi. So I played a solidly swinging mid-tempo set with lots of hi-fi stuff I don't play very often as I associate it with my beginner days and feel it's a bit un-complicated for more advanced dancers (it is - it's musically and rhythmically pretty simple, but vocally quite nice). I may post that set list later if I can be bothered.
But it went down a treat. Once again, Keith and I were teamed up as DJs, and he followed me, muttering "I'm getting a reputation as an old school DJ and I want to be more flexible", and then playing a whole bunch of hi-fi which I really enjoyed dancing to. It was really an example of how you can play hi-fi, good quality music which is still hard-driving, bad-ass swinging jazz. No freakin trip hop rhythm n blues bullshit here, thankyou very much.
The crowd went nuts. It's so nice to see beginner dancers dancing like they're on crack.
PLEASE NOTE: If you're looking at this set with an eye to picking up the songs - get into it! But if you're looking to do some torrenting or CD copying, please think twice, especially when it's a song by a contemporary band. I've added links to these bands sites, or to their CDs on amazon - give them a click. Some are really, really, crazily cheap. And these guys are the guys we dancers hire for our dancing pleasure. If we steal their music they'll go bust and we won't get to dance like fools to them LIVE!
DJ Snoop Doggydogpossum's set, CBD, Thursday 5th April 10pm-12:30am (second shift).
title - artist - bpm - date - album - length
Blues In Hoss' Flat - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 142 - 1995 - Big Band Renaissance Disc 1 - 3:13
C-Jam Blues - Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - 143 - 1999 - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke - 3:33
For Dancers Only - Jimmie Lunceford and His Harlem Express - 178 - 1944 - 1944-Uncollected - 2:22
"Big Apple Contest"- The Solomon Douglas Swingtet - 211 - 2006 - Swingmatism - 2:57
Shoutin' Blues - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Powerhouse- 2:38
Jive At Five - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 147 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) - 3:02
Back Room Romp - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - 155 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington - 2:49
Stomp It Off - Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra - 190 - 1934 - Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford upenergy - 3:08
Foo A Little Bally-Hoo - Cab Calloway - 175 - 1994 - Are You Hep To The Jive? - 3:01
Four Or Five Times - Woody Herman Orchestra - 141 - The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) - 3:09
Savoy Blues - Kid Ory - 134 - 2002 - Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 - 3:00
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho - Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band - 160 - 1946 - Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 - 3:12
Perdido Street Blues - Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra with Sidney Bechet - 148 - 1940 - Blues In Thirds 1940-41 - 3:00
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo - Michael McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers - 152 - 2006 - Rhythm Of The Day - 3:21
Jungle Nights In Harlem - Charlestown Chasers - 213 - 1995 - Pleasure Mad - 2:48
Yellow Dog Blues - Vince Giordano - 195 - 2004 - The Aviator - 2:29
Lavender Coffin - Hampton, Lionel and His Orchestra with Sonny Parker and Joe James - 134 - 1949 - Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings - 2:47
Cole Slaw - Jesse Stone and His Orchestra - 145 - Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 - 2:57
Flying Home - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 159 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 2:58
Savoy - Lucky Millinder - 192 - Apollo Jump - 3:26
Le Jazz Hot - Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - 144 - 1939 - Lunceford Special 1939-40 - 2:41
I Want The Waiter (with the water) - Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - 151 - 1939 - Lunceford Special 1939-40 - 2:44
Apollo Jump - Lucky Millinder - 143 - Apollo Jump - 3:26
Sent For You Yesterday - Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams - 163 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 2) - 3:09
Good Rockin' Tonight - Jimmy Witherspoon - 155 - 1998 - Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon - 4:15
Blues For Stephanie - George Gee And His Make-Believe Ballroom Orchestra - 140 - Swingin' Live! - 4:55
Rock-A-Bye Basie - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 175 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) - 3:37
Splanky - Count Basie - 125 - 1957 - Complete Atomic Basie, the - 3:36
Every Day I Have The Blues - Count Basie - 116 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 3:48
A Viper's Moan - Mora's Modern Rhythmists - 143 - 2000 - Call Of The Freaks - 3:30
Krum Elbow Blues - Mora's Modern Swingtet - 162 - 2004 - 20th Century Closet - 2:45
Till Tom Special - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 158 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 3:23
Six Appeal - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five - 141 - 2004 - Crazy Rhythm - 3:29
Effervescent Blues - Mora's Modern Swingtet - 122 - 2004 - 20th Century Closet - 3:07
St. James Infirmary - Hot Lips Page and his Orchestra - 122 - 1949 - Jump For Joy! - 3:12
Black And Tan Fantasy - Jimmie Lunceford - 104 - 1997 - Rhythm Is Our Business - 2:44
Why Don't You Right - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five featuring Hillary Alexander - 118 - 2004 - Crazy Rhythm - 4:59
Down Hearted Blues - Ella Fitzgerald - 122 - 1963 - These Are The Blues - 3:11
My Chile Jay - McShann Trio - 145 - Hootie - 3:20
Blues In Hoss' Flat - City Rhythm Orchestra - 130 - 2004 - Vibrant Tones - 5:23
Moten Swing - Count Basie - 125 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 5:17
Easy Does It - Big 18Smooth Sailing - Ella Fitzgerald - 118 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Ella Fitzgerald - 3:07
"DJing talk" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 29, 2007
i guess you get what I mean, right?
Posted by dogpossum on March 29, 2007 12:40 PM
Jean put me onto something neat here. It's a talk by Ken Robinson about learning and teaching and you can watch the clip here. I can hear some of you sighing and clicking on, but I recommend dropping in to have a look and a listen - it'll make you giggle. And there's some talk about bodies and dance.
It's interesting, because I've written and thought quite a bit about embodied and disembodied knowledge, and how different cultures privilege one or the other. Robinson talks about academics and how their bodies are really just vehicles for carrying their brains around. It's true - I've always loved dancing (mostly la discotheque!), but before I got hardcore about dancing I always thought of my body as something for transporting my brain. I sufferred from serious migraine headaches - I spent a couple of days in bed each fortnight when I was finishing my MA. Can you imagine that? It seems completely crazy to me now, but then I just dealt with it (well, in a getting-depressed-and-wanting-to-blow-myself-up way).
Now I realise that the problem was that I was spending an awful lot of time sitting on my clack, squirrelling my stress away in my muscles. Now I know that if I don't get up out of my chair and shake my arse every day, my muscles start to tense up and get cranky. And I get a headache. But I also know that getting up out of my chair and jiggling about to music I love for an hour is WONDERFUL! Going to the gym - dull. Jogging - duller. But dancing? That shit is GREAT!
Writing about dance for my work happened kind of by accident - I was coming out of a shitty first run at a PhD, I was hating it, I was miserable, but I loved dancing. And I thought, 'What would be my dream situation? What would be most perfect?' And getting another scholarship to write about dancing and score some funding to go to Herrang was that dream project. And you know what? They gave me the scholarship and they sent me to Herrang, and I wrote a big fat thesis and lots of articles about dancing.
Can you imagine anything more nuts? It just seems too great to be true - getting the chance to do combine dance with the loveliness of thinking and writing and reading and talking all day. I still feel insanely lucky - and I'm sure someone's going to bust me some day and ask for the money and degree back.
The thing I like to think and write about, though (after I've written about saucy 1920s song lyrics), is the way dance works as system of meaning and a medium for the exchange of ideas - the way dance is discourse. That shit rocks. I mean, in cultural studies you're so centered on the idea of language and words - most of the theory floating around in this discipline has at its heart the idea that words are the most important, most wonderful way of communicating ideas. I dig that - I'm all over the idea that words are great. But I've found, working with the various theories trucking about, that this doesn't allow much room for other ways of communicating or representing the world. Sure, there might be vast tracts of writing about other disocourses, but they're still vast tracts of words. I can make a joke with my body that simply doesn't translate into words. You just can't make the joke work. But one sight gag is worth a thousand words.
And then, the thing that really gets me pumping, is thinking and writing about the way dancers have gotten a hold of the internet and other hi-tech action and appropriated it for ther own, decidely embodied purposes. The last paper I submitted to a journal had a comment from a reviewer where they wrote:
The author needs to explain this meaning for the dance studies outsider and not use it for other purposes like a some sort of repetitive mantra or abstract motif to try and unify the article, or 'sound academic' . For example, couldn't 'embodied use-value' (p.6) just be 'inherent usefulness'?
And after I got over huffing and puffing and being angry, I thought about the way I've used the expression 'embodied use-value'. I'd spent a large chunk of my thesis exploring the idea of particular technologies having 'embodied use-value'. For me, this meant asking how a particular bit of tech was valued for its place in embodied practice. In other words, dancers value particular types of technology because they can be used in an embodied context. They're not very interested in books of vast theoretical discussions of dance. But they've gone crazy for youtube. Because you can do things with it, with your body. You can watch a clip, stand up and dance along.
I wanted to distinguish between 'usefulness' and embodied usefulness. Sure, the internet is neat for keeping people in contact, but for dancers it's even more useful as a means by which they can access dance footage, download music and organise a dance class. The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra Live in Swing City CD is a wonderful thing in itself, but when you pop it in the CD player and stand up, it suddenly becomes an incredibly useful and wonderful thing. And the difference is that it acquires a material, physical, immediate, embodied value and meaning. Here is the medium by which I can access the work of musicians in another country, years ago. Here is the means by which I am inspired to move my body. Here is the thread that joins me to my dance partner and to the dancers around me and to the people people in the room who aren't on the dance floor, but are still listening and watching and moving.
When I read Gunther Schuller's book The Swing Era, I certainly find use for his ideas. I read about Ellington and think about his life and read the musical score on the page. But Schuller's book suddenly has far more meaning and value for me when I play the song he's writing about, and get up to physically test the different percussive rhythms and soaring trumpet solos he's describing. That's embodied use-value. It's not just the academic value of an idea or a line of prose. It's not even the things that I might do with his words with my body in the future. It's the things that I do do, and am doing, right now, when I'm shaking my arse.
I think that's one of the things that I find so appealing about dance - each dance is transient. Sure, you can record it and watch it again later. But the real meaning of the dance lies in that moment when your body is in motion, when you're touching your partner and the communicative process simply outstrips the resources of words. You can't write about it later and hope to catch the true meaning, or to articulate the way it really felt. But you can certainly get up and move, and feel the meaning.
I think that's the other important part of dance - it's not just about watching, but about doing. It's necessarily participatory discourse. That's why I'm interested in vernacular dance rather than performance or concert dance - I'm interested in the way vernacular dance doesn't let you just sit there and suck it in. You have to do it, to make it, to participate with your body. So your body cannot possibly just be a container to carry your brain around in. It actually is the medium and the message and the meaning all at once.
Ok, that's a long way away from the original clip, but I guess you get what I mean, right?
"i guess you get what I mean, right?" was posted in the category clicky and lindy hop and other dances and music
March 20, 2007
big women
Posted by dogpossum on March 20, 2007 12:30 PM
I know, I know, another youtube post.
Hey, I'm doing some reading on blues music and women blues artists, and they reference a bunch of soundies - and the biggest collection of soundies is on youtube.
This one is fascinating. Louis Armstrong's playing Swingin' on Nothin', and the track features Velma Middleton and George Washington on vocals. Middleton is the interesting part. Armstrong was loyal to her for years, and even though she wasn't the best vocalist, he kept her in his band and on his recordings.
But the bit that interests me is the way she dances in the following clip. She's a big woman - tall and carrying a lot of weight. But she's down on the ground in hiiigh heels and a big flowy dress. It's kind of an understatement to say she offers an interesting contrast to the dancing female bodies in this clip!
"big women" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
March 15, 2007
blackbottom
Posted by dogpossum on March 15, 2007 4:24 PM
Just so's you can see what happened when white media got ahold of black dance in the 20s:
(from here).
That's pretty much the stuff we learnt in the second class on Saturday. I'm the little round kid in the white dress in the clip, but with less coordination.
"blackbottom" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
lady dances the blues
Posted by dogpossum on March 15, 2007 12:38 PM
I'd really like to embed this clip but they've disabled that feature on this one.
So go here and check out some badass solo sister action. When I say 'solo jazz', that's what I'm talking about. The splits stuff and the girl in white doing the tremors could be slotted into the 'eccentric dance' category - sort of 'stunt dancing'.
Here's the descriptor from the page:
Dancing outtake from Hollywood Rhythm Vol. 1: The Best of Jazz and Blues - Released 2001
Section: A Bundle of Blues (excerpt taken from approx. 7 min into the section to the end)
Stars: Duke Ellington, Ivie Anderson, Florence Hill, Bessie Dudley, Duke Ellington Orchestra
Plot Outline Duke Ellington and his orchestra play two jazz compositions plus 'Stormy Weather' (sung by Ivy Anderson).
Here are some stills to whet your appetite:
"lady dances the blues" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
March 11, 2007
this is a great weekend
Posted by dogpossum on March 11, 2007 12:17 PM | Comments (5)
Right now I'm supposed to be midway through a day of workshops over in Prahran (or wherever they are). But a water main has burst and I am trying to get a plumber to come fix it. Why can't I find a plumber willing to rip me off for a few hundred bucks on a Sunday? I could leave it, but then it wouldn't get fixed. :(
This is the exact same problem we had before - the bung pipe in the veggie patch. The owner had his bullshit 'plumber' (ie some stooge who isn't a qualified plumber) 'fix' it last time and, well... I thought someone was hosing down our house, went outside and discovered where Melbourne's water was going. Up into the air, over some laundry, and all over the back yard.
The emergency plumber will cost a bomb, the landlord will try to make us pay it and I'll get so angry I'll try to kick the shit out of him write angry things on the internet and frighten The Squeeze with some shouting.
So now I'm sitting here TRYING to find a fucking plumber. The Squeeze is off doing stupid moomba shit and doesn't have a mobile, and I'm seriously sleep deprived and dehydrated. The classes yesterday were in a really overcrowded, hot hot HOT room and I haven't been able to drink enough to stop feeling thirsty since. We also had to suffer through two classes with a few bullshit American hot shot teachers and I'm more than a little shitty about being ripped off.
This is a great weekend.
"this is a great weekend" was posted in the category domesticity and lindy hop and other dances
March 2, 2007
Hullabaloo 2007
Posted by dogpossum on March 2, 2007 4:59 PM
I don't know if I've mentioned it or not, but we're going to Hullabaloo soon. Next month, I think it is.
This is the forth annual Hullabaloo - and Hullabaloo is kind of the Perth equivalent to MLX. It's not an all-social exchange (there are only two of those in this country - MLX and Canberrang), mostly because it's very difficult to make an all-social event sustainable, unless you live in a giant local scene (like us here in Melbourne), have quite a few years of successful events under your belt to serve as promotion (like us here in Melbourne), live in a very tourist-attracting city (like us here in Melbourne) or just couldn't give a shit, and want to have a party (like the kids in Canberra).
So we go and just don't do any workshops - we pretend it's an all social event, and sleep in late every day, go to cafes, wander around like the cheery holidaying tourists we are. The very best bit of going to someone else's exchange isn't that you don't have to run anything or work on anything (you always end up doing something at some point to help out - it's an instinct you can't fight when you're used to running events), it's that you're on holiday with a hundred or so other people. And they all want to wander around like tourists, visit cafes and breweries, eat nice meals, talk a whole lot of shit and then dance like crazy fools all night.
Hullabaloo is The Squeeze's favourite exchange. We get hosted by dear friends (who we host when they come to us), with dear friends (who we see regularly when we host an exchange - it's a real exchange and it's wonderful), we don't do anything particularly difficult, The Squeeze is very popular with the Perth ladies (not just because he's cute - also because he's naughty and inclined to pranks, drinking games and stunts) and I like to dance like a fool. Unfortunately I haven't been to an exchange yet where I haven't gotten really ill. I think it's because my body tends to think 'ok, we're on holiday, let's relax'. So I have to spend far too much time sitting about being tired and pathetic. Which sucks arse because I love de late night dancing.
I love Hullabaloo because you can feel every step a Perth lead takes, they bounce and they play good music. They are a bit anal and weird about vintage costume, but The Squeeze sets a good example and just completely ignores any dress standards rubbish. He simply doesn't bother reading that part of the events guide and doesn't bother his pretty little head about it. And he never gets in trouble for it.
So yeah, we're going there next month.
They're also planning a lindy battle thing as well. Trev will no doubt chime in with a comment on that, seeing as how he's organising it (Trev is a Perth person). My buddy Dan (who has a blog, but I can't remember the url) has decided we're goint to enter the battle. And I think it's a good idea. So we've started hassling all our friends to put together a team, including people like Kara. I'm not going to read any rules, because these sorts of things are always much more fun if you don't plan anything too seriously.
There's been a flurry of emails this morning afternoon (I got up LATE - DJed the second set at CBD last night and didn't get home til 1am. Now I'm really tired) with all sorts of exciting ideas for the team. Mostly involving tshirts and how cool we are. Not much talk of actual dancing. Trev, I hope you're not reading this, because I want to talk about it... ok, well, this is the internet, so I won't talk about it til later.
Anyway, I've also put my name in for DJing at Hullabaloo, which will be way fun, but also way pressure - I've DJed interstate before (SLX), but no DJing for a hardcore lindy hopping crowd out of my home town. I DJed at MLX, and I've DJed local big events, but it's different when you travel to a new town. There's new equipment to learn. The fear of forgetting essential cords. Not knowing what a local crowd will like/not like. And so on. I'm excited, but a bit scared. I don't doubt I'll do a decent job, but I will need to work on learning my music a bit better and do some serious practicing. But I have faith.
[all photos are by The Squeeze from Hullabaloo 2005]
"Hullabaloo 2007" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and travel
last night's set
Posted by dogpossum on March 2, 2007 4:55 PM
Last night I did the second set at CBD (as I mentioned), the first time I've done a second set in aaaages (since SEPTEMBER last year, and MLX last year in November), and I was a bit worried about it. I like going first because it's like starting with a blank palette - you start at 0bpm and work the room to your comfort zone. I've been pretty successful getting the room really pumping - working from that 0 point (actually starting at about 130bpm and working the average tempo up to about 160bpm) - which can be tricky with a room that's largely beginner dancers. But you know. Performance anxiety. But last night went well.
We are expecting a large event of our own next weekend, so the locals are getting a bit excited. Last night there were more experienced dancers in the room, and I heard a lot of "oh god, I HAVE to get fitter" and "shit, my charleston sucks" talk.
Basically, I went at it the way I would for a first set - get the tempos up high, regularly, and really pump the energy up. It was a bit tricky because it was pretty bloody hot and humid in that nasty skankpit of a venue, but people proved amenable to a little persuasion.
There's a new mixer thingy, which proved a pain. Once again there were lines that didn't work. Fiddling with the cords, I noticed that someone had plugged the CD players into the wrong lines (despite we lindy hoppers being lectured by some wanker sound guy about only using X plugs, etc - this time it wasn't us), and then that the line I'd chosen was screwed. So I had to do some emergency unplugging/replugging mid-set. As per usual. Every single set, I'm lifting the fucker out of the desk (this new one is way heavier than the old one), pulling out plugs, inserting plugs and hunting down loose connections. The hairs on my arms stand on end.
So I start with a bit of hi-fi groove action to segue from Megger's* set, and that goes ok. The second song? Long, hi-fi, supergroove - good for testing levels and shifting stylistic gears. There were some major technical issues, though (fucked if I know what was wrong - I didn't touch the fucker!), so I had to change cords and plugs and so on. By that point the sound had cut out a couple of times and I was heartily sick of that bloody song. So I just thought 'fuck it', stopped the song mid-way, changed the cords over, and started again with something I actually liked.
It was very liberating to break all the rules like that - you're not supposed to stop a song mid-way through, and you should make gentler transitions. But it was hot, the song had already been screwed by the tech issues and I just HATE that groover shit right now.
It was so nice to hear Buddy Johnson kicking on in. No bullshit organ crap. No fancy wank flourishes - just a kicking rhythm, some punchy brass and a nice clear melody. Bread and cheese action. A potato chip song that lets the dancers know what your action is all about. Once I had their attention I went to a crowd pleasing favourite - C-Jam Blues (that, even though it's overplayed up the wazoo, is still a bitching song - buy that album if you're interested in learning about lindy hop music). And we were off.
A third of the songs I played were over 160bpm, which is a bit of a shift for Melbournians - they like it slow. And the 120s were at the very beginning when I was still thinking about new dancers, or at the very end when people were starting to pass out from dehydration. But otherwise, we had quite a few more upper tempo songs than usual. I just kept dropping them in there, working up and down the tempos. And they kept dancing. It was really nice to work a crowd of more experienced dancers who were determined to dance like fools to decent tempos - I haven't seen the experienced kids from different cliques so unified by dancing and enthusiasm in ages. I did, however, neglect the newer dancers a bit. But shit, just that one time, I wanted to play what I liked, and to really cater to more experienced dancers who often spend most of the night going through the motions rather than pushing themselves a bit.
I was still a bit clunky til about Four or Five Times (I didn't really practice yesterday), but there were a couple of guys standing behind me talking shit and distracting me - I knew I'd hit my groove when they both said "ok, the music's gotten good - I'm going to dance", headed off in different directions to hit the floor. And I laughed at them. Man, my friends are big fat nerdy music snob nerds.
From there, though, things went really well.
I was actually happy with the songs preceding that point - I might have been a bit quick to get the Mora's Modern Swingtet stuff in there, and did follow a combination of 3 or so songs I'd played with that afternoon rather than working the room thoroughly, but I was still finding my groove and beating off a case of weird nerves. When I'm nervy I just throw random songs on - sort of like the way I talk when I'm nervy. Lots of random comments rather than a coherent discussion.
I love Shout 'em Aunt Tillie (Ellington, of course, to follow on from the MMS verson of an Ellington track), but I should have left it til later in the night when the doods were ready for that sort of less familiar music. It was also a bit poor quality, which the crowd often can't take so early in a set. Especially after a set of super hi-fi music. But I freakin' love that song.
From Effervescent Blues, though, we were really cooking. Old Skool rules! Yee-haw!
I love Back Room Romp a great deal, and hope I don't get sick of it soon. The dancers really like it too - it's one of those songs where the floor starts off empty because it's kind of lo-fi and a bit scratchy. But the beat is so insistent, the brass really rolls around and then gets up there with some nice spikey bits... the floor always ends up full and kicking. It's almost painful to have to stand there watching people enjoying the music on the floor while I just have to be satisfied with a bit of bouncing on the spot.
Who Stole the Lock (On the Hen House Door?) was a bit of a punt. I wanted a high energy, old school lindy song. But people did charleston, which surprised me as it's the song Todd and Naomi used in this routine (which I've talked about before). I'd thought the old school fans would think 'Yee-haw! Lindy hop MUTHAFUCKAHS!' but they thought 'Yee-haw! Charleston MUTHAFUCKAHS!' instead. Which was kind of a shame as I had some sweet Charleston Chasers and Vince Giordano lined up for later on. There's only so much superfast music you can play on a hot night. And very few people actually dance 20s solo charleston, so it've been a bit exclusive to pound that theme to hard.
Because the quality of that recording is quite poor, I went for the Mora's Modern Rhythmists version of A Viper's Moan, because I wanted to stay old school, but needed to lift the sound quality a bit to change the mood and get the un-charleston people onto the floor again. It was a success. I'm almost really sick of that song (especially the MMR version), but it's a useful potato chip song.
I'm also a bit over Savoy Blues. But I was going somewhere particular. And, weirdly, that New Orleans sound is really popular with Melbourne kiddies at the moment. It defies comprehension. But it's very pleasing - I love that action, so it's nice to play stuff for the kids that I really dig. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised: it has stompy rhythms everyone can hear, it has a kind of uproarious, controlled-chaos approach to solos and parts. It's not the sort of carefully unified and controlled stuff that Benny Goodman and Glen Miller are into. Nor is it the sort of wilder, yet still managed big band sound of Basie. It feels a bit crazy, but is still quite clear and easy to dance to.
But then I wanted to up the tempos a bit and change the mood. So I went with Stomp it Off by Lunceford, which is quite quick, but has a lovely light, energetic, fun feeling - it feels light hearted and fun. Which is quite a nice contrast to the New Orleans stuff which can be a bit heavy and lower and church-influenced (you can really hear the jesus gospel stuff and martial themes). I'm always delighted when people jump on the floor for uptempo stuff, people who don't usually dance to quick stuff. I always figure it as a win if I've tricked them into dancing faster. But that version of Stomp it off is so fun and nice - it could almost be an Ellington recording, but it has that Lunceford naughtiness chugging along in there as well. And of course, it's some nice Sy Oliver goodness (he wrote it).
Then I followed up with some mellower uptempo stuff. I'm almost over Good Queen Bess as well, but it's a very effective tool for transitioning. At this point I was totally in the groove and thought I'd finally please the girl who wanted old school but really meant male vocal stuff. So I played a big fat bracket of chunky male vocal stuff. I say male vocal, but I'm actually thinking 'silly songs with men talking about food, sex or both, accompanied by guitars'.
These songs always stump me, in terms of the sound quality, but Cammy was really nice and helpful and gave me some tips mid-way through to sort them out. They're tricky because they're not walls of sound like big band stuff - they're really just a couple (or few) blokes singing along with a guitar, bass and possibly percussionist. Cam said they're mostly sitting on about 220 somethings (I can't remember the word), so we dumped the bass way down, upped the mids (or was it the opposite? I forget), and then fiddled with the highs. It was interesting to play with this stuff. And Cam encouraged me to get serious with my equalizer, which scares me. But heck, I'm all cowboy these days, so I might as well. It does bring home the drawbacks of itunes, though.
So I played a bunch of Slim and Slam, Cats and the Fiddle and Mills Brothers and peopel went NUTS. They really really dug it. Apparently the teachers at the Lismore camp in February played a lot of this action. It's weird, because I learnt to dance on these guys, the Hot Shots use them a lot at Herrang for teaching and they really feel very familiar and kind of 'overplayed' in my mind - I love them, but I wouldn't pack a set with them. But I had avoided playing them for a while as they'd not gone down well last year with CBD people, and I do actually adore Slim Gaillard in particular.
I almost added some Fats Waller in there, but I figured I needed to change the vibe a bit, so I went with a potato chip song (after the Potato Chips song), because I wanted to get to a request for the birthday boy - when someone requests For Dancers Only you hop to it. Particularly when they specifically request the higher tempo version I adore.
By this point people were looking really trashed. They were kind of euphoric and having a good time, but they were obviously not drinking enough water (arsehole venue manager won't let people bring their own water and won't turn on the air-con. Arsehole), so I figured I'd finish off this chunk then let it settle a bit. Savoy, one of my favourite songs, went down really well, and I thought I Want The Waiter (with the water) was a funny choice, a bit lower energy and a bit slower. And it also went down well. Jive at Five is such a nice song, and that version is slower again and kind of mellow, so people had a chance to chill.
It's kind of a risk at that point in the evening (I started at 10.00 and it was about 11 by then), so this was a bit of a punt. But they were still nuts for dancing. So I built them up again. And played Minor Goes a'Muggin' in honour of Trev. There was a protracted discussion about the meaning of the word 'muggin' at the DJ desk at this point, with some speculation that it could have something to do with smiling or a big face (kind of a British thing), or perhaps more to do with:
muggins |ˈməginz|(to use the dictionary on my computer).
noun ( pl. same or mugginses ) Brit., informal a foolish and gullible person.
• humorous used to refer to oneself in order to suggest that one has been stupid, esp. in allowing oneself to be exploited : muggins has volunteered to do the catering.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: perhaps a use of the surname Muggins, with allusion to mug 1 .
People dug the song, though. By this point it was about 11.20 and I was getting tired. The last few songs were closers and I danced the last two (because it was after 11.30 and I wasn't being paid any more and I WANTED TO). I should have ended at St James Infirmary rather than letting it peter out. Don't Come Too Soon is a fairly lackluster attempt to construct a euphemism for the obvious. I like it.
It was a good set, I enjoyed it, and things went well.
Here's the set list:
CBD set 2 1st March 2007
(title, artist, bpm, date, album, time)
Mumbles Oscar Peterson 188 1964 Ultimate Oscar Peterson As Selected By Ray Brown 2:02
Blues In Hoss' Flat City Rhythm Orchestra 130 2004 Vibrant Tones 5:23
Shufflin' And Rollin' Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra 153 1952 Walk 'Em 3:12
C-Jam Blues Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 143 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke 3:33
Krum Elbow Blues Mora's Modern Swingtet 162 2004 20th Century Closet 2:45
Shout 'Em Aunt Tillie Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 158 1930 Jazz Caravan 2:56
Effervescent Blues Mora's Modern Swingtet 122 2004 20th Century Closet 3:07
B-Sharp Boston Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 126 1949 Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 2:54
Four Or Five Times Woody Herman Orchestra 141 The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) 3:09
Back Room Romp Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 155 2000 Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington 2:49
Flying Home Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 159 1940 Tempo And Swing 2:58
Who Stole the Lock (On the Hen House Door?) Jack Bland 245 2002 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 2 2:37
A Viper's Moan Mora's Modern Rhythmists 143 2000 Call Of The Freaks 3:30
Savoy Blues Kid Ory 134 2002 Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 3:00
Perdido Street Blues Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra with Sidney Bechet 148 1940 Blues In Thirds 1940-41 3:00
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band 160 1946 Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 3:12
Stomp It Off Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra 190 1934 Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford 3:08
Good Queen Bess Duke Ellington 160 1940 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10) 3:00
Laughing In Rhythm Slim Gaillard 140 2:52
Groove Juice Special Slim Gaillard And His Flat Foot Floogie Boys 170 1942 Big Ben - Disc 2 - All Too Soon 2:43
Stomp, Stomp The Cats and The Fiddle 203 1941 We Cats Will Swing For You Volume 2 1940-41 2:55
My Walking Stick The Mills Brothers 158 1938 The Mills Brothers Featuring Louis Armstrong vol4 (1937-1940) 2:43
Potato Chips Slim Gaillard 143 2004 Jazz For Kids - Sing, Clap, Wiggle, and Shake 3:04
Apollo Jump Lucky Millinder 143 Apollo Jump 3:26
For Dancers Only Jimmie Lunceford and His Harlem Express 178 1944 1944-Uncollected 2:22
Savoy Lucky Millinder 166 1993 Anthology Of Big Band Swing (Disc 2) 3:04
I Want The Waiter (with the water) Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 151 1939 Lunceford Special 1939-40 2:44
Jive At Five Count Basie and His Orchestra 147 1960 The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) 3:02
Shoutin' Blues Count Basie and His Orchestra 148 1949 Kansas City Powerhouse 2:38
Till Tom Special Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 158 1940 Tempo And Swing 3:23
The Minor Goes Muggin' Duke Ellington 176 1946 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 15) 3:02
Cole Slaw Jesse Stone and His Orchestra 145 Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 2:57
Yes, Indeed! Sy Oliver and Jo Stafford with Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra 134 1941 Yes, Indeed! 3:30
St. James Infirmary Hot Lips Page and his Orchestra 122 1949 Jump For Joy! 3:12
Black And Tan Fantasy Jimmie Lunceford 104 1997 Rhythm Is Our Business 2:44
New Style Baby Walter Brown with Jay McShann and His Kycee Stompers 120 1949 Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 3) 2:37
Don't Come Too Soon Julia Lee And Her Boyfriends 123 1949 Kansas City Blues 1944-1949 (Disc 2) 2:59
*Megs and I have very different taste in music, but we like each other and enjoy DJing together - she's an arse kicker and we make each other laugh a lot. So it's always good when we're paired up for sets.
"last night's set" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances
February 27, 2007
manning-palooza
Posted by dogpossum on February 27, 2007 12:50 PM
This is a lovely clip (URL) of Frankie Manning and Norma Miller Dawn Hampton dancing together at the The Jelly Roll 4th Anniversary Party in New York on the 10th February this year. Frankie is 93, Norma Dawn is 87 ??. Both of them can still dance like mofos. The song is Shiny Stockings (Basie, of course, but performed by the George Gee big band).
I'm currently going through a big Frankie Manning phase. If I'm leading dumb I think to myself 'what would Frankie do?' Sure, he'd tell a long story about boobies, but then he'd do something silly to make the ladies laugh. I dig Norma Dawn, but this is a story about Frankie.
Manning has an autobiography coming out soon, which you can pre-order on amazon here.
There's also an interesting interview with Manning (which you can download here, or grab via Yehoodi). At one point Manu asks Frankie about segregation. Manning's answer is interesting, as he tells a number of stories which, while illustrating the nastiness of segregation, are also funny. They also - most interesting of all - make it clear that the best way of dealing with segregation if you didn't want trouble was to quietly leave the room - to avoid conflict. It made me wonder if all those years of avoiding conflict has contributed to older African Americans metaphorically 'leaving the room' when segregation and race politics enter the discussion. Just quietly avoiding the issue or redirecting with a funny story. It's fascinating, and something I'd like to find out more about.
---EDIT: to correct my not-paying-attention mistakes. Dawn Hampton and Norma Miller are two different people. Trev also pays more attention than I do ---
---EDIT #2: Frankie Manning will be in Australia, in Sydney, in March/April (you can read the most unhelpful website here). I have no solid information on this gig, as it's run by a woman/school who don't do very good promotion. But of course, if you're interested, this is one of the few chances you'll get to hear/see Frankie teaching, talking and dancing in person in Australia---
"manning-palooza" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
February 20, 2007
one phrase. that's 4 8s. or 16 bars. or about 4 seconds
Posted by dogpossum on February 20, 2007 1:34 PM
Yesterday I spent an hour and fifteen minutes doing some dancing in dah house and managed to:
- go over the Tranky Doo a few times
- go over the Big Apple (FKP) bits I know
- learn one phrase from the line bit of the BAFKP. That's some difficult shit. But I am totally onto it. I should have this routine learnt in about... ten years. Or by the end of 2007
It's still really difficult to learn the partner bits on my own. But I think I'm doing a pretty good job.
I need someone to help me style the Tranky Doo so I don't look so honky. Or, as Sally kindly pointed out on Thursday night, so I don't dance like my elbows are glued to my sides.
But the BAFKP taught me how to to do one of the difficult transitions in the Tranky Doo. Goddess Bless the internet.
"one phrase. that's 4 8s. or 16 bars. or about 4 seconds" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
February 18, 2007
i just couldn't get it together
Posted by dogpossum on February 18, 2007 1:44 PM
Friday night I played a crappy craptastic set at Funbags.
It was pretty hot, I'd been feeling a bit crook during the day and I didn't take time to go through my music.
I was also pretty uncomfortable with the set up for the DJ. The sound system was pretty good, but the whole thing was at the same counter where the punters pay to come in near the front door. We had to sit our laptops on the counter with our backs to the mixing desk so we could see the dancers, but this meant that our cables had to hang across the entry to the behind-the-counter. And people kept coming in and out of that space all night, climbing under the cords. In addition, I was ideally placed for people to come talk to me.
I need at least ten minutes of alone time at the beginning of a set to get settled - fix the sound a bit, sort my laptop, pick out a couple of good starter songs so I can go walk the room, de-jitter, etc etc etc. But I don't mind being visited later in the set.
I just couldn't get it together - I had to tell people to leave me alone a couple of times and to move out of my way so I could see the floor at least three times til I gave up.
As a result, I was a bit jittery and couldn't relax and get into gear. There was too much talking and bustling around me and it kept me on edge.
So the set sucked.
It was also a bit of an odd crowd, mostly beginner dancers with a couple of more experienced people. It also felt more like an after-class gig than a 'social dancing' gig, so pumping, upenergy crowd-kicking songs fell a bit flat. Those sorts of hardcore songs really go down better with more experienced dancers. The Bechet track was a particularly heinous fizzer.
sigh.
I didn't kill the floor, though. I just couldn't make a coherent set that really worked the energy in the room. Because it was mostly newer dancers who just love dancing, it was ok. But it wouldn't have worked on a more experienced crowd.
I'm a bit sick of my music as well - I feel like I'm just playing the same old stodge each week. The same old songs. I haven't bought a lot of great music lately, just a lot of stuff I really like.... well, that's probably not true, that's just how it feels. I actually feel like I'm a bit limited in the music I can play. I feel like I can't pull out the less crowd-pleasery stuff. There are some songs that are just like chips at a party - they go down well, you can just keep filling the bowl and the crowd'll just keep chewing em down. But they're nothing special.
I want to make hoors doovers. Not chips.
I dunno, guess I need to spend more time listening to my music I spose. I think I need to find another artist that really drives me wild so I can get inspired again.
I'm actually feeling like I'd like to play a supergroove set - really pull out all the really good supergroove stuff. But I don't want to waste a big night on that rubbish. I'd like a more mellow late night perhaps for that. A really late night... but I can't fight my 'drive them crazy' arse-kicker instincts.
anyway...
Just so's you can compare, he's the set list. All good songs, just combined in a really shitty order.
(first set, Funpit 16 Feb 2007) song - artist - bpm - album - song length
My Baby Just Cares For Me - Nina Simone - 118 - The Great Nina Simone - 3:38
Cow Cow Boogie - Jennie Löbel and Swing Kings - 120 - 2001 - He Ain't Got Rhythm - 2:56
Jump Ditty! - Joe Carroll and The Ray Bryant Quintet - 134 - Red Kat Swing 1 - 2:53
Oomph Fa Fa - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five - 129 - 2003 - Jammin' the Blues - 3:35
B-Sharp Boston - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 126 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:54
Jive At Five - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 147 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) - 3:02
Splanky - Count Basie - 157 - 1966 - Live at the Sands - 3:52
Hallelujah, I Love Her So - Count Basie - 145 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 2:36
Undecided Blues - Count Basie and His Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing - 120 - 1941 - Cutting Butter - The Complete Columbia Recordings 1939 - 1942 (disc 03) - 2:55
Hey Now, Hey Now - Cab Calloway - 121 - 1994 - Are You Hep To The Jive? - 2:56
Four Or Five Times - Woody Herman Orchestra - 141 - The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) - 3:09
Back Room Romp - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - 155 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington - 2:49
Flying Home - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 159 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 2:58
Cole Slaw - Jesse Stone and His Orchestra - 145 - Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 - 2:57
Lavender Coffin - Lionel Hampton, etc - 138 - 1949 - Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun - 2:47
Redskin Rhumba - Charlie Barnet - 186 - 1940 - Charlie Barnet : Skyliner - 2:41
Savoy Blues - Kid Ory - 134 - 2002 - Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 - 3:00
Perdido Street Blues - Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra with Sidney Bechet - 148 - 1940 - Blues In Thirds - 1940-41 - 3:00
The Greatest There Is - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 133 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:43
Come On Over To My House - Julia Lee with Jay McShann's Kansas City Stompers - 138 - 1944 - Jumpin' The Blues (Disc 1) - 2:52
Six Appeal - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five - 141 - 2004 - Crazy Rhythm - 3:29
"i just couldn't get it together" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances
down down down
Posted by dogpossum on February 18, 2007 12:50 PM
This clip caught my eye (you can find it here on youtube) because I'm fond of the Basie version (I have a 1941 version on a collection called Cutting Butter). But watching it, the race and gender stuff was kind of interesting... note the whiteness of the girls' skin. The two girls dancing towards the end of the clip aren't terribly great dancers (I wonder who the blokes are?), but I suspect they were picked for their looks.
And of course the lyrics are kind of interesting (the Basie version I have is an instrumental).
"down down down" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
February 12, 2007
the partner stuff is really hard to learn on my own
Posted by dogpossum on February 12, 2007 5:34 PM
The Big Apple is easier than the Tranky Doo, but it's kickin' my arse. I can do 8 phrases now. So that's about a minute. Of three minutes.
The partner stuff is really hard to learn on my own. :(
"the partner stuff is really hard to learn on my own" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
shouting
Posted by dogpossum on February 12, 2007 11:41 AM
this (found here) caught my interest.
It's dance, captain, but not as we know it.
My first response: oooh, man-dancing. That was just my initial response - how masculine the dance was. The performance was. Shouting, synchronised, 'fighty' style. I don't know anything about Yosakoi(I'll go read more in a tick).
But then I was interested in the synchronised-ness of it (that always fascinates me, obsessed as I am with the Af-Am lindy where you were 'synchronised' in that you all did the same steps, but it was almost mandatory that you add your own, distinct styling).
And then with the music (ooo, contemporary music. Interesting).
And then with the shouting.
I was thinking, last Thursday night as I ran around on the dance floor, mid-way through the Big Apple, completely lost in the steps (ie, I had no clue what I was doing), but really enjoying all the running around - we were doing the spank the baby bit where you run around in a circle... that was the best bit. Crinks had apparently decided that Brian was running too slowly, so she decided to run faster and overtake him. The rest of us, competitive instincts obviously stimulated, responded by running faster as well, and adding a few pushes and shoves. Jazz dance = contact sport. That bit with the spank the baby got kind of washingmachine-like. There was also a lot of shouting during that bit, and also during the "Charleston!" bit, and then, just random shouting bits. Not all of us knew the damn thing. That didn't seem to bother anyone, though I was (once again), the last one to grab a partner so I ended up on my onw for the partner bit. Again. It's because I'm a lead-follow and I'm not fast enough to grab someone. There were about... 10? of us doing it on the social dance floor - Sally had stood up, saying "I'm going to do the Big Apple" and then gone straight onto the floor and done it. It was like a siren call - people descended on her from all over the room. I still don't know any more than the first few phrases, but that didn't stop me.
Ok, so I was thinking, as I was running around on the dance floor, shouting, about how the shouting is quite important. Some of my favourite songs are the ones where the musicians shout out - to each other, with excitement, just because. If I hear a musician shouting 'yeah!' at the end of a solo, or at the excitingest bit of a solo, I'm usually with them. Frida is a big shouter - you can hear her yelling all through that Todd and Naomi clip just before. And when she shouts when she's performing, people respond.
But not everyone feels comfortable with the shouting. Usually the people who don't feel comfortable with the not-perfectly-synchronised-routines.
So, watching that yosakoi clip, I was struck by the shouting, and how ordered it was. Nothing like "Charleston!" and the "yaaaah!!" shouting getting around last Thursday night at CBD.
"shouting" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
As dangerous as a midnight coffee
Posted by dogpossum on February 12, 2007 10:28 AM
Glen's started a meme over here, and it's one that actually caught my eye.
I meme when I'm trying to be cool, but I think this one is actually quite me.
I am starting up a meme. It is called the “As dangerous as a midnight coffee†meme.Blurb: Five songs for going nuts when IT HAS TO BE DONE. This isn’t the Nike Just Do It song list of inspiration. It is a savage beast that attacks your weaknesses, and gives you the perspective of sickness, thus forcing you to be stronger. The songs have to currently be on a portable music playing device that you listen to at midnight brewing a coffee and getting ready to attack IT (or comparable scenario).
I do own an ipod (well, The Squeeze owns an ipod, and I see it as my Sistahly duty to appropriate it and use it for previewing old skewl jass for DJing on the bus... well I did, when I was catching the bus. I also used to use it for 'read-a-long' sessions with Gunther Schuller (I've just been humming and ahing over his books on abebooks, btw: I need them. I do. I really do)), but I think this meme really lends itself to the 'hypothetical set list'.
Midnight Coffee - hm. I'm thinking of late night after parties, when the crowd are warmed up from the first gig, but you've just changed venues, so you have to get them really cooking again.
So, to rework the meme-theme, here are five songs that (I'd hope) would work together to GET IT DONE. In other words, five songs that would hopefully drive a crowd of dancers into a frenzy.
Now, five songs really isn't very much for crowd frenzying, so let's assume I've spent about five songs getting them warmed up.
...actually, I'm going to do two lists. One will be a chronological list of five songs, in the order I'd play to get the crowd nuts. The other list will be five seriously hardcore-kick your muthafucking arse hardcore YAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! dancing songs that I would never play all in a row. Not if I wanted to have the floor even partly full.
1. 'Blues In Hoss' Flat' Count Basie 142bpm 195? Big Band Renaissance Disc 1 3:13
Because Basie is the only way to kick a bunch of dancers into a frenzy... well, not really, but it's a nice place to start.
I'm imagining I'm working with the Melbourne crowd at CBD rather than at MLX or another big exchange. Because exchanges are a different kettle of fish.
This song rocks because it's hi-fi, it's late Basie, it has some pretty major brass and people know it and love it. It's also a very manageable 142bpm - a nice warm-up tempo.
2.
...look, this isn't going to work. Five songs isn't long enough for me to guarantee mass insanity. I ain't that good, and I need to see the floor to judge my choices.
Instead, I'm just going to go list five arse kicker songs. The sorts of songs that make me crazy. That I've made dancers crazy with (with which I've made... whatever). And they'll probably be my current favourites.
1. 'Back Room Romp' Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 155 2000 Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington 2:49
Man, I can't believe I only have one version of this song! It's the best. This is a great warm-up track.
... wait, I'm doing it again! I just can't list five big songs without working up to them!
Ok, now I'm just going to do hardcore, arse kicky songs that I might play at an afterparty. Maybe not all in a row, because the dancers would die. But definitely within one set. Between about 2 and 3 perhaps - when people have all arrived, had a slurpy or their second (or third) Red Bull and something to eat and have the energy to burn. Let's also say that the room is pretty warm (but not hot - just not chilly), and it's pretty crowded. But not so crowded you can't really swing out like a fool.
I'll try again.
1. 'Jumpin' At The Woodside' Count Basie 237bpm 1938 Ken Burns Jazz Series: Count Basie
The 1930s versions are best. This is one kick your arse song. You can tell Basie got his start with a bit of stride piano with that stomping intro. The tempo is hot (but doable), there are lots of nice layers building up the energy.
Actually, I'm into this now. Now I'm just going to list hardcore songs that I love that would kick your arse if you danced to them all in a row.
2. 'Lafayette' Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra with Count Basie 285bpm 1932 Kansas City Powerhouse 2:48
My comments for this one read "difficult but good fast dancing; ok quality". It comes in shouting and then pounds away at 285bpm. I've never danced to it, I'm not sure you could, but it's a cracking song. I like the stompy base. Basie of course began with Moten's band - this is hot Kansas city action (those Kansas doods were wilder and rougher).
3. 'Hotter Than Hell' Fletcher Henderson 275bpm 1934 Tidal Wave 2:58
This is one frickin' fast song. But it really rocks. Henderson is the king of hot, arse-kicking music for lindy hopping.
...I'm getting really excited listening to this stuff. It's going to be impossible to settle down and work after this.
4.'Blues In The Groove' Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 205bpm 1939 Lunceford Special 1939-40 2:35
Not everyone's pick of the Lunceford action (I know I was torn between this and 'Lunceford Special' or 'Blue Blazes'), but this one, while it doesn't have that pounding, driving structure is one of those songs that you can't help but dance to - it makes you jump up and jiggle around. So it's a 'get it done song' because it'll get you dancing, despite yourself. And that's a DJ's job - getting people dancing despite themselves.
5. 'Rigamarole' Willie Bryant And His Orchestra 240bpm Willie Bryant 1935-1936 2:35
This one doesn't actually sound all that fast, but it really builds you up and makes you crazy. It says DANCE MUTHAHFUCKAH! So people generally do. Mostly like crazy fools. It has shouting in it as well, which always helps. I often play the Mora's Modern Rhythmists version for dancers because the quality is better, but the MMR version doesn't have the same punch as Bryant's.
That's it, then.
There are about a million other songs I could have listed - we're all about hard fast, getting-you-moving music here in the swinguverse - but these are five of my favourites.
I know some people'd be suprised to see no 'Ride Red Ride' in there, or 'Man from Mars' (or Chick Webb at all) or 'Sugar Foot Stomp' in some incarnation. I'm also a bit sorry not to have any really hot Ellington action there something like 'Jubilee Stomp', a 1928 Ellington track that clocks in at 265bpm (I have it on The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 01)) would have been a sensible addition. But I could have gone on forever. I could have done a top 5 Basie arse kicking songs. Or a top 5 old skewl. And I didn't even touch the dixie or 'charleston' music.
Anyone got 5 other good, arse kicking, 'get it done', 'dangerous as midnight coffee' music?
"As dangerous as a midnight coffee" was posted in the category clicky and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 9, 2007
because trev is a little baby
Posted by dogpossum on February 9, 2007 12:48 PM
Last night I DJed for the second time since... well. I've only DJed three times this year, since November 2006 really. The last time was actually very ordinary and I wasn't very happy with it (see earlier comment). Thing is, when I'm not DJing a lot, I'm dancing a lot. So it's a trade off.
Anyways, last night I DJed a set which made me very, very happy. Practicing yesteday afternoon for the first time in ages probably helped (practicing = going through my music and doing 'test' sets, re-familiarising myself with all my music... well, most of my music).
Partway through the first or second or third (can't remember which) song I had that crazy pulse-thumping 'this freakin' RAWKS' feeling. I said to Dan about ten times "God, this sounds so GREAT on a big sound system!" Which was kind of duh, because it was either the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, from an album that every swing dancer and DJ must own - fabulous live recording of a fabulous band doing fabulous Ellington music, or it was Basie. And Basie is the best.
The night started kind of strange when a girl I thought knew my music asked if I could play some 'old school' music. And I thought she might be joking because I said "That's like asking me if I like to lindy hop". But she thought... well, who knows what she thought. Anyways, the upshot is that she really wanted to hear some Cats and the Fiddle. I showed her a short list of stuff I'd put together that afternoon with plenty of CATF, Slim and Slam and the Mills Brothers - male vocal groups which feature lots of guitar. And are, incidentally, from the late 30s and 40s for the most part. 'Old school' to me means early 30s, late 20s - serious scratch. It's not difficult to convince me to play that stuff - I loves that action (and I'd probably add some select Fats freakin-wonderful Waller and Cab Calloway to that particular subgroup - sillier vocals, smaller groups (though not necessarily with Cab... though his earlier stuff has the right sort of sound), chunking rhythm section.
Despite the impression I might have given here, it was actually quite nice to be asked to play stuff I adore. I had to stop myself suddenly go through my music and revising my plans for the set. I had to stay cool and just work with the plan.
As it turns out, I didn't play any of that stuff (not even any Cab!), nor did I play any serious old school, though I did have Who Stole The Lock (On The Henhouse Door) by Jack Bland and his Rhythmakers with Henry 'Red' Allen (1932, 243bpm) on my short list. In fact, I think it's time for a little gratuitous lindy hop pr0n.
That's Todd Yanacone and Naomi Unami (blowing all my arguments about ethnicity to shit right there) kickin' it old school at the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in 2005 (linkage). Dat is where it's at.
But I didn't end up playing that either. That's the sort of music that I think of as old school, and I'd add people like Willie Bryant (oh Willie, how do I love thee?), Henry Red Allen, Mills Blue Rhythm Band, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, early Cab Calloway and early Ellington to that group). I really freakin' love that action - it sounds crazy and fun and you can really hear the transition from 'charleston' music to 'lindy hop' music - ie this is where the swing is actually getting into jazz. It's not quite right for hard core lindy hop, a la Frankie, but it has the crazy energy of the music that makes you dance de charleston and other ol' timey dances. This is the sort of stuff that I associate with the breakaway - precursor to lindy hop (which you can see in the After Seben clip - Shorty George does the breakaway with an unknown partner right there at the end before the solo stuff (and that solo stuff, incidentally, was my obsession for a while - I love that crazy eccentric dance stuff)).
Though I adore this stuff, it's not terribly general-audience-friendly. The tempos are generally very high (above 200 at least) for lindy hoppers... for Melbourne lindy hoppers - I'm sure Trev could offer some nice examples of lindy hoppers in other Australian cities and their tempo-comfort. And the lack of swinginess can actually make for quite tiring dancing when you're doing lindy. It almost demands a more upright position and you don't get that 'flying' lindy look. But, as Todd and Naomi demonstrate, it still makes for freakin' amazing dancing.
Anyway, back to me and me and my stuff and me.
I think I'll just cut and paste from my comment over on Swing Talk. Here's my set list and commentary on how the set went:
[song title - artist - bpm - year - album title - song length]
Happy Go Lucky Local - Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - 110 - 1999 - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke highenergy - 6:57
Moten Swing - Count Basie - 125 - 1959 - Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - 5:17
Blues In Hoss' Flat - Count Basie - 142 - 1995 - Big Band Renaissance Disc 1 - 3:13
Shoutin' Blues - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 148 - 1949 - Kansas City Powerhouse- 2:38
Four Or Five Times - Woody Herman Orchestra - 141 - The Great Swing Bands (Disc 2) - 3:09
Shout, Sister, Shout - Lucky Millinder - 140 - Apollo Jump - 2:44
Back Room Romp - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - 155 - 2000 - Ken Burns Jazz: Duke Ellington - 9:07 PM
A Viper's Moan - Mora's Modern Rhythmists - 143 - 2000 - Call Of The Freaks - 3:30
Savoy Blues Kid Ory - 134 - 2002 - Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3 - 3:00
Perdido Street Blues - Louis Armstrong - 144 - 1997 - Priceless Jazz Collection #3 - 3:08
Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho - Kid Ory And His Creole Jazz Band - 160 - 1946 - Kid Ory and his Creole Jazz Band 1944-46 - 3:12
Lavender Coffin - Lionel Hampton, etc - 138 - 1949 - Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun - 2:47
Cole Slaw - Jesse Stone and His Orchestra - 145 - Original Swingers: Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips vol 2 - 2:57
Solid as a Rock - Count Basie and His Orchestra with The Deep River Boys - 140 - Count Basie and His Orchestra 1950-1951 - 3:03
Joog, Joog - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 146 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 3:00
B-Sharp Boston - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - 126 - 1949 - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: 1949-1950 - 2:54
Jive At Five - Count Basie and His Orchestra - 147 - 1960 - The Count Basie Story (Disc 1) - 3:02
Six Appeal - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five - 141 - 2004 - Crazy Rhythm - 3:29
All The Cats Join In - Peggy Lee and Frank DeVol's Orchestra - 150 - 1998 - Complete Peggy Lee & June Christy Capitol Transcription Sessions (Disc 2) - 2:18
Flying Home - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 159 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 2:58
Blues In The Groove - Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - 205 - 1939 - Lunceford Special 1939-40 - 2:35
Hop Skip and Jump - Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five, featuring Hilary Alexander - 192 - 2004 - Crazy Rhythm - 2:48
For Dancers Only - Jimmie Lunceford and His Harlem Express - 178 - 1944 - 1944-Uncollected - 2:22
Till Tom Special - Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra - 158 - 1940 - Tempo And Swing - 3:23
Jumpin' At The Woodside - Count Basie - 235 - The Complete Decca Recordings (disc 02) - 3:10
Rundown:
I always begin with something 'safe' and hi-fi at CBD so I can fuss over the tech set up (because it always sucks). Happy Go Lucky Local went down really well (which surprised me). I'm not sure if I actually played Moten Swing or not - it was on my list but I think I was deciding between it or HGLL and didn't actually play it. Whatever.
Keith tried to suggest the one-in-a-row rule to me at about Blues in Hoss's Flat but I scoffed. I derided. Basie is such a great opener for a set - he really is the best lindy hopping music. Nice, high energy, kind of straight up and nothing too scary or difficult, you can get nice quality recordings and people know a lot of his stuff.
I consciously played a lot of favourites during the set - sort of speckled them in there between other 'mini-sets' (the mini-sets in order: the norleans set, the shouty-clapping set, the 'chilling' set, the 'finally you're warmed up, so let's kick your arse' set). Perdido Street Blues is one of my old faves which I actually DJ very rarely (it's also actually a song I think of as 'Sidney Bechet' rather than Armstrong). I can't play Blues My Naughty Sweety Gave To Me again - it make me want to hurl. Even though people love it, I'm over it. PSB was my BMNSGTM substitute.
The 'mini set' thing wasn't deliberate - it just kind of worked out that way as I tried to play songs in a logical order (ie matching styles and then moving between styles using the clutch rather than just hacking them in there).
I did scew up at one point, doing a dreaded double click 3/4 of the way through Til Tom Special, which sucked, as I was building them into a frenzy for the last song. But no one seemed to mind and an jam circle formed instantly. It was the first spontaneous jam I've seen in Melbourne for ages. There were a couple of grumbles from people who wanted to dance to that song, but I say - get in there and DANCE to it.
I think I have to add for the non-dancers reading, that that last song Jumpin' at the Woodsideis an iconic one. It's hardcore Basie, doing the very best Basie action. It's fast (though this wasn't the version I thought I played, which is about 270 odd bpm), it's fun and it's crazy. It's also been stamped as a 'jam song'. I didn't intend a jam, I just wanted to play an arse-kicking, fun, crazy fast song to close my set. As bigpants comments in that Swing Talk thread, though (and I really like this line):
"We interrupt the regular broadcast for this important jam announcement"If only I could say that I planned this. But I'm afraid it was sheer fluke.Maybe you shocked the jam into us. It worked.
One of my favourite parts of the night was playing Blues in the Groove (I'm on a(nother) Lunceford kick atm) and seeing people run to the floor. I blame that version of Flying Home - it's slower but gets people all worked up. And you have to love balboans - they get in there and work it at all tempos.
Another highlight was playing that version of For Dancers Only - it's off a new album I saw pimped on SwingDJs recently and which I absolutely LOVE. I think Gracenote has the wrong name for the album, but it looks like that to the right there.
As you can see from the Amazon link, it's crazy cheap. And worth it for that version of FDO alone (incidentally, Dan played a version of Wham last night - I am currently loving that song atm. Lunceford and Hamp are my men).
Then Dan played his first Melbourne gig and did a neat job. We had a bit of a scuffle over who'd play what. The best bit of DJing first is that you get to play what you like, while the second DJ can't repeat anything. Tough luck if you dig the same stuff (though that rocks because you get to dance to the stuff that way). But then, the first DJ has to suffer through thinking 'why didn't I play that?!' in the second set. Actually, I enjoyed DJed with Trev at the Speegs at MLX - we have similar tastes, but different collections, and of course, different ways of putting a set together. I played the first set, he the second, me the third, and it was really nice rubbing in/bewailing our choices.
And just in case you thought I was the nerdiest DJ in the whole world, go look at this link and see I'm not. WHY didn't I find that clip before I wrote that stuff about youtube?
Rightio. Enough postage for you there, Trev?
I have a job application to write, so I'm outy.
LCJO image stolen from here.
"because trev is a little baby" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
February 2, 2007
i like this dancing - she is mighty fine. but she also demands a fairly steep tithe.
Posted by dogpossum on February 2, 2007 2:35 PM
Ok, so I've decided to get back into the dancing hardcore in the last month.
Because:
- I have time and can stay up late a few nights a week because I'm not teaching
- I need to get a bit fitter and healthier, and there is no exercise as physically demanding as lindy hop except perhaps basketball. 20s charleston, however, kicks both their arses for arse kicking
- I missed it - I missed the creativity and the physical challenge and the sheer wonderfulness of jiggling about to music I love with a partner
Things I have noticed:
- I am not 25 any more. My recovery time is kind of long. Today, after dancing like a fool for a few hours (including my first public showing of the Cranky Poo and the bits of the Big Schnapple that I know) last night and then riding home I feel quite rough. I have aches and pains. I have ringing ears (argh, noob DJs: walk the room, doods, walk the room. Decibals won't replace base). I am tired and look quite awful.
- It's frickin' fun. When you've got a bit of fitness back and your body awareness and general coordination get back up above the sloth level, dancing is easier, you can do more things and the endorphines... oh, those lovely lovely endorphines.
For the first song you're kind of clunky. The second, your heart rate gets up a bit, your muscles are warming up nicely and you're remembering how to dance. Midway through the third it's like someone's thrown a bucket of ecstacy over you. Ecstasy made of chocolate. Ecstasy making really fabulous jokes. You start grinning like an idiot, then laughing like a fool. You're a dancing queen - nothing goes wrong, you rock. You know every single note of the song, your partner is beautiful (and possibly made of chocolate as well). You physically feel frickin' good - it's like... I was going to compare it to sex or something sex-like, but it's not - it's better. It's kind of like you get a drumming in your ears. You suddenly want to touch your friends more and squeeze your partner. It's really nice. - I really don't give a fuck who I'm dancing with - I'm just happy to be dancing. Because dancing - she is good. She is also the bringer of nice chemical action.
- Music - she is even better. Suddenly all the songs you like listening to have added purpose and meaning. Dancing to them makes them better
- This stuff is addictive. I can see, as someone with no real demands on their time or actual focus, how people do let dancing consume them utterly. How they end up living, breathing dancing in a pretty scary way. Think I'm into dance in a big way? Imagine if I was teaching it. And in a performance troupe. And training for a competition. That's at least 3 or 4 nights a week on top of social dancing twice a week and the sort of practice you do on your own. That's insane. When would I have time to watch telly? My conversational skills would deteriorate, my attention span would drop to about 3 minutes max (ie, the time between dances) and I'd suddenly find it difficult to retain basic information about new friends. And those endorphines - did I mention their goodness?
Last night I went to sleep still hearing jazz and with my brain running through dance steps. And this after a couple of hours coming down - riding home for 20 minutes, hassling The Squeeze, reading, eating something, showering.
I like this dancing - she is mighty fine. But she also demands a fairly steep tithe.
Tonight I DJ the second set. And I'm kind of looking forward to sitting down and getting some physical and emotional distance from the dance floor.
"i like this dancing - she is mighty fine. but she also demands a fairly steep tithe." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 31, 2007
holy smokes
Posted by dogpossum on January 31, 2007 4:22 PM
I'm kind of in shock.
My guest post has been published over here and frankly, I'm having trouble breathing.
I've cross-posted the post here. This is the title Henry gave it (as I forgot that part when I sent him the copy. Doh).
Are You Hep to That Jive?: The Fan Culture Surrounding Swing Music
This is a clip of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers dancing a Big Apple routine (choreographed by Frankie Manning) in the 1939 film Keep Punchin'. In the last section of this clip they dance lindy hop on a 'social dance floor'.
And here's footage of dancers in the US dancing the same routine in 2006.
If you follow this link you can listen to the Solomon Douglas Swinged playing the same song on their recent album.
Both dancers and musicians have painstakingly transcribed what they see and hear in that original 1939 clip.
Lindy hop - the partner dance most popular today in swing dance communities - developed in Harlem in the late 1920s and early 30s by African American dancers. Over the following years it moved to mainstream American youth culture, carried by dance teachers and performers in films like Keep Punchin' and in stage shows, and then moved out into the international community, again in film and stage plays, but also with American soldiers stationed overseas. Though it was massively popular in its day, by the 1950s changes in popular music, where jazz was replaced by rock n roll or became increasingly difficult to dance to with the rise of bebop, saw lindy slipping from the public eye.
In the 1980s, dancers in Europe and the US began researching lindy, using archival footage like Keep Punchin' but also including films like Hellzapoppin' and Day at the Races - popular musical films of the 1930s and 40s. The aim of these dancers was to revive lindy hop, to recreate the steps they saw on screen. Learning to dance by watching films, particularly films that were only available at cinemas or in archival collections, was unsurprisingly, quite difficult, and these revivalists began seeking out surviving dancers from the period. Among these original lindy hoppers were Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Al Minns, Sugar Sullivan and Dean Collins.
Twenty years after these revivalists began learning lindy, there are thriving swing dance communities throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Korea. They come together in their local communities for classes and social dancing, and also travel extensively for camps and lindy exchanges. My research has focussed on the ways these contemporary swing dancers utilise a range of digital media in their embodied practices. This has involved discussing the way DJs in the swing community use digital music technology; the way swing dancers use discussion boards (Swing Talk, Dance History), instant messaging and email to keep in contact with dancers in their own community and overseas and to plan their own trips to other local scenes; and the ways in which swing dancers have use a range of audio visual technology. These uses of audio visual technology include the sorts of revivalist activities first practiced in the 1980s, but continuing now in lounge rooms and church halls in every local scene, but also to record their own dancing and local communities and also performances (on the social or competitive floor) by 'celebrity' lindy hoppers.
The Big Apple contest from Keep Punchin' is a useful example of the ways swing dancers make use of digital media in their embodied practices. But it's also the focus of my own dancing obsessions at the moment. I've been dancing lindy for at least eight years, and dance a few times a week in my local, Melbourne scene. I've travelled extensively within Australia to attend dance events, I've run events in my own city and I've travelled overseas for large dance events (such as the Herräng dance camp). This year, having just finished my Phd, I've decided I finally have time to work on my own dancing, in the sweaty, embodied sense, rather than the academic or abstract.
Writers in fan studies like Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills and Camille Bacon-Smith have discussed being a scholar-fan (to use Matt Hill's term), where you're a member of the community of fans you're researching. This approach is fairly standard in much of the dance studies literature - it is notoriously difficult to write about dance and dancing with any degree of convincingness if you don't dance - it's a little like dancing about architecture. I've also found that combining my academic work with my everyday, making my everyday experiences my work, has been a satisfying way to extend my fanatical obsession with dance into every corner of my life (a little like Henry's writing about Supernatural, a program I also love, here on this blog).
So when I decided I needed to get back to some level of dance fitness, to end the thesis-imposed hiatus from hardcore dance training, I chose this Big Apple and a number of other 'vintage' or 'authentic' jazz dance routines as my focus. I've learnt the Big Apple and Tranky Doo (another venerable jazz dance routine choreographed by Frankie Manning) before, but this was to be my first solo mission, using clips garnered almost entirely from the internet, though also making use of sections of an instructional DVD produced by a famous teaching couple.
Dancing alone is an essential part of lindy hop. The dance itself revolutionised the European partner dancing structure with its use of the 'break away', (which you can see danced by the last couple in the film After Seben), where partners literally broke away from each other to dance in 'open' position. In open, partners are free to improvise, and the most common improvisation in that historical moment and today, is to include jazz steps from the vast repertoire of steps developed by African American vernacular dance culture over centuries in America. Learning to dance alone not only offers dancers the opportunity to work on body awareness, fitness, coordination, individual styling and expanding their own repertoire (a point upon which I was relying), but also encourages a creative, improvised approach to music which they can then bring to their lindy hop for those 5 or 6 beats of the 8 count swing out - the foundational step of lindy hop.
I've written a great deal about the gender dynamics at work in lindy hop, a dance which prioritise the heterocentric pairing of a man and a woman, beginning with my own discomfort with a dance where the man leads, the woman follows, and traditional gender roles prevail. But I've also written a great deal about the liberatory potential of lindy. The open position and the emphasis on improvisation are an important part of this - in those moments both partners are expected to 'bring it' - to contribute to the creative exchange within the partnership. Lindy, as it was danced by African American dancers in that original creative moment, also embodies a history of resistance and transgression, as a dance with its roots in slavery and created during a period of institutionalised racism and oppression. One of my own research interests has been the extent to which the resistant themes of lindy hop, of African American vernacular dance, have been realised by contemporary swing dancers. The fact that most of these contemporary dancers are white, middle class urban heterosexual youth goes some way to discouraging my reading of contemporary swing dance culture as a hot bed of radical politics and revisions of dominant ideology and culture. Yet I have also found that lindy hop and African American vernacular jazz dances like the Big Apple structure and the Tranky Doo offer opportunities for the expression of self and resistance of dominant gender roles.
As a woman, and as a feminist, I've found that archival footage such as that Keep Punchin' clip offer opportunities for reworking the way I dance and participate in the public dance discourse. When we watch that Big Apple clip, while we can clearly see that each dancer is performing synchronised, choreographed steps, they are also clearly styling each step to suit their own aesthetic, athletic and social needs and interests. We see the personality of each dancer as they execute a set piece of choreography. The very concept of a Big Apple contest involves dancers performing specific steps as they are called, and being judged not only for their ability to dance the correct step in time and with alacrity, but more importantly (in a setting where dance competency, as Katrina Hazzard-Gordon has written, is demanded by the social setting - everyone can dance), for their individual interpretation of the step. This is a performance of improvisation within a socially, collaboratively created structure. The representation of individual identity within a consensual public discourse. This is the sort of thing that jazz musicians do - improvise within a given structure.
And man, is that some serious fun.
For contemporary swing dancers, the idea of taking particular formal structures and then reworking them to suit their own discursive needs extends from the dance floor to the mediated world. Online, swing dancers upload digital footage of themselves dancing, edited to best display their abilities. Or they edit whole narrative films like Hellzapoppin' and Day at the Races and edit out the sequences they're most interested in - the dancing. And dancers like myself are still watching these edited clips, recreating entire routines, and then, even more interestingly, editing out particular steps and integrating them into their lindy on the social dance floor, or into their own choreographed routines.
The notion of step stealing is not new in African American vernacular dance - it reaches back to Africa. And Frankie Manning himself is often quoted as saying 'dance it once and it's yours, dance it twice and it's mine'. For me, as a dancer, this is exciting stuff. If I put in the time and effort, I can learn these steps (well, some of them - watch that Hellzapoppin' clip and you'll see what I mean). And if I practice, time it properly and really bring it, I can pull that out on the social dance floor. Perhaps. Contemporary dancers enact that philosophy on the dance floor every day -stealing steps that catch their attention on the social dance floor, or 'ripping off' moves they see performed in footage of dancers in competitions or performances or in social dance settings all over the world. Or from seventy years ago.
For me, swing dancers' tactical use of digital media in their embodied use of archival footage is not only a source of academic fascination, but also a very practical skill to develop. I have had to learn how to watch footage of dancing in a way that lets me apply my knowledge of dance to separate out distinct steps, then figure out how they work, practically. Learning to poach dance steps from archival footage is a useful skill for lindy hoppers. But the testing of my skills is not online or in my ability to write and talk about these things. The real challenge to my creative and critical faculties comes on the dance floor, when I have to bring it - to bring the right step at the right time, but with my own unique, creative twist.
Bacon-Smith, Camille. (1992). Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
---. (2000). Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Clein, John, dir. (1939). Keep Punchin'. Film. Chor. Frank Manning. Perf. Frank Manning and Hot Chocolates. USA.
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. (1990). Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hills, Matt. (2002). Fan Cultures. London and New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York and London: Routledge.
Kaufman, S. J. (1929). After Seben. Short film. Perf. "Shorty" George Snowden. USA.
Potter, H. C., dir. (1941). Hellzapoppin'. Film. Chor. Frank Manning. Perf. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and Frank Manning. USA.
Solomon Douglas Swingtet. (2006). Swingmatism. USA.
Wood, Sam. (1939). A Day at the Races. Perf. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. USA.
"holy smokes" was posted in the category academia and lindy hop and other dances
i'm not sure I'm buying the whole 'flappers are great' line any more
Posted by dogpossum on January 31, 2007 4:00 PM
I've just read this review of a book I'd like to read, and while it's all good stuff, I have some concerns.
I'd been thinking of an article where I talked about the way the popularity of 20s charleston with contemporary swing dancers meant that, finally, it was ok for women to dance alone (again). Just like in the 20s. And then I was going to write about flappers and women's lib in the 20s. Reading the stuff I just have on blues women in the 20s, I could probably add a bit about how the 20s were just frickin' hardcore generally. Compared to the late 30s anyway, mid WWII when we were wearing silly overly fitted dresses and then busily being kicked out of jobs and back into the kitchen.
But then I read this bit of the review:
Women of the 1920s began votingAnd all I could think was 'sure, if they were white and lived in the US'. Votes for women weren't happening all over Europe in the 20s. And sure as fuck you weren't voting in AUSTRALIA if you weren't WHITE.
And then I thought about 20s charleston today and how the people who get out there and do it are generally the more advanced dancers (in 'mixed company' that is - when I'm at Funbags or other beginner-dominated gigs the noober dancers do all kinds of crazy shit without worrying that some frickin' rockstar is watching). It seems social 20s charleston is not the People's Dance as I had imagined it in two or three years ago.
I'm not sure I'm buying the whole 'flappers are great' line any more.
...and strangely, I'm reminded of the line from a Hot Club of Cowtown* song:
I can't tame wild women,A sentiment I heartily endorse.
But I can make tame women wild.
*If you don't know the HCOCT, you should. That's some hawt shit.
"i'm not sure I'm buying the whole 'flappers are great' line any more" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 30, 2007
the dark side of the swinguverse
Posted by dogpossum on January 30, 2007 5:54 PM
No, it's not all Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and solo jazz routines.
[Benji Schwimmer West Coast Swing Jack and Jill]
When I talk about 'groover' lindy in Melbourne, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. That's not lindy hop in that clip, it's west coast swing (a peculiarly American phenomenon - though we have our ceroc), and I have to admit that that's some pretty shmick dancing. Particularly when you keep in mind that that's a jack and jill comp (ie, they weren't actual dance partners - that's all made up shit). It's just that it's so... well, look at it.
That guy - he's some pretty hot stuff. I couldn't lead like that. But... you know what I mean.
Why isn't it lindy hop?
Ok, so once you get past the music (which is the sort of pap I hear far too regularly out lindy hopping here in Melbourne - especially the first song), there's the really upright bodies (even leaning backwards), the pointy toes, the lack of bounce, the heels on the ground (putting their weight backwards, rather than onto the front half of the foot)... it's a completely different bodily aesthetic. And very white. This is honky dancing (note the way they sort of nod down to the ground, then up. And flick their hair about).
It's almost latin, but look at their hips. There's no saucy Cuban isolation there.
But I do have to say - that's some pretty dang shmick dancing. Not my cup of tea, not one little bit (though it does look like fun), but that don't stop that being some pretty good leading and following.
.... do I have to mention the whole black pants, black dress shoes, red collared shirt thing? No. Nor do we need to talk about black pants and black crop tops.
[Don't Cha (Pussycat Dolls) - West Coast Swing demo]
Yep, that's that sweet west coast action as well.
And the scariest part of all this is that this sort of dancing is getting about in Melbourne, masquerading as lindy hop. And I. Don't. Like. It.
[edit: I can't stop watching that Benji clip. It's mesmerising. The Squeeze watched 10 seconds and left the room in disgust]
"the dark side of the swinguverse" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 26, 2007
Jimmie Lunceford Rhythm is our Business
Posted by dogpossum on January 26, 2007 2:42 PM
I'm currently enjoying (another) Jimmie Lunceford album called Rhythm is our Business. I can't find a link to it, I'm afraid. It seems that quite a few of these CDs I'm picking up second hand are actually ones that you could mail order or get as one of those monthly music club deals. So they're not on amazon or the other major music sites. Which sucks, because they're actually really great compilations - some unusual stuff that isn't on the more usual CDs.
Anyway, this Lunceford one is really neat. It has a few of my favourites (Hitting the Bottle (which I LOVE), Organ Grinder's Swing (great fun for dancing but goes over like a lead balloon with Melbournians because it has those tinkly 'organ' bits), Wham (Re-Bop-Boom-Bam) (fun lindy fun)), but also a couple of new things that I didn't have before. Perhaps the most interesting version of Black and Tan Fantasy I've heard so far. Most of the versions I have are by Ellington (as you'd expect), with a few other ordinary versions. But I really like this Lunceford one - it has a different intro and the initial trumpet solo feels quite different.
I'm a big fan of second hand CD shops, and regularly turn up nice surprises. Nice cheap surprises.
I was going to post a clip which I remember as Black and Tan Fantasy, but is actually something else (East St Louis Toodle-oo or something) with the Five Hot Shots or the Berry Brothers or somebody dancing...
...look, I'm having trouble remembering, ok?
Anyway, because I couldn't find any of those things on youtube (one search is enough), here's the Nicholas Brothers, who frickin' rock.
And because the 70s were a very strange place, here's the Nicholas Brothers with the Jacksons.
And because I can't keep away from youtube, here's something else:
Yes, there were skips dancing lindy in the 30s. Though I'm not sure Dean Collins counts as a skip - he was Jewish. That's some serious jazz action he and Jewell McGowan are pulling out, west coast lindy style.
The best bit of that clip is right near the end where the white dood sings Darktown Strutters' Ball - that's some seriously dodgy racial politics right there.
"Jimmie Lunceford Rhythm is our Business" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
January 25, 2007
meaningless side note
Posted by dogpossum on January 25, 2007 4:04 PM
When I follow, I find I'm spinning every third move. This is partly a Melbourne thing - the leads stand around a lot waiting for the follow to finish making them look good. They don't make much constructive use of horizontal (lateral?) space - perhaps a result of our relatively crowded dance floors, but most probably because there's a very particular dominant 'lead culture' in this town.
When I lead, I very very rarely do spins myself. It's directly related to my other life as a follow - I just get sick to death of the stupid things.
"meaningless side note" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
nerd
Posted by dogpossum on January 25, 2007 3:35 PM
The first recorded black woman blues singer (ie first black woman to record a non-religious commercially released song), Mamie Smith's 1920 song Crazy Blues had the lyrics:
I'm gonna do likea Chinaman... go and get some hop
Get myselfa gun... and shoot myself a cop.
That's about sixty years before NWA and Ice-T came along.
Adam Gussow (in "'Shoot myself a cop': Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues as Social Text" (Callaloo 25.1 (2002): 8-44) claims:
Ths song is... an insurrectionary social text, a document that transcends its moment by contributing to an evolving discourse of black revolutionary violence in the broadest sense - which is to say, black violence as a way of resisting white violence and unsettling a repressive social order (10).
Dang.
I'm doing some reading on blues and women blues singers of the 20s and 30s and it's hardcore stuff. No pussyfooting around this topic. I'm still working on ideas I wrote about briefly here, here and by extension here.
And to think a bunch of white middle class kids are using this shit to dance dirty at late night parties. Though I guess they were doing exactly the same thing in the 20s too.
I can't seem to get past the idea of the 20s as a far more radical moment than the late 30s. And the 20s were charleston time, flapper time - women dancing on their own, not wearing stockings, cutting their hair, staying up all night and getting divorced. While the 30s were lindy hop time, partner dancing, seriously tailored clothes with lots of darts and War Work.
It's really nice to have a chance to finally read and read on things that are entirely 'off-topic'. I can read whatever I like and write about whatever I like. I still can't get over that!
Meanwhile, I've done that paper I had to do and a draft of that guest blog post thing (which is scaring me - the pressure!). I've also got a stack of stuff about online community to read, including some neat stuff by Barry Wellman about the relationship between offline and online community. That dood is beginning to rock.
...I'm sure my interest in writing about seriously dance-related stuff (as opposed to more media-centered stuff) has lots to do with the fact that I'm actually going dancing more often than I have in a year - I dance pretty much every day and do at least 2 serious out-the-house dance things a week. My brain is ticking over all the time. And I feel like I have the time (and freedom from stress) to really think about ideas and make them coherent (sort of, anyway).
No doubt this is post-thesis euphoria and will soon be all over, replaced by some sort of post-thesis anxiety/depression/self-doubt.
For now I'm enjoying myself.
NERD!
"nerd" was posted in the category academia and article ideas and lindy hop and other dances
January 24, 2007
tranky doo update
Posted by dogpossum on January 24, 2007 10:57 AM
Ok, so I've been working on the tranky doo for about a month (or three weeks - I can't remember which). Even for as slow a learner as I, that's sufficient time to ....
look, why can't I write in English today?
....anyway, I've pretty much learnt the Tranky Doo now. There are a couple of bits where I'm not exactly sure of the timing (is it 2 or 4 repeats of the 'ooh-aah' towards the end there?), but I have ironed out some confusions (Dan suggests doing left-right-left-right rather than triple step at the end of the second fall off the log in the first phrase to stop me being early). I can do it at full speed (192bpm) quite happily.
I've also discovered it's being taught here in March. Dang. But I'm hoping it's the Hot Shots part of the teaching team - Hannah and Matthias - teaching it so I can get their super styling happening.
Or, as I've pointed out to Dan, we need to strut this baby old school before that weekend so we can get maximum show-off value for our effort.
At any rate, the Tranky Doo no longer holds sufficient appeal for the hour of practice I'm doing every day (yes, it's true - but I'd like to be able to walk without falling over, and dancing helps with that). I have decided the next stop on my Tour of Venerable Jazz Routines will be the Big Apple:
Mostly because I've been writing about the way the Big Apple incorporated bits of the Tranky Doo (we love you Frankie). But also because it's a fricking KICK ARSE routine!
I've also just realised that I've failed to mention (in that paper) that there've been at least two bands who've recreated the arrangements of the nameless (and fairly ordinary) song in that clip. That fascinates me - not only are dancers recreating routines from archival footage, but musicians are recreating music from the footage. And it's important to remember that the arrangement of a particular song (ie writing out all the parts of all the instruments) is often 'ear marked' by particular bands. So each great band leader would have a particular take on a big song, marked by their arrangement.
Some of these arrangements suck arse. Some rock. And this is where you realise that a truly great big band was more than its leader or soloists or rhythm section or vocalists - it was also about the arranger(s) and composer(s).
I will report back on the Big Apple and let you know how I'm going. If I can ever get up the guts I'll film myself so you can all have a good laugh.
But here's pic of some Australian (and New Zealand) dancers doing the routine to tide you over:
"tranky doo update" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 20, 2007
bert's recent intensive spate in musical theatre has served him up an order of pointed-toes and glamour-arms
Posted by dogpossum on January 20, 2007 8:58 PM | Comments (0)
It was totally fricking hot and humid last night, and while I went out intending to repeat my crazy-dancing-like-a-fool Thursday night action, the heat (and rather ordinary floor) disuaded me. I ended up hanging out with Bert*, who's not been out dancing in FAR TOO LONG.
We are stunt buddies from way back (remind me to tell you about the time we convinced a group of Taswegians we were professional stuntmen/women. Truly. And the best bit was that we look like people who like to prop up bars. Because we do), and while we're both a little out of condition, we decided the front stairs of Forever Dance have gone too long without our attention. My describing pakour in great detail only encouraged our belief in our own abilities.
Unfortunately, we discovered it's been a bit of a while since we were in proper stunt condition. Coming down the first half of the stairs on my chest/shoulders/back I realised I had no actual control and was actually falling down the stairs. I decided I'd quit while was ahead - a bit of carpet burn and a slight scare was enough. I was also a little put off by the way the carpet grit was clinging attractively to my supersweaty skin.
But, as Bert has pointed out on prior stunt occasions, stunts aren't for babies.
So we tried a little pakour, using available resources (mostly just two hand rails down the stairs, a couple of door knobs and a side table). Despite our clear 'thinking like a child' skills, we failed to anything other than very B-grade traceurs. Unfortunately Bert's recent intensive spate in musical theatre** has served him up an order of pointed-toes and glamour-arms. And my recent spate of uninterrupted gluttony and sloth has gone some way in reducing my aerodynamicness. I also found that pakour + serious heat and humidity + laughing uproariously at oneself = difficulty breathing.
The most important thing we learnt last night was that pakour goes far better if you shout "Pakour!" as you throw yourself into the air.
*Bert watches old 20s/30s/40s comedy films to rip off stunts - he's into things like Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the three stooges, etc.
**He really has been doing musical theatre. I was very disappointed when his brush with drag queening was necessarily brief - only one scene in Shout. I had high costuming hopes.
"bert's recent intensive spate in musical theatre has served him up an order of pointed-toes and glamour-arms" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
she's a freakin' gun
Posted by dogpossum on January 20, 2007 11:56 AM | Comments (2)
Apparently Sylvia Sykes is coming to Sydney (and Perth - but that's far away) in February (23rd, 24th and 25th to be exact). That's a bit exciting. I'm seriously considering going, and trying desperately to find a way to afford it.
See this clip below? That's Manu (my lead-hero and one of my favourite teachers) dancing with her in a Jack and Jill in 2002. In a J&J you're paired up with a partner on the spot - so it's all improvised, all made up, and you often don't know your partner or have never danced with them before (though in a pro J&J, that's not always the case. Pro J&J's are really good fun to watch. See Manu's response to discovering he's dancing with Sylvia? That's how everyone would feel - this chick's a freakin' gun.
Sylvia is one of the original revivalist dancers, a serious balboa specialist (check her out here, dancing balboa with the partner who's coming to Australia with her) and all round blow-your-pants-off amazing dancer. She is a Hollywood style lindy hopper (or was - now she's just dah bomb), and I amn't, but I'm really keen on learning from her. When she writes on her site that she is a 'teacher's teacher', it's true - she's the person teachers learn from. There's been a ripple of interest all over Melbourne, and even hardcore un-balboa people are interested. Even Frankie* wants to dance with her.
Thing is, watching her, you mightn't think she was all that, especially compared to the flashier, younger doods. But she's a crafts(wo)man. That's some freakin' amazing technical action.
*Frankie Manning is in his 90s now (!!!). He's one of the most famous choreographers/dancers/performers from the 30/40s and you can see him in Hellzapoppin' (in the routine he choreographed - I think he did... I forget...) in a pair of overalls. He likes the ladies.
Sometimes when I'm thinking 'dang, I'm too old for this lindy shit', I think of Frankie and realise I have about 60 years to go before I can claim I'm too old for lindy. And even then...
...I have to add, all the clips in this post feature unchoreographed dancing... Sylvia is just following, and following three blokes with completely different styles.
"she's a freakin' gun" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 18, 2007
the thought of dancing in the third person
Posted by dogpossum on January 18, 2007 5:06 PM | Comments (0)
If you drop in over here, you'll see that things are sounding a lot like a whole lot of swing dancers with too little to occupy their immediate attention.
I have only two things to add:
1. I wrote my thesis in the first person and began each chapter with an anecdote, not to mention peppering the whole thing with talk about me. This is partly because I was actually spending a bit of time talking about how to do research as scholar-fan (to use Matt Hills' term)/member of the community you're researching. But mostly it was because I am a hopeless narcissist. It simply became ridiculous to write about this stuff without the first person - imagine all this in not-first-person (apologies - this is from a not-final-draft):
My earliest experience with swing dance was framed by university culture. As the social convenor for my postgraduate association in 1999, I was asked to organise a group expedition to a local venue that featured a live jazz band and swing dance classes. I fell instantly in love. Moving to Melbourne in 2001 for postgraduate study, I found the local swing dance community offered a natural complement to the work and culture of academic life, and quickly became a ‘serious dancer’. Five years later, I am well familiar with ‘the zone’ and all its attractions, have devoted countless hours and dollars to its pursuit, and become firmly entangled in both the local and international swing dance community. This doctoral thesis signals not only the completion of years of academic study in cultural studies and media studies, but also my critical engagement with a community and hobby which has played such a large part in my life.A large part of the introduction, from which this bit was taken, is devoted to my figuring out how to talk about and write about a community of which I am a part. I did try writing in the not-first-person. It was mostly ok until I started trying to talk about what it felt like to actually dance. Then it just got dumb.During my time in the swing dancing community, my interest has frequently been arrested by:
1) the encouragement and embodiment of traditional gender roles and social relations in the dance;
2) the ways in which these embodied dance practices and representations of identity are managed by communications media and technology; and
3) by the discursive activities of institutions and organisations within the community.
I am continually surprised by the way traditional gender roles are enforced in contemporary swing dance culture, despite the more liberal examples offered by the African American history of swing dances. I am also struck by the capitalist nature of contemporary swing dance culture articulated by dance schools and institutions, again, despite the social history of African American vernacular dance. These issues have led me to a more comprehensive research project where I asked how embodied dance practice in this community have been mediated by technology and institutions, and what are the effects of this mediation?Much of what I have observed in terms of media practice in contemporary swing dance culture echoes the literature dealing with media fandom in cultural studies. In this small community of interest, members adopt active and creative approaches to texts and discourse, routinely poaching ideas and structures from official discourses and media texts to create new creative works. Fan studies offers me a means by which to approach my research, not only in terms of theoretical frameworks, but also in terms of considering my role as a researcher who is also a member of the community I am studying. Despite my interest in media use within this community, swing dancers are, above all else, dancers, engaged in embodied discourse and cultural practice, always with an eye to social engagement with other dancers.
In fact, one of the major arguments in my work is that the divide between performer and audience in concert dance is a marker of middle class Anglo ideological stuff.
Here's some stuff from the paper I'm trying to write writing.
African American vernacular dance of the swing era, with its emphasis on improvisation and the creative contribution of individual dancers, rather than the prioritisation of choreographed performances and of choreographers as orchestrating artists, presents a public discourse that demands individual contributions. Social standing is assured by the ability to produce improvised or innovative new steps or variations on familiar steps, making public contributions to public discourse, representing the self in community discourse. A popular phrase in contemporary swing dance culture, shouted to encourage dancers in competitions or in jams or battles on the social dance floor, epitomises this notion: “Bring it!†And what is being brought to this discourse is an authentic or convincing self. Make it real or dance real feelings (whether these are anger or joy or derision or ironic humour), or stay off the floor....and then...
Ward makes this distinction: “there is a categorical divide between dancers and the audience in performance dance …that does not exist between dancers and spectators in social dance, where those roles are interchangeable†(18). I read this dynamic relationship between the roles of ‘spectator’ and ‘dancer’ in social or vernacular dance as a clear example of the ways in which readers participate in the making of meaning in textual interpretation. Thomas DeFrantz describes the call-and-response between performers and audiences in African American music and dance in "Believe the Hype", arguing that this structure is carried on into other media forms, and he takes music video and film as his key examples.In the case of dance, the text is a dance, or a dancer’s body, or just ‘dancing’, and the reader makes meaning through reading this text not only as a spectator, but also through their knowledge as dancers. This ability to make meaning even from unfamiliar choreography is facilitated by the cultural knowledge of movement that we all learn as social beings within a community. We know that this is dance, we recognise it as such in this moment, because we have danced, we have seen dance before. We have occupied and are occupying the roles of spectator and performer and are culturally familiar with this as dance.
I can promise you only that more quotes from my thesis will be forthcoming. No one will ever read the bloody thing if I don't, and fuck, we endorse strutting in our house.
I will also, no doubt, continue to quote from papers until I get them under control. I am working at home, alone, and don't see another acka type person more than once or twice a semester. This is the online equivalent of talking to yourself.
But, wait, my second thing:
2) If the first person is using 'I' and the third person is saying things like "dogpossum disapproves of most things" and "today dogpossum will take her tea at her desk, though she will consider wearing pants so as to avoid unfortunate scorchings", what's the second person? Is it (to make oh, perhaps another quote from a little thing I've just finished)...
In the zone, you respond without thinking, your senses taken up by the music, by your partner and by your own emotional responses in a state or way of being that can only be described as – thinking with the body.
???
I think this is the sort of question that &Duck could answer.
.... look, I'm still giggling at the thought of dancing in the third person. One of the indelible rules of partner dancing is that you have to stop thinking to make it work. And one of the most excellent bits of my research has been the way thinking academically about dancing on the dance floor is the one sure way of having a really crap dance.
oo, oo, I'd really like to write a bit about choreography and the 'third person' in that process. There's some really fabulous stuff written on the choreographic process and its ideological function/context. I'm a big fan of the idea of improvisation as choreography, which suggests that you make shit up as you go along, so the new steps you create are necessarily function-first. This is of course in direct contradiction with the sort of tortured-artist-in-an-ivory-studio idea that gets trundled along in ballet and concert dance (and much of dance studies - you should see how excited they get about the idea of geneologies of dance - where they trace the influence a particular teacher had on a line of dancers/students).
[edit: oops. forgot some references:
DeFrantz, Thomas. “Believe the Hype!: Hype Williams and Afro-Futurist Filmmaking.†Unpublished paper. Spectacle, Rhythm and Eschatology: A Symposium. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 24th July 2003.
Ward, Andrew. "Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance)." Dance in the City. Ed. Helen Thomas. London: Macmillan, 1997. 3-20. ]
[another edit: I also like the way it's assumed that blogging is about telling the truth. Whether you're writing with emotional honesty or with careful logic and supporting linkage. Surely I'm not the only one who's digging the implied gendered assumptions about writing here?]
"the thought of dancing in the third person" was posted in the category academia and clicky and lindy hop and other dances
happy coincidence
Posted by dogpossum on January 18, 2007 1:34 PM | Comments (6)
I'm doing a bit of research on youtube for this paper I'm doing (and discovering in the process that deciding to 'stop reading', while a fabulous tool for getting the thesis done, has left me... oh, at least a few years behind the published world of academia), and have come across this neat article on M/C by Paula Geyh. Do go read it - it's only a little thing, and does the nicest job of combining talk about bodies, urban space and D&G I've seen yet.
I am a massive big nerd for anything to do with bodies and dance/gymnastics/beautiful, rhythmic movement, and this stuff on parkour (which I've also heard referred to as urban junglism) is absolutely right up my alley.
To quote directly from wikipedia:
Parkour (IPA: [paÊ.'kuÊ], often abbreviated PK) is a physical discipline of French origin in which the participant — called a traceur (/tÊa.'sÅ“Ê/) — attempts to pass in obstacles in the fastest and most direct manner possible. The obstacles can be anything in the environment, so parkour is often practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures, such as buildings, rails, and walls.And to continue with a quote from Geyh's article,
Defined by originator David Belle as “an art to help you pass any obstacleâ€, the practice of “parkour†or “free running†constitutes both a mode of movement and a new way of interacting with the urban environment. Parkour was created by Belle (partly in collaboration with his childhood friend Sébastien Foucan) in France in the late 1980s. As seen in the following short video “Rush Hourâ€, a trailer for BBC One featuring Belle, parkour practitioners (known as “traceursâ€), leap, spring, and vault from objects in the urban milieu that are intended to limit movement (walls, curbs, railings, fences) or that unintentionally hamper passage (lampposts, street signs, benches) through the space.
So when we watch footage of that parkour stuff, we're watching a combination of practical (yet wonderfully imaginative and creative) urban locomotion. But the bit that catches my interest is the repeatedly quoted line from Sebastien Foucan,
"And really the whole town was there for us; there for free running. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children." This, as he describes, is "the vision of Parkour." (Wikipedia article)
I like that idea - thinking like a child. This is play. But it also involes a creative and unconscious approach to physical activity. One of the things I've noticed about swing dancers - they're particularly keen to try new things, particularly sports, physical activities, games, tricks and 'stunts'. I think it's because they've discovered that you have to just try things (as Sugar Sullivan would shout at us in class - "If you don't try to dance it, you will never dance it!"), throw yourself into activities, even if you're likely to look foolish or fall over. When you know the limits of your body, you can trust yourself to do things which appear physically difficult. And when you're used to experimenting physically, you stop worrying about looking foolish or being embarassed.
As an example, I am frequently (if not always) the only woman leading in aerials classes. I hear comments about how leads (or bases) should be physically strong, and there's certainly a degree of posturing by some male dancers in regards to being a base. But the truth of the matter is, if you have good technique and do moves correctly, you don't need to be ridiculously strong at all. I'm no stronger than the average woman, and certainly not as strong as most men my size, but I know that I can lift my partner up onto my shoulder and flip her over. Because I know how to use my body effectively, and work with her body. You are in greater danger of hurting yourself or your partner if you enter these activities with some grandiose idea of your own strength, or, conversely, with the idea that you're going to get hurt. In learning aerials, the conventional 'female = weak/vulnerable', 'male = strong and protective' is rubbish. Self reliance, good communication, solid technique and using spotters are key parts of safe aerials
But back to the parkour people...
There's lots of talk about military obstacle courses and so on in discussions of parkour, and escaping and leaping and reaching (the latter two I quite like, as ideas), but I'm really struck by the emphasis on creative responses to obstacles, yet with a practical eye. Ostentatious flips are debated - are they un-pakour because they're aesthetic (an unnecessary) embelishments?
But the part of this that I'm really interested in, is Geyhr's references to flow:
One might even say that the urban space is re-embodied — its rigid strata effectively “liquified.†In Jump London, the traceur Jerome Ben Aoues speaks of a Zen-like “harmony between you and the obstacle,†an idealization of what is sometimes described as a state of “flow,†a seemingly effortless immersion in an activity with a concomitant loss of self-consciousness. It suggests a different way of knowing the city, a knowledge of experience as opposed to abstract knowledge: parkour is, Jaclyn Law argues, “about curiosity and seeing possibilities — looking at a lamppost or bus shelter as an extension of the sidewalkâ€Flow is something that's come up in swing dance discussions. I've mentioned it very briefly in my own work, but without using that term.
Dancers often talk about being 'in the zone'. As with that notion of flow, the zone is the place where you stop consciously directing your body, but respond to the music, to the weight changes and posture and movements of your partner on an almost instinctive level. I think it's important to point out that this point of flow or zone is only achievable if your body and reactions are at a particular level of ability. To make this work, you must have a degree of body awareness, a stability of core, clear lines of alignment in joints and muscles and bones, some level of fitness and a willingness to 'give in' or 'surrender' what I call 'high brain stuff'. You have to stop planning and to just give in and move.
Needless to say, this is one of the most wonderful parts of dancing, and the point to which most dancers reach toward. It's often the motivation for travelling internationally or interstate to attend exchanges, where the sleep deprivation and intense socialising helps bring that point of flow closer. It's something that newer dancers don't feel, but suddenly, at about a couple of years, suddenly do feel, and get seriously addicted.
The thing that catches my attention in the discussion of parkour is that this flow is about the relationship between body and environment. With dancers, it is about body and body and floor.
So go read that nice article, if only to check out the neat clip.
Geyh, Paula. "Urban Free Flow: A Poetics of Parkour." M/C Journal. 9.3 (2006). 18 Jan. 2007
Photo from this site, a photo by a parkour dood, uploaded to parkour.net
"happy coincidence" was posted in the category academia and clicky and lindy hop and other dances
January 16, 2007
herrang is not for babies
Posted by dogpossum on January 16, 2007 11:16 AM
"herrang is not for babies" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 15, 2007
more gratuitous lindy
Posted by dogpossum on January 15, 2007 5:06 PM
Check that out - that's Sugar Sullivan and Peter Loggins doing the stops routine. Sugar rocks. Peter is nuts. Their classes were favourite.
More Sugar and Peter goodness.
And Sugar in the 50s:
"more gratuitous lindy" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 12, 2007
round up
Posted by dogpossum on January 12, 2007 4:10 PM
Just in case you were wondering why I'd suddenly gone all boring...
I've been very busy writing a paper for a media convergence collection/special ed of a journal/thingy. So I am making a really crappy rough draft at the moment. Soon it will be beautiful, but before it's beautiful, the editing will be horrible. I really enjoy writing (when I'm not all blocked) and write very quickly, so I feel like I'm accomplishing. I do not, however, write good first drafts - I need to edit and edit and edit and edit to make it look nice.
This paper, briefly, is about the AV stuff in my thesis. I've added on a nice bit about youtube, which was very exciting - youtube has made major changes in the world of online dance clips, and the whole 'free' and 'easily accessed' thing, as well as embedding clips in blogs and the sheer, wonderful quantity of obscure footage uploaded to the site make it a fabulous resource for dancers. It's also made some interesting changes in the economy of clip exchange in the swinguverse (to a certain extent). I've added a bit about the Silver Shadows stuff I wrote about in this entry, as it makes for a really nice example of the sorts of things I'm talking about. Not to mention the whole convergence thing.
I still haven't done the 'guest' post. But at least I've had some ideas. Once I've gotten this convergence paper done, I'm going to write something about radio and swing dancers. Now there's a bit of convergent action. I'm especially interested in the way the Yehoodi Talk Show used video podcasting (a visual element to its radio podcast) in the last edition. That's some awesome shit. Especially as they spent a fair bit of that podcast watching video clips they'd found on youtube, google movies, etc. Talk about nice timing. It all flows on nicely from my stuff on DJing and uses of sound/audio technology there.
I actually had a paper in the latest edition of Continuum if you're interested in reading some of the sort of work I'm doing. It's actually a refereed paper from the CSAA conference-before-last and I'm not actually convinced it's much good. I know I've written better. Hopefully this paper I'm doing now will be nicer.
...ok, so the other thing I've been doing is working on this. It's still looking fairly crap, but I do like the way it's going. I've not tested it in anything other than Safari (bad me), so if you're using Internet Exploder - sucked in! I doubt I'll ever actually do anything with this site once it's done (despite it's fairly high hits when I was running it more regularly), but I do like a bit of focussed web design. Viva la css!
Anyway, doing a little work on that this afternoon (paper in the morning, coding in the afternoon, then a mandatory tranky doo break in the late afternoon), I came across this thing on aural style sheets in the W3 website.
It caught my attention as I'd recently read Barista's entry on deafness stuff and my interest was caught. I'd read another comment on Barista's blog a while back about accessability, and I guess it's just been percolating in there for a while. I'm a bit strict about accessability (to a certain extent) because living with The Squeeze has made me aware of things like colours and how underlining links all the time is actually very important for colour blind people. Or even people who see colours in different ways.*
So the thought of styling websites to make them more accessible for people who use screen readers...!
I will read more about it and report back later. Meanwhile, if you know anything about this or have any ideas, points, please do drop them in the comments.
*The Squeeze actually bypasses all this shit by just reading the internet on his feedreader. Except when he's looking at photos.
"round up" was posted in the category academia and article ideas and lindy hop and other dances and webbing
January 3, 2007
because I am a giant dance nerd...
Posted by dogpossum on January 3, 2007 4:43 PM
...I'm also posting this clip of Frida and Skye dancing at the ALHC (American Lindy Hop Championships - a very 'proper' dance comp and nothing like the ULHS and other comps I've blogged before).
I am very behind - it's a 2005 clip, and look, we're all in 2007 now!
This is some awesome dancing - it looks unchoreographed, and really displays Skye's unusual personality - he and Frida are one scary combination. Scary in an entirely un G-rated way.
"because I am a giant dance nerd..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
the cranky poo
Posted by dogpossum on January 3, 2007 4:25 PM
I can now do all this part of the (renamed by The Squeeze in light of recent displays of dancing ineptitude in our house) Cranky Poo:
Well, the whole first 40 seconds of that routine. Then I get confused (it's not really my fault - we didn't have the timing solid for the next section when we were learning it). I'm also suspecting that Mike is a bit too ahead of himself in that clip and this one with the amazing Frida:
Now, I could be wrong on Mike's timing (most probably, considering my wonderful work learning this routine to date), but...
Having said that, he does have lovely arms, and lovely, big movements.
My admiration for this young man is, of course, entirely G-rated.
"the cranky poo" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 30, 2006
big apple, tranky doo, cultural transmission in dance and nerdy jazz fans
Posted by dogpossum on December 30, 2006 3:26 PM
Look out: this post is a bit crapworthy. I think I've found my idea for the article, but it needs some work. But I just had to wack this down now while it's on my mind (and just before I ping ding to the Laundry to see a band and do some dancing). My current mission is to learn the tranky doo routine. I am crap at learning routines. Yesterday I spent an hour and half trying to learn this version of the tranky doo (because I love Manu), and only figured out three phrases. That's some sad arse transcription/learning on my part. These stoods (in that clip) would probably have learnt that routine in an hour or hour and a half.
Doing a little youtube browsing today (as one does when one is waiting for one's Squeeze to get up), I discovered the following neat clip:
That's the Silver Shadows (whose members include Todd & Naomi, Skye & Frida, Andy & Nina, Peter & Caitlin - all young, 'famous' dancers of the type generally referred to as rock stars) there, performing a routine at the midwest lindy fest. Now, that's some seriously excellent lindy hopping there (and you can see more of the Silver Shadows if you do a search for them on youtube - their 2005 ULHS performance was amazing), but even more interestingly, that's some seriously excellent use of music there.
Have a look at the following clip, but more importantly, have a listen to this clip.
You'll notice (well, you might), that the riff that pops up at about 1.29mins is repeated in the track on that first Silver Shadows clip (at about 1.44 - when the crowd goes utterly nuts). I'm not really sure, but that sounds like an edited combination of songs on the Silver Shadows clip (I could be wrong though). Even if it's not an edited collection of songs and is one single song referencing all those other important songs, this is still important stuff.
Historically, various riffs would pop up in a range of popular jazz songs across bands and often across moments in time during theh 20s, 30s and 40s - the 'swing era' (as that's my era of interest). Individual musicians would play a particular solo, or a particular bit of melody/arrangement would be reproduced in another song, elsewhere.
This is very textual poaching stuff - jazz was all about the 'cut and paste' or 'sampling' deal.
The thing that makes this Silver Shadows routine so fascinating (and so wonderful) is the way they've combined various bits of iconic dance routines, to a song (or song-melange) which combines iconic combinations of notes and arrangements.
If you're not familiar with the songs, or with the choreography of these iconic routines (and if you do a search of 'whitey's lindy hoppers' and 'harlem congaroos' you'll find the original sections of film on youtube), you won't recognise this stuff in the Silver Shadows' choreography.
That they began with the song Savoy (by Lucky Millinder I think), which is named for the famous Savoy Ballroom where the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers were based (and which is credited as the birthplace of lindy hop), and this is a fairly nice indication of where they go with the routine and their particular style of lindy hop. These are pretty solid recreationist doods, digging 'authentic' music and lindy.
So when you watch that clip, you see the dancers pull out a bit of the Big Apple routine from the film Keep Punchin'. And to make this moment of intertextuality/cultural transmission/textual poaching even more wonderful, that routine in the original film (as choreographed by Frankie Manning for a combination of Whitey's Lindy Hopper dancers) also includes parts of the Tranky Doo.
And here's Al Minns and Leon James (more Savoy dancers) doing the Tranky Doo (note the references to Marshall Stearns, who wrote the important book on African American jazz dance Jazz Dance):
And because it's difficult to see Al and Leon properly in that footage, check out Mike and Nina (Nina is in the Silver Shadows) doing a demonstration of the Tranky Doo steps here:
The Tranky Doo is another piece of choreography from this early era of lindy hop, one that's become a bit popular with young swing dancers today.
And to round all of this off, the Big Apple is a dance with its roots in Africa. Here's a big chunk of my thesis about Big Apples:
John F. Szwed and Morton Marks (32) discuss the importance of called dances in African American musical history, noting the relationship between dance and musical form. Dancers were challenged by callers to perform the called steps to the best of their ability in the earliest moments of black appropriations of European folk dances. Credible performances required dancers not only be familiar with named steps, but also be able to perform them immediately, and often with variations on the step that still maintained a recognised structure. This discussion echoes a tradition from earliest African dance. Hazard-Gordon notes that “the challenge posed by the fiddler-caller, familiar to West Africans, calls upon the dancer to perform difficult combinations of steps. The best performers are those who can meet the challenge while maintaining control and coolness†(Jookin’ 21).
Malone and others draw clear connections between the ring dances of Africa, the ring Shouts of African American gospel churches and with ring dances of the 20s and 30s such as the Big Apple. The Ring Shout was a slaves’ reworking of ancient African ritual, remade to accord with European religious expectations. Performed in a ring, most often in churches or religious services, Ring Shouts placed an emphasis on innovative interpretations of set moves (Stearns and Stearns 27). The Big Apple, popular in the 1920s and 30s and choreographed by New York dancer Frankie Manning, reworked the Ring Shout with new, formal choreography and was performed in a circle by partnered and solo dancers. A range of other ‘Apples’ were popular throughout the period, and are today in contemporary swing culture, joined by new pieces such as the Japanese swing dancers’ ‘Fuji Apple’ and unchoreographed version.
In their simplest forms, ‘Apples’ are ‘called’, requiring dancers to perform steps chosen and demonstrated by a leader, a role that is shared by all in the circle. The more complex and famous Apples were more strictly choreographed – as with the Big Apple – but individuals’ executions of these set steps were always marked by individual style and variation often with a competitive edge. Despite the constraints of called dances, Big Apples in swing dance maintained a strong sense of improvisation and a valuing of innovation. The proving of a dancer’s skill lay not only in their recognising the step called, but in their interpretation and performance of that step. Footage of Frankie Manning’s dance troupe the Hot Chocolates performing his Big Apple (Keep Punchin’ 1939), is still consulted by dancers today, and aptly demonstrates the importance of individual creative styling of choreographed steps in this historical moment.
I think the reason that I get all excited about these sorts of things, is that these connections between archival film, historical African American vernacular dance, jazz music forms and practice and so on are fascilitated by the internet (my use of youtube just there was pretty important), yet are also dependent on access to archival film footage, the instruction of surviving dancers from the 1930s, individual dancers getting together now to work on this stuff (and the Silvers Shadows' dancers are from all over the US and include Frida from Sweden), and then (perhaps most importantly), dancers in the audience (whether there on the night or later online) recognisingall this cross-referencing and clever textual poaching.
This is community media use and practice in action. And, I think, one of the most exciting parts of using dancers as a case study: here are some doods using digitial media in really complex and sophisticated ways, yet with this technology always subsidiary to the embodied dance act. The communal embodied dance act.
Useful references:
Peter and the crew discuss the big apple on jassdance.org
"big apple, tranky doo, cultural transmission in dance and nerdy jazz fans" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 28, 2006
very un-cultural studies of me
Posted by dogpossum on December 28, 2006 12:01 PM
I've been writing a bit about women and blues music and dance lately, my ideas fed in part by my research for the thesis, but also (and perhaps more importantly), stimulated by my own experiences as a woman in the swing dance community.
I've been asked to do a guest spot on a fairly spec online culture blog, writing specifically about my own research. I've had a bit of a think about it, not much, I must admit, as I've been a bit distracted, and really, I just can't seem to put anything together in my head. I mean, I have no idea what I'd like to write about. I've kind of got stage fright. This is the first mass-public airing of my work where I'm likely to get/see immediate feedback (in the form of comments), and unlike academic journals or conference papers, I feel there's a bit of pressure to write well and accessibly. I do think that the format is quite different - shorter, lots of linkage, etc etc.
And while I just know that this is a fabulous opportunity, I can't seem to put my ideas together.
I'd quite like to do something like this hot and cool entry (with some tidying and a more coherent structure and, well point), but I'm not sure how to start.
I actually got to the hot/cool entry by way of this entry on women, blues and dance, which developed from this (fairly ordinary) entry on the same topic. And of course, that was a response to Kate's responses to a CD I sent her with a copy of a blues set I did a few weeks ago.
Of course, for me the most interesting part of this whole chain of thinking is the fact that we began with a set list posted on the internet, which is something I have started doing recently as a replacement for the fairly fizzly thread on the Swing Talk board where we did list our set lists ages ago, but which has recently fallen out of favour.
I found that thread particularly useful as a beginner DJ - I could see what sorts of songs different DJs in Australia are playing, the ways they're combining them, and then (perhaps even more interesting) I could read their own comments on the sets and how they went. I read that thread in conjunction with this DJ bubs thread (which gets interesting on the second page) and the Swing DJs board, where I'm too scared to post. And of course, I also spent a great deal of time clicking between amazon.com (or cduniverse.com) and allmusic (a site which used to be better) for sound clips and musicans' bios respectively. Radio programs like Hey Mr Jesse, which are only delivered online as podcasts have recently become really important to me (I don't think it's a coincidence, as Jesse has been producing this show since January 2006 and I started DJing in February of this year).
Talking about DJing in person, with real, live DJs has played a suprisingly small part in my learning to DJ. I think this is in part because I prefer to dance when I'm not DJing, dance venues generally aren't too good for talking about DJ, and I'm not really interested in getting together to talk DJing - I'd rather talk about other crap. I do discuss levels and technology when I'm DJing or when someone else is DJing - I ask knowledgeable friends questions like "why does that sound like shit?" and then do a little hypothetical problem solving.
These were the sorts of resources that I was using to help me learn how to DJ. I was full of ideas about DJing (in part prompted by my thesis work and chapter on DJing, but not entirely - I found that most of my theoretical ideas about DJing were actually bullshit and needed to be revised post-practical experience), and feeling creative and inspired. The fact that DJing is nine tenths compulsive CD collecting and song cataloguing no doubt helped me along (I can stop whenever I want. I don't have a problem. I don't need to organise things. No way).
Posting set lists (and posting my discussions of them), getting feedback from more experienced DJs, and learning about DJing from reading their posts, in combination with all those other sources helped me get a handle on DJing. I must add, without the practical experience of DJing, none of these things would have been any good to me at all. And of course, most of my ideas about DJing and how to DJ are in turn fostered by my own dance experience - both in Melbourne over the years and overseas - and and by listening and dancing to other DJs' sets.
I think it's also important to note that all this online toing and froing is a really interesting aspect of swing DJs' activities generally - I wrote about this in the chapter on DJing. Because we live so far apart (particularly in Australia), the internet has developed as a fabulous tool for networking between DJs, for the development of skills (and increasingly for me), networking with event organisers for scoring gigs. Travel has also been important, as it gives me a chance to touch base with DJs from out of town.
And, of course, I have to make note of the fact that I know only one female DJ from out of state who has a decent amount of experience and comes out dancing regularly or posts on Swing Talk. Here in Melbourne, there are far more female DJs than in other scenes, in part (I think) as a result of the recent 'opening up' of DJing at major venues like CBD (which has so many sets to fill each month and has been organised by people who have been clearly interested in expanding the DJing base in Melbourne), and (to a degree), the importance of buddying between new DJs. Glancing over the DJing roster for CBD in January, I can see that six out of the eight DJs rostered on are female. I also note that of those eight DJs, there are only perhaps two who I'd make an effort to go dancing for. Of all these DJs, most tend to play far beyond the limits of 'swinging jazz', with only three (myself included) playing (almost exclusively) swinging jazz from the 1930s-50s.
I have wondered if the serious emphasis on the cultural (and material) capital required for playing swinging jazz is exclusive - does it discourage women? I would suspect so. The largely exclusive language of sites like Swing DJs requires a fair bit of dancing (and listening) experience, and most of the DJs on this one sample list have only a couple of years dancing experience. The least proficient have also travelled the least (and travel, of course, demands lots of dosh). On a further note, only two of the DJs on this list are determinedly not interested in acquiring their music by illegal or file-sharing means. They are, also, the ones with the greatest interest in swinging jazz.
How do I feel about all this? I think it's quite clear (as I wrote in my thesis) that becoming a 'good' DJ (and I think that ability is a combination firstly (and most importantly) of DJing ability - combining songs, keeping the floor full, ranging across a variety of moods and styles - and musicall collection - playing swinging jazz) is restricted to those with the time, money and opportunity to invest. I feel uneasy with my personal insistence that 'good DJs' are those who play swinging jazz, even though I know that playing unswing results in inevitable adjustments to lindy hop technique (most of which I think are not good - they result in a simpler, musically and techically less interesting dance). I feel (on some level) that I should be ok with DJs playing unswing, as unswing is more accessible and therefore a means by which more women (and less financially well off DJs) can get access to the DJing role.
I have written at length about the ways in which the 'recreationist' imperative of many swing dancers is a discomforting (and selective) use of history which (as I have said before) neglects the darker parts of African American history and eventually recreates scary gender stuff.
So how am I to contribute to DJing discourse when I find so many bits of it so difficult?
There is the option of using 'buddying' to encourage new dancers to discover swinging jazz. But that feels condescending - who am I to tell people what 'good' music is, especially when many of them are patently not interested in this historical stuff? And really, when the whole history of African American vernacular dance is about cultural relevence, why should I encourage dancers (and DJs) away from the pop music of their day?
I might choose to give copies of the sorts of music I really like to other DJs - how else to be sure I get to dance to the music I like? I have reservations about this on the basis of IP, but also because I have found (in the past), that sharing really good songs with one person will see them spread out, diseminated to other dancers and DJs until I find that dancers are using that song (and that version of that song) to perform routines for paid gigs. And it's even more frustrating to find that the artists' name and recording details have dropped from the song, so it is circulating only as a digital, nameless file.
On the one hand, this is interesting stuff. On the other, it concerns me because (particularly when these are living artists), there are musicians being screwed. I will not go as far as some other DJs and say that I resent this illicit circulation because I'm losing some sort of cred as the 'discoverer' of this song who 'brings it to the dancers' (I'm not that naive or that arrogant - this is pop music, doods). Nor will I say that I resent this because other DJs play this song, so robbing me of my 'ace in the hole' crowd pleaser (and attendant status as 'awesome DJ'), mostly because it's cool for other DJs to hear a song, ask what it's called, say "that frickin' rocks", hunt it out on itunes or amazon, then play it when they next DJ (and I get to dance to that song when they play it). That doesn't worry me. It's more that the song is circulated as a burnt disc or shared file, with the song title, artist, recording year and musicians' details stripped from it. It also worries me that while I might share a song or songs as a gift, other DJs and dancers compile CDs which they then sell to others. That worries me.
As a dancer, it's frustrating when DJs simply take a 'found' or 'exchanged' or 'gifted' song and play it to death, without exploring that artist's other work. I hear one version of (for example) C Jam Blues by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and I think 'yes - now we're going to hear more swinging jazz. Finally. No more bullshit unswing that makes for crap dancing' (and as a dancer, that's how I think - I have no tolerance for unswing. I want to lindy hop to swinging jazz). But that song ends up just as one drop in anotherwise intolerable sea of overplayed pap played in clunky, unpleasant combinations that make for a night of shit dancing.
So I am in kind of a bind. My feminist instincts say 'fight the power' and 'information (and music) wants to be free'. But my dancer instincts say 'play some good frickin' music, and learn to DJ well'.
This post has rambled on far longer than I had intended. And far beyond the original point that I wanted to make. And I kind of think it's become a bit of a tirade against local media production and use practices in Melbourne swing culture. Which is very un-cultural studies of me.
"very un-cultural studies of me" was posted in the category academia and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 27, 2006
solomon douglas' swingtet's swingmatism and the basie mosaic set!
Posted by dogpossum on December 27, 2006 3:34 PM
I scored with two bits of music for christmas.
First, a friend's band's album: the Solomon Douglas Swingtet's album Swingmatism from The Squeeze's mother, and second, The Basie Mosaic set from The Squeeze.
Both are, of course, really fricking great. It's unfortunate, though, that Sol's album arrived with the Basie one - they're working (in a very general way) in the same sort of style* as the new testament Basie on the Mosaic set, and really, it's cruel to set the two head to head. Basie wins, of course.
But Sol's album really is very good - if this band was playing regularly in my city I'd be a very happy lindy hopper indeed. They're certainly better than the B# Big Band who are the closest thing Melbourne has in comparison, and I prefer them to the JW Swing Orchestra, who are our other major swinging big band (there are others, but these are the only dancer-oriented/dancer-trained bands).
For lindy hoppers, this album is definitely worth the cash**.
...I'm try to write an even partially coherent discussion of this album, but I'm feeling a bit scatty.
Actually, my feelings about this album are mixed. Firstly, I really appreciate it as a present - it was a very thoughtful gift, and definitely something I really like. Well chosen, mother of The Squeeze (and Squeeze).
Secondly, as a general into-music type person, I like it very much. I like to support current day swinging bands, especially ones like Sol's, where the band is led by a dancer, and tailors its sets specifically for dancers. I can also really appreciate this album as a dancer - this is some fun shit.
Thirdly, as a DJ, this is some good stuff. The version of the Big Apple Contest is a bit of a score, and there are some really nice songs on the album.
But, fourthly, as a picky, DJ nerd wench, I'm not sure this is my cup of tea. It's a little hi-fi/new testament for my liking (though I MUST admit that it wanders through a fair old range of musical territory - there's a nice version of Black and Tan Fantasy, for example), and I'm not sure how often I'd play this for my own pleasure at home. I do, however, really really like songs like Funky Blues - it feels like this is where it's at.
As a picky DJ, I'm wondering when I'd play many of these songs. I'm not sure I'd choose this version of Shiny Stockings, for example, when there are so many wonderful versions by people like Basie, which really are fabulous. I'd definitely spin that version of the Big Apple song, though, and I might play a few of the other tracks to win over a few of the groover/US-favouring dancers in our scene. But I'm not sure if I'd play things from it if I was compiling my ideal set. Having said that, when do we ever get to play our 'ideal' sets?
So, thinking sensibly, this is one of those albums (like Mora's Modern Rhythmists') which is great for getting the pickier hi-fi dancers interested in proper swing-era bands: this is some shit-hot recreationist work. I'd put this CD on my sneak list. Which, of course, makes this a very useful album indeed.This is a band we should support by buying the album, as these guys are the bread and butter of swing dancing - without wonderful live bands who put such effort into their live sets and recordings, many local scenes would founder in their early days, and we'd really miss this sort of superior big band action at our big balls and major events.
I do regret the fact that I've been listening to this with the Basie set at the same time. There simply is no comparison. Which is a shame, as I do think Sol has done fabulous work, and I don't doubt the band live are frickin awesome.
The other CD I scored was the fabulous 8-CD Mosaic set. The Squeeze is the sneakiest beast on earth. In town doing our christmas shopping the other week, he suggested popping in to Basement Discs (where I'd seen this set) for a bit of browsing. I poo-pooed the idea in favour of goal-oriented shopping. He later (or had already - I'm not sure which) popped in to pick this up himself. And I scored big time.
This is one fabulous collection of new testament Basie action. There are some fricking awesome versions of lindy hopping favourites (including another version of Jive at Five for my collection), all in fantastic quality. I'm not the hugest late testament Basie fan, but this is such a great, solid collection of the dood's work in the 1950s, I'm really very happy to have it. This was a period where Basie had some pretty shit-hot musicians on hand, working a band who were really cooking together. I can't get over the quality. Though most of this later Basie stuff is pretty good quality, this is a really, really nice collection.
As I've already said, it's a shame I first heard Sol's band in such close proximity to this set.
But I do think that the two are complementary and definitely very nice additions to any lindy hopper (let alone DJ)'s collection. The Basie set is, however, a massive luxury, and Sol's CD is far more accessible and practical for small-time collectors.
At the end of the day, I'm very very happy with these two presents - I couldn't have asked for anything better.... though this Basie set has me hankering for the Peggy Lee set, which I do not need! 
*As in they're hi-fi, have a kind of late testament sound, etc.
**Incidentally, when I asked The Squeeze if I could use his paypal account to buy this album the other day, he declared "no way - I'm not wasting paypal dollars on that guy's band", and then immediately sneaked off to coordinate its purchase with his mother. This album is, of course, very Squeeze like, and he does actually think it was worth spending paypal dollars on this album. Even if they were his mother's paypal dollars.
"solomon douglas' swingtet's swingmatism and the basie mosaic set!" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 14, 2006
bomb the blog
Posted by dogpossum on December 14, 2006 2:17 PM
sorry to bomb the blog a bit, but...
I think I need to learn to Madison RIGHT NOW. Well, I could, because I have no responsibilities! That's a Nicholas brother there btw.
...incidentally, I found this clip on dancehistory.org (that link from jassdance in my links on the side there goes to the same place).
This site is administered by Peter Loggins, one of my favourite lindy hopping types. This site has a really nice, friendly feel, with an emphasis on dance history (duh) and less with the interpersonal bitching. I like the layout of the fora, and the tone of the discussions - very 'go dancenerd, go!'
The front page is especially awesome, with its list of dances, the photos and clips.
"bomb the blog" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
hot and cool
Posted by dogpossum on December 14, 2006 12:22 PM
I can't find the clip that I was looking for, but this is one of Snake Hips Tucker. This dood was reknown for... well, watch and you'll see.
But he's an interesting example of something Tommy DeFrantz describes in terms of a contrast between a 'cool' face and 'hot' body. For most of that clip Tucker's face is impassive. But his body is doing some crazy arse shit. I do have a bunch of other references on exactly this topic, but I haven't found them yet (I'm suspecting someone like Katrina Hazzard Gordon or Brenda Dixon Gottschild).
I've wondered if the aesthetic of 'cool' was in part a response to the conditions of slavery. As DeFrantz noted (and i paraphrase from memory), serious dancing went underground to avoid persecution under slavery, and the black man's body became a site of multiple layers of meaning, and unravelling each depended on the observer's knowledge.
Or, in a far nicer example,
In 1901, a former slave told the actor Leigh Whipper: "Us slaves watched white folks' parties where the guests danced a minuet and then paraded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways and then meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we'd do it too, but we used to mock 'em every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it, but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn't dance any better" (Malone 18).
Sounds a lot like cake walk to me. And of course, there is a long history of derision in African dance. Sometimes immitation is not the highest form of flattery. I know that it's certainly proved a valuable discursive tool for me in the past.
So there were tactical reasons for maintaining a straight or 'cool' face while dancing.
But Malone extends her discussion of cool in African dance, noting
Personal coolness is an important hallmark of good style. Thompson has coined this phrase for such a set of values and attitudes: "an aesthetic of the cool." Coolness in this context has to do with control, transcendental balance, and directing one's energy with a clear purpose in mind. Thompson has identified this concept in the languages of thirty-five western and central African cultures. The Gola of Liberia define coolness in this way: "Ability to be nonchalant at hte right moment... to reveal no emotion in situations where excitement and sentimentality are acceptable - in other words, to act as though one's mind were in another world. It is particularly admirable to do difficult tasks with an air of ease silent disdain. Women are admired for a surly detached expression, and somnambulistic movement and attitude during the dance or other performance is considered very attractive." Thus, coolness is a metaphor for right living and diplomacy; it is "an all-embracing positive attribute which combines notions of composure, silence, vitality, healing, and social purification" (Malone 18-19)She also notes that
The canons of good behaviour insist that dancers become completely engrossed in what they are doing and avoid "throwing glances" at the audiences" (Malone 19).a point which resonates with me in the context of Melbourne swing. There's nothing more painful than a cheesy smile for or point at the audience - it's nasty to watch. Though in perfect accordance with the norm of competitive ballroom dance (check out Dancing with the Stars for a perfect example of not-cool).
And to bring it all back to lindy hop, there is nothing 'cooler' than the flat-out, parallel to the ground 'flying' style of Frankie Manning, where his body is long and lean and relaxed, but his legs and feet are going a million miles an hour. The ultimate cool/hot contrast. And it is the contrast that means so much.
So, if we think about this stuff in the context of Kate's questions about hot, cool and va-va-voom...
Perhaps it is that there's the contrast between the 'hot' body of the sensual woman (whether she is generously proportioned, tall and thin or whatever) and her 'cool' attitude of disdain. So Bessie Smith's sporting a decidedly 'hot' (or hawt?) body, but she is 'cool' in her control, her vocal ability. Hot in her statements of interest in sex, cool in her vocal delivery and timing.
...?
Oh, look here's an example. If you watch that solo blues clip (the one I've put in this post), you see some seriously hawt/hot bodily action (the whole 'lick your thumb then touch your hip in a 'sizzle' to test your own heat is a perfect illustration). But they're also sporting some serious cool snub. These chicks are really working it, but they are solidly unattainable. It's solo dancing. No one gets to touch them but them. And they certainly don't waste their time making eye contact with undesirables.
I'm not sure I've convinced myself with all that... Any one got any other thoughts?
References:
DeFrantz, Thomas. "The Black Male Body in Concert Dance." Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance. Ed. Gay Morris. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 107 - 20.
---. “Believe the Hype!: Hype Williams and Afro-Futurist Filmmaking.†Unpublished paper. Spectacle, Rhythm and Eschatology: A Symposium. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 24th July 2003.
---, ed. Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.
---. "Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance." Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World. Eds. David Gere, et al. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. 95 - 121.
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. "African-American Vernacular Dance: Core Culture and Meaning Operatives." Journal of Black Studies 15.4 (1985): 427-45.
---. Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Malone, Jacqui. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Sorry, I can't find the full reference for the Thompson quite in Malone. :(
[edit]I just had to add this clip, which DustForEyes pointed out in his comments. Son of Snake Hips? Cool/hot much?
"hot and cool" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
a long story about blues, women, feminism and dance
Posted by dogpossum on December 14, 2006 11:25 AM
Angela Y. Davies writes in her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
During Bessie Smith's era [the 20s and 30s], most black heterosexual couples - married or not - had children. However, blues women rarely sang about mothers, fathers and children. in the subject index to her book Black Pearls, black studies scholar Daphne Duval Harrison lists the following themes: advice to other women; alcohol; betrayal or abandonment; broken or failed love affairs; death; departure; dilemma of staying with man or returning to family; disease adn afflictions; erotica; hell; homosexuality;infidelity; injustice; jail and serving time; loss of lover; love; men; mistreatment; murder; other woman; poverty; promiscuity; sadness; sex; suicide; supernatural; trains; traveling; unfaithfulness; vengeance; weariness, depression, and disillusionment; weight loss. It is revealing that she does not include children, domestic life, husband, and marriage (Davis 13).She continues,
The absence of the mother figure in the blues does not imply a rejection of motherhood as such, but rather... The female figures evoked in women's blues are independent women free of the domestic orthodoxy of the prevailing representations of womanhood through which female subjects of the era were constructed (Davis 13).
Davis' book explores these themes in women's blues of the period, and my interest is caught by the section describing domestic violence. One of the points Davis makes is (to quote again - sorry) that
Women's blues suggest emergent feminist insurgency in that they unabashedly name the problem of male violence and so usher it out of the shadows of domestic life where society had kept it hidden and beyond public or political scrutiny (Davis 29-30).
I think this is one of the points that I like most. This sort of music is centrally concerned with individual women singing their stories. They mightn't be 'true' stories, but they're true in the sense that they are about these women's lives, and about the lives of women of their day (and of today, I'd argue). And they're discussing issues and experiences which we don't see in the mainstream films and white music of the period.
Davis goes on in her book to explore the feminist themes in this music, and she notes
...even in their most despairing moods, the female characters memorialized in women's blues songs do not fit the mold of the typical victim of abuse. The independent women of blues lore do not think twice about wielding weapons against men who they feel have mistreated them. They frequently brandish their razors and guns, and dare men to cross the lines they draw. While acknowledging the physical mistreatment they have received at the hands of their male lovers, they do not perceive or define themselves as powerless in face of such violence. Indeed, they fight back passionately (Davis 34).
As someone writing about contemporary swing dancers, all this is really important.
One of the central concerns of my thesis was with the way contemporary swing dancers use history in their 'revival' of dances and music. This 'history' is a very carefully clean and safe history, though, and neglects (to quote Paul Gilroy), the “unnameable terrors†of black history where
slavery, pogroms, indenture, [and] genocide….all figured in the constitutions of diasporas and the reproduction of a diasporan consciousness, in which identity is focussed less on equalizing, proto-democratic force of common territory and more on the social dynamics of remembrance and commemoration defined by a strong sense of the dangers involved in the forgetting the location of origin and the process of dispersal (Kelly, quoting Gilroy 318).As I wrote in the first chapter of my thesis,
African American vernacular dance – including Lindy Hop and other swing dances – remembers this history in specific steps as well as general themes and methods for acquiring and disseminating new steps. It is important to describe African American dance as product of historical and social forces not only for reasons of conscience and to avoid the dangers Gilroy implies, but also to explore how reframing African American vernacular dance in contemporary communities has had particular ideological consequences.
One of the things I've noticed about contemporary swing dance is that there's a lot of talk about the creative moment in swing dance history - a proliferation of stories about how dancers invented steps - but very little investigation of the social and political context out of which these steps developed. So, for example, we hear endless stories from Frankie Manning about working in theatre and film. But we don't hear him discuss the working conditions of black dancers in Hollywood (except in passing), nor do we hear discussions about the reasons why people like the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers came to be able to spend all day and night dancing. Unemployment, poverty, violence and so on are neglected in the popular history of swing dances. My favourite example is the pimp walk - each time it's taught in class, I hear the story of how it was inspired by pimps swaggering about Harlem. But I have never heard even the slightest reference to the specifics of the pimp's employment - his reason for swaggering about town.
And of course, if we follow Davis' point, if there's no naming of the 'unnameable' terrors, there's no public response possible for the women (and other disempowered individuals). It is all neatly swept under the pedagogic (and practical) blanket of contemporary swing dance.
I've also noticed a neglect in contemporary swing dance culture in Australia of the sort of blues music I've been talking about. This is in part a result of the musical tastes of dancers in my scene - a preponderance of supergroove. But in neglecting dirty nanna blues, or the sort of crude, funny, violent blues which I quite like, there's also a clear depoliticisation of blues music and blues dancing in Melbourne. I think that this has been clearly illustrated by a suggestion made for MLX7. If it were to be themed '7 deady sins' (and this is just one of the millions of ideas being floated), and blues was named 'lust', then blues dancing and blues music becomes simply sex - a sexualised dance. And, as people like Ma Rainey and Rosetta Crawford and Alberta Hunter and all their sisters have made very clear, 'the blues' is far more than just sex. It's about food, too. ;)
If all the other political and social elements of blues music and dance are neglected, there is no point of reply for these women in song. And, I'd argue quite strongly, the emphasis on follows simply 'surrendering' to the lead in blues music as it is danced in Melbourne (where the close embrace and tango-inspired moves are prioritised over other historical forms), supports a particularly scary patriarchal theme in swing dance culture in this city generally.
Shut up and dance, girl.
And of course, as a DJ, it's endlessly frustrating to hear only a series of repeated supergroove or soul tracks that don't seem to have any soul at all trotted out for dancers. As a learning-DJ, I want to hear a range of music which can both inspire me as a dancer, and also inspire me as a DJ - encourage me to seek out rare gems and learn more about this music and its history.
One thing that has interested me in all this is the way solo blues (dominated by women) tends to favour the sort of old school blues that reeks of more interesting social themes. There's a world of difference between East St Louis Toodle-oo, Black and Tan Fantasy and The Mooche and Oscar Peterson tinkling away through Bag's Groove once again.
I'd really like to see some solo blues to some of the sassy nannas I dig... though the lyrics might actually be a problem - they tend to anchor meaning in a song, limiting the potential scope for interpretation in a dance performance... which might actually be one of their advantages when we're talking about someone like Nina Simone, who tended to wear her politics on her sleeve.
But, to be fair, there is also the convincing argument that swing dances, as vernacular dances, should reflect the lived experiences of the dancers. This is the one, clear argument for doing things like combining tango steps with blues dancing, playing 'unswing' or 'unblues' (whether it is soul, r'n'b, hip hop, trance or whatever). I'm certainly not for blind recreation (and preservation) of some imagined historical moment or essence.
... but I'd much rather swing dancers today took on both the feminism of 1920s black blues women in a third wave feminist moment, rather than simply accepting the patriarchal (and capitalist! and heteronormative!) constraints of the pedagogic relationships which dominate contemporary swing dance culture!
And of course, there's still a great deal to be said about the anti-feminist sentiments of blues music, and disturbing people like Jimmy Witherspoon. Though I think it's worth pointing out that the 50s and late 40s were far more conservative moments than the 20s in popular African American music and dance.
[edited to add reference:
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Toronto: Random House, 1998.]
"a long story about blues, women, feminism and dance" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
December 13, 2006
big apple
Posted by dogpossum on December 13, 2006 9:40 AM
I love this photo - it's dancers from all over Australia doing the Big Apple at the Saturday night dance at MLX6.
"big apple" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
December 12, 2006
djing for lindy hoppers at the speegs
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2006 4:52 PM
I also played a set at the Spiegeltent during MLX. It was very exciting - a well paid gig, where I finally had the chance to play kicking lindy hop songs for a kicking lindy hop crowd. I was also lucky enough to share the set with Trev (thank the goddess for his generousity - I'd never have made it through three and a half hours on my own that night).
So the set was a combination of 'crazy exchange lindy' (dancers at exchanges are notoriously? famously? infamously? enthusiastic and open minded about music (compared to when they're at home)), Trev-inspired old school lindy stuff (ie things I dig but don't get to play very often here in my regular gigs), stuff that's just plain old good fun and a few other odds and ends.
It was an interesting set because I had to move from the disco/funk they were playing on the house stereo (I loath nasty transitions), allow for the juggling performance (I regret not getting the energy up before his act so I could get the crowd in the mood), take into account the fact that many of the lindy hoppers would be tired from the previous gig where (for example) Trev DJed an awesome set - the Gangbusters bracket where his tempos averaged 180 - 200 bpm. That's frickin' fast. And it was frickin' fun. I also had to take into account the fact that there were lots of non-dancers jiggling about on the dance floor.
There are a few rules for DJing at the Spiegeltent (so I've noticed):
1. Saucy = bad idea. The punters just feel uncomfortable. The guys don't dance, the girls feel silly.
2. Food songs = fun. Kids love them. Adults love them.
3. Upenergy = go. It's a fun place, so the energy needs to be fun.
The below list is the set I played that night. I started off with some unswing to segue into my set, then played some 'necrophiliac blues' because I wasn't sure how to get to the main lindy hopping event and was kind of finding my groove (I'm also a bit out of practice). In retrospect, I should have gotten the bpms up higher earlier.
There were a few bits that I really liked - the shift from Shouting Blues (1949) by Basie to Ridin' on the L&N by Hamp (1946) to Vine Street Boogie (1941) by Jay McShann (extra meaningful in light of his recent death) was really pleasing. Basie has a kicking rhythm section, of course at the piano himself. 
Ridin' on the L&N has a really chunking piano/base/percussion section (of course - this is Hamp), but it really sounds like a train chunking along the track. The vocals (with funny 'uh-oh, is that a train at the other end of the tunnel?' stories) are typically Hamp-humour. And of course, the McShann boogiewoogie (slower than uberboogie, but with a nice chunker piano sound) brings us back to Kansas (where Basie got his first go), and had that nice, heavy base feeling, but with the lighter, move-yo-feet! feel that I really like. 
I'm a bit over Lavender Coffin, the 'gospel' track which followed, but it had the right funny-dark-humour feel I like. The Witherspoon track was a bit of a stylistic jump (to a bit of hi-fi, power-groove), but it seemed appropriate, as Witherspoon (most sexist man alive dead) got his start with McShann. It's also a great energy upper, and I thought that we'd gotten a bit low-tempo there with those other songs.
I quite like playing that version of A Smo-o-oth One by Cab Calloway because it has no vocals and people always ask me who it's by. The most common version of that song is one by Benny Goodman (1941) which sits on 126bpm, is nice, but kind of draggy. There's also a version by Junior Mance (not sure of the year, sorry), which is 125bpm and a big groover song - meaning, kind of dull. I like the Calloway version (181bpm, again I'm not sure of the year, sorry - stupid compilations) because it's great fun for dancing and pretty punchy.
Overall, I was happy with the set, especially with the fact that I played my first 'jam' - Jumpin' at the Woodside. The energy just felt high and good, and I just wanted to hear that song. The generally higher tempos feel of the night generally (and Trev's influence) helped me take the risk. And of course, I should have realised that such an iconic track would get the kids jammin'. I deliberately chose the later era Basie recording (1960), from The Count Basie Story 
(where he re-recorded the seminal hits from his earlier band with his 'new testament' (and arguably better) late testament band) because the quality is sweet. The song before was hi-fi, and I thought a nice, clear hi-fi recording would work best in this situation.
Unfortunately, the base-controlling thingy on the sound desk (which automatically cuts in when the base gets too high, lowers the volume, then slowly lets it back up over a few seconds) cut in near the end and the volume was crappily low. But it meant that I could just move from that to a new, non-jam song without flogging a dead horse. It was a really fun jam, actually, and The Squeeze caught a few amazing photos.
So here's the set list:
(title-artist-bpm-year-album)
Think-Aretha Franklin-109-Greatest Hits - Disc 1
Please Please Please-James Brown-74-1991-Sex Machine
Hamp's Salty Blues-Lionel Hampton and His Quartet-86-1946-Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
Amtrak Blues-Alberta Hunter-95-1978-Amtrak Blues
Why Don't You Right-Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five Featuring Hilary Alexander-118-2004
St. James Infirmary-Hot Lips Page and his Orchestra-122-1949-Jump For Joy!
Minnie The Moocher-Cab Calloway and His Orchestra-112-1931-The Early Years 1930-1934 Disc A
Every Day I Have The Blues-Count Basie-116-1959-Breakfast Dance And Barbecue
Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee-Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra-130-1949-Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun
Flying Home-Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra-159-1940-Tempo And Swing
Good Queen Bess-Duke Ellington-160-1940-The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 10)
Stomp It Off-Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra-190-1934-Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford
Squatty Roo-Duke Ellington-202-1941-The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings (disc 12)
A Viper's Moan-Willie Bryant And His Orchestra-153 -Willie Bryant 1935-1936
A Smo-o-oth One-Cab Calloway-181-2000-Jungle King
For Dancers Only-Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra-154-1937-Swingsation - Jimmie Lunceford
Shoutin' Blues-Count Basie and His Orchestra-148-1949-Kansas City Powerhouse
Ridin' On The L&N-Lionel Hampton and His Quartet-170-1946-Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
Vine Street Boogie-Jay McShann and His Orchestra-153-1941-Jumpin' The Blues (Disc 1)
Lavender Coffin -Lionel Hampton, etc-138-1949-Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun
Good Rockin' Tonight-Jimmy Witherspoon-155-1998-Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon
Jumpin' At The Woodside-Count Basie and His Orchestra-278-1960-The Count Basie Story (Disc 1)
Sent For You Yesterday-Count Basie and His Orchestra with Joe Williams-163-1960-The Count Basie Story (Disc 2)
Apollo Jump-Lucky Millinder-143-Apollo Jump
Savoy Blues-Kid Ory-134-2002-Golden Greats: Greatest Dixieland Jazz Disc 3
Are You Hep To The Jive?-Cab Calloway-160-1994-Are You Hep To The Jive?
...I have to admit. I did play that bluesier stuff hoping to see a couple of the prissy lindy purists dance de olden dayes blues dancing. Ain't nothing finer than the power of the Pad o Plastic. I really feel that you can't dance lindy with any sort of serious cred if don't also know the blues with your body as well - the sort of blues that was getting around at the same time as this uptempo 'lindy' music.
And some lindy hoppers are just so precious.
"djing for lindy hoppers at the speegs" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music
crazed and manic jubilation
Posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2006 2:11 PM
I just found out that my thesis was passed WITHOUT CORRECTIONS!!
I have done the crazy happy dance about 10 times already (lots of high kicks up into the air, a few twirly spin-arounds, some random jiggling).
If I hurry I can do the graduation thing in March/April.
So I am now Dr dogpossum (mostly)! Hoorah!
...remind me to write about the dance conference, will you? I met some lovely (and awe-inspiring) young dancers who work with companies like Bangarra (and how did I introduce myself? "You guys rock!" - I am all about cool. But they did - their mini-performance blew me away!), networked like a crazy person, discovered someone who has Graybags for a supes (and knows Galaxy), told some inappropriate jokes, shared Frida and the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers with a bunch of doods who understood what I've been trying to say about them and ate some of the best conference food EVER.
[and hoorah for the markers - the thesis was sent to them at the end of September, and they had the marks to me by today - that's under 3 months turnaround time]
"crazed and manic jubilation" was posted in the category academia and conferences and lindy hop and other dances and thesis and travel
November 29, 2006
a few preliminary mlx thoughts - djing
Posted by dogpossum on November 29, 2006 5:53 PM
I've had a very busy week - from Wednesday last week til yesterday... well, let's count today as well.
Firstly, we had three lovely houseguests arrive on Wednesday evening, an arrival we celebrated with a fairly extensive barbeque dinner.
Thursday, the MLX began, with a volunteer meeting at 7.30pm, continuing with a free dance at our local venue CBD and rounding up with a gig at the Spiegeltent DJed by myself and Trev. From there the weekend continued at a frenetic pace (suddenly, I can't seem to spell that word). Our last guest departed this morning at 5am, and I've spent the last couple of days lying in bed trying to be well. I have caught that horrible cold again and am pretty well crook. It's a combination of overworking the last semester and then pushing myself to the point of destruction over the weekend.
I do have a bunch of photos to post, but they're on The Squeeze's computer in the other room and I can't really be bothered sorting the network to get access to them.
I had planned to devote this post (and the following few posts) to random accounts of specific events over the weekend, but I'm so tired I've forgotten what I was going to write about.
But let's start here, with a few comments on DJing (please note: these are just rough ideas and not well thought out. Nor are they representative of the mlx coordinating team - they are just some ideas that I have had).
Right now I'm sitting here with my new headphones on, a birthday present courtesy of The Squeeze - they're Sennheiser eh250's for the DJ nerds amongst you. Apparently quite expensive, and certainly very excellent quality. Perfect for people who're losing their upper range of hearing - which, apparently, we swing DJs are doing. In spades. This is something which upsets me quite a lot, as I used to have phenomenal hearing. Now I don't. One of the perils of DJing I guess.
So I'm sitting here in bed, drowning in mucous, fighting off dizziness and tiredness (it seems silly to go back to sleep after only being awake for 5 hours) so as to record some of the weekend's events.
I'm also trying to get back up to date with my music, seeing as how I've committed myself (foolishly) to DJing a set at CBD on Thursday night, and have my last gig at the Speegs this weekend.
We'd booked a number (10, actually) of the country's best DJs for MLX, and it was fascinating to see how DJs interact at exchanges. I knew that dancers thoroughly enjoyed getting together at exchanges to 'exchange' dance styles through actually dancing. But watching DJs pair up at the DJ booth and exchange incredibly nerdy DJing conversations was a joy.
DJs from different cities took great delight in arriving at the DJ booth well before their set to hang out with their DJ buddy who was playing the previous set, and many of the DJs (especially those in our cafe, a venue which became home to the silliest of no-rules dancing and DJing... no-rules in that DJs could do whatever they liked, so long as they didn't dance during their set, and saved the floor if they emptied it) took the opportunity to 'battle' or take turns playing songs and working cooperatively on sets, rather than adhering to the more conventional one and a half hour set turn taking.
As a cultural studies person, my imagination was immediately caught by this cooperative approach to cultural production. As a lindy hopper and cultural studies person, I was doubly attracted to this idea of partnership in creative practice. Very much in keeping with the tradition of African American vernacular jazz dance, where dancers improvise within a shared structure. Much as jazz musicians improvise within a shared, orchestrated musical structure in blues and swinging jazz.
One of my regrets from the weekend is that we couldn't set up a webcam and do a bit of live streaming lindy action - it would have been interesting to capture the event and send it to other dancers to see their response. But there's always next year.
I think it's also worth noting how the weekend exemplified the variety of local DJing practices and cultures there are even within a national DJing and dancing culture. I am giving a paper on this very issue (ie the way the 'Australian' swing dance community is more a network of local communities and cultures than a homogenous national whole) in Canberra next week, and I couldn't help but note how exchanges make these sorts of ideas so very clear.
We can talk at one level of the various local musical tropes - the way each local scene has a particular dominant musical and DJing culture or style. Perth (to draw a long bow), is known for its attention to historical musical accuracy. There is a greater emphasis on music from the 30s and 40s, and on a particular tempo and style of swinging jazz. Of course, the fact that we selected DJs who play within this genre went some way to constructing what amounts to a cultural myth of Perth DJing - there are certainly dancers and DJs within that community whose interests are beyond the limits of this specific genre. It is also worth pointing out that the DJs who played the MLX might also have felt that they must restrict their musical choices to this style - so as to best adhere to our expectations as organisers, and to best 'represent' their community.
And this point of course emphasises the role exchanges play in presenting a particular notion of 'local' identity and culture. A notion which is of course representative of the dominant ideology or discourse of that community (and event-organising body) rather than of the more complex and diverse whole.
I wonder if the same comments can be made of Melbourne DJs?
We offered a range of DJs over the weekend, choosing DJs who specialised in a particular area so as to best suit the room or event they were playing. We did choose two local Melbourne DJs who favoured a very 'Perth' musical style. Though one of these demonstrates a more diverse musical taste when DJing locally. I regret not hearing her set on the Thursday nigh, to see how she chose to play the room. Two others were representative of a very different musical style - heavy on the groove, r'n'b and late testament big band. And also representative of the musical tastes of most Melbourne lindy hoppers.
In contrast, of course, the cafe gained a reputation as an 'alternative' room not only through our scheduling of DJs (on the Friday night we held the now-notorious 'BSides' event there - where DJs were encouraged to play outside the swinging jazz genre), but also through a general, cooperative consensus about how that space was to be used. This room was decorated so as to present a more 'friendly' and social space, as opposed to the main room, which was very much focussed on hard-core dancing: a more effective air conditioning system, a large, clear floor, no decorations beyond the room's basic 'ballroom' fixtures, and a clear musical emphasis on 'lindy hop'. I don't doubt that the very layout and decorations of the rooms encouraged particular musical choices from the DJs, which were, of course, a response to the mood and physical interaction of the dancers themselves.
It was interesting to see two Perth DJs generally known for their adherence to historical recreationism (both in terms of dancing and music) produce two very excellent - and quite unconvention (by their usual standards) sets in the cafe. One of whom at least took great delight in playing 'outside the square'.
This response (which of course demonstrated the flexibility of the DJs we hired) offered an example of how DJs do respond to the room they're playing, and realise the brief they're given by the event coordinators. And it was a pleasure to see the DJs taking our brief and do such creative work with it. To take delight in doing something a little 'naughty'.
Our whole 'Hot Sides' approach, where we offered a second room specialising in something a little outside the mainstream of lindy hopping music seemed generally very successful over the weekend. We asked Trev to play a Gangbusters set on our very first night - a room devoted to very fast tempos. A room which consequently proved to be as high-energy an event as I've ever seen at a lindy hop exchange. And very popular with the dancers. My only regret is that I had to leave the venue early to set up for the Spiegeltent and missed the rest of this set.
We had the BSides night on Friday, of course, which was massively successful, a point paid testament to by the locker-room stench of the room when we tidied up after it at 6.30am.
On Saturday we held the Sugar Bowl blues night - slow, saucy, sexy music for very close dancing. I'm not sure it was quite as successful as the previous night, but it was definitely a popular room and was always filled.
And on Sunday we offered a less intensely alternative bracket, but I noticed that the pattern set by the previous nights encouraged the DJs in that room to play more 'alternative' music, catering to the less rigorously historical recreationist crowd.
And of course, one of the nicest parts of this two-room approach was not only seeing two rooms of dancers with quite different tastes kept happy, but seeing those dancers whose tastes are less codified lurching between the two rooms to sample both styles.
As The Squeeze succinctly put it "if the song sucked in one room, I went to the other".
I will think more about this and post again. Hopefully when I'm not so seriously high on cold and flu tablets and my own body temperature.
edit:
I judge a DJ 'successful' or 'good' when they:
- keep the floor full all the time
- can recover after clearing the floor
- work the energy of the room, using highs and lows, rather than one single 'mood' (ie varying the musical 'mood' from high energy and crazy to more mellow and moderate energy)
- respond to the crowd's mood - if the dancers are looking to party like fools, they bring the partyfool music
I also expect a degree of professionalism from DJs at something like MLX (which had hundreds of dancers in attendance, and was really serving as a representation of Melbourne lindy culture), including:
- not dancing during their sets (something which proved controversial, and which I'll return to later when it's not so close an issue)
- arriving 15 minutes before their set was to begin, in order to touch base with the previous DJ
- beginning their set on-time
- having a basic understanding of the equipment they're using - ie being able to adjust the levels and volumes in a way that makes for a more pleasurable dancing experience
These are not only my expectations, but also those of the MJDA who was running the event - we agreed on these terms before hiring our DJs.
And of course, we pay our DJs well (with better rates than other Australian events), and offer decent working conditions.
We also ask our DJs to send us a complete set list after the event so that we can forward this to APRA and pay our dues to that organisation. An interesting allusion to our stance on intellectual and creative copyright legislation.
"a few preliminary mlx thoughts - djing" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances
November 27, 2006
btw
Posted by dogpossum on November 27, 2006 8:19 PM
Hey homies.
I did take a lot of prep shots of the barbeque, but that was a hundred years ago, and we've been very very busy since. I went to bed at 4am Friday morning, then got up at 2.30 Friday afternoon, then to bed at 7.30am Saturday morning, then up at 2.30 Saturday afternoon, then to bed at 7.30am Sunday, then up at 3.30, then... ok, so I got up at 4.30 this afternoon.
The MLX was fucking awesomely successful. We had hundreds and hundreds of dancers and DJs and everything. I will post full details in due course. Once I've slept more. Or perhaps in a couple of hours when the insomnia kicks in.
But to tide you over, I've added this photo of me DJing at the Spiegeltent (c/o Thai - thanks dood). This was taken early on in the night before the jugggling show (!) and before they took down the mini-stage. Later the floor was full of idiot lindy hoppers and drunken fools til 3am. The venue management gushed and gushed - the manager was dancing like a fool, and one of the staff came to all the MLX events over the weekend (I don't doubt the presence of all the hawt Perth girls helped).
It was a fabulous venue and I'm there again this Saturday if you're around town and want to catch up.
BTW the BBQ food was awesome.
"btw" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
November 22, 2006
this weekend's program
Posted by dogpossum on November 22, 2006 3:15 PM
Ok, so here's the program for this MLX6 weekend:
Thursday 8.30-midnight: Apollo Jump and Gangbusters, 3 dJs, 2 floors, CBD nightclub. Free.
Thursday 11.30-3am: Jumpin' at the Spiegeltent. 2 DJs, the Amazing Spiegeltent. $5.
Friday 6.30-8.30. Welcome Drinks, Holliava Bar, Richmond.
Friday 8:30-midnight: King Porter Stomp with George Washingmachine (Sydney), Julie O'Hara and her quintet, Forever Dance, Richmond. $24.
Friday midnight-6am: Jumpin at the Woodside and BSides, aprox 6 DJs, 2 rooms (hard core lindy/BSides 'unswing'), Forever Dance. $10.
Saturday 2.00-4.00pm. Marquis of Lorne Hotel, Fitzroy. Lunch.
Saturday 4:00-7:00pm. Beer-and-Band. Virus at the Laundry in Fitzroy. Free.
Saturday 3-5pm. Afternoon tea dance. DJ. Spiegeltent. $10.
Saturday 8.30-midnight. Strutters' Ball. JW Swing Orchestra, Coppin Hall Prahran.$28.
Saturday midnight - 6am. Jumpin at the Woodside and The Sugar Bowl (lindy/blues). 6+ DJs, 2 rooms. Forever Dance. $10.
Sunday 2:00-5:30pm. MLX6 picnic. Fitzroy Gardens.
Sunday 1:00-3:00. B# Big Band at Copacobana, Collingwood. $10.
Sunday 7:00-10:00pm. Flying Home Dance with Mike McQuaid's Red Hot Rhythmakers. Forever Dance. $20.
Sunday 10:00-late. Jumpin' at the Woodside. Hundreds of DJs. 2 rooms, Forever Dance. $10.
If you've bought a pass, it'll all cost you only $60.
Now, my program for the weekend is as above, just add in:
Friday 2:00-7:00pm. Set up at Forever Dance.
Thursday 7.30pm. Volunteer meeting.
And then add in the fact that I'm DJing at the Spiegeltent that first Thursday, and I'm running the late nights (with wonderful Keith). I'm also expecting to be there to help Wendy on Thursday night, and at every event over the weekend I'll be hanging around for the other organisers when they need me (we've divided up all the events between us).
We have about 100-odd people flying in from interstate and overseas, and millions of local coming.
I am coordinating our 10 wonderful DJs and 25 fabulous volunteers.
I will have 3 houseguests (Perth, San Diego and Tasmania, Representing) and 1 Squeeze to play with. It will be a massive weekend (it always is), but now that I've finished my marking (as of yesterday!), my extreme anxiety has disappeared, and I feel like it's Christmas eve.
The temperature has dropped to the very pleasant mid-20s and my guests are flying in tonight. I'm really looking forward to the weekend!
[NB all these photos are from The Squeeze's collection. They used to be there at his flickr account, but I suspect he's lost his uber priveleges, hence their unsee-able-ness. Btw, I reccommend those Pnlrland pics - they are work safe. Wearing bright orange vests and all.]
"this weekend's program" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
November 9, 2006
FIVE STEPS A SECOND
Posted by dogpossum on November 9, 2006 3:30 PM
Feeling a little tired, finding it difficult to concentrate?
Sounds like you have
Marking fatigue
Take one of these and call me in the morning.
Coming in at 275bpm (or thereabouts), this fast finals of the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown comp for 2006 is fricking fast. At one point one couple dances in half-time, then shifts back to full-time (French wunderkind Max and Alice - in black shirt and jeans/black dress), and they look like a film speeded up when they make that shift.
To give you an idea of how fast 275bpm is (if you can't be arsed going and looking and listening), we're talking about 5 steps a second. FIVE STEPS A SECOND. Can you even run that fast, let alone dance that fast?
When Max and his partner dance half time, they're dancing at about 137bpm. 140 is an average tempo in Melbourne atm (though it should be 160 at least).
I guess I don't need to explain why I needed to get back in shape for MLX6, huh?
The first couple in that clip are Frida and Todd Yanacocmamancobi (?). He's about 12 and she's about 16. Well, actually, she's about 22 and he's about 20. He gets better and better and better each time I see him dance. Frida still blows my brain - I have yet to see a young lindy hopper who's better. We have no dancers in Australia who can dance at the standard of these guys.
If you're interested, the winners are Ria and Nick (she's wearing a short, shiny red skirt and he's wearing a red shirt), second place was taken by Frida and Todd and third by Max and Alice.
"FIVE STEPS A SECOND" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and teaching
November 6, 2006
The Charleston Chasers
Posted by dogpossum on November 6, 2006 11:20 AM
The Charleston Chasers (self-titled).
Not the modern-day recreationist Charleston Chasers, but the early days doods from the 20s/30s.
Only existing as a studio-group (ie recording together but not performing live for audiences), the Charleston Chasers feature a pretty white cast of musicians (and sound it too), including Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Pee Wee Russell, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Jack Teagarden. Goodman was the focus of my interest in this album.
I haven't really had a chance to listen to the album properly, but I can say, the quality is surprisingly good for such old recordings, the 'sound' is pretty dang white (check out that above link for a discussion of this stuff in one of my earlier posts), but the music is still good stuff. Think 'charleston', a few slow drags/blues numbers, all with a bit of a 'society' edge (no guts, no buckets here).
Considering the cast on this one, I think my appreciation for this album will only grow over listens.
"The Charleston Chasers" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
Maxine Sullivan's My Memories of You
Posted by dogpossum on November 6, 2006 11:03 AM
Maxine Sullivan's 1955 album My Memories of You (remastered, etc) is very like Ella's These are the Blues in its groovy, later-era swinging jazz vibe. I'd pop this one in the same family as Ella and Louis Again (Ella and Louis Armstrong), Billy Holiday's later stuff from Verve (including Songs for Distingue Lovers) and some of the Oscar Peterson/late Louis Armstong All-Stars stuff.
Small combo, sweet production, older artist with a less-excellent voice, but nice phrasing and sophisticated musicianship. You have to love the way these ladies hang on the beat - they just wait out there til the very last minute.
My Memories of You is a really nice album - almost all very danceable/DJable (for a groover crowd, mind you), as I discovered at the Spiegeltent this weekend. I played far too many songs from the album, but it was just so appropriate for the dancers who were there - a version of Massachusetts which went down really well as a birthday song (and I like it because it reminds me of her much earlier version which I really prefer), as did Christopher Columbus which doesn't really hold up to too many replayings, but has a sweet sparcity and velvety sauciness which plays on the memory of Fats Waller's (decidedly dirty) version in a nice way.
Max manages to avoid the dirty lyrics, but their absense (if you know the Fats version) is emphasised rather than coyly ignored (as in the horrible Andrews Sisters versions of things like Hold Tight), so ends up feeling saucy - the delay in her phrasing, while not a patch on Billy Holiday, seems to let you know that she knows this is saucy stuff, but won't go so far as to piss of her record company with dirty lyrics.
This is a nice album. I've listened to it a bunch of times, and I know it'll be a sure-fire winner when DJing for groovers. But after about a half-dozen, or maybe 10 times through, I feel like I've pretty much heard all there is to hear. Unlike Billy Holiday's later stuff, where you feel you can keep going back and finding more interesting things. Max isn't the consumate muisican Billy is. Nor has her voice weathered as well as Ella's in that period. But there's something really appealing about this mature voice with a mature approach to swing.
[NB: I heard Jesse spruiking this one on his radio show and made an immediate impulse purchase. It's a damn good thing I really don't like Earnestine Anderson or I'd have spent my (non-existant) savings on groover crowd-pleasers by now)]
"Maxine Sullivan's My Memories of You" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
Ella Fitzgerald's These are the Blues
Posted by dogpossum on November 6, 2006 10:55 AM
Just a quick entry to blog the lately arrived members of my CD collection.
These Are the Blues by Ella Fitzgerald.
Ella really rocks, and this is a really great album. One of the late-Ella recordings (1963), there's some sweet organ action, some lovely solos, etc etc from the combo supporting her (I don't have the linter notes handy, sorry - story of my laptop-life). It's all blues, and it's all very blues-danceable.
Yet I am not entirely convinced that Ella really knows how to sing anything other than happy. She has an amazing voice, amazing musicianship, but it feels like she has a limited emotional range. Listening to a version of Christopher Columbus on another album last night, I speculated to The Squeeze that Ella could sing the naughty version of that song have it come off sounding entirely innocent.
But this is still a great album - truly great. If you like groovy, smooth blues. And Ella, of course.
"Ella Fitzgerald's These are the Blues" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
October 18, 2006
Hamp & slow-mid range swing
Posted by dogpossum on October 18, 2006 10:42 AM
My love for Lionel Hampton continues in an unnatural way*. Unnatural in that I have not only abandoned my qualms about DJing jump blues for lindy hoppers for Hamp's sake, but in that I have also decided that boogie woogie is Fun. I have also (quite unashamedly) overplayed my favourite Hamp songs (eventually, I guess, I will tire of songs like Drinkin' Wine spo-de-oh-doh, Hey ba-ba-re-bop! and Lavender Coffin (yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, they are actually different songs)) and will continue to do so.
I think my love for Benny Goodman's small groups is in part (perhaps a large part) owing to my love of the Hamp.
Right now, I am declaring a love for Don't be that way (you can hear it here). I have already played it far too many times, and will continue to do so. I just love the way it chuggs along. And you get the feeling that there's some joking going on in the band there. I love the saucy brass with the brruurp brruurp trombone underneath. I love the twinkly vibes. I love the chunky beat (bass, guitar esp). I even love the sax (and really, who could love sax?). I love the restrained, but kind of bursting-at-the-seams feeling of momentum building. It's only 137bpm, but it feels like it's going somewhere.** It feels like... like... like bounce feels - like energy stored in your body, that might bust out any old how.
This brings me to a comment another dancer made the other day. After I'd just played a set of old scratchies that were all between 120 and 167 at a sedate after-class gig.
The comment involved these points:
- I wish that guitar would move away from the microphone. It's so dull - clunk, clunk, clunk
- that older clunky music sucks when it's under 180 - it's really boring.
I didn't really lay much value on these observations.But it made me think a lot about the issue (of course). And here are the things I came up with:
- that slower stuff sounds dull if you're looking for tinkly, complex melodies and delayed timing, a la Oscar Peterson. But if you're into combining moves, and working with phrases as the markers for your complexity (ie, working on a larger scale), or perhaps looking at the layers of sound only a big band can offer, and which are clear markers of that earlier, late 30s sound, then this stuff is quite interesting. It begs a combination of moves and a use of lateral or horizontal space, rather than micro-movements on the spot. It says 'think of each note or each beat or each chunk of rhythm as part of a bigger pattern' not 'think of each note or beat or chunk of rhythm as something you have to echo in your body exactly'.
The free-er, riff-based and improvisation-heavy nature of Kansas City jazz (in particular) encourages musicians to think of how they can combine improvisations and solos within a looser musical framework. For dancers, that approach encourages contributions to the rhythms going on, rather than a strict representation of what they can hear. So, for example, a Swede would add a bit of syncopated footwork at the end of an 8 to add rhythm to the song, rather than simply making flesh exactly what they can hear. They would also make greater use of a dynamic, lateral energy rather than just a restrained, micro-movement and energy-contained.
So, really, this stuff is actually very interesting and challenging for dancing. Even at slower tempos. I actually feel that slower tempos can offer greater scope for improvisation and interest - you have time to add stuff in. When you're moving to 200bpm, you don't have time to add in extras - you pare down the movement to basic moves simply because you don't have time. It's about combinations of moves rather than individual movements.
When you're working at a slower tempo, you can add in all the interesting visual 'commentaries' and social interaction that faster tempos prevent. And if you're working with the more open, improvised connection of a Swedish or old skool swingout, for example, both partners can happily add in variations and jazz steps, breaking out into open to do 'solo' stuff as well. And all that in addition to the combinations of moves and use of lateral space that says 'hey, I can hear more of this song than just the three or four notes in my immediate vicinity'.
I also find that phrasing becomes more important with this sort of music - you work in combinations of 8s rather than within an 8 for variation and interpretation and improvisation.
So my love of the mid/slower tempo chunk-chunk songs by people like Lionel Hampton run in the face of arguments challenging their aural interest. But I must admit - 120 is the lowest I'll go in that style, and really, it's better if it hits 140.
*a love that will never be realised as this fan's was here
**a lot like the slower version of Flying Home that's about - it builds to a frenzy of almost-fastness. It's at least 20bpm slower than the version most dancers know.
"Hamp & slow-mid range swing" was posted in the category digging and lindy hop and other dances and music
October 11, 2006
current dance clip viewing
Posted by dogpossum on October 11, 2006 11:26 AM
First dancer: Naomi who won. Second, Sharon from Perth who came second. Third, whatshername.
Saucy, no?
"current dance clip viewing" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 6, 2006
Henry 'Red' Allen's World on a String
Posted by dogpossum on October 6, 2006 7:33 PM
I have my eye on Henry Red Allen's World on a String after reading about the version of St James Infirmary discussed on SwingDJs here. The song caught my ear while watching the ULHS finals (which I talked about here).
I don't have any Red Allen, but I'm definitely interested.
As for my stalking yet another version of SJI, alls I can say, is that if obsessing about multiple versions of particuar songs is good enough for Jesse in his October show, it's certainly good enough for me.
Although, on a side-note, one of my reasons for seeking out the older or 'betterer' versions of particular songs is motivated by the current musical clime in Melbourne lindy hop. There's been a recent rash of new DJs in our town, which I do applaud. I am particularly happy about the fact that most of (if not all of) these noobs are women. But I do have a great deal of issue with the fact that they're all into boring old groove, and that most of the Melbourne DJs playing this sort of action don't actually own their music - they've ripped it off someone else. Which is problematic not only for the fact that they're, well, ripping people off, but just as importantly for a community of dancers, it means that the same old music is being recycled through the speakers every night. We hear no music - only poor quality versions of ordinary songs someone's downloaded illegally (in a shitty mp3) and then shared around.
So when I hear a particularly shitful version of a song, I'm immediately motivated to play a betterer version so people can hear that there is more to the jazz world than fucked up versions of goddamn Lou Rawls goddamn version of SJI!
Dang - I am SO on my high horse here!
...the thing of it is, though, that un-groove is out of style here in Melbourne town, and even if I do play a 'better' version, it's unlikely that there'll be any dancers there who'd value it in the same way I do!
argh.
So, yeah, I'm hot for that Red Allen album, but goddess knows when I'd get to play it for dancers. Guess I'll just have to love it on my own. Like I loves de McKinney's Cotton Pickers and early Cab on my own...
"Henry 'Red' Allen's World on a String" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and music and objects of desire
October 3, 2006
a partial reckoning
Posted by dogpossum on October 3, 2006 7:02 PM
We have returned from SLX.
Injuries acquired:
- sore ear from my cold (and flying with ear infection - never have I felt such pain. Ever. I cried like a baby and people stared. But I didn't care, because having blocked ears is like closing your eyes - no one can see you)
- sore groin from doing stunts at a late night party (The Cheese regrets his spontaneity)
- sore thigh from lawn bowls (The Squeeze does not regret learning to bowl)
- a big bag of regrets (I wish I had been well enough to acquire injuries like The Squeeze's - but I did a lot of sitting about and talking shit. It seems that Sydneysiders do not fall for long lines of bullshit as do our Southern Cousins from Tasmania. But I tried)
"a partial reckoning" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and sydney
September 29, 2006
UHLS jam
Posted by dogpossum on September 29, 2006 4:29 PM
The 2006 ULHS finals are up on youtube.
The Charleston final battle stars Australian Sharon (Perth) and Frenchman Max (Tolouse). See all the clips here
"UHLS jam" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
Australian-Melbourne-Irish-Global media?
Posted by dogpossum on September 29, 2006 1:22 PM
As some of you know, I'm booked in to give a paper at the annual CSAA conference in Canberra in December. I wrote about my abstract here and moaned about not scoring a bursary here.
Well, things have actually turned around a bit since then. I have actually scored a smallish grant from the nice people at the CSAA, which will cover my conference registration and part of my airfare. Yay.
So, come December, I'm flying up to the Can to talk theoretical turkey with acadackas, hang out with my old school friend Kate (no, not 'old skewl', nor is she particularly 'old' - she is a friend I have had for a long time) and possibly see some local dancers.
This was all very nice to hear - I'm quite proud of having scored a competitive grant from an organisation which will look good on my CV. I'm also happy to be funded for my trip to the Can - I need to get a job some time soon, and these things are good networking activities... though I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time hanging about with old UQ buddies. And as you can see from this entry, I seemed to spend more time thinking about jazz than any professional business at the last CSAA conference.
So anyways, I'm off to do a paper.
Here is the abstract again:
Swing Talk and Swing Dance: online and embodied networks in the ‘Australian’ swing dance community.
Since its revival in the 1980s, lindy hop and other swing dances have become increasingly popular with middle class youth throughout the developed world.
There are vibrant local swing dance communities in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Canberra and Brisbane for whom dancing - an embodied cultural practice – is the most important form of social interaction. Swing dancers will travel vast distances and spend large amounts of money solely to attend dance events in other cities. The success and appeal of these events lies in their promotion as unique and showcasing their local dance ‘scene’.
In travel itineraries which criss-cross the country, swing dancers develop networks between local communities that are not only cemented by their embodied interpersonal interaction, but also by their uses of digital media. In this paper, I examine the ways in which the online Swing Talk discussion board is utilised by Australian swing dancers to develop personal relationships with dancers in other cities, which in turn serve to develop relationships between local communities. This insistence of local community identity in swing dance culture in Australia defies a definition of a ‘national’ swing dance community. I describe the ways in which ‘Australian’ swing dance is an ‘unAustralia’ - not a homogenous ‘whole’ but a network of embodied and mediated relationships between diverse local communities and individuals.
Right now I'm having trouble remembering what I wanted to write about. I suspect there wasn't actually a lot of planning in there. But I have started to have some ideas. Of course stimulated by my impending trip to SLX (I'll be off to the tram stop in a few hours - nursing this horrid cold that's sprung up), but also prompted by planning for MLX6 planning.
Have a listen to this:
(which you can find here on the MLX6 music page).
Now, if that's not an advertisement for glocal community, I don't know what is. I mean, before we even get to the dance/exchange stuff, we're listening to an Irish guy pimping Australian jazz for a Melbourne exchange to an international audience. Neat stuff, huh?
This is the stuff about lindy hoppers that I really love: the way they go nuts and do all sorts of creative things - off as well as on the dance floor. And much of this creative work is centered on big dance events like exchanges and camps. There are lots of film clips, mini-films, websites, DVDs, etc etc - and a couple of special official CDs produced - but I'm beginning to get interested in the way swing dancers use radio and audio technology. Specifically, digital audio technology. I mean, there is all that stuff about DJing, but swing dancers do other really interesting things as well: Yehoodi radio is streaming music chosen by swing dancing DJs from all over the world, the Yehoodi Talk Show is really just a chance for a couple of engaging dance/music nerds to have a chat online and Hey Mr Jess is even nerdier - a particularly lovely DJ chatting about swing music and DJing with another dance/music nerd.
Hello podcasts.
This promotional podcast by one of our MLX6 crew is interesting for the way it combines samples from local musicians' albums (these are all bands we're hosting for MLX6, from Melbourne and Sydney) - they're all still living, all contemporary artists - with pimpage for our event.
I do need to sit down and do a bit of analysis of the content, but this is some interesting stuff. Radio has proved a particularly effective medium for connecting dancers in different countries - a natural complement to discussion boards. And this is one of (if not the) first Australian contribution to the international lindy hop radio world (excluding contributions by local DJs to the Yehoodi radio show) - this is the first locally produced Australian swing dance radio 'bit'. And it's narrated by an Irishman!
Wonderful!
I do need to sit down and think about how this works: the way 'Melbourne' is presented, the way 'Australia' is presented, and how different audiences within and without Australia (and Melbourne) might receive/interpret/read this text, but it's a starting point - a bit of motivation - for my paper. At the very least, I can add that to my usual list of clips and photos for the presentation - always fun to do.
Yay!
--edit: you know, part of my brain is also a bit interested in the way I've used that odeo plugin, there: most times you see those sorts of things they're 'invisible', in the way my sidebar over there is largely 'invisible' from the main body of the page over here. But I've actually framed that odeo thingy as something to use and listen to, rather than just stuffing it into my sidebar or at the bottom of this post. It's an interesting contrast to the livefm thingy over there in the sidebar (which is still stuffed and giving me the shits). I am, of course, delighted and fascinated by all this convergence action - my blog as combining audio and visual as well as written? Let's see a newspaper try that then! Of course, this issue is one I've been plaguing my students with lately in tutes - as I heard in a Media Report story about cross-media ownership and digital technology, the cross-media ownership legislation kind of collapses when faced with the internet and the fancy things newspapers have been doing online: they combine av with traditional 'static' text... and bloggage, and audio, and... lots of other lovely stuff.
This is such a great time to be a media studies stooge! How could you not love the internet?!
"Australian-Melbourne-Irish-Global media?" was posted in the category academia and conferences and lindy hop and other dances and melbourne and teaching
September 28, 2006
old and new
Posted by dogpossum on September 28, 2006 11:45 AM
My new CD has another version of Jive at Five for my collection.
I love this song more than anything. I love the way the rhythm section stomps along (hello Freddy and Jo - guitar and drums - and bass-player-whose-name-I-do-not-know). I love the featured muted trumpet. I even love the wandering saxophone. And the piano? Lovely. My favourite version (which features all these things) is a 1939 jobby, by Count Basie (and orchestra) of course. It trucks on in at 175pm.
I DJ it very rarely, in part because I have been afraid of 'higher' tempos until very lately (we had an epiphany last week - quicker transitions. Yes, yes, we knew, we had been told before. But now we Know). And it's 'lowerenergy', and I tend to prefer playing faster stuff only if it has 'highenergy'.
But things have changed, now, so I will soon play it every single time I DJ. Every. Single. Time.
I never tire of this gem.
I have also played a version by Jo Jones from this album, which is wonderful. Jo Jones (whom I wrote about here) was Basie's drummer for ages. And rocks). That's a great song, but it's 4.07mins long, and has a big fat bass solo in the middle which goes down like a ton of bricks with dancers. Especially since the whole song is 182bpm. It is still a mighty track, made even more wonderful by Jo's spoken introduction: "you hold up five fingers in each hand" and the chunky drum intro. The trucking rhythm section is emphasised (not surprising, considering Jo is a drummer, and this is his band), though the piano still gets in there... but with more vigour, and I think it's all in a different key (again, I'll have to think about it) - taken down a bit...?
But this new Basie album has another version of Jive at Five on it. It rolls along at a ponderous 147bpm, which kind of kills the sprightly, uplifting feeling of the original (sounds corny, but it really is uplifting - it makes you feel like trotting along on your tippy toes... well, that and stomping along with the rhythm doods).
But it's a neat track, with a trombone solo substituted for the sax solo (I think it's substituting - I can't remember - something's different there, anyways. I'll have to have a look), some nice additions and embellishments to the original version. It'll be a good track to play for noober dancers.
I have embarked on a Grand Scheme of late - playing newer 'more accessible' (ie hi-fi, or slightly slower, or simpler) versions of great old school tracks, then (over a series of gigs - not during the one song!) substituting the 'originals' and fading out the newer versions. This has worked a treat with songs like Viper's Moan, where I started with Mora's Modern Rhythmists' version, then used the Willie Bryant version (which is vastly superior - I am currently obsessed with Bryant and his band. This is some HOT shit). Similar stuff has happend with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra's version of C-Jam Blues (though I am thoroughly sick of that song, and wouldn't play it again unless I had to), with other DJs (obviously echoing my sentiments) pulling out alternative versions.
I really like C-Jam Blues, but my preferred version is a Duke Ellington version from 1941 (the Blanton Webster era) which sits on 178bpm and rolls along. The LCJO version rocks - it's live and very exciting - but it sits on 143bpm, and while the energy really builds in this top-notch contemporary reworking of a great song - it kind of loses the original energy of the faster version. There are some different things going on in the rhythm section too, and the neat violin solo in the third phrase has been replaced by a trumpet, which, while cool, isn't quite as cool as the original. But that could just be the gypsy jazz in me showing.
I don't play it very much, but Sydney Bechet's version of Stompy Jones would be a good way of getting to Ellington's (fabulous) version. Interestingly, Bechet's version sits on 216bpm, while Ellington's is about 199bpm. Ellington's is vastly superior, in part because he's using a whole orchestra, while the Bechet version I most prefer (Bechet and his New Orleans Footwarmers) uses a smaller group (5 or 6 or something). One of the neat things about the Ellington song (as I discovered reading Gunther Schuller's Swing Era) is the layers and rhythms (layers of rhythms?) going on in his version.
The Ellington version I prefer is a 1934 job, while Bechet's is from 1940. I could talk about Bechet and revivalist New Orleans jazz, and the way the rhythm section works in each, but I can't really be bothered.
One of the side effects of listening to all this stuff with an ear to dancing is that I've become obsessed with rhythm sections - with the way each note is played in terms of tempo and timing and accent and emphasis, rather than in terms of melody or tone or pitch. I guess it's because it's difficult to make those things visible in your body, when you're essentially working with a percussive instrument.
I'd never really thought about all this rhythm stuff when I was singing a lot at school - then I was all about pitch and stuff.
I'm also fascinated by the idea of polyrhythms. Which I need to learn more about.
"old and new" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 27, 2006
The Count Basie Story - Count Basie
Posted by dogpossum on September 27, 2006 4:03 PM
This lovely thing came in the mail today. Recorded in 1957, 58 and 1960, this is a collection of Basie's big hits re-recorded by his 'new testament' band. It's interesting stuff.
I'm not usually such a big fan of new testament Basie, but I do find him useful for DJing, as it's a nice cross-over point for old school scratchy fans and hi-fi kids. This CD is great because it's such good quality, is an interesting idea (especially in reference to Basie, whose earlier band(s) had such different sounds to his later big band(s)). If you don't think about the 'originals', this is one sweet album. I know a few DJs/dancers who'd love it.
I'll go through and listen to each song in comparison to the 'original' or earlier recordings and let you know what I think.
I don't doubt that this will give me some useful fodder for my sets at SLX... now, if only I could figure out how to reinstall my bpm counter after the Great Reinstallation of 2006, prompted by the incredible CRAPtitude of itunes 7.0. BPM counter tips for mac would be very welcome.
"The Count Basie Story - Count Basie" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
September 20, 2006
sigh...
Posted by dogpossum on September 20, 2006 7:47 PM
There are so many things I could say about this clip.
I could start with the fact this is 'traditional' Korean music and costume, matched with 'traditional' beat box and breaking (with some seriously old school moves in there - a real grabfest for anyone who's ever watched a fair amount of break dancing). And then I could go on to talk about how this is a peculiarly Korean way of moving and dancing - these are not African American dancers, nor do they dance or move like black Americans. This is Korean dance... or a Korean appropriation of a black American dance and musical form and costume and...? And then, that this is a Korean appropriation of a classical piece of music, in a hip hop context - how wonderful!
Then I could talk about the beauty of the round performance space - the perfect jam circle, with the viewer invited to take up the empty space and join in - to become part of the jam. The inclusion of the musicians in this circle only emphasises the way dance and music are inextricably bound.
And then, of course, there is the use of editing, focus, pans, cuts, etc etc to exaggerate and emphasise certain aspects of the choreography - to speed up fast parts, to add staccato to jagged movements, to highlight small movements which might otherwise be lost. The use of a constantly moving camera to heighten that sense of movement, which - if you've ever stood at the edge of a jam circle, digging what you see, or perhaps considering coming in - is exactly how it feels and looks. As part of the audience, you move with the dancers and the music. This is more than call and response, it is cooperative meaning making at its most pleasurable. And do I need to mention the use of video 'screens' in the shot to emphasise the presence of the musicians, in the face of such mesmerising physical display?
And if I had more time, I'd talk about the use of light, the use of colour, and what all this means for an art form that is so heavily inflected by discourses of skin colour and shade...
Sigh.
"sigh..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
September 7, 2006
Duke Ellington's House of Lords
Posted by dogpossum on September 7, 2006 1:55 PM
Ok, so a little while ago I crapped on about Bluesology.
Today I'd like to crap on about House of Lords, which I have on acomplete centennial something or other collection (well worth the (massive) cost - it truly is a 'complete' collection... well, for that one label. whatever that may be). It's live, recorded in 1966 and it's five minutes and thirtyfive seconds long. It's also 136bpm and I classify it as 'groovy swinging', which means that it has the tsi-tsi-tsii high hat sound and rhythm section, but trucks along - not that sort of formlessly swingingly groove that irritates old scratchy fans. Because it's Ellington, it really cooks. And it really feels like it's trucking along - grooving, but rocking. Chunky but still palatable for the smoothy types.
So, anyways, the thing I like about it is a) it's live, and b) you can hear Duke laughing - no, chortling - away in the solos. The band are really enjoying this stuff, and it's really rolling along - you feel like it's going somewhere. Kind of makes me feel like this is the type of stuff Oscar Peterson would do if he had more guts. Guts as in, if his music was a little more visceral.
I'd certainly like to dance de lindy hop to this song. Which sounds as if it's really just drums/percussion, piano and bass. And groaning adn chortling.
Matter of fact, I wonder if there aren't two pianos in there - could it actually be Peterson? Or maybe it's Basie? I'd hazzard the former, though I don't think they really worked together (actually, what would I know).
Dang! I just NEED to rush home and look at the liner notes!
At this point I really wish I could insert a sound clip so that you could all listen along with me, but of course, there are copyright problems there. Maybe I need to get into that streaming radio action?
"Duke Ellington's House of Lords" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
Duke Ellington: The Duke: The Columbia Years 1927-1962 [BOX SET]
Posted by dogpossum on September 7, 2006 1:27 PM
Duke Ellington: The Duke: The Columbia Years 1927-1962 [BOX SET] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
It finally arrived, and I'm now one happy ducky. As you can probably tell, I've been bingeing on Ellington a bit lately. I now have quite a few excellent albums, and of course, there are plenty more to get. Ellington is one of those artists who continually surprise you with excellent music. His career was so long, and he did such diverse work, there's always something for everyone.
This collection is neat because it offers some excellently remastered old faves (I'm especially happy to have a decent quality version of It don't mean a thing (1932)), but also some more recent stuff - especially some nice 50s stuff which I didn't have. I'm still not sure I feel entirely comfortable with the heavy duty high hat action in this stuff, but you can't deny the standard of musicianship in some of these amazing recordings. The quality isn't always better (I have some heinous Blanton-Webster Ellington stuff), but you get some great music.
Personally, I'd much rather dance old school, to that late 20s, 30s and some 40s stuff (depends on who and what it is, though - I adore Hampton, and he tends to sit in that later moment - 40s and 50s), but I do like to DJ across the board. And when you're not dancing - you're DJing - it's easier to handle the 50s stuff at a dance. Pity the dancers, though...
Well, actually, most dancers don't really mind - beginners are certainly the least picky in regards to specific eras, and most of the more tolerant experienced dancers would simply rather we played goodmusic than stuck religiously to one era... unless we can DJ well within that era.
As a DJ, I do actually like to play a wider range of stuff, if only to save my brain having to deal with balancing the levels of all-scratch, all the time.
"Duke Ellington: The Duke: The Columbia Years 1927-1962 [BOX SET] " was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
Duke Ellington and his orchestra 1949-1950
Posted by dogpossum on September 7, 2006 1:14 PM
Duke Ellington and his orchestra 1949-1950.
A chronological classic, so we're listening to a comprehensive overview of a particular period, but not truly excellent quality. I picked this sweety up a few weeks ago (again from caiman.com, via amazon - fabulously quick delivery and cheap) so as to secure myself a whole album's worth of stuff like B-Sharp Boston, a song Doz got me onto.
It's neat stuff. I wasn't really all that aware of Ellinton's more mainstream stuff from the late 40s/early 50s - I have a bit of it, but it's stuff on compilations or overviews of his career, so I've not listened to it in isolation. I also have to say that I'm always distracted by the earlier stuff - I am passionate about very late 20s and early 30s (1928-1931 mostly) Ellington - and find it difficult to move past songs like Flaming Youth and Rockin' in Rhythm. Which is probably why I find it difficult to DJ a lot of later Ellington - I simply don't know it as well.
...that's actually an exaggeration - I do play quite a bit of early 40s Ellington. And love it.
So anyway, back to the early 50s Ellington.
I like this stuff. When it's not veering off into artyfarty stuff, there's good dancing action on there. I think I like Joog Joog because it manages to use that big vocal sound Ellington liked for his stage shows with accessible 'swing vocals' - so you get the singer from Creole Love Call (sorry, I've forgotten her name, and I don't have it in the laptop yet) teamed up with someone poppier, and you get a rockingly good pop song.
So, as far as DJable music goes, this is a goody - a few I'd happily play for dancers (and have - and had them go down well), plus some arty stuff purely for your own listening pleasure.
Two thumbs.
"Duke Ellington and his orchestra 1949-1950" was posted in the category digging and djing and lindy hop and other dances
the wrong sort of bounce
Posted by dogpossum on September 7, 2006 1:07 PM
I'm sitting in my office listening to some straight-ahead swinging Ellington on headphones, watching a young African dood kicking a soccer ball around outside the Muslim prayer room. He's jogging back and forth at about 140 bpm and I really want to be out there with him, running about and having fun, rather than stuck in here waiting for students to come avail themselves of my office hour.
Off behind him there are a couple of fatties smoking and chatting. They should be kicking that soccer ball too.
Watching this guy jogging about on the concrete in time to Joog Joog (currently favourite song - 1949 from the chronological classics Duke Ellington 1949-1950) reminds me of how lindy hop - jazz dances - are all about that relaxed, ground-eating, bouncy jogging motion. It's about bending your knees, sinking into the floor and pushing up again. It's about loose limbs, being strong in your core, getting into the ground...
And it doesn't work to groover swing (Jersey Bounce, Ella, 1961 Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie)) - it encourages the wrong sort of bounce.
"the wrong sort of bounce" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
August 18, 2006
jealousy is green
Posted by dogpossum on August 18, 2006 6:05 PM
...and if you take care to compare this image with the one in the previous post you'll see why.
- and just to make it absolutely clear, check out the littlest charlestoner* in this clip:
*that makes is sound like Frida is a little dolly. She's not, she's a ravening beast.
Zachi, however, is a sweety. A sixty-metre tall lanky young 20s sweety.
"jealousy is green" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
August 8, 2006
the tyranny of distance: audiences and performers/texts in high and low art forms
Posted by dogpossum on August 8, 2006 10:34 AM
Laura has asked an interesting question here on a previous post:
...I would like to ask a question about "the everyday", in those CS quote marks - is consumption of canonical or high art an everyday activity, and if it isn't what is it? Posted by: Laura at August 7, 2006 03:30 PM
I think the man to answer this question is right up there in the cs canon (or at least the audience studies canon). Take it away Henry Jenkins...
I skip about a bit in the next part of this post (I'm a bit distracted, so I can't really take time to formulate a sensible argument)...
I think the key point (in my approach, anyhoo) is not so much the nature of the actual text or practice, but the way it is institutionalised, commodified and 'valued' by various cultural and social forces.
I've been looking at this issue in reference to dance (of course), comparing the way ballet and vernacular dances like hip hop or breaking are approached by audiences.
[In an aside, the discussions on wikipedia's project dance (esp the talk pages) - people want to capitalise the names of specific ballet choreographies, but aren't so sure about how to capitalise vernacular dances like lindy or hip hop].
I've also noticed that the way swing dancers - DJs in particular - approach jazz is quite different to the way the genre is approached by jazzniks. One of the clearest and nicest illustrations of how different groups imagine jazz lies in the way Bennett's Lane puts on gigs (Bennett's Lane is a well respected local jazz venue - devoted to 'quality' jazz). They are very strict about noise during performances, and do NOT allow dancing. This is such a strange and bizarre contrast to the way jazz functioned socially in the 20s, 30s and 40s - it was pub music. It's also a serious contrast to the way I experience and enjoy jazz at the Laundry in Fitzroy on Saturday afternoons: it's loud, it's full of smoke and drinkers, the band members will get down off the stage and kick audience arse if they give them trouble. They don't care if we dance, and there is - as a consequence - a really exciting and dynamic relationship between dancers, musicians and audience at these gigs.
But at Bennett's Lane (and other venues around the place), there's a definite positioning of jazz as 'art', which must be 'appreciated' from a distance, rather than enjoyed with the body, up close and personal. There are quite culturally specific ways of demonstrating appreciation going on. Just as Jenkins noted that Checkhov fans used different language to describe their interest in theatre, there are clear differences in the way certain groups approach jazz and music.
Here's a quote from chapter one of my thesis about the relationship between audiences and performers, audiences and texts in dance:
Considering dance, whether vernacular dance or performance dance, as a public discourse, allows us to analyse it for ideological content, for the ways in which identity markers such as class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age and so on are represented and valued by a particular community of people. Reading vernacular dance as everyday discourse encourages us to see social dance as an exchange of ideas, and as a site for the negotiation of identity and social relations between individuals and groups within a community. I draw clear distinctions between vernacular dance traditions, where dance occurs in everyday spaces, between ordinary people, and concert or performance dance traditions, where dance is relegated to particular ‘dance spaces’ which are separate from the everyday spaces of a community. Ward makes this distinction: “there is a categorical divide between dancers and the audience in performance dance …that does not exist between dancers and spectators in social dance, where those roles are interchangeable†(18). I read this dynamic relationship between the roles of ‘spectator’ and ‘dancer’ in social or vernacular dance as a clear example not only of call-and-response, but also of the ways in which readers participate in the making of meaning in textual interpretation. (pg5)Later on I add this:
The word ‘vernacular’ in a discussion of dance refers to the everyday or ordinary, common dance of a particular group or culture. Vernacular dance is distinguished from concert or theatre dance through its positioning in everyday spaces, rather than existing only as a formalised, and usually choreographed, performance of a particular dance on a concert stage. Vernacular dance is intrinsically participatory and happens in all sorts of spaces, both public and private. It is also necessarily mutable and reflexive, responding to the cultural needs of its performers. (pg9)
I wonder if one of the key differences between 'low' and 'high' cultural forms and practices is this issue of distance - there is (in Western culture ...?) a divide between the audience and text/practice in high art forms, whereas the 'low' forms encourage close proximity between audiences and texts - you have only to consider the Big Brother website and voting system to see how particular industries and textual forms encourage audiences to get close to texts. If only so that they can be more easily targetted by advertisers.
It can't be an accident that high art forms like ballet and opera have trouble keeping audience numbers up, and that various marketing strategies that aim to make these sorts of forms more approachable to wider audiences are at once endorsed, yet also regarded with some suspicion by those sections of our community which have a vested interest in maintaining social heirarchies.
...there's a good article by Joann Kealiinohomoku on reading ballet as an 'ethnic' dance that examines how race and class work in high and low art form (and in anthropological approaches to 'culture' and 'society'): Kealiinohomoku, Joann. "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance." What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 533 - 49.
"the tyranny of distance: audiences and performers/texts in high and low art forms" was posted in the category academia and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
July 11, 2006
I am John Travolta
Posted by dogpossum on July 11, 2006 8:37 PM
In our house The Squeeze is convinced that BB is not only foul, but also immoral. He leaves the room if it's on. I don't care much either way, in fact I'm watching it now. I'd prefer it if it was unedited, and just a bunch of people in a room with no 'tasks' - just like watching a bunch of sharehousers who're on the dole. No money, so they can't afford to go out. No imagination, so they don't go do free stuff. Eeeexcellent.
But I do have a problem with the new program 'Honey I'm killing the kids'. Ostensibly a program committed to 'helping' parents with overweight kids, rather than focussing on positive reinforcement for the parents and children, I suspect the tools are guilt, guilt and more guilt. Nice. I won't be watching that.
I've watched very little telly lately - beyond the eternal Buffy and Angel (seasons 4 and 2 respectively) - but I have my eye on tonight's OC. Nice.*
In other, more important news, I have a John Travolta obsession. I am convinced, when I'm dancing, that I am the man. It doesn't help that I think I'm funny when I strut it, Saturday Night Fever style. It's particularly unhelpful that lindy is built for strutting. Or, more importantly, blues dancing is built for strutting. A keen balboa fan was asking "you're into this blues stuff - what's the deal? I just don't get it," and of course, the only response is: "strut. You need to strut. Either take it incredibly seriously, or incredibly unseriously. But strut." It's true. Blues dancing is all about strutting.
*NB Willow now has an ibook. An oooold one.
"I am John Travolta" was posted in the category buffy and angel and lindy hop and other dances and television
June 24, 2006
recent reading
Posted by dogpossum on June 24, 2006 10:18 PM
Ok, so I haven't read that article, yet, but I have read most of this:
It's one of the most recent contriubtions to dance studies work on African American vernacular dance history, edited by Tommy DeFrantz, who does some interesting work on queer black masculinity in dance. While there's a little more emphasis on concert dance than I'm really interested in, there are also some neat articles, especially one on ring shouts which is really worth reading for a discussion of African slaves' experiences with christianity, as represented in dance.
"recent reading" was posted in the category academia and lindy hop and other dances
June 20, 2006
that big fat bottomless pit of uncritical critical theory (wherein Buffy, ibooks and a horde of cyberdykes take on The Man)
Posted by dogpossum on June 20, 2006 5:10 PM
I think this series of entries is really me logging in my reading process, as I go through an article in a journal. Tedious stuff if you're looking for a coherent, sensible argument. Interesting stuff if you're into active readership... dang. Did I give away the punch line?*
If you've already read my last entry (who am I kidding?), you might be interested in reading this - it's the McKee text I quoted. Interestingly, McKee notes that
I'm trying to encourage people to break out of their normal habits, to think about the culture they consume. I'm thinking that maybe we shouldn't just do the same thing, every day week in, week out.
....a global campaign encouraging people to boycott books for one week and to challenge you to explore new ways of passing time.You could try talking to friends, or dancing to some music. You could even watch some television!'
Do you like the way McKee lists some of my most favourite things there? And how, for me, these are the cultural practices in the forefront of my mind? Will I dance? Will I stay home and watch telly? Will I talk with friends while watching telly? Will I read? Oh, dilemma, dilemma.
I still feel, even though I love telly and understand all those arguments about high/low culture, loving mass culture for its own goodness, that perhaps encouraging people to 'turn off their telly' for a week is not a bad thing. And not just because it saves power.**
Look, I'm getting off-track now, and I still haven't read that article, but really, why am I so bothered by McKee's comments? Surely it's not just because it seems to have toppled into that big fat bottomless pit of uncritical critical theory which seems to dogg me at every conference***?
Geez. I wonder if all this confusion and brow-furrowing on my part is really just a result of watching too much Buffy and Angel, where there seems to be an eternal tension between 'old knowledge' and 'new knowledge', namely in the persons of Willow (read: Witch/feminist/lesbian/macslut****/hawt young thing with irritating approach to slang English) and Giles/Wesley (read: Watchers' council/patriarchy/booknerds)?***** Probably.
and CRAP, where is the INTERNET in all this book v telly crap? I mean, geez, hasn't anyone read that thing about media convergence yet?****** Or is that as totally uncool as globalisation/global media now?*******
*this was meant to be a joke where I linked to a post by a local Aussie acblog, but I can't find the link now. Sorry. It was funny and clever. Was.
**this is where I link to what I'm thinking of as the 'sequel' to the save water campaign in Melbourne. I'm kind of interested in the ramifications of this power campaign. I like the whole 'you have the power' plug (so to speak) - it makes me laugh to think of how this switching off unnecessary power soures is kind of functioning as an incitement to quit consuming... vig gov goes socialist? I wonder how origin feels about all this?
*** Hell if I'll name names - these doods seem to be so online I'll totally get busted. But you know who I'm talking about. Don't you? They tend to be a bit slow to engage in any satisfying way with issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc, beyond glib book titles and throw away lines. And they love that new media.
Though, frankly, who doesn't love that new media?
****Go on, tell me you didn't find Willow's steady progression to the world of macdom just a little bit signficant to her appeal as thinking-woman's-hero/hawt-young-dyke/Wicced-kewl young thing? Go on, admit it - you just love to see a slightly-undernourished-young-academic-sexually-ambigious-mildly-androgenous-gingah sporting those sexy safety-corner apple products. you bet your i-life you do!
...you know that we've been sitting here on the couch the past few months quietly noting her progression from ugly, clunky pc desktops in Ms Calender's class to her clunky oldskool macbook, and now are waiting (somewhat breathlessly) for her ibook to appear. But be assured - I will blog it as soon as it appears.
*****off-the-top-of-my-head reference: Blind Date in Angel season one, where Cordy scoffs at Wesley's slooow old school bookteck, while kicking his arse in the research stakes with her computer, and yet also spending 1 hour and 40 minutes on the phone to Willow who has also been decrypting files all day (ref for the Buffy parallel eps where that goes down - the Yoko Factor and Primeval). Though, really, if I was Cordy at that moment, and considering Willow's recent Outing at that point in season 4 of Buff, there's plenty to talk about - at least 1 hour and 40 minutes' worth.
******Wait til you read my thesis. It's right there in Chapter 5:DJing as the convergence of media forms and practices in embodied dance discourse
*******Chapters 2 through 6.
-----------
Post Script
You might be interested in this issue of the CSAA newsletter, three articles down, where Greg Noble writes about "A cultural studies anti-canon?" Speaking as someone who did an MA on newspapers (how uncool! how ...analogue of me!), this caught my attention...
NB the whole mac thing - you know that I'm making a joke about how mac has so totally scored with its marketing towards my demographic with the whole white/safety corners/block colour thing, right? Right?
"that big fat bottomless pit of uncritical critical theory (wherein Buffy, ibooks and a horde of cyberdykes take on The Man)" was posted in the category academia and books and clicky and lindy hop and other dances and television
June 16, 2006
remind me
Posted by dogpossum on June 16, 2006 3:26 PM
to write about female role models for lindy hoppers, will you?
Thinking about Frida has made me think about expanding a bit of one of my chapters (ch3 I think) where I wrote about gendered resistance and transgression in dance in contemporary swing dance culture.
In that chapter I looked at how women (and men, but I'm mostly interested in women) do resistant stuff while actually dancing. I write about:
- resistance within the lead-follow partnership, as follows (I think that's where I talk about the swivel and African American v Anglo American styling and gender performance therein - and how women dancers in the 2000s can borrow from these 1930s examples to do active stuff. All via archival film, of course, and then (even more interestingly) via networks of shared clips).
- resistance within the lead-follow partnership, where women lead
- solo dancing for women on the social dance floor (with a reference to flappers and charleston as a radical departure from partner dancing (and the heteronormativity) in the 20s... and in the 2000s. Interesting point: the 30s and 40s were SO conservative compared to the 20s!)
I want to have a think and a write about this stuff in a more comprehensive way. Possibly something for an article for a feministy/gender studies journal? Maybe a feminist media studies journal?
"remind me" was posted in the category article ideas and lindy hop and other dances
weekly round-up
Posted by dogpossum on June 16, 2006 2:39 PM
Today is a kind of day out of time for me. The thesis is with the Supes, to be looked at later on (and to be talked about next Thursday). Next week I'm going to get into all the annoying administrative bits of submitting a thesis - cover sheets, descriptions, forms, etc. But this week (ie the last 2 or 3 days, incuding today) I've given myself leave to do whatever I like. That means:
- obsessing about the MLX6 site. I have some neat stuff from our Arty Team (ie Kylee and Scotti - designer and scribbler respectively), and a good plan for the site. But this week was all about designy stuff - trying to make the logo work with the practical functions of the site. Or, in other words, laying it all out on the page in a pretty and yet usable way. Eek.
- finishing off some sewing jobs that really needed doing (PJs for The Squeeze - bad wobot, altering my lovely plum stretch needle cord trousers so they're not mega bags, finishing off a neat black (with white arm-stripes, red wrist-cuffs and big red cross on the front) fleece jumper - fleece is neat. I promise to post some sort of pictures at some point. This last jumper was black, white and red in an attempt to be Serious and Grown Up (esp after my pink and red fleece hello-kitty lined hood fleecy cardigan thing), but ended up looking like something Dennis teh Menace would wear:
I like to imagine that I am, in fact, a comic book hero when I'm burning down Sydney Rd, dodging cars and yelling "BAM!" under my breath* like Frida:
She does actually yell "BAM!" and she's probably shouting "YEAH!" in a loud, Swedish-American accent in that photo. - discovering last-minute thesis jobs and FREAKING out about them
- actually submitting my Intention to Submit form (yes, I know - it's madness. But you have to give them 3 months to find you 3 markers or else you delay the return of your thesis post-marking), with abstract, thesis title (what? you mean I have to name this thing before it's even finished gestating? what?!). I can't remember what that was. No, wait, I've found it:
Hepfidelity: Swing dance and the role of digital media in embodied practice
Ta-DA!
- And... what else have I done? Oh, I went to see Dave Chappelle's Block Party, where there were 4 of us in the cinema - me and 3 teenage/first year boys. I laughed at the Huxtable jokes, they laughed at the hip hop references. Cultural capital for all.
So it's been an ok week. I feel a bit lost, but still. I've also been looking for work. Yeah, right. Let's not talk about THAT.
Anyhoo** here are two interesting things to read:
- this blog called avant game, which is a far more interesting games studies blog than any I've ever read before
- and B's entries on meditation, starting here which are quite a lovely read.
I especially like this bit:
Upon returning to Alice Springs, I kept up my practice, and found other people to meditate with from time to time. One group that met on Sunday afternoons was a small Sangha group. It was held in the artist’s workshop out back of the house of one of the members. Although I was not really studying Buddhism, they were always welcoming, and it was a pleasure to sit with them for a half hour in that quiet room, and feel their energy.I really like this idea of being part of a group while meditating. Meditationg, martial arts and other inwards-looking practices like yoga or Thi Chi can often be seriously inward-looking, or in-the-body. To such an extent that they can affect your outward-looking interactions with others***. I am really interested in the idea of being-in-the-body and inward-focussed, and yet to still be aware of and part of a group or partnership. It's an idea I'd like to explore a little more. Particularly when you keep in mind that African American vernacular dance - vernacular dance is about being part of a group, about social context, and about call-and-response between dance partners, between dancers on the floor, between musicians and dancers, and between dancers and audiences. Being seriously inwards-looking is kind of not so great in a social dance situation where the dance is all about conversations with others...
* I'm brave, but not that brave.
**that was for you, Galaxy - I'm crazily aware of it now. But I think of a friend called Dave who says it a lot. He's probably referencing the Simpsons, but I'm referencing an insanely good dancer who's also a Thai Chi master country boy.
***it's not uncommon for hardcore martial arts people or yogis to be quite terrible partner dancers because they're so focussed internally, they are so good at responding with their bodies, they're not so good at responding with their bodies in relation to others, as a partnership.
"weekly round-up" was posted in the category academia and lindy hop and other dances and people i know and yoga
June 2, 2006
bubs blues dj. down around the river
Posted by dogpossum on June 2, 2006 2:51 PM
I'm doing my first 'public' blues set* at the blues pit this Sunday, and've been going through my music to sort out stuff I might play. I Â got to thinking about how I may handle it, as a DJ. My feeling is that the deal will work much as with lindy hoppers - combine tempos, careful transitions, manipulate energy levels.
But I've noticed a few things that make it a bit different to DJing for lindy hoppers:
- the tempo range is far smaller. While I've been reading that varying tempos is actually more important in blues dancing in the States than one might expect, the range is actually fairly limited. With lindy, I tend to think that I'm working between 115 and 250bpm (pretty much - give or take). With blues, I'm looking at a range between about 45 and 115bpm.
I know that there are other DJs who may vary the tempo range a little more for blues (but I can't really talk more about that), but from my experiences at the Blues Pit, I reckon this is the safe range.
SO
- the energy levels are more important as a result. Working with such a small tempo range, I think you have to be a bit more aware of how the music makes you feel.
I've seen blues DJs get up and play a series of songs seemingly at random - it feels like they're just playing 'their favourite songs', one after another. Just being 'slow' isn't really enough to make songs work together. The problem with blues is that the tempos are so low, the vibe in the room can be so mellow, that it's all too easy for the crowd to sit down, start chatting, and not get up again. So I really do think you need to work the energy levels and mood of the room. Just as with lindy, I guess.
- there's a greater tolerance for a wider range of musical styles in blues dancers than lindy hoppers (in Melbourne atm, anyway). I know there are purists who won't tolerate 'non-swing' or 'non-jazz' or even 'non-blues' in blues dancing, but I'm tending to lean towards the camp who feel that 'blues dancing' is such a wide and flexible notion, that we can really borrow 'blues music' from a wide range of blues styles: 20s blues, slow drags, 12bar blues structures and the 'blues key', rhythm n blues from the 50s (60s, 70s, etc), etc, but even move into stuff like funk and soul. Not to mention the more 'arty' piano- and small combo- driven instrumental stuff (like Junior Mance, Oscar Peterson, Jay McShann, etc).
My personal feeling as a dancer is that 'music for blues dancing' feels best if it has a solid beat. By solid beat I don't mean insistent beat, but that kind of deep, solid and low-down bass that makes you move your hips. So I'm happy with a kind of hip hop beat as well.
Having said that, it makes complete sense to me to play mostly from the jazz and blues genres, not just because it suits blues' positioning within a swing dance community which favours lindy and other jazz dances, but because that stuff is simply often so much more musically interesting and challenging than some of the newer or non-jazz stuff.
I also feel that you can't really do, say 20s charleston without doing slow blues or drags - it just feels like you're leaving out half of the musical and emotional story.
- the lyrics seem more important with 12 bar blues (in that traditional form) than they do to lindy. So I think that playing more songs with vocals is perhaps more workable than lindy. I really like this style of blues music, mostly because I like the combination of humour, sadness, longing, desire and irony. In his book 'stomping the blues', Arthur Murray talks about how 'singing the blues' isn't just about singing sad songs. it's also about singing (and dancing) to drive out the blues. So you get these interesting contrasts between sad, sad lyrics and upbeat, energetic melodies and rhythms. Or you get seriously slow, saucy rhythms and melodies with funny, sarcastic or ironic or just plain funny lyrics. All this hung on a relatively simple musical structure (A, A, B or whatever it is).
So it feels like the lyrics are especially important, and encourage us as dancers to move in these layers of meanings - not just sexy all the time. Not just super-slow.
Having said that, I think it'd be a bit dull if we left out other musical styles, such as slow drags, which have all those other wonderful musical and social meanings.
-> I think that all of these points are a result of the fact that (or contribute to) blues dancing is less 'structured' than lindy (well, not when you do lindy the way I do: "structure? What, you can do lessons in this shit?"), so people feel free to experiment and innovate.
In addition, blues is so slow, you really have time to work on expressing all these feelings and contrasting emotions. So you can do technically difficult steps which aren't possible at higher tempos, and you can really milk every musical iota out of the songs. Because you've got the time. So it really helps if the music is more interesting.
Other things I'm thinking about as a DJ:
- the set is an after-class set, and most of the dancers will be new to blues dancing (as regular blues dancing nights are relatively new to melbourne), but most of them will be familiar with swinging jazz or blues music (from their lindy).
- I've only got 45 minutes, which is tricky, as blues dancing takes a while to warm up to, good blues nights last late into the night, it feels right to take longer with each partner (more than the 2 song rule for lindy, definitely right for loooong songs), and it takes longer to work through moods - the curve or wave is kind of longer.
- the room is seriously crowded - it's small, there's far, far, FAR less room for each couple than in lindy rooms. And I'm standing at floor level to DJ, so my view of the dance floor will be limited.
As per usual, I'm set on avoiding the 'teach dancers about music' thing or 'expand their minds' thing, or 'be historically accurate' thing, even though it'd be nice to really get into some old scratchy blues, eg. As with lindy, if I go in there with a mission, I will almost certainly stuff up. It's always best to work with the vibe the room is giving off.
It's going to be really interesting: I'm wondering if these ideas I have about the similarities between DJing for lindy hoppers and blues dancers will hold up in practice.
I'd be interested in any feedback from people who've DJed for bot ...
*ie not a private party
...yes, you have read this post before. but not here. here
"bubs blues dj. down around the river" was posted in the category djing and lindy hop and other dances and music
May 31, 2006
go 20s charleston, go!
Posted by dogpossum on May 31, 2006 5:11 PM
"go 20s charleston, go!" was posted in the category clicky and digging and lindy hop and other dances
May 5, 2006
taking a cat for a walk: DJing and phenomenological media studies
Posted by dogpossum on May 5, 2006 2:48 PM
I'm addressing some interesting points Brian raise in the comments to the unexpectedly entry from a couple entries ago.
Brian writes in that comment:
That of course leads on to the big question is: “Is playing a small amount of non-swing music at a swing event a major problem.†The smarty pants answer would be, just play some Neo. My real answer is I don’t know. What I to know is that to put a non-swing song in your set and for it to go down will with all the dancers takes a lot of skill. I find you must first make sure all the classic hard core dancers are happy and maybe even some of them left (gone outside) the room. Play some hardcore classic songs in a row of upper tempo and you should achieve this. Then it’s a matter is checking if those “non-swing mood group are in the room and ready to dance. You then need to make the transition and then comes the non-swing song. And hey the songs selection is like bringing a cat for a walk.
This section really interested me. That's a really clever approach. I'd been thinking "there's no way I'm every playing neo because I hate it". But this scheme offers me a new approach. It reminds me of Trev's comment here on Swing Talk where he says:
Yes, the 'wave'!I was using it last night (will post set soon) - although lately i've been more brutal with my tempo changes - it's great for shaking things up, and avoids things "sounding all the same".
Don't be afraid to drop in a fast, high energy one when you have the floor full at medium. I'm not talking crazy fast, but something around 190-210bpm. The folks that are into it will be hanging out for it, and if you keep the tempos too low (to keep the floor full) they will get bored/lazy. Even if you only get 2 couples dancing to a fast song, you get the benefits of:
a) lifting the energy/enthusiasm of the room even if they don't dance; b) inspiring others to get better go they can do it too. It's not the same for everyone, but when I was new watching a high-energy dance motivated me to keep at;
c) sending people to the bar to spend their $ on the venue!If you do it right, the room will be buzzing, and you can follow up with something at around 150 and everyone will be right back into it.
I generally wouldn't play more that 2 fast tempo songs in a row. People start getting pissed if they don't want to/can't dance fast, and tired if they've been dancing to it.
(NB the setlist he's referring to is here, though I'm not sure which setlist he means)). For a description of 'the wave' check out this thread on swingdjs.
... ok, so now to address the point.
Basically, both Trev and Brian are suggesting that the DJ use the 'wave' - which is a way of describing the general 'flow' of mood in the room, to provoke a particular response from dancers. It's hard to explain how it works with dancers, but
I've just been reading some fascinating articles referring to David Seamon's book A Geography of the Lifeworld where he describes exactly this phenomeon - people making a space 'place' by repeated actions and social interaction. So, everyday a man makes a coffee shop 'place' by rising at 8, walking to the coffee shop, buying a paper, ordering a poached egg and coffee, eating and reading til 9 when he walks on to work. The man comments that he is only made aware of how 'comforting' and 'warm' this cafe space is when the series of actions is interrupted by something like the paper being sold out.
Seamon talks about this as people becoming aware of their 'precognitive' behaviour only when it's interrupted. In other words, he's interested in what happens when people are made conscious of the stuff they do habitually in particular spaces to make those spaces a 'place'.
This phenomenological stuff really makes me laugh, because they write like no one has ever thought to investigate what happens when you make people aware of their unconscous habits. When of course, any physiotherapist, yoga instructor or dance teacher spends all their working hours helping people develop a 'body awareness', where they become conscious of the things they do habitually with their bodies and muscles.
but anyway...
That theory seems particularly relevent to this discussion of DJing, because DJs are basically people who develop the skills to manipulate the mood of a room full of dancers so as to get them all dancing. I've been absolutely fascinated, as a noob DJ, by the way the choices I make in playing songs and combining songs can affect the mood of a crowded room. While, as a dancer, I respond unconsciously to the music, either getting really 'high' with uptempo, upenergy music, or getting really 'low', and moderating my dancing (my unconscious movements and social behaviour), as a DJ, I've had to become conscious of this process and figure out how it works.
It's important to note that 'precognitive' behaviour is essential to skilled partner dancing. I'm frequently reminding myself 'stop thinking!' and 'just follow!'. It's like driving a manual car - you suddenly reach a point when you're learning where the combination of accelerator, clutch, gear stick, etc becomes unconscious. And when you're suddenly made conscious of this process, it often stuffs up.
Leading, however, can be more comfortably 'cognitive' than following as you are planning and determining the course of the dance. I have found, though, that the best dances, the most effective ones, where I really use my centre to move their centre, are the ones where I relax and 'just move my body' naturally, rather than 'trying to lead' in order to effect weight changes which in turn move the follow's weight - effecting their weigh changes.
So when Trev talks about manipulating the wave (ie developing a 'mood' or 'vibe' in the room, or, to use Seamon's approach, making a space 'place' through playing music which will provoke particular social responses through dance), Brian talks about exploiting the wave/dancers' response to the wave to sneak in songs which are potentially going to 'break' the wave. So he plays 'risky' songs (like neo) after a couple of faster, old school swinging jazz traacks, so that he can exploit the old school fans' taking time out for a break to slip in some neo. So the potential 'risk' of playing the neo stuff is ameliorated.
Trev also talks about 'breaking' the wave constructively by making quicker transitions between tempos - dropping in a fast one, even if the floor was full at slower tempos, then dropping the tempo down again to 'recover' and pick up the dancers who've stepped off the floor for that fast song. And, incidentally, giving those who danced the faster song a break.
This is fascinating shit, because it all reveals how important it is as a DJ to be a dancer, but perhaps more importantly, to consciously recognise how dancers respond to combinations of songs and musical moods to manipulate the mood of the room, but also to 'please everyone'. I adore this approach because of the way it contrasts with the comment "you can't please everyone" a DJ (whose work doesn't impress me at all) said to me recently. This comment 'you can't please everyone' seems (in the case of this DJ) to serve as justification for not attempting to work the room and 'wave'. Or rather, to me it seems like this DJ made this comment because they are simply unaware of these issues. Which holds true with their dancing, where they are similarly 'unaware' of other dancers in the immediate vicinity, unable to 'feel' their partners' weight changes, and have a propensity for rough leads.
In my own DJing, however, I've recently discovered that I can actually keep the floor full for the entire set, at a 100% strike rate. This usually means playing mid-tempo songs, and not taking any 'risks'. Yet one of the results of this approach is that some of the dancers (mostly that hardcore, experienced group), while they're dancing every song and enjoying themselves, really want me to play some faster songs as well.
I've been a bit tentative about doing this, as the numbers on the floor immediately drop when faster songs are played (though I have noticed that they pick up or don't drop if the song is very swingy and good quality). One thing I have learnt, as Trev has pointed out, is that it's ok to drop the numbers for a song or two. I've also found that if the floor does empty (for any reason, whether the song was fast, or you've played a dud) there are ways to fill it again - I have a few 'safety songs' which will always fill the floor. So it's ok to play fast songs, empty the floor, and then fill it again. As Trev has pointed out, playing the odd faster song will, while people stand out for a song or too, actually pump up the energy in the room. And, as Brian points out, it also gives you an opportunity to play something that group of experienced, old school faster dancers wouldn't dance to anyway, even if they weren't standing on the sidelines strugging to breathe.
Another trick that Brian has noted before, is that if you do take the tempos up really high, you can actually raise the overall tempos when you play the next song. So if you find the room is stuck at about 140bpm, playing something at 200, while it may clear the room for those 3 minutes, will actually make it possible for you to follow up with something at 160 or 180, because it feels so much slower, comparatively, people get out there and dance. So allowing you to up the general tempo of the room, and change the overall wave.
I have noticed, however, that while you can raise the tempos generally, you will have to bring them down again eventually, as people's energy and stamina wears out. I had previously been obsessed with getting tempos up and keeping there, as if 200bpm was my ultimate goal. Now I realise that it's about varying tempos over the course of the night - the wave is a wave, and not just an incline. The trick is, of course, managing these crests and troughs without dropping the energy and tempos prematurely.
So DJing is a really interesting way of putting into practice that phenomenological approach to media use in everyday spaces.
NB when we say 'bpm', we mean 'beats per minute'. The average speed of house or 'dance' music is 120bpm. The average tempo for dancing lindy in the 1930s was 180bpm. I can follow comfortably up to 180bpm, then I have to work harder. I can lead comfortably up to about 160. 20s Charleston, however, requires faster tempos - over 200 is average. Over 300 is 'fast'. We can dance to such high tempos in lindy because the music 'swings' - it doesn't feel like you're rushing, and in fact really swinging songs feel slower than they are. Which helps to keep you relaxed, as you can't dance fast if you're freaking. 20s charleston, however, is usually danced to 'dixie' or jazz from the 20s, which predates swing, and has a different timing - 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 rather than 1-2-3-4, 5-6-7-8.
FYI: 180bpm is more than 3 steps per second, as we actually make 10 weight changes (or steps) in the basic lindy rhythm and Swing Out (fundamental step of lindy).
"taking a cat for a walk: DJing and phenomenological media studies" was posted in the category academia and djing and lindy hop and other dances and music and yoga
April 21, 2006
rolled shoulders
Posted by dogpossum on April 21, 2006 4:54 PM
So today I scored a new haircut (scored as in paid for).
It's slightly different to my usual very-short. Uli said "what will it be this time? short?" and I said 'Yes, but I think I want something different".
So now I have 'girly bits' at the front.
...
Which is nice. And anyway, I tried to colour it myself. Two problems:
1. dud colour (some crap Loreal product - I need their oldschool hyper-red but can't find it)
2. missed some bits at the front through conservative application of colour
3. I got no idea what's going on at the back there.
I guess it'll look ok. It's kind of tame, though - it looks like a 'natural' red (well, as natural as a chick with black eyebrows and eyes can look with red hair) and I like toxicly unnatural reds.
Sigh.
Will see what I can find out at the shops tonight.
On other fronts, a trip to the hairdresser is always a great opportunity to secure local community gossip. Uli is a member of the Sydney Rd Assoc (I think it's called) and has lots to do with the council. Apparently the giant Sortino across the road (Sortino = wonderful Italian furniture. Say yes to white, to gold, to marble) will soon become a Priceline. So I might be able to get my hair colour there soon. The big old reception place/furniture store place is to be an Aldi, which we're not pleased about in Little Sweden's home of Fine Hair: the local small businesses will suffer. And I agree. I'm not sure why they think a German supermarket will do well in Brunswick (land of Middle Eastern, Mediterannean and Subcontinental -ness), but heck.
I passed on the wonder that is Nino and Joe's and we tutted over the urban renewal generally.
Speaking of Nino and Joe's...
went in for a bunch of sausages, came out with $50 worth of fucking amazing meat.
We got:
- 8 fat sausages (2 pork spicey, 2 pork normal, 2 beef spicey, 2 beef normal) because I wanted to test them all. These aren't the pale and insipid bangers filled with beige paste you find tagged 'BBQ' in the supermarket. They're fat, they're textured a little like my thighs (helloooo cellulite), they're kind of blotchy-coloured, owing to the combination of stuff inside them. They taste FANTASTIC.
- 1 rolled beef shoulder roast (1.2kg at $12.99 a kg) - pancetta, swiss mushrooms, garlic, etc. It looks fantastic. It had better be.
- 1 pork chop (because)
- some beef 'stir fry'. Ordinarily I buy steak and we cut it up ourselves, but I trust Joe. Well, I'll trust him just this once
- 2 chicken breasts
- 1 pork loin (hellloooo stir-fry)
... and something else I've forgotten. At any rate, it took two bags and I had to squish it into my bike bag. This is enough meat to feed us forever. I should perhaps buy fresh rather than freezing, but I wanted to be sure we were stocked up.
I'm a bit excited about the rolled beef. The Squeeze barely tolerates roasted meats, but he likes beef. And I was excited by the pancetta. Though I'll probably die from botulism, leaving cured and raw meat cohabiting in the fridge for 24 hours.
And from whence does the funds for all this bounty come?
Well, we can thank the Melbourne lindy hop community for the most part - I've DJed 9 times since the 23rd February. That's 9 times in an 8 week period. Going from 0. DJ drought? Naaaah.
I'm certainly learning quickly. Well, I guess I'm learning quickly, because it seems to be going well. Last night was my second time doing the second set at CBD and the room was PACKED and FRENZIED til 12. I DJed for 2.4 hours for $25.
I was abused and been-mean-to by some loser arseholes, but everyone else seemd to really dug my action. I know that the floor was always full, and the reports from dancers were overwhelmingly positive - "Man, it's really pumping out there. There's a really great vibe in the room." That's really nice to hear, but it's a bit hard watching your mates flail about in a sweaty, endorphine-charged euphoria while you have to stand up there playing the best music in the world. Thankfully, people seem to have grasped the idea that I like to be visited when I'm DJing, so I spent a large part of the set laughing so much with the Rubinator I thought I'd broken my face laughing.
The few dances I did have were quite awful: I have forgotten how to dance. But I think perhaps it's recorded music. I only dance to live bands now. heh.
I'd like to end this post with a witty reference to sausages or perhaps rolled shoulders... no, I won't go near that awful punnage about my own rolled right shoulder impeding my following. Even I won't stoop that low. Though I could, now that I have super-dooper yoga-strength.
"rolled shoulders" was posted in the category fewd and lindy hop and other dances and music
April 19, 2006
black - white dance
Posted by dogpossum on April 19, 2006 4:55 PM
This is a fascinating photo from this book:
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.
This photo rocks because it emphasises the different culturally informed aesthetics of dance, in different dance traditions.
These dancers are George Balanchine (the white dood), Violetta Verdy and Arthur Mitchell. You may know Balanchine's work from films like Cabin in the Sky]. He was a Russian-born American choreographer who revolutionised concert dance in the States (and internationally) by introducing Africanist themes to white dances like ballet (I have to note: this wouldn't have been possible without the assistance of black dancers, and black dancers wouldn't have been in white ballet schools if it wasn't for the abolition of Jim Crow and other segregationist legislation).
These photos absolutely fascinate me. Check out the angles at Mitchell's hips in the left photo - more exaggerated than Balanchine. Its off-centredness really creates some excellent angles, breaking up the 'straight lines' which are characteristic of white performance dance. And that from a black dood with ballet training - think of Frankie doing a Shorty George for a far more extreme example (or go way extreme and check out 'Snake Hips' Earl Tucker).
Joann Kealiinohomoku reads ballet as a cultural discourse in her article An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance, noting the ways in which "all forms of dance reflect the cultural traditions within which they developed" (533). She describes "the long line of lifted, extended bodies, the total revealing of legs, of small heads and tiny feet for women, slender bodies for both sexes, and the coveted airy quality which is best shown in the lifts and carryings of the female" (545) in ballet. Check it out - you can see those long lines in Verdy's immitation of Balanchine on the right. Note her straight line from hip to ankle, versus Balanchine's serious angleage.
Jacqui Malone writes:
Africans brought to North American were no doubt affirming their ancestral values when they sang a slave song that urged dancers to gimme de kneebone bent. To many western and central Africans, flexed joints represented life and energy, while straightened hips, elbows, and knees epitomized rigidity and death. The bent kneebone symbolized the ability to get down (12).
Isn't that the most amazing shit you've ever seen/read?!
It just blows my mind that you can see a culture's values and ideology in the way people hold their bodies and move. That is SO amazing! It's also very relevent to the way we Aussie kids learn dance today - how are our culturally inscribed ways of moving and dancing affecting the way we 'recreate' these dances? You just have to look at the difference between someone like Ryan Francois and one of the Hot Shots to see how ethnicity affects movement - both are amazing dancers, but quite different.
And I think it is absolutely ESSENTIAL to point out that these ways of moving are learnt. No essentialist stuff here, thanks. For evidence of that argument you can check out the Malcolm X bio for descriptions of how class affected dancing in black communities in Harlem in the 30s, or you can check out the last 2 refs at the bottom.
This one is just as interesting. That's Whitey's Lindy Hoppers rehearsing for Hellzapoppin' (Mickey Sales/William Downs, Norma Miller/Billy Ricker, Frank Manning/Ann Johnson). Check out the individual variation on the same basic A-jump.
And below there's a final ensemble scene from George Balanchine's 'The Four Temperamentals'. The ballerinas have just come down from a 'scissor kick' thingy and are rested on the men.
How's that for another neat comparison?
Kealiinohomoku, Joann. "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance." What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 533 - 49.
Malone, Jacqui. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Friedland, LeeEllen. "Social Commentary in African-American Movement Performance." Â Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: The Visible and the Invisible in Movement and Dance. Ed. Brenda Farnell. London: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 136 - 57.
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. "Embodying Canadian Multiculturalism: The Case of Salsa Dancing in Montreal." Revista Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses nueva época, número 3. (2002). (read it here)
"black - white dance" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
April 5, 2006
there are many reasons to love today's swing dancers...
Posted by dogpossum on April 5, 2006 5:36 PM
here are two of mine:
and here are a few more... for other reasons....
I just know I'm going to regret this post... but this is for you, Bruce. I know you'll love it most.
*pic by DaveCheney. If you're gonna use it, credit him. Or I will kick your arse - BAM!
**pics from this site
"there are many reasons to love today's swing dancers..." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
March 24, 2006
thesis update
Posted by dogpossum on March 24, 2006 8:07 PM
I am editing like a crazy person. Well, preferably like a clever, articulate and focussed academic.
I'm up to the 4th draft of Chapter 2 (Dance as public discourse: Afro-American vernacular dance). Actually, I'm mid-way with draft #4 of Chapter 3 (cultural transmission in dance: the movement of cultural form and practice as ideological and mediated process). This will be followed by the 4th drafts of Chapter 4 (AV media in contemporary swing dance culture: revivalism and the ideological management of mediated dance), Chapter 5 (DJing in contemporary swing dance culture: the collusion of cultural practices in mediated dance), Chapter 6 (institutions in contemporary swing dance culture: swing dance schools and the ideological management of embodied practice via media) and rounding up with a first draft of my conclusion. Then I go back to Chapter 1 (Introduction) to do its 4th draft.
Then I edit for typos/grammar/spelling and all that rubbish. Hopefully to submit in August.
It's all going pretty well, and the supes gave me the thumbs up on my recent effort at making 6 seperate blobs of work one comprehensive 'story' about swing dancers' use of media in embodied practice. It was a matter of juggling writing style, making each chapter support a key thesis (which I can't articulate right now, sorry), and then each point in each chapter support that thesis.
So Chapter 2 is now looking pretty comprehensive (dance as discourse; how to discuss dance as discourse, theoretically and analytically; dance discourse as culturally specific; then considering Afro-American vernacular dance of the 20s/30s/40s as an example, paying most attention to the relationship between the introduction of new ideas/dance steps (mostly through improvisation) and community structures which regulate/manage this process. In other words, how is the representation of 'self' and individual identity (through improvisation, creative 'work') by individual dancers 'managed' by community structures (such as musical structures, social conventions regarding sexuality and public behaviour, etc etc).
I make the point quite clearly that individual self expression in Af-Am v dance (or the representation of self and individual interests and 'difference' in public (dance) discourse) is more flexible than in contemporary swing dance culture.
I see the formal heirachies of teaching and learning (esp in schools) as the reason why there's less tolerance/opportunity for the representation of self/difference in contemporary swing dance culture. And teaching and learning in contemporary swing dance culture is dominated by 'revivalist' ideology - the idea that swing dances are dead, they were great, and they need to be 'revived'.
I explore this in greater detail in Chapter 4, the AV chapter, where I look at the role of archival film in the revivalist project.
In Chapter 3, though, I talk about 'cultural transmission', and consider contemporary swing dance culture, noting how it's a fairly homogenous culture, in fact a predominantly youth/consumer culture, a consequence of the formal pedagogic practices of swing culture. I take Melbourne as an extreme example, looking at how the swing dance school's commodification of dance as a package to be bought and sold via classes has resulted in a homogenous 'market' for this product - white, middle class, hetero kids.
But this chapter is more interesting than that. I argue swing dances' movement into the white American mainstream in the 30s was achieved primarily through the mediation of the form: film and dance studios brought swing dances to the mainstream (with obvious asides to stuff like Afro-American troops interacting with white women, though I argue that the segregation of the day prevented the wide-spread effect some dance historians argue for. I think film and dance teachers were significant - though it was a combination of factors).
I'm most interested in the mediation of swing dances in their movement from Afro-American communites to mainstream America and then into the internaitonal community. There's plenty of work on this stuff, esp in relation to mambo and latin dance and their movement into mainstream America (admittedly in later years).
I'm interested in how film was important. Then I make the point in Chapter 3 that these films represented the racism and segregation of the day in various ways (ie some studios not showing black and white characters on screen together - segregation in-text; racist work-practices in the studios themselves). And then, that revivalist dancers cannot help but reproduce these racist and dodgy themes in using these films as key sources for reviving swing dances. The problem lies in their not critically engaging with these issues in their teaching/researching dance. In fact, I argue quite strongly that swing dancers today are notably reluctant to engage with issues of race and class in their discussions of swing dance history. Which concerns me, esp as 20s and 30s 'Harlem' and 'slavery' seem quite ideologically loaded terms.
Ok, so with all that in mind, I then introduce swing dancers as fans, through their media use, and through their class/age/etc demographics.
Then I say: 'ok, so with all that in mind, what evidence do I have for all that in actual examples from dancers' embodied practice? Where is this shit in the dancing?' And then I do some neat analysis of actual dance stuff, in particular reference to gender and sexuality (because they're key issues in swing culture). And I make the argument that just that fans are engaged in 'textual poaching' - tactical engagments with dominant ideologies and discourses, so too are swing dancers. It's even more interesting when you read Afro-American vernacular dance as embodying tactical resistance to dominant American ideology and discourse of the day - hell, let's be blunt. When you read Afro-American vernacular dance as the dance of people whose history involves racism, segregation, jim crow legislation, racial violence, etc etc. In that situation, of course cultural production will be resistant. Particularly dance, for people of West African descent.
So then I do some neat analysis, basically asking how sexual and gender differences are represented in contemporary swing dance cultures around the world. I look at how, for example, young women in North America use swing dance to explore 'sexual display' within a safe social context, where they may (beyond dance) be unwilling to do things like flash their knickers, wear suspenders for show, shimmy, etc. I'm also interested in stuff like women leading and men following as a way of subverting heternormative social forces. I'm also facinated by local differences - eg blues dancing in Korea and Japan, as opposed to blues dancing in Canada or Australia or New Zealand.
And of course, the most imporant part of all this the role media plays. How contemporary swing dancers use the internet, AV media, etc in all this. How important are swing discussion boards in the way young people in swing dance communities represent sexual and gender differences? I argue that media is very important, and provide some neat examples from different discussion boards, websites and email lists.
Then I move on to AV media in Chapter 4, where I talk specifically about media use in contemporary swing dance culture. I take AV media as an example of one key media form (and practice), and then DJing as an example of the collusion of different media forms and embodied practices - in swing DJing we see dancers using discussion boards, email lists, websites, digitial music technology (from downloading mp3s to DJing from laptops), to research, purchase, discuss and explore music and how to use it. Then I look at how all this stuff functions in embodied practice: how DJs' media use actually functions in their embodied DJing for a crowd of dancers.
In Chapter 5 I look at how all this stuff - media use - is managed by institutions in contemporary swing dance culture. I focus on Melbourne as it has the largest swing dance school in the world, and is a local scene dominated by school discourse (which is, incidentally, capitalist discourse). And I look at how capitalist discourse functions to commodify what was once a vernacular dance - to sell young people a lifestyle product. And, most facinating of all, how they are also sold an ideological 'product' as well. I'm interested in how the ideology and discourse of schools in Melbourne reflect dominant social discourse and ideology in the wider Melbourne and Australian community.
Therefore proving my original argument, that dance = public discourse, where ideology is represented, and that this discourse is representative of the social/political/cultural forces of the wider community in which this community-of-interest is located.
I squeeze the fandom stuff in Chapters 4 and 5 in more detail, mostly to explain specific media practices.
Ta-DAH!
"thesis update" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and thesis
revelation
Posted by dogpossum on March 24, 2006 7:26 PM
I'm sorry Brian, I'm sorry. Chick Webb does rule... well, after Fats and the Duke and Billie and... well, he does rule.
New Proper chick webb collection purchased at caiman.com via amazon for a reasonable price (check it here). Could have found it cheaper, but didn't bother.
Quality: superior to anything else I had.
DJableness: yes
Range: covers Webb's career on 4 CDs. As with other Proper collections, I guess it'll do a good job covering the key moments in his career. I'm not so familiar with Webb, so I'll have to get back to you...
If you're not a Webb person already... we're talking Old Scratchy action here.
Sweet-as swinging jazz recorded between 1931 and 1939. I previously knew Webb through Ella Fitzgerald - she got her first serious gig with his band as a teenager (and later led the band after his death) - knew he was important (in part for his association with the Savoy Ballroom, Home of Happy Feet), read varying discussions about the quality of his band and of course danced de lindy hop to him many times.
I had a few albums already (mostly rubbishy 'greatest hits' or not-so-greatly-remastered albums) and wanted something comprehensive so I could get a handle on his action, and then seek out specific albums or greater collections (let's not talk about how my Billie Holiday obsession began).
I'll let you know how it goes - so far I like it a lot. The tempos are pretty high (as you'd expect from an old skool Scratchy from the Savoy), which makes it less flexible for DJing (esp when the DJ in question seems destined never to play for anyone other than newbs - but I don't fret. I'm getting valuable skills... and one day those newbs will be advanced dancers. And then, with my army of newbs, I will conquer the world!), but it's neat for listening. Though I probably shouldn't listen to it before bed. Like watching clips - it makes me jiggly. And it could only fuel my recent series of weirdo dance/DJing/suppressed thesis anxiety dreams).
"revelation" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
March 22, 2006
speed
Posted by dogpossum on March 22, 2006 10:03 AM
I know, I know, I've not been around much any more. But I can't help it! I've been editing like a crazy editing fool, and then I move from the computer to the bike to ride off to yoga or into the city or wherever the fuck I want to go - because I can ride my bike as fast as the wind, certainly faster than Commonwealth Games stalled traffic. And it's much easier for me to get onto my bike than it is for a cranky commuter to get onto a tram these days as well (PT users city-wide are 'amused' by the little notes at the tram stop: avoid using trams during peak periods. Nice one - two thumbs).
Though I am worried about the disappearing bike lanes. Melbournians will be familiar with the Games Lanes marked in blue on on CBD streets. Not so many will have noticed the way several key bike lanes (a few-block section on Swanston Street, all of Queensberry Street) have completely disappeared. I'm paranoid - really worried - that they won't come back after the games have finished. But this hasn't stopped me speeding into town or off to Brunswick Street or to the cinema. 20 minutes to town (official time down 10minutes on previous personal best). Still 20 minutes to Carlton, but surely that's a timing error? Yoga, however, is down to 10 minutes.
I am truly In Love with Blacky. Though its first service seems in order... how could we bare to be parted?
On other fronts, I've DJed no less than four times in the past three weeks. It seems there's a bit of a DJ drought in Melbourne atm. My skills have necessarily taken a serious up-turn and I'm sure the groupies are moments away. They are no doubt waiting for a tram somewhere on Swanston Street.
"speed" was posted in the category bikes and lindy hop and other dances and thesis
January 20, 2006
casualties from the lindy battle
Posted by dogpossum on January 20, 2006 3:32 PM
Today is Friday, and I'm in some pain. Last night was a big dancing night for me, and also a big out-the-house-day, all in quite hot weather. If you're interested in the illustrated version, follow this link to the set on flickr.
Yes, I know I'm writing like it's my second language, but I'm also lying on the bed on my tummy with the laptop and it's hard to write.
Ok, so back to me (don't you love the way blogging is all about me? Don't you love the way we can talk about the Genre like we're not already self-reflexive enough?).
Yesterday about 2pm I decided I needed to leave the house. I'm waiting for a meeting with the Supes as I've forgotten where I'd gotten to in my chapter editing and need her to read (reread? who can say) some chapter before I continue. Actually, I have 6 chapters she can read, but I'm letting her off lightly: 2 in 2 weeks, then 3 more in a couple more weeks. Hey, she's the one who chose to take Christmas off when she had obsessively-complulsively productive phd girl in the final editing stages.
So anyway, I've gone through some chapters, starting on the intro again and decided I need to reread some key books so I can remember what they're about. One problem with a phd: who can remember what they read 3 years ago in adequate detail?
Thankfully it's dance stuff, which is interesting to read, even when it's not really terribly excellent. I'm interested in the way dance studies and cultural studies do/don't really get along and the way dance studies is all resentful of this. Hey, I blame sociology.
At any rate, that prompted the previous post and a trip to Melbourne uni library (which, owing to the dance degree at their Vic College of Arts campus and a dance elective in their education degree (I think), has a damn fine collection of dance stuff).
After that I went to see Underworld Evolution because I loved the first one. It was terribly great: gorey, soft core porn for the teen boy/middle aged female SF fan audience. Then we went for a lie in the park (Exhibition Gardens actually), right near the fountain. We lay on our backs and read, one of us wandered off to take photos, and the other stared and stared at a couple further down the avenue who snogged and snogged for the hour and a bit we were there. It was very Paris. Or very Paris-as-depicted-by-Hollywood. Check the photos to see why.
After that we rode down to have dumplings (15 pan-fried pork/veggie; 8 steamed chicken/prawn = $13.50) at Shanghai village in china town, where the walls are bright pink and they have one solitary goldfish in a tank.
Then it was off to disgusting CBD for dancing.
A practice version of the team battles bit of this was planned and I went in it. Not sure what battle is? Check this out, think about You Got Served, but with less choreography*. Or the film Drumline with more dancing and fewer musicians. Or, of course, Rize.
Battling is an Afro-American vernacular dance/music tradition with its roots in Africa, where dance or music function as a forum for the resolution of rivalries or grudges in a socially sanctioned public space. Ralph Ellison discusses 'cutting contests' in his stories of jazz in Harlem in the 30s and 40s, Hazzard Gordon discusses street parties and competitions in her book Jookin', etc etc etc.
Things that'll make a battle work:
passion and 'bringing it' on the dance floor
an ability to improvise and respond to your opponents, partner and team
creativity in dance
being able to 'relax' and give in to your emotions
not being afraid to look stupid
girls not standing back and waiting for the guys to bring it
Most of these things are incredibly difficult for most of Melbourne's dancers. The emphasis in their classes is on repetition, immitation, routines, choreography and 'looking good' rather than bringing it - risking looking crap for the sake of creative or emotional authenticity. It's also difficult for these white, middle class teenagers to relax and express themselves in dance.
So the whole thing was a bit crap and contrived - as are most of the examples I've seen in footage.
It wasn't as good as the battle we had in Herrang with Peter and Sugar. But ....
It was fun, and I'd do it again, in a casual context. It was like a fun game. I don't know how cool it'd be in the formal competition context, though.
I have some issues with the selection of team captains (who really should be able to tell the end of a phrase), but now have a better idea of how these things may work in future.
I've seen clips of American Battles and wasn't terribly impressed - things can go wrong too easily. Wrong, of course, equates to Dull or Boring.
Major problems:
choreograph or plan something too fiercely in such a spontaneous format and you will fuck up: leave it looser and you're actually able to respond to your opponents with creativity rather than pre-planned schlock.
a lack of lindy hop will make for a lack of dynamic energy.
a lack of swing dances and excess of silly made-up dancing will make for dull viewing.
most lindy hoppers don't have any experience with battling in their general social context, so they have to learn how - so our battles are really kind of lame.
So, anyway, hopefully the whole thing will get more interesting and creative in future efforts. It was nice to see a mix of dancers from different backgrounds and experience: the important part is having dancers who are prepared to bring it. I wish I could explain that phrase more accurately. But it really is something which defies words - it's about dancing with passion, with attitude, with aggression (but not being aggressive...). It's about challenge and really feeling what you're doing. It's also about being so in your body, and so aware of how your body works, and so able to transfer emotion to rhythmic movement that 'bringing it' is instinctive and natural.
And of course, truly 'bringing it' is a bit too much for most Melbourne dancers - there are too many social and institutional limitations, founded on the heirarchal structures of a school, and on the way these institutionalised assessments/performances/definitions of 'ability' discourage less experienced or lower status dancers from having faith in their own ability.
Bringing it reminds me of discussions of 'cool' in Tommy deFrantz' work and in the literature on Afro-American vernacular dance (including Jacqui Malone's). It's about having 'attitude' but being 'cool' - ie staying in control in your face, but having a furiously hot body. So it's about attitude, not being out of control, but staying cool and making it all look effortless while your body is going crazy. While at the same time being all about bringing it. It's a difficult juxtaposition. But think of rap or rnb video clips: the swaggering rapper with hardcore lyrics, the hardcore dancing, the extreme clothing. But a cool, sneering or impassive face. The contrast between 'breaks' - static poses - and full-on dancing. The importance of tableau as a challenge in the midst of a frenetically moving dance sequence.
But anyway.
So we did that last night. I don't feel that I really brought it - I felt like I didn't really know what was expected of me, having a captain who was quite controlling discouraged me from improvising and taking the inititiave - it made me feel like I had to wait til the moves were 'called' - and following rather than leading made me feel like I should wait for my partner to take the initiative. It was the first time, though, so things could go differently in the future...
So now, today, I'm totally buggered and wrecked. It was so hot and sweaty I was totally stuffed by the end of the thing, especially considering that I'd been social dancing like a fool in the hour or so before hand. I was so tired I feel like I failed to put in a good showing for my partners in the following Jack and Jill. Oh well. Nor did I drink enough water (as per usual - I hate the way I feel guilty about drinking my own water at that place. Sure, I'll buy a drink, but I'm also going to drink at least 2-3 litres while I'm out dancing. And I can't afford to buy that much water!
Then I rode home (which was nice with the cool breeze, esp as it was still so hot) at 12:30am, but had to stop at the 7-11 for a drink.
At the 7-11 it made me smile to see some Italian kids in their 20s posing with their cars, boys with shirts off. It made me think about the battle and how the battle should have had the same type of posing but didn't.
*this was a truly crap film, but the dancing was good
"casualties from the lindy battle" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
January 5, 2006
entymology or etymology?
Posted by dogpossum on January 5, 2006 2:52 PM
I'm listening to a Black Eyed Peas album on itunes (Behind the Front, actually) for the first time, and it strikes me that I listen to jazz in a very different way to other music. No, let's get specific. When I'm listening to jazz on itunes via my laptop when I'm using my laptop (as opposed to when I'm hanging around the house doing other things and incidentally listening to music from my laptop via the stereo), my brain and listening bits work in a particular way.
I ask myself: "could you dance to this?" Well, it's not actually a conscious thing, it's more of a response. Does this song fulfill the following criteria:
- swinging timing (as opposed to latin or bebop or unswing or whatever)
- does this song make me want to move my arse?
- is the musicianship of a decent standard?
- is the song 'interesting' - ie does it offer me musical inspiration for said moving of arse, or do I immediately wander off to find a nectarine to eat?
and then:
- how is the quality of this song - would it cut it on a shitty sound system, and are the basic elements (rhythm section, vocals, etc) distinguishable as individual elements? In other words, can you hear the beat, can you hear the words, does the music have 'levels' or is it a flat 'monotone' mess?
I also have a few other criteria which are entirely idiosyncratic:
- is it 'new testament' - ie 50s or later swinging jazz? If so, does it make me want to gag or is it bearable?
- is it a 'new band' (ie someone from the contemporary music scene), and if it is, are they worth worrying about?*
- is this a 'better' version of a song I already have?
- is it 'swinging lindyhop', 'groovy swinging lindyhop', 'groovy lindyhop', 'swinging blues', 'groovy swinging blues', 'groovy blues', 'charleston', 'swinging charleston', 'slow drag', 'kissing song' or some other animal?
- what's the bpm? Is it too slow to lindy hop to on an average dance night? Or would you put it in the 'blues' folder?
and, most importantly
- how many stars?
This is a crazy way to think about music. Listening to the Black Eyed Peas, I had a momentary instinct to assess the 'danceability'. Sheesh. Bpm? Who gives a fuck!
And of course, all this is in part of my ongoing issue with DJing.
I have half thought about DJing, but frankly, the main reasons I've abstained so far (in order of importance):
1. we only have one decent DJed dance night a week, and only one a fortnight which are at least 2 hours long (2.5 for the former, 2.5-3 for the second). And we call ourselves the biggest swing scene in the country? Fuck - even Hobart has more social dancing action. At any rate, this paucity of DJed social dancing action means that I'm reluctant to waste it standing in front of my laptop playing my favourite dancing songs to a bunch of people who aren't me.
2. if I'm not there to dance, I'm not particularly interested in being there. I'm not terribly interested in the company of most swing dancers, and I'm certainly not interested in trying to hold a conversation with them in a noisy room where I can only guarantee their attention for 3 minutes. If that. Added to that, our two regular DJed spaces are shitty. The weekely venue is a shitbox - the sort of rank nightclub you'd go to when you were 15 because you could get in. And score some low grade speed while posing for amateur porn. If you were so inclined. The other joint is better, but it's a dance studio, superhot and overcrowded. Not so cool.
3. the few times I have DJed, I've nearly died of boredom. Sure, there are interesting aspects - keeping people on the floor, choosing songs to suit the 'mood' or tempo you've got going, etc etc. But really, at the end of the day, you're just playing a bunch of songs for other people to dance to. See point 1.
4. Most people on the floor aren't particularly interested in excellent swinging jazz. They'd be just as happy dancing to Royal Crown Revue as Basie. This sticks in my craw. It's even more infuriating when I think of the fact that most of the teachers teaching these people feel the same way - and teach with that crap. Frankly, I couldn't handle that shit.
I feel - obviously erroneously - that you should dance because the music tells you to. And it should tell you how to dance. For me, if I'm looking to dance lindy hop or charleston or whatever, I need jazz. With lindy hop, I need swinging jazz because the structure of the music is reflected in the dance form. An 8-count basic, where a 4-count rhythm is played out first favouring one foot, then favouring the second. That same 8-count basic is a balance between 'closed' and 'open' position. 'Closed' roughly correlates with scored music, and 'open' with improvised, unscored music. The execution of this basic - the steps - involves bounce. And bounce is swinging tempo embodied: it's about accent and emphasis and delay on particular terms. And all that with a partner on a crowded dance floor - which is, of course, the equivalent to the band.
So not giving a shit about what music you dance to is - to me - a fundamental declaration of a misunderstanding of the way this dance works. Which is fine... but it's also INFURIATING!
Reasons I would consider DJing:
1. the music I hear when I go out is so ordinary, I consider a civic duty to pull out the good shit. There are problems with this: I don't know what I'm doing and am just as likely to fuck it up as work it properly for the crowd. But I am attracted to the idea of reminding people of the good stuff, and generally contributing to a musical discourse which expands beyond goddamn Royal Crown Revue. Gotta be in it to win it, I guess. Or, if it's broke, get off your arse and fix it rather than bitching til someone else does.
2. I really like the music. So hearing it on a big sound system rocks. Though most of our systems suck (esp in the night club joint), and I don't know how to fix it to make it sound better.
3. You get paid. Not much, but seeing how poor I am at the moment, anything is better than nothing. And it'd get me essential items such as the Slim Gaillard Proper Box set.
4. It'd be a good way to get skilled up. And I love learning how to do new things.
At any rate, this ongoing dilemma/conflict/internal discussion has led to my insane approach to 'listening' to music. I go about this complicated system of classification in part with an eye to DJing at some point in the future, but also because it's certainly been an advantage when it comes to getting music together to work on dance, whether I'm working alone or with other people. I'm also a little ob-con, and this sort of crazy classification is pretty much an extension of my crazy laundry obessiveness, or my deep passion for tidying and arranging glass jars full of ingredients in the kitchen.
It has also been somewhat self perpetuating - the more interest I take in the music, the more interested in the music I become. I've learnt more about swinging jazz and jazz generally in the last year than ever before. I have about 400 albums in various forms that I'd consider 'danceable', I've discovered new artists that I really love, and come to understand and be interested in artists I hadn't really liked before. The technical knowledge I had from endless singing/performing/classes at school has been expanded and I've really developed a greater interest in the relationship between musical form and dance - particularly in terms of the relationship between improvisation and scored music within a song, how this is a reflection of relationships between musicians in a band, the bandleader's approach, and then - of course - the ways a dancer may respond to all this.
I wouldn't say that all this has made me a better dancer - you can't be a better dancer if you don't dance, and sitting on your clack fussing over your itunes doesn't quite equate to dancing. Listening to music with this critical ear is definitely not the same as the way I listen to music when I'm dancing. When I'm dancing I'm not 'conscious' of musical structure. In fact, I rely on my ability to unconsciously follow the structure of the music. If I had to actually count out the bars or sets of '8' in a phrase while I was dancing I'd be stuffed. I have noticed, though, that my responses to the music have changed and gotten more complex since I've been more into the music.
At the end of the day, however, your ability to actually make the music visible - to embody the music - is limited by basic stuff like dance fitness, body awareness (ie do you actually know how to move your arm to make that shape or relax/tense that muscle?), response time, connection with your partner (and ability to influence that connection) and so on. All that shit is really the product of:
1. dancing
2. aerobic fitness
3. experience in your body - dancing, sports, whatever
4. physical experimentation - trying shit out
Sitting there in front of you your itunes you're not really going to become a better dancer. Nor will you by watching other people dance. You need to move your arse.
Does this lead me to a kind of anxiety about DJing? Perhaps - if I'm sitting there DJing half the night, will my dancing go down in quality? Will I lose fitness? I think it's very likely. But, having said that, if I'm sitting there disgusted by the music, won't my dancing suffer the same fate?
So I guess I'll just continue with my ob-con musical classification. And collection. All those songs are really just specimens in my collection, I guess.
*there seems an instinct to grasp at any contemporary artist who plays anything even remotely 'swinging' and then foist it on vulnerable dancers in the swing scene. Just because Harry Connick Jnr is singing a 'swing song', don't mean it necessarily swings, or is even half worth dancing to. Further, the standard of most contemporary swinging jazz artists simply doesn't match the old skool doods - we have no Basie or Ellington or Armstrong or Holiday or Fitzgerald. They're all over there in indy rock, thanks.
"entymology or etymology?" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances and music
January 2, 2006
cultural relevence and dance
Posted by dogpossum on January 2, 2006 12:26 PM
Here's something I wrote about cultural relevence and swing dance a while back. I think it was posted on Swing Talk. I'm reposting it here because it's got some interesting points that I want to hang onto and think about with the chapter I'm writing atm.
[quote begins]
In terms of music: one of the neat things about Afro-American vernacular jazz dance is that it was 'made' in tandem with the music - that's why live music is important. Jazz totally leans on improvisation. So jazz dances do too. Being able to improvise is as important for us as dancers as it is for jazz musicians: it tests us. It pushes us to our creative limits. It makes the whole thing harder and so much funner.
So if I assume that the original line was: "the way vernacular dance maintains its relevancy to ordinary people's lives. Dance styles and fashions stick around because they have use-value - they respond to the culture of the day". You could also use 'society' instead I guess.
You know, I've thought about this a lot lately. It's something that has relevancy to me as a dancer, and to me as a feminist researcher looking at issues of power and discourse and ideology in a dance culture.
nerdy academic rambling
As a cultural studies person, I believe that 'culture' ...
- ie 'stuff' like texts (ie music and songs and pictures and paintings and sculpture and story and dances and magazines and television programs and film clips and so on)
and 'practices' (stuff we do - like talk about things or share clips or publish magazines or produce paintings or make clothes or whatever)
...is a nice way to look at what a society or culture is thinking and doing at a particular moment in time. As a cultural studies person I tend to be interested in 'now' - I'm not a historian, but sometimes I might do historical research. I don't use historical research techniques. Nor do I use a sociological or anthropological techniques in the same way as people in those fields do.
I assume - as a feminist cultural studies researcher - that the relationships between people - 'politics' are indicated or represented in cultural 'stuff' and 'practices'. So if I examine a song from 1935 I could make some guesses about the language and culture of the time. For these guesses to be more productive, I'd look at this text in context. So I'd look at other songs, I'd do interviews with people of the 30s, I'd read newspapers of the day, I'd read academic and popular work of and about that time. I guess that’s what I’m doing with my thesis: I’m looking at how the media we produce (be that dance or online) can be read to identify ideological discourse.
So I think it's really neat that Afro-American vernacular dance builds this idea of cultural relevancy into its very structure... I mean, all dances do, but Afro-American vernacular dance totally DIGS it and positions it as very important. Hell, the swingout is revolutionary because it broke open the highly structured European partner dance form and gave partners all that time to do their own thing - to improvise.
So I like to see people do 'their' thing in those moments. And I think we can analyse those moments to see what sort of person they are, their dance experience and knowledge, their physical abilities, even their political or social beliefs and position (take a look at girl x's swingout compared to guy x's swingout - what does this tell you about gender relations? about sexuality? about musicality?). It's there that we make the dance mean something.
more specific rambling
I wonder how we might combine 'making the dance relevant to us today' with any sense of historical 'accuracy' or congruency? ie getting new stuff in without losing the old stuff?
It wasn't a problem in Afro-American dance communities in the 'original swing era' (or in vernacular dance traditions generally) - the shared knowledge and skill base was just added to. Useful stuff stuck. Other stuff was shelved.
But many of us feel - as swing dance revivalists - that there's a responsibility to take a historical moment (be it 1935 in Harlem, 1930 in Kansas city, 1942 in Los Angeles or that heady summer on Balboa Island) and preserve it. Because it's beautiful or fascinating or exciting or wonderful or awful or scary or whatever. We just want to get onto that moment and somehow make it stick.
It's an interesting tension, I think.
Some ways I've noticed contemporary dancers make swing dances reflect their contemporary lives by exploiting the inherent flexibility of a dance that incorporates things like improvisation, impersonation and imitation:
- women leading and woman/woman dance partnerships not a new thing for partner dance by any means.
Same sex dance partnerships were there waaay back in Europe when partner dancing got going, it was there in various African nations pre American slavery (particularly when mixed-sex partner dancing was taboo), it was there in Afro-American vernacular dance from the beginning, right through the 30s to now.
For me, it's about reconciling my passion for dance with my frustration with patriarchal and hetero-normative gender roles and dynamics. It's also about getting to dance with my female friends.
- dancing lindyhop and other swing dances to contemporary music. I know, it makes me cringe sometimes, but hell, if it gets people dancing... I just ask that you dance to olden days music as well: don't replace the old stuff with the new. Hang onto the bits that are useful. And I think swinging jazz is useful.
- incorporating 'new skool' moves into oldskool dances:
the body roll (sexy new skool... or is it really oldskool made newskool already?);
running man (humorous performance of 1980s/70s oldskool... which might also be really oldskool made new and then made new again);
various hip hop bits and pieces (as in hip hop lindy)... again, isn't this oldskool made newskool in the 80s?
- women and men 'dancing like themselves'. So seeing men and women actually taking the structure of swing dances to perform their own personality and identity, outside a static gender role or identity. So, seeing a young heterosexual woman dancing with 'power' or kickarse to show that she's an independent woman, in a way she mightn't have been able to in the 1930s or 40s. Especially if her family or ethnic group weren't into female empowerment in that time. Or seeing an assertive, alpha-type chick take a moment to just 'follow' and stop making decisions for a while. Or seeing a young man not worrying that he may look 'gay' or whatever for relaxing and really feeling the music in ways that mightn't go down so well at a conventional night club. Or seeing a young gay guy working with female partners in a close embrace and not having to second guess the sexual tensions that would accompany this contact in a non-dance setting. Or perhaps even more exciting, see things like that first young woman [I]perform[/I] a meek, stereotypical ‘good Asian girl’ and then rework it to totally subvert it.
- one of the things I'm most interested in at the moment: swing dancers getting into solo stuff. Especially if they've never done any type of dancing - not even disco dancing - before swing. I am really interested in the ring structure for things like big apples, charleston-offs, a bit of jazzedy jiggywiggy or whatever - people dancing in a circle so they can see each other, and all be a part of the deal, and yet experimenting with moves and the music independently. I think this is a nice way for people to use a really, really, really old dance form to experiment with their own bodies and personalities in a public place, trying on all sorts of moves. I especially like it when it's all girl or all boy - I like to see some same sex peer work. But then I also dig a mixed gender thing too...
in this setting you see people for whom dance has never been part of their everyday lives before taking a bit of a chance that they might embarrass themselves and really exploring the things they're physically capable of, the limits of their 'jazz' vocabulary, their ability to steal steps from people near by or make up new steps. It's different to the big apple dances of the olden days, but it's still using similar themes and structures.
Neat!
"cultural relevence and dance" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 14, 2005
pro J&J = space jump
Posted by dogpossum on October 14, 2005 12:38 PM
Just watching some clips of Manu (one of my absolute favourite lindy hop leads - in that I want to be him) here and got to thinking: pro Jack and Jill comps (where you're randomly matched with a partner and have to dance to music you don't choose) are just like theatre sports. Well, when Manu and Sylvia do it, anyway...
This is how I feel about Jack and Jill comps - they're like a fun party game. This is one of the reasons I don't get nervous with J&J comps (or other dance performances, really): it's a game. Even if it's just you performing, it's still a game, because the audience has a role to play as well - they have to be The Audience. I wonder how much of this approach to performance and competition is a result of my research and developing ideas about the roles of performers and audiences in swing - and how both are 'performances'?
I have moments of nerves - literally moments - but I don't get nervous about performances or comps. Same as I don't get nervous when I'm tutoring or lecturing. I just enjoy it so much, I don't have time to be nervous.
It reminds me of something that Crinks said the other night. She mentioned a discussion she'd had with some other dancers (people with lots of performance experience) about getting nervous. Someone said 'I wish I didn't get nervous' or something similar, and the other person said 'I wish I still did - I don't any more. And the nerves were part of what made it exciting. Now it's just pedestrian' (I am paraphrasing majorly here).
It's funny, because I find that I do a better job if I'm not nervous, and I can relax and get on with focussing on the other stuff and doing a better job. Especially in the case of teaching or lecturing or giving papers: if I'm nervous, I can't concentrate on the questions people ask, and I don't do the best job I could.
So when I watched Manu and Sylvia in that J&J, all relaxed and having fun, I thought 'yes, this is what it's supposed to be like - fun. And a game'. Space Jump.
"pro J&J = space jump" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
October 13, 2005
Recent Lindy Hop adventures
Posted by dogpossum on October 13, 2005 6:07 PM
I've just seen some clips from the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown competition this year (on a french site whose name I can't remember, sorry) and I've noticed some interesting tropes.
What's the ULHS?
The ULHS is one of the most well-respected lindy competitions in the swinguverse. The emphasis is on hardcore dancing, with a relaxed attitude. Sure, Hellzapoppin' is still the lindy hop competition, but the ULHS is less about choreography and schmaltz than painful comps like the ALHC (american lindy hop comp/championships?) or the Australian Jitterbug Champs.
A word on lindy comps
I'm not a big fan of comps: I'm all about social dancing. But I also recognise the role comps can play in a dance community. They galvanise dancers, getting them keen and working on dance in a serious way. This of course brings up their dancing ability level, and setting new standards in the community.
The obvious draw-back is related to the type of competition: the VRRDA (victorian rock n roll dance association) comps which obsessed Melbourne dancers for ages about 4 years ago are all about the worst aspects of competitive dancing: 100% tacky, schmaltzy, choreographed rubbish (which is pleasurable, but in a different way of course); the AJC where the organisers would enter their own competition (it took 2 years for them to realise how unethical this was): what kind of cultural example is being set there? And of course, Dancesport: the name says it all.
So what did I notice about ULHS?
everything oldskool is nuskool
This is the age of the first wave lindy hop... or second wave.
The kids are getting hardcore into their old clips. THANK GOD! This has led to some scary second-rate imitations further down the line, but the first rank dancers are doing some seriously awesome shit.
crazy = good
This warms my heart (what with being a crazy dancer by trade).
20s solo charleston is still cooking along
Yay. One day Melbourne will get into it in a big way.
Melbourne is still trying to be the USA, dance wise
Sure, there are good reasons to be inspired by the American example, but imitation... hm. It's kind of a dilemma, because lindy hop is all about imitation - historical recreation. But my concern is with dancers immitating recreationists, rather than dancers getting out there and exploring the original footage.
How to dress
On the other hand, one thing I did think while watching the clips was how appropriate it is to wear contemporary dress while swing dancing. It's like Shakespeare: it's always set in the 'current day'. So wearing contemporary clothes is very appropriate (especially as we are always 'wearing' our contemporary cultural 'clothes' when we dance or move or speak or write or....).
It's a dilemma: everything old is new again, and yet everything new is also very appropriate.
One thing I noted (on this point) was the way performers would wear 'old' clothes (vintage or recreationist) for performances, and then 'new' clothes when they competed. It strikes me as an example of framing and 'performing' identity. When performing in formal Performances, they're putting on an historic identity, framing their dancing performance as recreation. When they perform in competitions, they're performing their own identities - their own selves (or another of their own selves?), so they wear their 'own' clothes. And of course, the two identities and performances aren't seperate: they are intended to be read intertextually. So when we see Frida in her crazy modern young person clothes, we are still reading her in reference to her historical recreationist work in the Silver Shadows, and in the Hot Shots. This historical cross-referencing serves to authenticate and justify her authority as a dancer, and her status as a 'good' dancer.
And just one more point:
Vaudville and lindy hop
I need to get a hold of Henry Jenkins' book on early musical cinema (1930s). He discusses the vaudville aesthetic and the shift to cinematic narrative in these films. This issue has caught my interest as well, in reference to swing dancers. The ULHS reinforced the vaudvillian aspect of swing dancing: it's a matter of sitting down to watch a series of individual 'spectacles' which we read intertextually. Just as with vaudville theatre, there's room for audience participation: being an audience is 'active'.
I've been thinking about vaudville and shows like Dancing with the Stars a bit lately, and how we really like it, as audiences. I'd also hazard a speculation that vaudville didn't really go away - telly is all about pieces of 'spectacle' which we put together in a larger viewing 'whole'. This of course echoes some of the 80s (or was it 90s?) stuff on telly and the 'glance' and 'segments' of image/narrative/viewing. It emphasises the 'active' viewer. Which is what swing dancers are all about: active viewing. Active spectatorship.
"Recent Lindy Hop adventures" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
September 8, 2004
dance talk
Posted by dogpossum on September 8, 2004 8:27 PM
i'm a bit inspired, dance-wise. it was really nice to get some decent teaching, somewhere outside of angsty old melbourne. it was also nice to meet so many interesting people from all over the world - that was the best thing about herrang.
but i'm totally into leading now - not particularly interested in following. maybe i would be if there'd been any guys in herrang who'd done classes and were interested in trying stuff with me. but doris and i are cooking, and corinne is always up to try things out. so it's girl on girl action at the moment: i am damn lucky to be able to dance with these two superior follows. corinne leads a bit, and doris is interested: soon we will all be all-leading, all-following chicks.
rawk on.
i am obsessed with weight transfer and leading and following with your centre. this obsession was only fueled by the amazing max at the gym (who does my programs and assesments), who's taken up aerial work. we had an excited talk about centres the other week: much enthusiastic realisations about how bodies move in space.
max rawks.
a quick gym note: i am doing a hardcore upper-body and core-strengthening program. so my arms and shoulders ache, my abs ache and i'm getting much more control, centre-wise.
max rocks.
and i am getting a two-pack. if i had less of a jelly belly, i might have a three or four pack. but i do, so i don't. or if i do, i can't see it.
i really like being strong.
i'd like to be fitter, but i just can't hack that boring, dull as dogshit cardio work... aerobics totally sucks.
"dance talk" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
August 13, 2004
it's a sad, sad day when you're eating instant noodles for breakfast
Posted by dogpossum on August 13, 2004 11:19 AM
but it can't be helped. my first night of proper dancing since i've been back (where i dance like a nut all night) and i wake up feeling a little ill. now, i've been dealing with herrang cold remnants since i arrived home last thursday, but it seems the IT nerd version of the cold which laid The Squeeze low has decided to take up residence in moi. sick again. so i'm feeling tired and rough and a little disappointed in my immune system. i thought we were a team.
at any rate, despite my attempts to eat only sandwiches since i arrived home, there is no decent bread in the house. the only alternative for sick-girl was obviously instant noodles. and i think the milk has gone off.
sigh.
meanwhile, the handyman (who i quite like) is wacking things in another room, attending to 2 of the 10 or so items on our list of 'fix it now you bastards' things. a list we sent to the real estate agent before i left (we're talking at least 7 weeks ago). only now, since i've been home and threatened to kick arse have they done anything about this list. a plumber is promised, but i doubt we'll see him any time soon.
meanwhile, the lease is up, so we're living on borrowed time and with little room to apply pressure to our arsehole landlord. we are trying to decide whether or not we should move. unfortuntately, though, areshole landlords dominate our price bracket, and while we pay too much rent here, it's still cheaper to stay than to pay for all the moving crap.
ah, renting. how wonderful it is.
"it's a sad, sad day when you're eating instant noodles for breakfast" was posted in the category domesticity and lindy hop and other dances
August 8, 2004
first night dancing
Posted by dogpossum on August 8, 2004 1:46 PM
Last night we went to the Austrian club to see JW. My first night dancing since i've been back (and it's been about a week since i last danced - feels like a couple of days, though, owing to the weirdo travel thing). The Squeeze brought his excellent digital camera and took some wonderful photos of the band. i had a play and took some nice photos of my friends. they're a bit grainy because it was quite dark there, the shutter speed wasn't quite quick enough (i think - i don't really know about this stuff), i don't use flash (because people look horrid and washed out, though The Squeeze has introduced me to the notion of fill flash. hm.) and they were a bit far away.
This is a picture of doris and corinne. aren't they pretty? this is an edited version (i cropped for framing). i'm still learning, so be kind.
also, i'm having some troubles with mt uploading my files. so the link to the popup might be broken. check the archive for a better copy if you want to save a copy. please keep in mind that these are photos i've taken myself, and you should (if you're any sort of decent person) credit me. if you want to use any of these photos in your own publications (including websites) please get my permission or at least credit me and link to my site.
ta.
here's another photo of doris:
i am trying to upload another version of that dory and corinne one, but it won't work. poop. you'll have to settle for this gorgeous photo of dave:
nor will it let me upload an interesting photo of lotte. i think i smell technical problems. oh well...
"first night dancing" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
August 2, 2004
flying home
Posted by dogpossum on August 2, 2004 2:55 PM
There’s something strange about being the only person in a block of apartments after spending two weeks in the constant company of at least 200 people. Especially when those 200 people are almost always in constant physical contact with each other.
The second camp – Camp Savoy – is over, and I’m taking an extra night in the student housing to recover before I fly out of Heathrow tomorrow night. The weather has been utterly wonderful: very warm, very sunny. This could be a university campus anywhere in Australia. Though the food marks it as singularly British. Otherwise, there are very few English accents about – this being a university campus and all – and I’m really quite enjoying doodling about on my own.
Could do with a bit of company, but still
how could I complain about such a long, glorious evening with such wonderful warmth and cooling breeze? And after all this sitting about on the hilly lawn under the student accommodation, reading The Guardian (which I’ve missed) and beginning to think again, I’ve a lovely clean, dry bed with sheets and no early morning missions ahead of me.
The last two weeks have been incredibly intense. Herrang was the perfect exercise in indoctrination: intensely, physically demanding days with round the clock dancing, where doing a beginners class in aerials at 12midnight (midday Herrang time) seemed perfectly logical and plain black tea was a precious commodity to be traded illicitly and only between friends. I have surely joined a cult, and am in dire need of deprogramming.
Living with constant physical exhaustion, sleep deficiency and irregular meals have taken their toll and my health has once again dropped. The Herrang bug has been hanging about in my sinuses since late last week, and pushed me into naps every afternoon. Expensive classes with world-class lindy hop egos be-damned. There’s rest and recuperation to be done. My lungs are beginning to fill and the Horrid Cough has returned. I predict much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the plane takes off.
Flying with feet as sore and mangled and swollen as mine were last week resulted in a pain so spectacular I would have bawled like a baby if I’d not been so tired I fell immediately into a sleep that defied even take off. While the effects of constant dancing haven’t quite worn off – there are some disturbingly numb spots on my toes and recurring bouts of pins and needles – I’m hoping these couple of days of rest will make flying a bit more comfortable. I’ve regained some higher brain function and have managed to stay awake all day, though I’ll probably find myself all awake and twitchy at about 1am, looking for some dance floor action. But for now, it’s 8:34pm and I’ve not napped today. I must be getting better. There’s also been no dancing, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Over two weeks of dancing every day for at least eight hours is kind of addictive. I’m in endorphin withdrawal, I’m sure. How will I cope with Melbourne’s dark and horrible winter?
Pft. It’s such a lovely, warm evening, it’s hard to imagine Melbourne’s crap weather. For now, while I’ve borrowed from Lionel Hampton, I think Miles Davis is the only possible musical alternative for this evening.
"flying home" was posted in the category herrang and lindy hop and other dances and travel
laundry report
Posted by dogpossum on August 2, 2004 2:51 PM
My backpack full of clean laundry, care of Eva’s washing machine and a night break between camps, is now more a mixed bag. I am down to the non-dancing underwear (where the dancing underwear seems to have largely disappeared: I’m sure I’ve lost knickers in the Herrang laundry. Despite Grace’s best efforts) and once again wishing I’d brought some thai fisherman’s pants with me. But who’d have thought loose, cotton nappy-inspired trousers would be the perfect garment for a dance camp in Europe? Note to self for future reference, I guess.
The wedding clothes proved just as irritating as I’d thought: sure, I could have dressed up for the blues nights at Herrang (one can never be over dressed for blues night), but then I’d not have felt as comfortable as I did. Ah well.
I’m going to have to hunt for something clean for flying in. Something I can bear to wear for 24 hours straight
Future Herrang visits: more trousers. More loose, comfy cotton trousers. More thai fisherman pants. Ten tshirts is enough. Bring bike pants to manage inevitable Chafing Issues. Never too many pairs of underwear or socks. Bring only machine-washable, quick-drying clothes. Care not for crinkles. Swimming costume an essential for shy-bies (not that I had the opportunity to see if I was shy). Sheets. Say yes to a sheet. Hat. Sarong – another essential.
How will I manage Melbourne’s winter weather and fashion requirements? Especially now I’m at least a size smaller than I was before I left. Goddamn this super-responsive metabolism. It adores exercise. And dancing truly is the best exercise there is.
"laundry report" was posted in the category england and herrang and lindy hop and other dances and travel
brit hop revisited
Posted by dogpossum on August 2, 2004 2:46 PM
I subsequently met the young fella from London who designed the London Lindy Exchange (LLX) Brit Hop tshirts. He was in Herrang. He was young, cute and a lovely dancer. I know it’s wrong to be patronise, and I do try not to. But he was.
And it was a brit pop joke.
Eeeexcellent.
"brit hop revisited" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
July 26, 2004
doris
Posted by dogpossum on July 26, 2004 5:39 AM
here is a pretty picture of doris in herrang. that's my arm there next to her, but i looked crappy so i took me out.
"doris" was posted in the category herrang and lindy hop and other dances and people i know and travel
eating in herrang
Posted by dogpossum on July 26, 2004 5:15 AM
here we are lining up for breakfast. things are moving slow.... note the cheese. cheese is big with the swedes. we eat a lot of crackers as well. the food is bloody good.
and here we are eating in the tent.
the tents are important features on the herrang landscape. we eat in them, we learn in them, we practice in them. meals are my favourite thing - good food and lots of good company.
"eating in herrang" was posted in the category herrang and lindy hop and other dances and travel and travel
laundry report
Posted by dogpossum on July 26, 2004 2:52 AM
things have gotten dire. last pair of knickers. last pair of pants. all else is in the laundry, being washed. it may or may not all come back to me. then i have to get it dried. tricky in this climate. they have these big drier thingies that look like fridges, and they're pretty good. but there'll be that moment between getting up and walking the 10minutes across town to the driers where i'll have nothing to wear. lucky herrang is 24hours a day.
i am so sweaty all the time, i go through clothes at a phenomenal rate. so does everyone.
herrang fashion: loose, comfortable trousers; tshirt, thongs or sandals by day, and the same with dance shoes at night. loose, comfy tshirts for men, smaller, tighter tshirts for women. the dress standards are definitely casual. except on the party nights. then people dress up like fools: check out these pictures.
this one is my favourite. that nursey there is a lovely german boy. and the wrestler is a lovely girl. ah, herrang.
"laundry report" was posted in the category herrang and herrang and lindy hop and other dances
still in herrang
Posted by dogpossum on July 26, 2004 2:43 AM
but now i have a cold. everyone's got it. and now i do too. poop.
didn't stop me staying up til 7am dancing. the thing that's really giving me trouble are my feet - the joints in my toes are really really hurting. i worry that i've done something nasty to myself... oh well.
the dancing is good. my dancing is now better than it has been in a million years. the dancers are also good - good company, good fun, good music, good dancing. it's like being on holiday with a couple of hundred totally excellent people who love to dance and do interesting things. ...which i guess is actually the situation. i'm still very tired, but now that i'm nocturnal, it's not so much of a problem. the sun is only down for about 6 hours at night, so it's not so hard to stay up. i'm super fit again, and have dropped so much weight i have to safety pin my pants on. last week i was doing classes, so that was 4 and a half hours of dance classes during the day, with one or two casual classes and a bit of practice as well. then hours on end of social dancing. all we do here is eat, dance, talk and muck about. and people sleep whenever and wherever they can. in the cafe between songs. in hammocks, in the gym on mattresses, on the grass between classes.
the cutest thing i've seen so far has been two swedish girls squashed into a hammock sidebyside, battling with a mosquito net. they were giggling and tired and hidden away under a tree. very sweet.
"still in herrang" was posted in the category herrang and herrang and lindy hop and other dances and travel
May 31, 2004
it's that crazy disco dancing. it's led me astray.
Posted by dogpossum on May 31, 2004 1:12 PM
i am about as boring as boring gets at the moment. i'm full of goob, and trying not to panic about getting well in time to travel...
i'm flying out on the 26th (straight through to the uk... aw yeah, that'll be excellent fun), so i've about 26 days to get the tubes in my head clear so i won't explode in the plane. speaking of eustachian tubes. guess i shouldn't have jinxed myself.
things weren't helped by my dancing like a nut on two seperate occasions over the past week - a wednesday night at a pub, dancing like an idiot for too long, followed by talking and dancing with germ-ridden blues dancers til 6:30 in the morning; and a friday night at a bar (dancing like a complete fool, and without inhibition for about an hour).
it seems i have not only lost the few inhibitions i once had about dancing in public, but also any good sense about caring for ill bodies. it's that crazy disco dancing. it's led me astray.
i just don't seem to care at all any more about what people think about me when i'm dancing. and while i've always loved disco dancing, i've not always been as prone to spasticity on the dance floor.
the next day i cringe at the memories... it seems there's no dance move i won't do, no limit on the amount of dance floor i'll coopt for my own use, no unsuspecting peer i'll not rope into dancing with me.
the perfect antidote to swing, i think.
"it's that crazy disco dancing. it's led me astray." was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 11, 2004
i went to the swingpatrol ball last friday
Posted by dogpossum on May 11, 2004 1:24 AM
it was crowded, cultish and a bit scary. but i had lots of nice dances, listened to a good band, met some nice people. and took a few photos. note the discrepencies in lighting - i am still learning. but i like the blurs. that's how it always seems - blurry - when you're dancing.
here's a pic of cam and emily.
and the big group charleston.
and the performance by some geelong dancers.
too many performances make dogpossum a very bored girl. sp are all about marketing, all about heirarchy, all about encouraging their students to pay up so that they can 'improve' and join the illustrious ranks of the overrated. cynical? of course. this ball was very Young Cult. lots of group hysteria in action. but there were reassuring moments: seeing that the majority of people in the hall were as uncomfortable with the grandstanding as i was, and watching a sp teacher i respect skipping out of the love-fest introductions. over all, it's interesting stuff for the thesis, but concerning and frustrating stuff for the freeswinger.
"i went to the swingpatrol ball last friday" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
May 3, 2004
Rent parties
Posted by dogpossum on May 3, 2004 9:26 PM
I realise I’ve not actually given much useful information in my previous entry on rent parties.
Simply put:
In the 30s (and in the prior and later years), people living in Harlem in New York were often short of money. When rent time loomed, people who were short of money might hold a party in their house, invite lots of people, and have them pay to attend. They’d put on music (a band or records), and people would dance.
That’s the short story.
Some more details? Sure.
What went on at a rent party?
Eating, drinking, dancing, music playing, talking, love-making, fighting, arguing, kissing
party stuff.
Who were these people holding the rent parties?
For the most part, the majority of the stories I’ve found about rent parties placed them firmly in the Afro-American community. In the first 30 years of the 20th century - between 1919 and 1926, many freed slaves moved north from the southern states to northern cities like New York, Washington and Chicago. They followed the promise of work, fleeing lynching, poverty and scary-arse southern politics for the more tolerant north. Not that tolerant, but at least you weren’t being lynched.
The 1920s and 30s are referred to as an Afro-American renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is of greatest interest to swingers (as it is the birthplace of lindy hop).
Harlem in the 30s was a predominantly Afro-American community. Conditions were crowded, there were more people arriving every day, and not enough work to go around. It was also a time of great creative and artistic endeavour (see the links to sites discussing the Harlem Renaissance below), human rights activism and social change.
Rent party hosts were usually ordinary Harlem people trying to raise their rent money. The rent party convention was later appropriated by more enterprising individuals, and often served as a front for brothels or illegal casinos.
Why did people hold rent parties?
During the 20s and 30s an estimated 200 000 people were living in this one neighbourhood in New York. The sudden influx of residents pushed rents higher than most families could accord. Families opened their homes to lodgers and often shared apartments with other families. Despite these measures, the rent was often due before the residents could find the money.
Residents would hold ‘parties’ in their homes, charging for entry or food, and ‘guests’ would come to dance and socialise, often all night. Advertisement was done surreptitiously, so as to avoid the wrong sort of guests, as well as the law, in this era of prohibition. The ‘rent party’ often served as a pseudonym for brothels.
On this site a woman explains why she held rent parties. This page provides a more detailed explanation of rent parties (with links to the site I referenced in my other post).
What did rent parties mean to swing dance?
For swingers, it’s an important time as these conditions saw the rise of the lindy hop, in tandem with the development of jazz. While the night clubs, cabarets, theatres and dance halls were pivotal public places in the development of lindy hop, the rent parties are important as they were private places made public, in a city where crowding and intensely interpersonal social and kin networks dominated. Rent parties fostered dancing and music, not only as fund raisers, but also as a site for individual self expression and the formation of community identity.
The following quote comes from this site.
“The dancers organize little impromptu contests among themselves and this competition is often responsible for the birth of many new and original dance-steps. The house-rent party takes credit for the innovation of the Lindy-Hop that was subsequently improved upon at the Savoy Ballroom. For years, it has been a great favorite with the regular rug-cutting crowd. Nothing has been able to supplant it, not ever the Boogie-Woogie that has recently enjoyed a great wave of popularity in Uptown New York.â€
References:
This link provides an interesting section of the book ‘12 million black voices’, written and illustrated by Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam respectively. The site ‘America in the 1930s’ provides some archival and historical material from the States during this period.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture provides an interesting overview of the Harlem Renaissance period.
Harlem Renaissance has a useful range of Afro-American authors, artists and their works.
"Rent parties" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
April 30, 2004
rent parties
Posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 7:18 PM
spaces and places for lindy hop - a useful reference.
The American Library of Congress have a site called 'American Memory - Historical Collections for the National Digital Library'. A quick search for 'lindy' and 'hop' gives you the option of scanned images of the original typed written pages discussing rent parties in Harlem in New York.
This article is really worth reading if you have any history in lindy hop, or in afro-american urban communities of the time. This rent parties article provides a nice complement to my brief history of lindy hop as an afro-american vernacular dance.
"rent parties" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
April 22, 2004
I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events
Posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2004 3:33 PM
Last night we were on our (reluctant) way to Ballyhoo to hand over some presents for people in Perth (Hullabaloo is on, so everyone’s flying over for that. Except us. :( ), and ended up ditching the swing gig for a fun band.
I rode to The Squeeze’s work in record time (20 mins - I flew) then mosied east to Brunswick Street, where we had dinner at The Standard hotel on Fitzroy Street. It reminded me of how wonderful Melbourne pubs are. We don’t have a decent local in West Brunswick (we’re not struck on the Cornish Arms - it’s got a weirdo vibe, or the Perseverence, or even the Brunswick), so we don’t pub locally very much. I adore the Town Hall in North Melbourne (my old local), and I like the Napier in Collingwood (mostly for their food), but I don’t pub it regularly much any more. So it was a pleasant reminder of Good Melbourne Stuff last night. I was totally disappointed by my steak - super tough, which was crappy for the price ($22!), but The Squeeze had a good fish and chips.
Then we rode a bit further north to park our bikes at the Retro café on Brunswick Street (where Ballyhoo is held), and then wandered down the street to buy a little present for Cheryl in Perth. We totally scored in the bookshop, and then wandered back up to Retro.
As we were wandering north, we heard jazz from somewhere. I figured it might be the Planet Café so I dragged The Squeeze over and we investigated. Upstairs we discovered The Sweet Lowdowns, a local swinging jazz 4piece who play there every Wednesday FOR FREE! The Squeeze immediately declared a pit stop for beer and cake, and I was sent over the road to deliver the Perth goods.
We spent the next few hours listening to fun jazz, eating cake and having a jolly old time. We did send an SMS to the swingers to let them know (it’s only fair), and my letting slip that we were dancers got the manager all excited (note to self: circumspection when chatting to barkeeps). He was dead keen to have swingers come in regularly to dance, even when I mentioned (as seemed only fair) that swingers are a poor crowd for making money at the bar - they don’t drink.
At any rate, the otherwise tiny crowd (maybe 10 or so of the bands’ mates) when crazy for the dancing. We were shy getting up at first (mostly because The Squeeze felt ill, but largely because it’s not really that excellent to have a crowd of people watching you dance when you’re just up for a nice bit of a toddle round the floor, full of cake and beer), but it got cooler, especially when a couple of other dancers turned up and we weren’t the only ones.
Over all, it was a fun night. I liked the band a lot - I love dixie, and there was a fair slab of it, as well as more swingingly lindy stuff. I’d like to go back regularly. I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events. Too great a focus on dancing, and not enough on proper social interaction. Plus I prefer band doos that aren’t staked out as a particular swing group’s territory.
Only problem is that I’ve just teed up a tango class for Wednesday nights
damn! Oh well, I’ll see what I can do
"I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events" was posted in the category lindy hop and other dances
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