So I watched Swingers many, many times

May 21, 2016 2:45 PM

The past week was Weird 90's week at Stereogum, and they explored some of the strangest musical moments and trends of the decade. Highlights inside.

Carman’s Addicted To Jesus Was ’90s Christian Rock At Its Weirdest

Various Artists: A Tribute To ’90s Tribute Albums

Per Chants To Dream: How Evensong Almost Conquered The Charts

Let’s All Remember The Late-’90s Swing Revival

Behind The Music: “Steal My Sunshine”

It’s A Spice World, And I’m Just Living In It

Falling Hook, Line, And Sinker For John Lurie’s Fishing With John

Remembering Kool Keith’s Unlikely Major Label Phase

“These Guys Rocked The House”: 10 Surreal Moments When ’90s Rock Met Mainstream TV

Party Off, Garth: The Short Life And Long Death Of Chris Gaines

Pop Vs. Nü-Metal: The Battle For TRL

posted by naju (80 comments total)

Shut up, I fucking love the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Hot was a great album. So there.
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:55 PM on May 21, 2016 [33 favorites]

I like how they rode some of that novelty fad fame into being a really great traditional Dixieland band.
posted by The Whelk at 2:57 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

As a huge Kate Bush fan, I was surprised that I'd never heard her cover of Rocket Man.

Then I listened to it, and.... why..... why Kate?
posted by schmod at 3:04 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

That 'Saturday Morning Cartoon' comp contains a bunch of legit awesomeness. The Scooby Doo theme is the song Matthew Sweet was born to sing.
posted by mintcake! at 3:13 PM on May 21, 2016 [14 favorites]

That interview with the guy from Len was great. I loved that song so much. It was just so pretty and happy. Then had my first of many experiences with buying an album because I liked the single and none of the songs are anything like the single. Reading this interview makes the whole thing a lot easier to understand. There was only one of that song.
posted by bleep at 3:21 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Remember how the Butthole Surfers had a hit in the 90s?
posted by drezdn at 3:23 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

Red Hot + Blue, that Cole Porter tribute album is SOMETHING ELSE, it completely bridged the two wild ends of my high school tastes, that is new wave NYC rock sounds and Cole Porter American songbook. I mean, Iggy Pop and Blondie singing a number written for a musical version of Kate Hepburn movie I would evah
posted by The Whelk at 3:32 PM on May 21, 2016 [14 favorites]

Red Hot + Blue, that Cole Porter tribute album is SOMETHING ELSE

Hm, I'll have to give the whole thing a listen, since I only got it for the U2 song. At that time, between Rattle & Hum and Achtung Baby, what they did with "Night and Day" was a radical departure from their previous work.
posted by LionIndex at 3:44 PM on May 21, 2016

Most blissfully unaware string of sentences I've seen in a while, from Dave Holmes' Battle for TRL article: "There are a lot of reasons I’m glad I scored a gig at MTV. I got to quit my advertising job."
posted by entropicamericana at 3:45 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Dave Holmes, still dreamy.

(When asked if he ever gave Jesse Camp a hard or if how Camp talked was an act, Holmes said No that's not an act and that would be liking making fun of a cloud)
posted by The Whelk at 3:53 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

CTRL+F "Electric Hellfire Club" in the tribute article...what?! They kinda missed out on the best fodder for their gentle-mockery intro, there.
posted by zinful at 3:58 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh wow, Jane's Addiction's cover of Ripple. I'd totally forgotten about how great that was. And for some reason, I've played that Sonic Youth version of Superstar about twenty times over the last month.
posted by octothorpe at 4:02 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I like the Len song because, as much as there's that element of sunny '90s Daytona whiteboyrapdouchebaggery as shown in the video, it's subverted and darkened at every turn by the ever-present sound of the sleazy muzak in the lobby of a Topeka Holiday Inn circa 1978, the soundtrack to a series of lonely, middle-aged businessmen in whisky-stained brown polyester suits trudging back to their rooms half-drunk and half-exhausted from a day of selling paper products, trying to decide whether to call a hooker or pass out to Carson.
posted by eschatfische at 4:25 PM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

Best Christmas: The year my brother and I gave one another Fishing with John DVDs, completely coincidentally.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:33 PM on May 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

I had a roommate who was a saxophonist in a bro-ska band with an awful name. One night we were watching a more successful swing revival band on television. At one point, this saxophonist in a bro-ska band, he scoffed and said, "Man, I feel sorry for these guys. Swing is such a flash in the pan."
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:42 PM on May 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

Im glad I got to spend most of the 90s in fringe psychedelic drug subculture so I didn't have to deal with this stuff.
posted by Liquidwolf at 4:43 PM on May 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

Not that I liked swing - it is likely my least favorite genre after smooth jazz - but a dude in a bro-ska band calling anything a "flash in the pan" made all the kettles and pots for miles around explode.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:46 PM on May 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

Feh. I continue to love Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
posted by kimberussell at 4:54 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

That Fishing with John article is a must read. What a great show.
posted by saul wright at 5:00 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh lord I worked sooooooo many ska and nu-swing nights back in the 90's. Most in tiny clubs where the stages were like 10 foot by 12, so everyone was just jammed up on top of one another.

Eventually I figured out that it was an exercise in frustration trying to keep things cleanly organized on stage, especially on 4 or 5 band bills. I would just line the front of the stage with microphones, and when bands would come up to tell me, "OK, so we've got a trumpet here, and a tenor sax over ther-" I would go, "Look, don't bother telling me this, there's a bunch of mics, everybody just grab one for your horn and one for your voice and I'll figure it out."
posted by soundguy99 at 5:15 PM on May 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

Shut up, I fucking love the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

ugh - my musical education was 75% 60s pop and rock - the other 25% was my dad's old 78s from the 30s and 40s and ugh

sorry, but they'd have never made it back then as musicians
posted by pyramid termite at 5:17 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cake.
posted by 4ster at 5:48 PM on May 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

they'd have never made it back then as musicians

Their fiddler was pretty good, though.
posted by Iridic at 5:49 PM on May 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

let me get this straight you're saying a band that made it as musicians in the 1990s would not have made it 50-60 years prior when there was much more of a demand for live musicians?

ok then
posted by entropicamericana at 6:03 PM on May 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

The Evan Dando interview on Live with Regis and Kathy Lee (in the 90s Rick meets mainstream tv link) was worth watching.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

That Spice Girl article is stupid. It wasn't a teen movie, it was a nostalgia movie for people born in the 70s and 80s who grew up watching the same few movies and shows on BBC and ITV before they invented all those other channels. The teen cousins we took to see it didn't get any of the jokes, they didn't even know who Meatloaf or Roger Moore were.
posted by fshgrl at 6:20 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

A friend posted the one about Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines the other day and man, if you either don't remember or were blissfully unaware of this part of his career, just read the article to see the pictures of the covers of the albums Chris Gaines supposedly recorded. Now I also cannot stop thinking about the alternate universe in which Fornucopia would exist, and would that universe also have Spinal Tap or not.
posted by pandalicious at 6:41 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

They listed a lot of tribute albums, but not Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin, which brought us this version of "Going To California" by Never The Bride.

I love the Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot was a great album. I have Steal My Sunshine in regular rotation in my music library.

I don't think anyone's linked to From Marky Mark To Humpty Hump: Remembering Hip-Hop’s Awkward Adolescence yet, but it's a great article. Rap and hip-hop in the 80s and 90s was something else. In the late 80s, I was just entering my tween years and starting to discover music for myself and went through a phase where I first discovered (amongst others) L'Trimm, LL Cool J, Slick Rick and of course Eazy-E and NWA. Then Digital Underground, A Tribe Called Quest and others. My younger sister loved Kriss Kross and Kid 'n Play. Anyone remember We're All In the Same Gang?
posted by triggerfinger at 7:09 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

In the article about nü metal, Dave Holmes can't find the connection between '80s hard rock and the bro-hop angst and darkness of Korn. ... Nine Inch Nails. Marilyn Manson. Jane's Addiction. Ministry. RHCP. C'mon, Dave. I'm not even a fan of nü metal...

I enjoyed the article about Len. It makes sense how "Steal My Sunshine" came about, a song I love without reservation or apology. It was an accident, and the process was very simple and came down to a brother and sister, but it was in the midst of a lot of work that had no specific goal other than to create music. I think the serendipity and lack of ego is a big part of why the song works and endures, and why Len is always and only one specific process ("hey, Sharon!"), but it didn't appear out of thin air. It's not surprising that the song was inspired at a rave. A lot of electronic music projects are similarly time-and-place or process specific, without the big egos attached to a lot of rock bands, so it's easy to let it go and move on to the next project. This may come around again, but maybe not, and that's very liberating for everyone.
posted by krinklyfig at 7:17 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

I still own and listen to both the School House Rock, Rocks! album (yes, it has the punctuation and it lives in a weird yellow plastic jewel case, 90's double bonus score!) and the Graham Parson Tribute alums. and yes, they are both still worth hearing.

I would suggest that Blind Melon's rendition of the underrated pop genus Bob Dorough's Three Is a Magic Number is the classic on the former album, and Ryan Adams' and Emmylou Harris duet on A Song for You is the standout on the latter (although the Mavericks take on Hot Burrito #1 is worthy of note, or Beck's brilliant take on Sin City, OR Lucinda Williams kicking it with Chris Hillman on Return of the Grievous Angel are all also worthy of inclusion on whatever revival mixtape you're planning in your mind...).

And yes, this Gen-Xer had someone make fun of my musical tastes, facial hair, flannel shirt, and piercings today and I feel somewhat justified after reading all these articles so: thank you.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 7:20 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

and here I thought I was the only one who remembered and liked "Steal My Sunshine".

And let's not forget Sublime's "What I Got" ...
posted by lon_star at 7:44 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

At 1:25 in the Steal My Sunshine video, you can see Sharon not hit the lip sync on "sunshine" and mouth "fuck"
posted by Brainy at 7:59 PM on May 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

I also unapologetically love "Steal My Sunshine" and think it's summer in a bottle. It sounded like it just blew up out of the radio when it came out, and I always wondered what the deal was. It sounded so Don't Give A Fuck from top to bottom yet worked fantastically and I thought it was amazing that they figured out how to capture that. I didn't know the secret was not giving a fuck and getting lucky, but I should have, since that's how most great things are made.
posted by bongo_x at 8:18 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

This also just impresses on me that aging is just stops on a train, and Gen X is going by a certain station.

The millennials will reach it too and there will be lots about Beyoncé, but there will also be these silly little poppy songs that didn't seem like much at the time but nevertheless take everyone who was a certain age at this time back to what seemed like endless sunny summer days while whatever generational cadre follows them nods and rolls their eyes at each other.
posted by lon_star at 8:25 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

take everyone who was a certain age at this time back to what seemed like endless sunny summer days

I think I must have heard it in a movie or something, but I somehow recently rediscovered MMMBop and though I HATED it at the time (20 years ago!), I kind of like it now, for the exact reason you mention.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:33 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Out on the water ... fishing ... with John ....
posted by matildaben at 8:54 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

(When asked if he ever gave Jesse Camp a hard or if how Camp talked was an act, Holmes said No that's not an act and that would be liking making fun of a cloud)

I spent my early twenties working as the assistant manager of a pet supply store in Los Angeles. I left that job in 2006, and the guy that they hired to replace me was Jesse Camp. He was trying to stay clean and employed, and from what I heard from friends who remained at the job he was a pretty good worker, although it was annoying to have customers asking if he was Jesse Camp a thousand times a day.

I also heard that, yes, that was the voice that he used all the time, but that occasionally he would slip and a less unique voice would come through. So the general opinion amongst his co-workers was that the voice was probably an affectation, but it was an affectation that he maintained constantly.

Which sounds like too much work for me, but I suppose that accepting limits like those is what keeps me from being an MTV VJ.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 8:56 PM on May 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

I also unapologetically love "Steal My Sunshine"

Same. Maybe because it was featured in the most 90s movie of all time, Go. A movie I watched on VHS over and over again during my last summer in America - a long, hot summer of 40's and bong rips and Mario Party. Doesn't sound like the stuff memories are made from but it was a great fucking summer.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:02 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hanson was the butt of some jokes due to their family image and being huge pop stars, but they get a lot of well deserved credit for being good musicians, and "MMMbop" is cited by a large number of musicians and critics as being a great pop song. Pop stars tend to be easy targets for cynics and music snobs, but I think in some cases the talent and songwriting work so well that even the most jaded industry types recognize it. It's the kind of song every angry teenage boy loves to hate, but it's a great song once you move beyond the need to hate pop music.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:05 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ha! I always thought that part of "Steal My Sunshine" sounded just like a fragment of "More More More" but never bothered to verify it. Vindicated after a decade and a half!
posted by sourwookie at 9:12 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

I disagree with so much stuff in that swing article, except for the part about Mambo No. 5. That shit was terrible.

And if there hadn't been a swing revival, they couldn't have done that scene in Blast from the Past where they go to a Squirrel Nut Zippers show and he can actually kinda fit in.

And also: perhaps it is just that I tend to be rather oblivious, but years later it struck me how Cherry Poppin' Daddies is pretty much the grossest name ever.
posted by ckape at 9:31 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

I actually just heard the Humpty Dance for the first time a few weeks ago and I was laughing out loud alone in the car listening to it. It's really silly!
posted by town of cats at 9:42 PM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Go Is both ciminally underrated and EXTREMELY 90s in that it's a TEEN VERSION of Pulp Fiction set around a RAVE.

Also Melissa McCarthy's first speaking role!
posted by The Whelk at 9:53 PM on May 21, 2016 [11 favorites]

I was hoping that the link to "90s rock meets mainstream TV" would include Nick Cave singing Red Right Hand on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I taped it when it originally aired, but no longer have the tape and have never found the performance online.
posted by terooot at 10:24 PM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Humpty Dance is my workplace party trick. Colleagues will come to my desk and randomly say "Alright stop what you're doing" because they know I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you're used to.
posted by Ruki at 10:25 PM on May 21, 2016 [12 favorites]

There was an interview recently with Jesse Camp on the Going off Track Podcast... totally worth a listen.
posted by ph00dz at 10:53 PM on May 21, 2016

L-A-T-E-R THAT WEEK
posted by naju at 11:11 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

AWe discussed GO and it's critical relavemce and meaning over on FanFare where we did a thematic MOVIES OF 1999" viewing club thing
posted by The Whelk at 11:31 PM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also Melissa McCarthy's first speaking role!

Mind. Blown.
posted by naju at 11:51 PM on May 21, 2016

I also took the Annie Lemnox tribute to be a bit of a thing

Cause I grew up at just the right time to mean if you had sex, even once, you were totally going to die , and I've never quite gotten over that . (And I've done all the art and communes with all the LAtER Millennials about it ( you really need a new term for them ) but you know. It never leaves your brain, this time I have sex it may kill me. Horribly and without respect. I'll just get weaker and weaker and did. Because I wanted to fuck someone, or be nice to someone , like once, ever, in my life.

I don't know you guys it see in it like s bad spot to be in although it a nasty spot
posted by The Whelk at 2:18 AM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

As for those music videos , DONT FENCE ME IN, is pretty great
posted by The Whelk at 2:29 AM on May 22, 2016

A later UK Red Hot benefit album, Twentieth Century Blues did the same thing with Noël Coward songs and included Divine Comedy performing I've Been to a Marvellous Party, partly in the style of Underworld.
posted by Grangousier at 4:37 AM on May 22, 2016

I love this early 90s clip of the Pixies on the Dennis Miller Show, especially for the talk show guests that the Pixies are juxtaposed with. "From Los Angeles, live on tape, it's the Dennis Miller Show! Tonight, Senator Al Gore, the Pixies, Donna Dixon..." Oh yeah, the music's awesome too.
posted by jonp72 at 6:45 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another weird 90s favorite is this clip of The Breeders on The Jon Stewart Show. It begins with Jon Stewart thanking his latest guest, David Cassidy, and announcing that Sinbad will be on the next show. When I've posted it to my Facebook feed, I've had at least two female friends go into "Squee! Baby Jon Stewart!" mode.
posted by jonp72 at 6:49 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

let me get this straight you're saying a band that made it as musicians in the 1990s would not have made it 50-60 years prior when there was much more of a demand for live musicians?

you seem to have forgotten that the population doubled in that time

also, standards were much higher back then - there was no overdubbing, no fixing it in the mix, no editing to "comp" the best performances, no hours and hours and takes and takes to get it right - the bands of that era were expected to deliver 4 good performances in 3 hours

i listen to what they did and what the squirrel nut zippers did with all the modern advantages

they're not close to being on the same level
posted by pyramid termite at 6:59 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hanson was the butt of some jokes due to their family image and being huge pop stars, but they get a lot of well deserved credit for being good musicians, and "MMMbop" is cited by a large number of musicians and critics as being a great pop song.

Part of the reason is that you don't really know how deep and dark the lyrics are unless you see them written down. The song begins, "You have so many relationships in this life/Only one or two will last./You go through all the pain and strife./And it goes by oh so fast." (As somebody who's tried to do it on karaoke, I can also testify that the lyrics are not as easy to sing well as you think.) When you consider that the one of the lyricists was a teenager whose voice was still changing, the profundity of it is even more amazing.
posted by jonp72 at 7:15 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

As a Depeche Mode fan (more so in my teens, but still), I was gratified to see a "For the Masses" diss in the tribute album article. With the possible exception of Hooverphonic's cover of Shake the Disease, that album is a hot mess.
posted by duffell at 7:34 AM on May 22, 2016

Okay I just learned that a couple of years ago Hanson launched an official beer and called it Mmmhops so my famdom is now solidified.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:04 AM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also, that tribute album article led me to listen to the Grateful Dead's Ripple for the first time in years, and it immediately hit me how similar it sounds to the modern gospel hymn Because He Lives. I'll save you the googling: Ripple was released in 1970, one year before Because He Lives.
posted by duffell at 8:11 AM on May 22, 2016

A later UK Red Hot benefit album, Twentieth Century Blues did the same thing with Noël Coward songs and included Divine Comedy performing I've Been to a Marvellous Party yt , partly in the style of Underworld.

Oh hey that was the song playing when our Croen Heights warehouse party got unexpectedly raided by cops and I learned the art of casually wandering away from Scenes cause no one questions the white guy in a linen suit
posted by The Whelk at 8:33 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

i listen to what they did and what the squirrel nut zippers did with all the modern advantages

they're not close to being on the same level

also they made all those records with onions tied to their belts

i'd like to see the squirrel nut zippers pull that one off
posted by Existential Dread at 8:34 AM on May 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have learned that the Squirrel Nut Zippers have a lot of friends in Chapel Hill, and calling them a "novelty act" at a party there doesn't go over so well.
posted by thelonius at 8:49 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Squirrel Nut Zippers were a bunch of fun, and had some terrific songs. I know they were lumped in with the Great Swing Scare of the 1990s but they had songs in a variety of styles other than swing.
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:13 AM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not a huge SNZ fan but they're a fun band and I had a great time seeing them at the 9:30 Club in DC back in '98/'99 or so.
posted by octothorpe at 9:35 AM on May 22, 2016

they're not close to being on the same level

look i'm not saying the SNZ are in the same league as benny goodman and his orchestra, i'm just saying you have a poor grasp of history and your statement that they would not have been a working band is wrong.
posted by entropicamericana at 9:37 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't think anyone's linked to From Marky Mark To Humpty Hump: Remembering Hip-Hop’s Awkward Adolescence

I feel like that was kind of a weird write up on Digital Underground, maybe I missed the point in them? Weren't they basically picking up where Parliament-Fnkadelic left off? Like, you're just supposed to party and dance and have fun and it doesn't matter if you're good at it or look stupid. I feel like framing it as "not a real dance" sort of misses the point; it was a funky good time is what it was. Shock G struck me as heavily influenced by Bootsy in particular. Maybe it was a response to Hammer and Vanilla Ice but I did not pick up on that at all.
posted by Hoopo at 10:39 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Squirrel Nut Zippers were a bunch of fun, and had some terrific songs. I know they were lumped in with the Great Swing Scare of the 1990s but they had songs in a variety of styles other than swing.

Didn't they do some jug band material? There was a "jug band revival" that existed in the early 1960s shortly before the Beatlemania hit the United States (e.g., the Holy Modal Rounders and Jim Kweskin came out of it), but bands have been doing it ever since.
posted by jonp72 at 10:47 AM on May 22, 2016

People! Let's not lose sight of the most important thing here. We've still got plenty of time left in the 2010s to get weird for the sake of future nostalgia pieces.

Let's workshop some ideas.

1. A Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show renaissance
2. An entire year of nothing coming from the US market other than covers of songs from Cats
3. The return of jam bands, but doing hours-long nu-metal sets
4. The guy from Blues Clues releases multiple spoken word albums about the Dreyfus Affair and hits #1 on iTunes

What else you got?
posted by duffell at 11:05 AM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

There was a "jug band revival" that existed in the early 1960s

There were people trying to do this again by the late 1990's, yeah. I think they mostly got absorbed into the Americana revival.
posted by thelonius at 11:36 AM on May 22, 2016

The return of jam bands, but doing hours-long nu-metal sets

How bout we switch that around, have Puddle of Mudd, for instance, do 27-minute songs with names like Sweet Buffalo Magnolia Girl Blues?
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:56 AM on May 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

I feel like that was kind of a weird write up on Digital Underground, maybe I missed the point in them?

We both did then. I thought that was kind of a weird write up too.

But many people missed the point, and it was in turn taken seriously as a dance.

Whaaa? Who?
posted by bongo_x at 12:43 PM on May 22, 2016

I, for one, have always taken the Humpty Dance very, very seriously.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:55 PM on May 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

4. The guy from Blues Clues releases multiple spoken word albums about the Dreyfus Affair and hits #1 on iTunes

What else you got?

I was going to say, well, I've got some terrible news about the Blue's Clues guy, but I'm glad to learn the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. The replacement host hasn't shuffled off this mortal coil either.

Thus ends this critical Blue's Clues update. My timely cultural references bring all the boys to the yard.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:03 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Their fiddler was pretty good, though.

FUN FACT they hired him because their trumpet player had to go to rehab for heroin.

When I learned this, it explained a lot about the Squirrel Nut Zippers show I saw that one time. "They're.... they're REALLY out of tune," we said, befuddled.
posted by clavicle at 1:14 PM on May 22, 2016

At my house, any chore name that can possibly take on four syllables automatically does, and is sung like the Fishing with John theme. "Mowing...the lawn." "Walking...the dog." "Scooping...the box."
posted by juniper at 2:07 PM on May 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

To be fair, Steve Burns' album Songs For Dustmites is actually a good album.
posted by hippybear at 2:57 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm still living the late-90s Swing revival and nothing you say will change that.
posted by tommasz at 3:12 PM on May 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I did not participate in the 90's swing revival, but I'm going to start now.
posted by bongo_x at 3:16 PM on May 22, 2016

Shock G struck me as heavily influenced by Bootsy in particular. Maybe it was a response to Hammer and Vanilla Ice but I did not pick up on that at all.

He did include a line about, "Yo, Humpty! You look like MC Hammer on crack!" in the Humpty Dance.
posted by jonp72 at 5:44 PM on May 22, 2016

My path to swing was Tom doing "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" in Tom and Jerry's Solid Serenade, then Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive. So I was revivalin' ahead of the revivalists.

About the Gap Khaki Swing commercial: "Jump, Jive an' Wail" is an awesome song and the commercial is fun.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:11 AM on May 23, 2016 [2 favorites]