SwingDJs

Vine Street Rumble as performed by the Wolverines Big Band at ULHS 2004.

Brent

Listen to the radio. My favorite, "The Art Of Jazz", is broadcast 3 to 6 PM Pacific Time on Sundays, available on kplu.org for Internet listening. Well, as long as we're plugging stations, I'll mention KBEM (Minneapolis), at jazz88fm.com (live streaming available). This independent public...

Easy one. Twin Cities Hot Club, from their self-titled CD. First version I ever heard, and still my favorite. Clocks in right around 210 BPM, until the last 20 seconds or so when it builds up to 290.

http://www.twincitieshotclub.com/

Brent

Greg Avakian wrote:I've never asked him about what he feels he might have missed...

If you ever get a chance, I would like to see his response to that question.

Brent

Sony MDR-7506 . They appear to be about $89-99 these days. I use a pair of these regularly for live mixing, and have never been disappointed. Not as good for DJing/mixing, but very pleasant for listening for extended periods, I have a pair of Fostex T40-RP , which go for about $70. The only reason ...

Except for the luckiest of circumstances, I don't think the Eurorack mixer is going to work well for live mixing. Noticably absent is any sort of per-channel equalization. Without that, you'll never be happy with the resulting sound. A single more general-purpose mixer will be able to do double-duty...

high-energy mid-tempo? Sounds like Barbara Morrison to me.

Brent

Easy one, for me. Though I have two favorites. First, the Twin Cities Hot Club, from this CD . You've been to Showdown. 'Nuf said. Second, and I may be shunned for this, but Eva Cassidy from the CD Live At Blues Alley . This second version is an excellent song for a transition from low energy to hig...

Last time I DJed, I ended the night with Political Science by Randy Newman. Obviously not a swing-era song, but it has a nice little bounce to it that capped the night off quite well.

Geez... now it's stuck in my head...

Brent

Jesse: I love the show, as always. Thank you so much for producing and hosting these. One minor technical comment. On your voice there seems to be an echo, kind of like you're talking in an empty auditorium -- though it doesn't seem to be present on Spuds' voice. I don't recall this problem in previ...

I don't know if this counts as shortlisting, but last weekend I tried a concept I'm calling "mini-sets". As I don't have a laptop, I pre-burned sets of five songs that worked well together, four such sets to a CD. Over the course of the night my rule of thumb was to play five songs selecte...

I'd rate the sound of the passport as good or better than a telephone (3kHz B/W) but not quite as good as a clear AM or FM radio signal (5kHz B/W). Music where the vocals are front and center sound okay but instrumentals with lots of horns (eg trumpet) tend to clip and sound like crap long before t...

Thanks Reuben and Ryan. The editing was what I was concerned about, and means that for the purpose I had in mind (learning how a band manages a dance floor), these albums wouldn't be that useful. That of course has little to do with whether they'd be good to pick up for other reasons. Thanks for the...

A little unusual, but for Japanese... I found "Makka na Bara to Gin Tonic" (A Crimson Rose and Gin Tonic) on the soundtrack for the video game Katamari Damacy. It borrows a brief riff here and there from It Don't Mean A Thing, and Sing Sing Sing. It clocks in around 250 bpm. It's also just...

I'm curious to explore how live bands "manage" a dance floor, like a good DJ supposedly does. Can you recommend any live albums that you know were recorded at a dance event, or at least where the dancers would have been a significant consideration for the musicians? The only two in my coll...