Giantrobo

I used to dig these guys but does anyone know what they're up to?

Jackskeleton

crying because the swing craze moved on?

Who knows. Last I remember just little shows here and there. nothing new really.

Burnt Alive

Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher both left the group before the recording of Bedlam Ballroom in 2000. The last CD was a huge departure from the normal style and I consider it a failure.
Jim Mathus is on a solo tour right now and it looks like the band is on some sort of hiatus.

BTW, Jackskeleton, the Squirrel Nut Zippers aren't a swing band.

Josh-da-man

Obscurity.

Such is the fate of a novelty band that rides high of the wave of a novelty trend.

Not to be mean or anything, but there's no chance in hell these guys would have any kind of a future after the swing craze (inevitably) passed.

And I have to say that the late-90s swing thing was probably one of the weirdest pop culture moments I've ever seen. How exactly did it come about? Anyone explain this? Did it start with Swingers or that Gap commercial? But it really had to exist before Swingers because Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was all over soundtrack, so it must've existed before the movie.

Giantrobo

Well, my theory on why "SWING" hit again was it came right on the heels of DEPRESSING SEATTLE GRUNGE S#IT MUSIC.

When Kurt Cobrainalloverthewall died that was a nail in the coffin.

There had to be a swing(no pun) back the other way. RICH Kids were all depressed and sad hating there lives and swing gave them a reason to come back to life.

Gene Simmons said it best about "Grunge", "no one wants to hear rich white kids in crappy clothes whine about how tough their lives are".

I think Swing is a lot like Metal...it never completely goes away. There will always be artists who dabble in it and clubs and fans who keep it going despite the fact that the 15 minute fans have shunned it.

Burnt Alive

The Squirrel Nut Zippers are considered a "Hot Jazz" band. This type of music is much more closely related to ragtime/New Orleans-style jazz than swing.

Hot Jazz dates from the 1910's-30's.
Swing was around in the 30's-early 50's.

SNZ was grouped with the other swing bands because they were just around at the time the whole swing-thing was taking off.

Aghama

And because they sounded just like the other swing bands.

Jackskeleton

that made me laugh aghama. simply put. they were placed in the cat. of swing for better or worse by the general public. and with the fade of the swing/gap commercial swing revival, so did this band's appeal.

Burnt Alive

And The Clash sounded just like the other ska bands.

Sure, that analogy might look crazy, but if a person did not know about the types of music they were labeling/discussing, it would make perfect sense to them.

Seriously though, how many SNZ songs have people heard? "Hell" and possibly "The Suits Are Picking Up The Bill" are probably the only songs that anyone who never bought one of their albums has ever heard.....and "Hell" is actually a calypso song.

If you're going to label an artist after only hearing one of their songs, then after listening to "The Guns Of Brixton" you would assume The Clash was a ska band.

ChrisKnudsen

The Squirrel Nut Zippers are one of my favorite bands and I am really not into the whole swing thing. Some of the members are in different bands now and some people started delvoping their familes and such. Don't know anything about a reunion soon though.

Aghama

I'll admit that was a minor troll post. But their music was similar enough that it ended up riding the swing wave, pure and simple.

lostatmidnight

I dunno, but I still have that cd with 'Hell' on it. (Hot?) I have never thought about getting rid of it...I wasn't into the jazz/swing fusion period---hell, I hated it---but when a friend at the time had bought it, and I heard it, I kept it for myself . Hot is filled with some great, moody, eerie music.

Pointyskull

They did have the misfortune (or fortune, depending how you look at it) of becoming "known" during the swing craze. This combined with SNZ's use of horns helped get them lumped mercilessly into the swing category.

They were simply too cool, imo. I dig 'em bigtime.

Giantrobo

me too

Josh-da-man

Pretty close to my pet theory, actually.

I think musical styles (at least during my lifetime) follow economic trends. You had the 80s with the goofy hair metal -- image conscious, good-time music -- when the economy was perceived to be healthy. It was a time champagne, and limosines, lots of bright neon-colored clothes.

Then, around the early 90s, the recession hits. The kids don't want to see rich rock stars living it up. Enter, whiny, thrist-store flannel grunge.

Then, along comes the dot-com burst of prosperity, and everyone wants to be happy again. So they latch onto swing music. It's about dressing snappy, it's happy music with the champange flowing (like the overflowing glasses in Setzer's "Jump Jive and Wail" video). It's also a bit conservative, maybe a "let's try to be more like our parents or grandparents" type of thing.

Then the bottom falls out of the dot-coms, everyone's working at Starbucks again, and Staind is playing on the radio.

The whole thing still baffles me a little bit, though. It's almost like nostalgia for something before people were born. The scene was really mining the trends and fashions of the past in order to define itself.

I mean all of the Transformers junk is selling to the adults who remembered the cartoons and toys when they were kids.