On this Memorial Day I thought I would simply post this video “Hold the Line” by The Clockwork Dolls from their Dieselpunk CD “When Banner’s Fall” dedicated to those who fought in World War II:
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Electric Swing Circus
The Electric Swing Circus is a six-piece electro swing band based in Birmingham, UK. Organized as a cooperative they became a You Tube sensation with their video performance of ‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cat’. While the dieselpunk community has adopted Electro-swing music as "Dieselpunk Music", ELC certainly fits within the definition of Dieselpunk. As they say at their web site, the band “fuses cool 20′s swing with fiery electro beats”.
Electric Swing Circus has a well-earned reputation for their outstanding live shows in which they mix live music with dance and circus acts. In fact, ELC received the award for the ‘Best Live Act’ in the Electro Swing Peoples Favorite Awards 2011. All of this adds up to make their highly anticipated newly released self-titled debut CD so exciting. I’m going to review just a few tracks from their new CD that I consider outstanding. Trust me; it was difficult for me to limit myself to just these.
Swingamajig
Swingamajig is a high-octane song that add layers and layers in such a creative manner. If this song doesn’t make you want to get up and dance then you must be dead. Sheer fun!
Valentine
This song is wonderfully creative. There are several haunting moments in the song where it breaks from the electro-swing sound and briefly goes into an alternative rock style that’s reminiscent of Evanescence.
Harvey
Electric Swing Circus makes a strong left turn in their style with this song. The song is a fantastic Dark Cabaret song that pays tribute to the Diesel Era movie classic ‘Harvey’.
Minnie
Minnie is a wonderful reimagining of the Diesel Era classic Minnie the Moocher. Though it starts with traditional lyrics, they rewrote the rest of the lyrics in such a way as to provide an intriguing twist to the song. In addition, the song has a wonderful mix of horns with an electronica sound. It’s very creative and well made.
Put Your Smile On
Put Your Smile On is another break in the style of the CD and it works perfectly. It’s wonderful in its simplicity that really shows off the vocal talents of the singers.
Everyone Wants to Be a Cat
I’ve heard several remakes of this song and this has to be the best. It starts out teasing you and then breaks out into a full-blown dance song that incorporates a wonderful mix of horns, drums, electro-swing electronics and guitar. When it hits its climax near the end I found myself singing along and wanting to dance. Meow!
Every track on this CD is great and I could go on and on about each one. In my opinion, Baz Luhrmann didn’t need Jay-Z to create his soundtrack for the Great Gatsby. He should have turned to Electric Swing Circus, which would have created a much better soundtrack for his movie. My advice is don’t waste your money buying the official Great Gatsby soundtrack. Instead, download Electric Swing Circus’s new CD. You’ll be glad that you did.
You can visit their official web site here: http://www.electricswingcircus.com/
You can purchase their new CD here: http://electricswingcircus.bandcamp.com/
Electric Swing Circus has a well-earned reputation for their outstanding live shows in which they mix live music with dance and circus acts. In fact, ELC received the award for the ‘Best Live Act’ in the Electro Swing Peoples Favorite Awards 2011. All of this adds up to make their highly anticipated newly released self-titled debut CD so exciting. I’m going to review just a few tracks from their new CD that I consider outstanding. Trust me; it was difficult for me to limit myself to just these.
Swingamajig
Swingamajig is a high-octane song that add layers and layers in such a creative manner. If this song doesn’t make you want to get up and dance then you must be dead. Sheer fun!
This song is wonderfully creative. There are several haunting moments in the song where it breaks from the electro-swing sound and briefly goes into an alternative rock style that’s reminiscent of Evanescence.
Harvey
Electric Swing Circus makes a strong left turn in their style with this song. The song is a fantastic Dark Cabaret song that pays tribute to the Diesel Era movie classic ‘Harvey’.
Minnie
Minnie is a wonderful reimagining of the Diesel Era classic Minnie the Moocher. Though it starts with traditional lyrics, they rewrote the rest of the lyrics in such a way as to provide an intriguing twist to the song. In addition, the song has a wonderful mix of horns with an electronica sound. It’s very creative and well made.
Put Your Smile On is another break in the style of the CD and it works perfectly. It’s wonderful in its simplicity that really shows off the vocal talents of the singers.
Everyone Wants to Be a Cat
I’ve heard several remakes of this song and this has to be the best. It starts out teasing you and then breaks out into a full-blown dance song that incorporates a wonderful mix of horns, drums, electro-swing electronics and guitar. When it hits its climax near the end I found myself singing along and wanting to dance. Meow!
Every track on this CD is great and I could go on and on about each one. In my opinion, Baz Luhrmann didn’t need Jay-Z to create his soundtrack for the Great Gatsby. He should have turned to Electric Swing Circus, which would have created a much better soundtrack for his movie. My advice is don’t waste your money buying the official Great Gatsby soundtrack. Instead, download Electric Swing Circus’s new CD. You’ll be glad that you did.
You can visit their official web site here: http://www.electricswingcircus.com/
You can purchase their new CD here: http://electricswingcircus.bandcamp.com/
Sunday, May 12, 2013
The Great Gatsby Movie Review
I doubt that there’s anyone reading my blog that hasn’t heard of Baz Luhrmann’s Dieselpunk version of The Great Gatsby. With an event as big as this, I thought I needed to post a review as soon as possible after seeing it.
There’s so much good stuff to say about this movie that it’s hard to know where to start. First, fans of the novel, which I’m one, should be pleased. The movie is true to the novel. The settings and the portrayal of characters in the movie were exactly as I imagined them in my mind’s eye back when I read The Great Gatsby. I thoroughly enjoyed DiCaprio’s portrayal of Jay Gatsby and Tobey Maguire was the perfect choice for Nick Carraway. Maguire was very believable as the one person who could see the true greatness of Jay Gatsby when no one else could. In addition, Gatsby drew me in the way he drew Carraway. When Gatsby (DiCaprio) smiled into the camera welcoming Carraway into his world I felt the same draw.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the development of the movie. According to Penn State web site, the Penn State literary scholar, James L. W. West III, who is the university's Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, played in important role as a consultant to the Luhrmann and cast of the film. In addition, Luhrmann drew on "Trimalchio: An Early Version of ‘The Great Gatsby’”, which was published in 2000 to fill in some of the gaps of the novel and to flesh out several of the characters such as Gatsby himself. According to the scholar, Jay Gatsby in the movie as portrayed by DiCaprio was truer to Fitzgerald’s vision of the character then it was in the final published version.
Then there was the giant billboard with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in the Ash Heaps watching over everyone. Luhrmann used this prop wonderfully just as Fitzgerald would have wanted it in that it gives a sense of condemnation to the decadent society that people had built. As George Wilson screamed in a fit of rage, "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!...God sees everything".
In addition, the fashion in the movie worked perfectly. One certainly knew you were in the 1920s however it was revised just enough that I felt like I could wear most of the outfits as a dieselpunk.
While keeping true to the work of Fitzgerald, Luhrmann also succeeded at creating a unique Dieselpunk vision of the 1920s. Luhrmann created a Dieselpunk Manhattan, which when I saw it on the screen I wanted to step in and travel to this alternate reality.
Before I saw the movie, one of my major concerns was not that Luhrmann had chosen a hip-hop artist, Jay-Z, to be the executive producer of soundtrack but the reports that I had read in which they compared hip-hop to Jazz. Then I saw a trailer and my fears were at the time eased. However, I downloaded the soundtrack the day it was released and once again, my concerns returned because the soundtrack seemed to lack any decodence to most of the songs. Ultimately, I am very pleased with how they used the soundtrack in the movie. The modern musical styles were used primarily for Carraway’s flash back scenes while the few times a real life scene included a song the music was, while not exactly true to the age, close enough to feel appropriate.
Unfortunately, the movie isn’t perfect. First, Luhrmann’s use of 3D was so over the top that when viewed in 2D at times it was blurry and gave me an uncomfortable sense of vertigo. Far too many scenes were so obviously shot for 3D, which harmed the look. Second, some elements to the movie seemed unoriginal when compared to Luhrmann’s earlier work. Just as in Moulin Rouge, it begins with a black and white opening. In this case, it was a silent movie style rather than the nickelodeon of Moulin Rouge but it was still the same concept. Along with this, Carraway tells the story in the movie by writing a book, which also reminded me of Moulin Rouge. Was Luhrmann in a creative rut that he couldn’t break? Then again, maybe that’s giving him too much credit and maybe he’s jaded with the opinion of, “Hell, it worked for my last movie so I’ll just do it again.”
Here’s my bottom-line about the movie: Is it a great movie? Yes. Will I buy the inevitable 2-disk, super-deluxe, platinum, Blu-Ray version with a million extras? Yes. Should you go see it? Yes and if you haven’t then what the hell are you waiting on, old sport?
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the development of the movie. According to Penn State web site, the Penn State literary scholar, James L. W. West III, who is the university's Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, played in important role as a consultant to the Luhrmann and cast of the film. In addition, Luhrmann drew on "Trimalchio: An Early Version of ‘The Great Gatsby’”, which was published in 2000 to fill in some of the gaps of the novel and to flesh out several of the characters such as Gatsby himself. According to the scholar, Jay Gatsby in the movie as portrayed by DiCaprio was truer to Fitzgerald’s vision of the character then it was in the final published version.
Then there was the giant billboard with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in the Ash Heaps watching over everyone. Luhrmann used this prop wonderfully just as Fitzgerald would have wanted it in that it gives a sense of condemnation to the decadent society that people had built. As George Wilson screamed in a fit of rage, "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!...God sees everything".
In addition, the fashion in the movie worked perfectly. One certainly knew you were in the 1920s however it was revised just enough that I felt like I could wear most of the outfits as a dieselpunk.
While keeping true to the work of Fitzgerald, Luhrmann also succeeded at creating a unique Dieselpunk vision of the 1920s. Luhrmann created a Dieselpunk Manhattan, which when I saw it on the screen I wanted to step in and travel to this alternate reality.
Before I saw the movie, one of my major concerns was not that Luhrmann had chosen a hip-hop artist, Jay-Z, to be the executive producer of soundtrack but the reports that I had read in which they compared hip-hop to Jazz. Then I saw a trailer and my fears were at the time eased. However, I downloaded the soundtrack the day it was released and once again, my concerns returned because the soundtrack seemed to lack any decodence to most of the songs. Ultimately, I am very pleased with how they used the soundtrack in the movie. The modern musical styles were used primarily for Carraway’s flash back scenes while the few times a real life scene included a song the music was, while not exactly true to the age, close enough to feel appropriate.
Unfortunately, the movie isn’t perfect. First, Luhrmann’s use of 3D was so over the top that when viewed in 2D at times it was blurry and gave me an uncomfortable sense of vertigo. Far too many scenes were so obviously shot for 3D, which harmed the look. Second, some elements to the movie seemed unoriginal when compared to Luhrmann’s earlier work. Just as in Moulin Rouge, it begins with a black and white opening. In this case, it was a silent movie style rather than the nickelodeon of Moulin Rouge but it was still the same concept. Along with this, Carraway tells the story in the movie by writing a book, which also reminded me of Moulin Rouge. Was Luhrmann in a creative rut that he couldn’t break? Then again, maybe that’s giving him too much credit and maybe he’s jaded with the opinion of, “Hell, it worked for my last movie so I’ll just do it again.”
Here’s my bottom-line about the movie: Is it a great movie? Yes. Will I buy the inevitable 2-disk, super-deluxe, platinum, Blu-Ray version with a million extras? Yes. Should you go see it? Yes and if you haven’t then what the hell are you waiting on, old sport?
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Oh Brother Where Art Thou
Oh Brother Where Art Thou has to be one of my favorite Dieselpunk movies. Written and directed by the great Coen brothers, George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill who breaks out of prison and leads two fellow jailbirds on a hilarious road trip to recover hidden treasure while all the time being chased by the devil in the form of a lawman. The Coen brothers did a wonderful job of capturing Southern culture of that time and it’s simply amazing.
Some might say this is actually just a period piece but let me make the case for it being classified as Dieselpunk.
Starting with the basic story line, the Coen brothers took Homer’s "The Odyssey" and placed it in Mississippi during the 1930s. It has a Cyclops who was wonderfully played by John Goodman, Sirens, Ulysses misleading his men about the treasure, a prophet who warns of trouble, humans being cursed into animals (well kind of) and metaphorical scenes of forgiveness by Poseidon along with the circular axis heads.
If that’s not enough, the Coen brothers Punk'd history. The governor of Mississippi in the movie, Pappy "Pass the Biscuits" O’Daniel, was loosely based real Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel who did have his own radio hour and made his wealth through the O'Daniel's Hillbilly Flour Company. The real O’Daniel even had his own band called the Light Crust Doughboys. The name Soggy Bottom Boys was taken from the real-life Foggy Mountain Boys while the character Tommy Johnson was based on a combination of blues players Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson who both had the legend of selling their souls to the devil at the crossroads.
I would close with this quote from a scholarly paper by Margaret M. Toscano with the University of Utah, "The Coens humorously remake both Homer and the American folk tradition in a way that protects any of the originals from over-reverence. They keep putting new mustaches on the past, thus creating an on-going dialogue between the past and the present, the ideal and the mundane, to keep us questioning what is good and real, but always indirectly through humor so that we hardly realize the questions have been asked."
Yes, Oh Brother Where Art Thou is Dieselpunk.
Some might say this is actually just a period piece but let me make the case for it being classified as Dieselpunk.
Starting with the basic story line, the Coen brothers took Homer’s "The Odyssey" and placed it in Mississippi during the 1930s. It has a Cyclops who was wonderfully played by John Goodman, Sirens, Ulysses misleading his men about the treasure, a prophet who warns of trouble, humans being cursed into animals (well kind of) and metaphorical scenes of forgiveness by Poseidon along with the circular axis heads.
If that’s not enough, the Coen brothers Punk'd history. The governor of Mississippi in the movie, Pappy "Pass the Biscuits" O’Daniel, was loosely based real Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel who did have his own radio hour and made his wealth through the O'Daniel's Hillbilly Flour Company. The real O’Daniel even had his own band called the Light Crust Doughboys. The name Soggy Bottom Boys was taken from the real-life Foggy Mountain Boys while the character Tommy Johnson was based on a combination of blues players Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson who both had the legend of selling their souls to the devil at the crossroads.
I would close with this quote from a scholarly paper by Margaret M. Toscano with the University of Utah, "The Coens humorously remake both Homer and the American folk tradition in a way that protects any of the originals from over-reverence. They keep putting new mustaches on the past, thus creating an on-going dialogue between the past and the present, the ideal and the mundane, to keep us questioning what is good and real, but always indirectly through humor so that we hardly realize the questions have been asked."
Yes, Oh Brother Where Art Thou is Dieselpunk.
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