SWING JAZZ HEY PACHUCO MOVIE
SWING JAZZ HEY PACHUCO FREE

The zoot suit riots of 1943 were racial hate crimes: Returning American sailors and marines, on shore leave, mercilessly beating anyone they could find with a zoot suit. America wanted them to do with as little as possible, so they used as much material as they possibly could in their suits, a punk-rock fuck-you from decades before punk rock was ever a thing. The zoot suits they wore were conscious rebellion against the wartime austerity that the American government demanded.

SWING JAZZ HEY PACHUCO MOVIE

(If you take away nothing else from this article, take away this: The вЂ™90s were weird.) The one scene from the movie that everyone remembered - even more than the scene where the dog wore the mask and turned into a monster dog - was the one where Carrey, resplendent in a banana-yellow zoot suit, pulled a making-her-movie-debut Cameron Diaz into an absurd, surreal, Tex Avery-inspired dance sequence while the Royal Crown Revue played вЂњHey Pachuco.вЂќДЇor perspective, pachucos were Latino kids in the вЂ™40s, many of them gang members, who faced hellacious discrimination in вЂ™40s Los Angeles. This was, of course, Jim CarreyвЂ™s 1994 follow-up to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and it went even further toward establishing him as quite possibly the biggest movie star in the world for a minute there. And I was one of many.ДЄnd then there was The Mask, an unbelievably dumb movie that I should absolutely not be mentioning in the same breath as Malcolm X. So I watched Swingers many, many times, and I may have even spent a couple of days trying to talk like that. So I wasnвЂ™t just into the swing revival I was also dating girls who were into the swing revival.

SWING JAZZ HEY PACHUCO FREE

In the summer of 1998, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy played a free radio-station afternoon show in Baltimore, and I ended up randomly seated between my then-girlfriend and an ex. (My #2 of the year was Missy ElliottвЂ™s Supa Dupa Fly.) In maybe a two-year span, I saw every one of the bands from the swing revival big four live. I wanted to honor the album so much that I ignored that it had come out in 1996. In my high school newspaper, I wrote that Squirrel Nut ZippersвЂ™ Hot was the best album of 1997. But there were more, each with a shittier band name than the last. Squirrel Nut Zippers were, for a time, the biggest of those bands, and they were also the best. There was a full-bore swing revival happening, one that briefly left a deep impact on alternative radio and convinced people that it was a good idea to own a zoot suit. IвЂ™m not picking on Alternative Press in particular here. Precious few of us will ever admit to liking them. Eighteen years later, вЂњThe MetroвЂќ remains an unassailable synthpop classic, and Squirrel Nut Zippers are a punchline. ItвЂ™s organic and authentic and deeply felt. By contrast, the music of Squirrel Nut Zippers is steeped in history.

вЂњThe Metro,вЂќ to the writer, is chintzy, fake, and synthetic. He mocks вЂњThe MetroвЂќ - and, by extension, the people who love it, including the band membersвЂ™ wives or girlfriends - for personifying the worst excesses of вЂ™80s pop. The Alternative Press writer thinks this is the worst shit ever. IвЂ™m doing this from 18-year-old memory, but IвЂ™m pretty sure thereвЂ™s a part in the profile when a couple of the band membersвЂ™ wives dance, at a party, to вЂњThe Metro,вЂќ BerlinвЂ™s 1981 synthpop hit. One month in 1998, long before Alternative Press was a strictly emo-only concern, the magazine put Squirrel Nut Zippers, the North Carolina swing revivalists whoвЂ™d scored an out-of-nowhere radio hit with вЂњHell,вЂќ on its cover. All week long weвЂ™re looking at the strangest musical moments and trends of the decade.

Swing jazz hey pachuco