I've been listening to nothing swing since my post, and I want to revise
my former opinion. I'm really digging both that Seattle band's "Zoot
Suit Riot" (one member of whom is an FOJ, which makes them friends of
Megan, which gives us a John Feiler connection, linking back to FoRK,
giving them a degree of separation score of 3) and Big Bad Voodoo
Daddy's eponymous CD more and more with every listen. And Mike's review
of Royal Crown Revue is right on -- I bought "Mugzy's Move" on his
recommendation and love it. Still, if you were to only buy one swing
album (because you're lame, Rohit), the Swingers soundtrack is the one
to get. My next pickup will be Jump with Joey...
ObBits: A really worthy book I picked up lately is _A History of the
American People_ by Paul Johnson, one of those decent one-volume
compendiums that tries to interpret (optimistically though with a quite
conservative viewpoint -- no political correctness here!) the last 400
years of American social, political, economic, and cultural phenomena.
There are all kinds of cool statistical nuggets and anecdotes sprinkled
throughout as well.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060168366/forkrecommendedrA/
He does a decent job of capturing many different points of view of the
goings on of "average people" in America, much like Howard Zinn's
People's History of the United States...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060926430/forkrecommendedrA/
And the book is epic in its scope, but it works well, much like
Johnson's last epic, _A History of the Jews_
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060915331/forkrecommendedrA/
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Dear Prudence... won't you come out to play?
-- Beatles