Defining "fun" on a Sunday night alone.
Jenny is out of town tonight so I've been catching up on my "concept reading". After grilling dinner (teriyaki chicken) and eating while skimming through the Ruby on Rails site I decided it was time to put something "fun" on the Media Center before continuing my MVC vs. MVP conceptual dive.
Now I have a pretty large and fairly varied music collection (skewed heavily in count towards electronic music) so there is a lot of different stuff to pick from. However, as soon as I thought “fun” the word “swing” popped into my head. So the next challenge for me was to narrow down what swing album to kick things off with.
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live was the obvious pick after a quick glance at my swing music collection. It helps that they show up near the top of the list starting with “B”. But seriously, this is a live CD (as one might guess by the album title) that really does do a great job capturing the energy that is the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
The whole set is spectacular. They roll so smoothly from one song to the next. They do a great job featuring some great oldies mixed in with a their own original music. The way they transition into their rendition of “I Wanna Be Just Like You” (from the Jungle Book) is one of my favorites moments on the album. But the real kicker is when The Kid (the band’s killer in-control trumpet player, he really is amazing to watch live) croons a couple lines near the end of the first encore of “Goodbye”. Don’t skip ahead. Listen to the whole album. It makes the moment that much sweeter.
Every time I listen to the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live album it takes me back to the night Jenny and I saw these guys play Benaroya Hall. The album lacks some of the cool insights Scotty Morris shared with our audience about the band and the music they play but the album probably flows better without the history lessons. In any case, the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live is how I’ve decided to define “fun” tonight and I’m already smiling…