shimmy: n. A kind of ragtime dance in which the whole body shakes or sways. (Oxford English Dictionary)
I don't know why, but seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly in Chicago made me go "Yowza!" and "Hubba hubba!" as she did her moxy little dance routines throughout the show. And her little flapper dresses and her obnoxiously short, yet somehow cute haircut? Oh, it's all to die for!
So when I decided to do a little extracurricular research on The Ditty Bops, an act who I heard was opening for Tori Amos (oh yes, everything is always six degrees from Her Royal Red-headed Majesty), I really had no idea what I would be in store for. Buried deep inside my heart, next to the stacks of pop melodies and feisty grrl-power anthems, there is a fondness for swingin' songs of yesteryear.
Imagine my giddy delight when I decided to sample a few tracks from the Ditty Bops - from their self-titled debut. Oh gosh! It's like a lush, plinkety melange of mandolins, fiddles, and pianos, of music spanning the first few decades of Americana, and of course a lead vocalist who sports a shock pink-dyed Velma Kelly haircut. In fact, on their site, www.thedittybops.com, there's a clip from Conan O'Brien and honestly, after that song, I knew that I had found my new favorite song for the summer of 2005.
The Ditty Bops are Abby and Amanda. I forget whom among the two has the Velma Kelly haircut, but man, she shimmies up a storm! And the song? Oh yes the song. It's aptly called "Sister Kate" with a catchy refrain of "If I could shimmy like my Sister Kate / Like a bowl of jelly on a plate" and never have I found a song to sound so eponymously representative of vintage American sounds while being absolutely progressive as well (Think Ragtime meet Hillbilly Folk all polished over with a veneer of modern irony.)
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Rohin, that title is classic. Can't tell you're gay at all :-)
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Temple Stark