Another H/T to G-Man.
And NSFW doesn't mean "Not Safe For Work" here; instead, it means "Nipponese Swing ... Freaking Wild!"
"SING SING SING", that great Benny Goodman hit was ... Too hot to trot! (The Swing Girls don't even have a Clarinetist.) I've already watched it 3 times, and I'm not including the link for your benefit, but for mine; I wanna go back and watch it again and again. Wonderful performance of Le Jazz Hot. (Here's how Benny Goodman did it.)
The link takes you to some really "I feel The Need ... The Need To Speed" video. There are lots more where that came from; search YouTube for " . Unfortunately, they(whomever published the "Swing Girls" videos on YouTube) requested that embedding be disabled for this video. What a great loss for Jazz Lovers.
One of the videos which was NOT "disabled" was their treatment of Glenn Miller's "In The Mood", which was not one of their best. Their performance was desultory, not showing the energy which the 'disabled' videos allowed. They did all the technical things, but it didn't demonstrate the enthusiasm which they demonstrate in their best performances.`
I saw music from Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, and Duke Ellington played much better. It's a disservice to people who want to see more that they didn't allow their "best" to be embedded. (Incidentally, the RAF Band did "In The Mood" in the same way that The Glenn Miller Band did ... more upbeat. Even if the British musicians in their performance looked like aging sourpusses (which the Swing Girls apparently considered the be the audience of the Glenn Miller classic to be the same kind of aging sourpusses.) It may be that the conductor slowed down the tempo because of perceived limitations of the performers, but the Swing Girls may have shown as much enthusiasm if he had allowed them to play it at Full Speed.
They did "Take the A-Train" well, for example (with a guest First Sax, and "embedding disabled" -- sorry), but they seemed to be walking through it. (Also, the first trumpet player hit a couple of flat notes. It happens.) If it's not Rock and Roll tempo, it's just another day at work. Well done, of course, but ... when they get the stuff they like to do, they show The Flash what should happen when he says "FLAME ON!"
Their performance of "Moonlight Serenade" was well done, although the arrangement they were given may not have been hot enough for them.
If you want to see more of them, search YouTube for "First & Last Concert2004".
All of these numbers were apparently in a movie titled "The Swing Girls". My guess is that the flat notes and pedestrian numbers reflect their original bad attitude: IMDB description of the show:
A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the schools brass banWell, that will sour the performance.
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