The 25 Days of Christmas: Day 17

A big-band extravaganza.

Remember the Stray Cats? The rockabilly throwback band from the early days of MTV? Their frontman/guitarist, Brian Setzer, is a legit guitar legend and has had an amazing career despite flying largely under the radar. He played in The Honeydrippers, Robert Plant’s post-Led Zeppelin band that specialized in ‘50s revival music, and later founded The Brian Setzer Orchestra (BSO), a 17-piece big band that kicked off the retro swing craze of the late 90s and continues to occasionally tour.

The BSO has released a lot of Christmas music, much of it rockabilly-infused. In December 2004 they played a “Christmas Extravaganza!” at Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, and shot a concert film of it as well. I’d seen bits of it here and there but didn’t realize what a production it was until I looked it up for this project.

It’s an hour and 40 minutes long, but (like all his music) it’s good to put on and rock to while you’re doing something else like cleaning the kitchen. What a spectacle!

Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t allow embedding of the full video, but you can watch it here. And in the meantime here’s a rather low-res copy of The Nutcracker Suite from the concert:

Notes:

• BSO recorded an album called Wolfgang’s Big Night Out, a collection of well-known classical pieces arranged for big band and rock guitar, and it’s far more fun than such experiments usually are.

• Back in the ‘90s when the swing-revival craze was at its peak, I heard Setzer interviewed on some radio show. The host mentioned that BSO had been playing swing music for quite a while and asked him if he felt bitter now that everyone seemed to be jumping on the bandwagon. He laughed and said, “No, it’s a big wagon! There’s plenty of room for everyone.” That’s an answer I can get behind.

• When I was in middle school, in the mid-80s, my girlfriend’s older brother was a guitar player. He and some friends started a band called The Bloodless Pharaohs, so named because it was the name of Brian Setzer’s first band. I thought that was cool then, and I still think it’s cool now.