“THE IN CROWD”
A TATI MOMENT REVISITED

Dig this: there’s a Youtuber who has a channel called ‘Soft Tempo Lounge’ which features music videos (for want of a better term) he/she have created using footage culled from various 60s-era sources–found footage, commercials, repurposed feature films etc. that are set to music by Euro-pop artists of the time. They’re quite accomplished and frequently even mesmerizing. The above selection will serve as an introduction to Soft Tempo Lounge’s work–there are many more which you can access on their channel. It’s a a repurposing of footage from Jacques Tati’s masterful film ‘Playtime’ (1967) set to a song by Syd Dale titled ‘Brass Buy Lightly’. The video itself is titled ‘The In Crowd’ and features a swinging party of the era–or rather what passed for a swinging party of the era just before heavy-duty rocking parties rendered the one pictured as quaintly tame and a relic of the late-fifties era of narrow ties, cocktail dresses and the like. Catch the groovy moment with the woman between 50 and 60 seconds. Somehow it says everything…

For more info on the not-enough-known-about Syd Dale click here for his Wikipedia entry.  Many thanks to my good friend Marc Myers of JazzWax for hipping me to this stuff.

MOVIES
'TIL
DAWN

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