Customer Reviews

If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture

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How refreshing to find someone, in a world that tells us over and over that good's bad and bad's good, who can see and is willing to declare the emperor's nakedness. Mark Judge describes himself as a former left-wing radical who, through tough personal experiences, came to reject his own leftism. (Why is it almost always thus, and not the other way around?) By thoroughly and convincingly tweaking the precepts and icons of the left on the subject of our current American culture, he's undoubtedly invoked the ire and disdain of the literary establishment. So be it - the changes that he chronicles, centering around the Swing Revival in Washington DC in recent months, would never have occurred anyway had not that establishment's campaign of suppression and misdirection against our cultural life already begun to collapse into its own vacuum. At 118 pages it's a quick and easy, yet provocative, read; its rich set of references invites further study. If I were to pick a bone with Mr. Judge, though, it wouldn't be at all about his analysis and conclusions - for me they hit the nail right on the head! It would be about his somewhat pessimistic view that those of us with the common sense to be able to distinguish beauty from trash should be prepared to settle for a secret cultural life under the vast ocean of putrescence that styles itself as today's American culture. Remember the little boy who told the crowd what the emperor was really wearing? Take heart - we only need one plain voice being heard by most Americans to break this vast and entrenched spell against our better nature. After reading "If It Ain't Got That Swing," I'm persuaded that Mark Gauvreau Judge is now, and will continue to wax heavy as a key chord in that Voice. Thanks for a great book and keep swingin', Mr. Judge - they've wishfully pronounced Swing dead, but they ain't seen nothin' yet!

I don't see how one could read Mark Judge's book with any care and then write that in his ideal world "there would be a lot more Brittany Spears and N-Sync." He makes a solid argument that the kind of popular music people listen to has an effect on the tone of society. He goes on to argue that the popular music of 50 years ago was associated with a healthier social life than we have now. That is not "mindless nostalgia". Judge may or may not be right in his interpretation of the evidence (and I have my own doubts about swing music), but his book cannot be dismissed as a "boring, self-righteous rant against human expression and substance in art". Indeed, the thrust of his argument is precisely that the "substance" of art matters.