In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 157: Getting Paid to Stay Home For 9 Months; 1990s Brief Return of Swing Music; Top Ranked 1980s Movies; Far Side Comics(8-14-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 157

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Getting paid full-time to sit at home for 9 months. The brief resurgence of Swing music in the 1990s. The top-ranked 80s movies as chosen by the people.
Episode 157 of the podcast ranges from the unbelievable but true, to the meta nostalgia of nostalgia itself.
It kicks off with Restaurant Storytime 9. In this installment, I tell the tale of being paid full-time to sit at home and not work for 9 months. This was all thanks to one man, Jack Connors. If you don't know who he is don't worry you will get an education here.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug. That which was popular oftentimes comes back around decades later. Such was the case with Swing music. A staple of the American youth in the 1930s and 1940s it faded away with the emergence of Rock & Roll. However, by the 1990s, the country was ready for Swing music Round 2, and we'll go way Back In the Day to look at that brief Swing revival.
The 1980s had more than its fair share of legendary movies. This week the Top 5 is actually a Top 10 as we look, in order, at the top-ranked movies of the decade using a poll on IMDb.com.
As always there is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the birth of Gary Larson the creator of the iconic Far Side comics.
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Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 157. Nostalgia of all different shapes and sizes is the special meal of the day here. We're going to kick it off with Restaurant Storytime 9 The story of getting paid full time to stay home for nine months. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at that brief time, the return of swing music in the late 1990s. There's going to be a brand new top five, a cheap top ten, as we look at IMDB's highest rated 1980s American movies. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around one of my all-time favorites, the Far Side comics as we look at the birthday of creator Gary Larson. All of that is coming up right now on episode 157 of the In My Footsteps podcast because nostalgia is awesome. Welcome in everybody. Here we are, middle of August, dog days of summer, hot, humid, soupy weather. Hopefully wherever you are, whether you're Cape Cod, New England, the rest of the United States, or anywhere around the world, if you're listening, I hope you're staying cool. Hopefully some classic nostalgia will cool you off. We've got a lot to get into this week. Of course, I want to kick off the show with a big thank you to my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, early access to the main show, early access to YouTube videos. I'm still noodling with the idea of the video podcast that would kind of encompass the initial impressions 2.0 blog, the weekly wrap-up look at my crazy life. Like I said last week, I finally broke down and got myself a vlogging camcorder. One that'll be really good for webcam stuff, video podcasts, travel videos. I'm figuring once I do some kind of weekly wrap-up podcast, it'll be on Patreon first. As a thank you to my subscribers, but also because I'll likely need to work out the kinks with it. Thank you as well to all of you who listen, all of you that share, all of you that leave ratings and reviews. Those are all the lifeblood of a content creator. I mean, nothing makes me happier than creating something, whether it's this podcast, a video, a blog, and sharing it and knowing there are people out there that enjoy it and then tell others to check it out. It does add a little bit of good pressure sometimes Because I'm always looking to make whatever content I make the best it can be. Because good content will get more eyes for the right reasons. Bad content will go viral for being crap. And I don't want that. I don't want to be known as that guy. I'll likely have a lot more... Time to do content of varying platforms as the end of this month traditionally at my job is my week's paid vacation plus it's Labor Day weekend. So I end up with about 11 straight days off. Now, granted, I do a lot of content work on those days, so I'm not really off, but it's going to give me time to hopefully take this vlogging camcorder and go around and shoot some videos and share them and add to my portfolio that I have of content. What we're going to do now is what we do every week and kick off the podcast. This is going to be a fun story to share, and it's also timely. As it's time for the latest installment of Restaurant Storytime, this is part nine. Someday, maybe I'll make a full-length playlist of just all Restaurant Storytime because I know that's what you all want. But without further ado, let's kick off episode 157 of the podcast with Restaurant Storytime 9, the time I was paid full-time nine months to stay home. Jack Connors doesn't need me to eulogize him. His passing made headlines in the last few weeks in the local newspapers. It was on the nightly news locally in New England. For those of you that may have no idea who Jack Connors was, I'll put a link to his obituary in the description of the podcast if you want to find out more. In short though, he was a legend in Boston-based advertising and a dominating force in philanthropy for decades. Money, fame, respect. He had it all. So no, Jack doesn't need me to eulogize him, so I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to tell a little story about the Jack Connors that I knew and that I owed so much to. And this is Restaurant Storytime 9. I could summarize my relationship with Jack Connors really quick and say that at one point, he paid me full-time to stay at home for nine months, but that wouldn't be much of a segment. My first introduction to Jack occurred in 2006. He had, and probably still the family has, a summer home near the Marshside Restaurant where I had worked in Dennis on Cape Cod for years. Jack was a frequent patron of our rustic but beloved establishment. It was a homey place with delicious food that ran the gamut from pancakes to lobster rolls to prime rib turkey clubs. We had a staff that was more like family, with many of us working together for 10 or more years. And I describe the Marsh side, the old Marsh side, in this way, not just because that's how I feel, but that's how Jack felt. And this came into play when the opportunity came for him to buy the restaurant. Now, I wasn't privy to why Mary Lou, who was the owner and my boss for years, was selling the restaurant. I can make some guesses and assumptions because our building needed a good amount of work. And if you've heard restaurant story times in the past, you've heard me mention our barn that doubled as a prep room storage area, had our walk-in fridge and freezer and the stories of how animals would get in there. It wasn't quite as bad in the actual restaurant, but we definitely had times that we skated by on the inspections due to people knowing people. I can say that now because the old building is gone. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the restaurant was dirty. We took great pride in serving great food and being extremely clean, despite the fact that our building looked like if a few people sneezed on the outside, it would knock it down like a But whatever her reason was, Mary Lou and Jack made a deal in 2007 where he would buy the Marsh side and essentially be a silent owner while Mary Lou continued to run the day-to-day operations. Whether or not the building, the restaurant, had been in dire straits or the business was going down, I don't know, but it was irrelevant because the Marsh side would continue on thanks to Jack. And this is where the true measure of who Jack Connors was as a person became apparent to us who worked there. And I preface it by saying this is all true and all real. So early summer 2007, We staff were told by Mary Lou of the plans. The Marsai was being sold to Jack with her staying on basically as a general manager. And we were going to close Labor Day weekend or right before Labor Day weekend 2007. And after that, the rustic clam shack that we knew that we worked at was going to be torn down with a new modern restaurant arising in its place in time for the following summer. We staff made plans for a big final shindig at the Old Marshside. I'm assuming, I don't remember, but I'm assuming it was a weekend night. So we did regular service. I wasn't working that night, but a lot of us who were working or weren't working that night all went in, had some drinks, some laughs, laughing at the people that were working. And then the doors closed for the final time. And the Old Marshside, as we knew it, was done. Grand closing. Then came the real fun. It was everything must go because the building was going to be torn down. So what are we going to save? Jack was basically going to make sure we had all new equipment at the new restaurant. Many of us that were there that night took basically anything that wasn't nailed down. And I'm very serious. I know myself. I can't speak for anyone else. But I took bar stools, counter chairs. My mother still has. Glass fish plates that we used to serve kids meals on. A couple of sauce pots I took. A couple of omelet pans. I was just taking things and putting them in the backseat of my car saying, I'll figure out what I've got later. We were going into the... Prep area, storage area, taking things, dried goods. I took a bag of chocolate chips, like a big Ziploc bag that I just dumped chocolate chips into. I don't know why, because they were there. I don't know for sure. I know the only real restriction that we had on us was if you took alcohol, it had to be opened bottles. No full bottles that hadn't been opened because you could save those. I myself took an open bottle of Jack Daniels. I can tell you one of our dishwashers took a milk crate and filled it with open bottles of liquor. He probably had seven, eight bottles of booze. It was literally eat, drink, be merry, celebrate, and then it was done. We all took our bounty that we had taken from the restaurant and left. A few days later, the building was torn down. The barn was torn down. I went by and took pictures of myself standing in the hole where the restaurant was. I tried to figure out where the dishwasher machine was. So like I would stand there pretending to wash dishes in this hole that was a restaurant. But what about us? What about the loyal staff? Well, we get to that part. Before we left on the day that Mary Lou had first announced the sale of the Marshside, she came to me and several others, and she asked us if we planned on coming back when the new Marshside opened. I said yes, and this is where my mind was blown. She looked at me and said, okay, great. Here's what's going to happen. Jack was going to pay me my full-time 40-hour-a-week average salary for the entire time the restaurant was being rebuilt. I was going to be paid full-time to stay at home. Out of sheer kindness and respect, this man Jack, who didn't know us really or owe us anything... was going to spend likely what ended up being easily a couple of hundred thousand dollars to keep on the longest tenured of the staff to be there when the new Marsh side opened. He didn't have to do that. Jack could have easily let us all go and be like, whatever, you're done, and brought in his own staff. Because you know a big time advertising, marketing, philanthropic, multi-multi-millionaire knew some heavy hitters in Boston in the restaurant scene that could have come and helped him launch his new venture. I had some doubts. I thought maybe it was going to be a trick, but nope. My check came in the mail that first week, so probably the week after Labor Day. There it was. So then it dawned on me that I had months ahead of me to just do whatever the hell I wanted. I was in my Early days of writing, so e-books. I think the Amazon Kindle store either had just come out. This is the end of summer 2007. I spent a few days, weeks, plotting out tons of different book ideas and going and spending several days a week at different libraries on Cape Cod, usually the Cape Cod Community College Library. I wrote a few short stories about I also started working on what was and probably still is my most in-depth novel. I called it Any Road. God, to try to sum it up, it's basically a high school quarterback who's got his whole life ahead of him planned out because he's an excellent quarterback. He's going to go to college, and there's his road. He suffers injuries, horrific injuries in a car accident. including severe head trauma. So he ends up not being able to play football and it changes his personality. And essentially the story is he has to find another road to get to wherever his success is. That's the any road. It was so in depth that I was about a third of the way done with the book, probably 120,000 words when the time came to go back to work, but we're not there yet. Anyway, I ended up not being able to finish that book. It is totally unfinished, 110 pages, because I would need several months uninterrupted to get back into that headspace. I became friends with melatonin to help me sleep, which I was warned would give me very vivid dreams, and that was true. Four of those dreams I had ended up becoming short stories I wrote during this long break from work. As great as everything was, as months passed, I knew there was going to be a time that I had to pay the piper. And that came in June 2008. The new staff, we all got together in the new Marsh side. It was really nice. It was a bit weird to be in the quote unquote Marsh side, but have it look so different. Jack gave kind of his state of the union, telling us what was going to go on, thanking us for sticking around, which was like, oh no, thank you for paying me for nine months. In what I would come to later appreciate, Jack gave a very dry, humorous explanation as to why he bought the Marsh side, saying he was looking for new ways to lose money. Because we had no idea at the time, but we later found out it cost him several million dollars to go from clam shack to modern casual dining establishment. And I think it took at least a few years for the Marsh side to turn a profit for Jack. We on staff, though, we definitely earned some of the money Jack had paid us during that first few weeks of reopening. We in the kitchen that got paid, we were the ones that went in. There was no relief there. So I was working on average 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., give or take, every day. I worked about 110 hours that first week. Then I finally got a day off, and I think it went down to 95 hours. It's a lot of overtime, but oh man, was I beat. I remember one of those first days, I was doing some of the prep in the nice, spacious kitchen. What I did was spend, no lie, Eight hours making coconut shrimp, cutting the shrimp flour, putting it in the beer batter, rolling it in the coconut, making sure it was stuck on there, putting five in a little Ziploc bag for an order and rinse and repeat for eight hours. I think that's why it's such a vivid memory because it was the whole day doing the same thing. At the end of the night, especially that first week, we would all get a celebratory beer and kind of cheers, you know, clink the bottles together because we made it through another day because it was so busy and just 15 hour days. And on this day with the coconut shrimp, I ended it. I got my beer, but I was trying to put this probably 20 gallon lexican, a big deep, clear, rectangular container, trying to wedge it in this rolling rack so I could put the shrimp in the freezer. And in my tired and weary state, I kind of slipped with it, and the handle of the lexicon pinned my finger to one of the bars of the rolling rack. I smashed my finger. It was all bloody and bruised. Now I had gloves on. but it hurt so bad, my hands were shaking in pain, and the rest of the kitchen crew, they're all over there, cheers, you know, clinking the glasses together, and I'm holding up my bottle, and it's shaking, and I got blood pouring down my arm. I'm like, God, but I earned the money that Jack had paid me. I ended up staying, working in the kitchen at the Marsh side for much longer than I intended to, and it boiled down to two things. One was my true and honest feeling that those I worked with, especially those I'd worked with for many years, were family, and I owed it to them. The second was gratitude to Jack. He would make you feel important when he had no obligation to, and he did it because he was a decent human. He wasn't born rich, and I think that that helped him remember that we're all humans doing the best we can to navigate through life. I was paid full-time to sit at home for nine months because of Jack. And I learned that wealth doesn't have to make you cold and uncaring because of Jack. I called him Mr. Connors the first time I met him, and he softly insisted I call him Jack. I was honestly surprised at how much hearing that Jack had died hit me, but I shouldn't have been. Just how he approached us differently. when our boss, the original owner of the Marshside Mary Lou, when she died suddenly, just how he treated us, earned him the loyalty and all the respect I could offer. So that's Restaurant Storytime 9, being paid full-time to stay home for nine months. And I'll end this off simply by saying thank you, Jack Connors, for everything. You lived a great life and a very important life. So rest in peace. This week in history, we're going back 74 years to August 14th, 1950 and the birth of Gary Larson, the creator of the Farside comic strip. Gary Larson was born in Tacoma, Washington, and from a young age, he displayed a keen interest in drawing and a fascination with the natural world, particularly animals. And he grew up in a family that encouraged creativity and humor. And I'm not trying to gloss over his biography leading up to it, but honestly, this segment is all going to be about the far side. This comic strip, if you've never seen it, you need to go and check it out. It's one of the most distinctive, unique, beloved comic strips of all time. It ran initially from 1980 to 1995, which sadly, when I first really discovered The Far Side, I think I was in eighth grade, so there was only a few years left before Gary Larson retired. It blends surreal humor and anthropomorphic animals, and just twisted logic, ideas you wouldn't think of until you see this. Usually the far side was single panels, like one image that would just blow your mind. It started when Gary Larson approached the San Francisco Chronicle in late 1979 with a series of the single panel cartoons. And they were so impressed that they offered him a syndication deal, which began January 1st, 1980. I could spend an entire podcast giving you my favorite Far Side comics, but I'll try to give you a little bit of the unique elements of the Far Side, just for those of you that have never seen it. First off, there's the surreal and absurd humor that was bizarre and fantastical scenarios, cows having philosophical conversations, or insects engaging in human-like behavior. There's the favorite of mine that it's doggy hell and all the dogs in hell have to be mailmen. That leads into another characteristic. That was the anthropomorphic animals where Gary Larson gave animals human characteristics physically and behaviorally. Like there's one where a cow wakes up in bed next to his wife screaming that he had a nightmare that the golden arches got him. Another unique characteristic was the intellectual and dark comedy. These made you think. If you didn't understand something at the first look, you had to read it or look at it for several minutes and maybe you got the joke. I mean, 14, 15-year-old me didn't get some of the humor that was in these because there'd be references to science and history and literature that weren't in my mind frame back then. As I got older, though, some of those started to make sense and it made the far side even better. At its peak in the mid-1980s, the Far Side comic was syndicated in more than 1,900 newspapers worldwide. And it led to the publication of numerous compilation books, which I think I have three of them. These were long before the internet and the web where you had to get physical books if you wanted these collections. Because if you go now to thefarside.com, oh, it's a website with all kinds of classics and new ones that Gary Larson is doing. Because he retired. He shut down the Farside January 1st, 1995. So exactly 15 years, which is pretty short for a run for a really successful comic strip. It was 2020, though, that Gary Larson came back, launched thefarside.com, and started doing some new, some unreleased Farside comics. I think of the Farside comics to artists as songs were to me in high school. Certain songs, it still happens, inspires you to write your own lyrics. And I'm sure a lot of artists out there saw these Farsides and it inspired them to create their own comics or graphic novels. And the Farside itself would not exist without Gary Larson, who celebrates his 74th birthday this week. Oh, and you know by that music, it's time for a brand new time capsule. We are going to go back 44 years ago this week to August 14th, 1980. I picked the earliest year we could go back to where the far side would be in newspapers. So let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Magic by Olivia Newton-John. This song was originally released as part of the soundtrack for the movie Xanadu. The song stayed at number one for four weeks, and it's actually one of the oldest songs that I have actual memories of as a child. So every time I hear this song, it makes me think of being a kid. As for the movie it was part of the soundtrack for, Xanadu, I think the less said about that, the better. But the number one movie back then was Smokey and the Bandit 2, and you could get in with a ticket costing $2.69. This was the sequel to the original Smokey and the Bandit from 1977 starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Dom DeLuise, Jackie Gleason. The sequel centers around the bandit Burt Reynolds trying to deliver an elephant to the Republican National Convention and being chased by Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice. The movie was a hit, making $66 million on a budget of about $17 million, but it was critically panned. It's about 25% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The number one TV show was 60 Minutes. This show is the oldest and most watched news magazine show. It began all the way back in 1968 and has launched the careers of so many famous news reporters. The show has also spawned several spinoffs of varying success, 60 Minutes 2 and things like that. And if you were around back then, August 14th, 1980, maybe you're parents with a child that's about three years old, who's starting to develop memories of music, and he wants toys, but you don't want to pay a lot, well, you're in luck. This week, there's a 20% off all Fisher Price toys sale at Child World. They've got the Fisher Price phonograph, which I actually had, Little Red Wagon, Marching Band, which is five different instruments, which I'm sure drove parents nuts. A bunch of toys for some character called Woodsy, but it's not Woodsy Owl. And a ton more I could just keep listing. Man, I miss Child World. Does anyone remember that out there, especially from New England? We'll do an in-depth segment on Child World at some point in the future. But until then, that wraps up another time capsule, another This Week in History. What we're going to do now is have a countdown of the highest rated 1980s American movies. Straight from a pole on IMDb. So this will be fun. A lot of heavy hitters coming up now. Oh, Gen Xers, rejoice. We're going to go through a lot of our favorites from childhood. This week's top five ends up being more of a top ten because we're going to look at the highest rated 1980s American movies. That's a lot of words. I initially got this idea by looking at Rotten Tomatoes a lot for the time capsule segments. And in my research for the highest rated 1980s movies, I ended up finding a poll that IMDB, the website, did. They simply asked people, what's your favorite 1980s movie? I don't know the ages of all the thousands and thousands of people that voted. Maybe there are people that weren't even born when these movies came out. But either way, the list... I think does a pretty good job of encompassing kind of what the 80s were in terms of film. Because there's 10 here, there won't be any honorable mentions. And to further sabotage the typical top five, these are in particular order. I should have done me versus AI top five and had this list here and then had AI pick their favorite 80s movies just to laugh at them. But let's get into it. According to IMDB's polling, the top 1980s American movie starts with number 10, Die Hard. The Bruce Willis action-adventure Christmas movie. Yes, it's a Christmas movie. This movie came out in 1988. Bruce Willis is John McClane. There's Hans Gruber, played by Alan Rickman. It's about a New York City cop that's trying to save his estranged wife and several others that are taken hostage at this Christmas party in a skyscraper. The movie made about $140 million on a budget of $30 million, and its legend has only grown in the years since, including three sequels with the latest being in 2007. Number nine on the list is Once Upon a Time in America. This is a movie that I have never seen. It came out in 1984. It stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, James Woods, about an aging mobster that has to face down his demons 35 years after his peak as a Manhattan-based criminal. What's crazy is that Despite this being ranked number 9 by the voters at IMDB, this movie in theaters was a critical fail, making less than $6 million on a budget of $30 million in 1984. Since its release, though, it's been highly lauded as one of the best movies in the gangster genre. We move on, though, to number 8, and another movie I've never seen, Amadeus. This movie also came out in 1984, and it tells the life and troubles of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as told by a rival, Antonio Salieri. It's a fictional historical movie, and it was a box office success, making about $90 million on a budget of $18 million. But the greatest claim to fame of the movie Amadeus was inspiring the all-time classic 80s one-hit wonder Rock Me Amadeus by Falco in 1985. Go watch the video if you like a good slice of 80s cheese. Next up, number seven, an all-time classic, Aliens. This movie came out in 1986. It is the sequel to the 1979 original and picks up 57 years after the original with Lieutenant Ripley floating in space, played by Sigourney Weaver. It's classic sci-fi, directed by James Cameron. With a budget of just north of $18 million, this movie was a smash, making somewhere in the neighborhood of $180 million dollars. in 1986, which would put it at well over $500 million when adjusted for inflation to today. There have been numerous sequels and prequels in the Aliens franchise, including one that's supposed to be out this year called Alien Romulus. Number six on the countdown is Raging Bull, another Robert De Niro. De Niro is boxer Jake LaMotta, and it traces his story rising through the ranks to earn a shot at the middleweight title. Directed by Martin Scorsese and is based off the real Jake LaMotta's 1970 book, Raging Bull My Story, that tells about his rise and fall as a boxer. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, with Robert De Niro winning an award as Best Actor. We move into the actual top five now with number five, Raiders of the Lost Ark. You talk about speaking to the 80s child inside of me. The original Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford. It came out in 1981. It's set in 1936 with Indiana Jones racing against Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant. This action-adventure movie directed by Steven Spielberg launched this whole Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford was already a star from the Star Wars movies, but man, this made him a megastar. On a budget of $20 million, Raiders of the Lost Ark made $390 million worldwide in 1981. That turns out to be over $1.3 billion when adjusted for inflation to 2024. The hits keep coming, though, with number four, Blade Runner. This movie's from 1982. It is another movie starring Harrison Ford. It will not be the last. The movie is about a Blade Runner, basically a bounty hunter, who must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator. This science fiction movie directed by Ridley Scott of the Alien franchise. was not a major hit at the time, barely making back a little more than its $30 million budget. This is one of those movies that now is so revered, but it took a little while to get there. It was critically acclaimed and led to a few sequels, with the franchise getting rebooted kind of in 2017. But next up, number three is a movie that I hope never gets remade because it's perfect the way it is. It's the original Back to the Future. This trilogy was a huge staple of my childhood. What can I say? Marty McFly, Michael J. Fox, Doc Brown, Christopher Lloyd. They end up going back in time to 1955. Marty has to have Doc help him after he messes up his parents' first meeting, but he's also going to try to get back to 1985. Science fiction, comedy, fantasy type movie. If you've never seen this, I don't know where you've been. The movie made $389 million in 1985 on a budget of $19 million. It spawned two hugely successful sequels with people for years clamoring for at least a fourth entry in the Back to the Future series. This movie is such a big part of my life that freshman year of high school, my friend John and I, when we were making our radio shows on audio cassette in the early 90s, we redid the whole Back to the Future movie. It took us weeks to do. We keep moving on though now with number two, The Shining. all-time classic horror movie suspense thriller from 1980 starring Jack Nicholson and the recently departed Shelley Duvall. It was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on Stephen King's novel. As Jack Torrance and his family are the winter caretakers of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado and what that isolation in this haunted hotel does to him, This movie is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror movies ever, but when it first came out, it had mixed response. That quickly changed, though, to basically overwhelming praise. Here we are, though. Number one highest rated 1980s American movie, according to this poll that they did on imdb.com, so it's based on what you folks think. Number one. is The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Episode V. This is the second of the original Star Wars trilogy. Came out in 1980. The further adventures of Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill and his crew, including Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. It's hard to give you much that hasn't been said about The Empire Strikes Back. It's the movie where the bad guys win at the end. It's right up there as one of the greatest sequels ever made. It had a budget of around $30 million and made somewhere in the neighborhood of just shy of $550 million in 1980. That would translate to nearly $2.1 billion when adjusted for inflation to today. A hugely critically acclaimed science fiction movie. Part of one of the greatest trilogies of movies ever. Genre defining, era defining. Can you tell that I definitely am happy with this number one pick? But that'll wrap up the top five that is this week's top ten. Do you agree with this list? I'll link to it in the description of the podcast if you want to go because it's actually still ongoing. It's a few years old, but you can go vote in it if you want to try to influence this list. But we go from genre era defining movies to something that defined an era once, but could it define a new era? Let's find out as we talk about the brief return of swing music. Nostalgia is a strong force. I mean, hey, I transformed this whole podcast into nostalgia because I love talking about it so much. People always like to look back at the good old days, things that were popular decades ago come back in style. Now it's 90s fashion. God, it's like reliving my high school days. Sometimes something comes back in fashion decades later and it's as big as it ever was or bigger. Sometimes things come back and it's an epic fail and you wish they had left the memory This here, I don't know, it's kind of in the middle. We're going to leave it up to you. As we go way, way back in the day, 25-ish years, to the brief return of swing music in America in the 1990s. Those of you around back then likely remember this brief resurgence. For those of you too young, or those of you that need a little bit of a refresher, Swing music emerged as a distinctive form of jazz in the late 1920s. It was characterized by a strong rhythm section, lively melodies, and emphasis on danceability. It was really influenced by some earlier jazz styles like Dixieland, New Orleans jazz, but it was smoother, more sophisticated. Some of the key figures from that original development of swing music included Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman. The swing band's They typically featured a robust horn section, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, a great rhythm section, piano, bass, drums, guitar. The genre's rise in the 30s and 40s became known as either the swing era, the big band era. And this music was an escape from the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II. Times changed, though. Rock and roll came around in the early 1950s. And that led to all different types of music. So swing faded away. Big band faded away. For several decades, the only references of swing music might have been in historical classic movies. You know, movies in the 60s, 70s, 80s that were set in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. I knew a little bit of swing music based on the fact that my Nina and Grandpa were jazz singers, frequented Cape Cod's great jazz establishments. But like I said, nostalgia, it's very powerful. We flash forward to the genesis of the neo-swing, new-swing movement, 1989. There was an interest in swing music, the Lindy Hop dance movement. The Los Angeles-based Royal Crown Review Band, led by Eddie Nichols, they're credited with really birthing this new era of swing music. They were formed in 1989, and their debut album was 1991's Kings of Gangster Bop. Their greatest fame was 1996, when they released the album Muggsy's Move, with a cover that was inspired by the movie Pulp Fiction. They supported this album by touring with The Pretenders. So this was as big as Royal Crown Review got. They're still around to this day. Nostalgia and retro trends. That was a big reason why swing music started to take off as the 90s went on. Swing music had this vibrant energy and association with a bygone era. So it really fit neatly into the nostalgia. That lively swing music... It was the danceability that made it so popular, and that was what helped bring in the swing revival. It attracted younger people eager to learn the Lindy Hop dance, the Charleston, other classic dances that their grandparents likely did. This led to dance clubs having swing nights, events that were just dedicated to swing music popping up all across the United States. My introduction to the return of swing music was the 1996 film Swingers. It's a buddy comedy set during this swing revival, directed by Doug Liman, written by Jon Favreau, starring Vince Vaughn. It was a modest hit, making just under $5 million on a budget of about $200,000. The movie could be hit or miss if you're not interested in swing music. But where swingers really shined was the soundtrack. You had classic songs by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Count Basie, Sammy Davis Jr. But then you also had the new generation of swing bands that were making their impact then or just starting to come onto the scene. Royal Crown Review was there, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Some of you out there might have seen Swingers and just been enthralled by the excitement and the camaraderie of Swing culture. There was something about the music, if it hit you right, it just opened your eyes up to something that was totally new. But who were some of these bands that were part of the new Swing revival? Well, I mentioned Royal Crown Review, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. They also came out of Southern California, were also formed in 1989. They were named for an autograph by blues legend Albert Collins. Some of their biggest hits included You and Me in the Bottle Makes Three Tonight, Go Daddy-O, Mr. Pinstripe Suit. Their peak was playing the halftime show of Super Bowl 33 in 1999. They are still around, still touring. There was the Squirrel Nut Zippers, a band hailing from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They were swing, jazz, bit of vaudeville. Their big hits included songs like Hell, that was from their 96 album Hot. They were critically acclaimed, commercially successful. Perhaps the most well-known of the swing revival bands, and the first one that I thought of, was the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. They were formed in 1989. A lot of these bands were formed that same year in Eugene, Oregon. Their biggest album was 1997's Zoot Suit Riot. It was really probably the defining work of that Swing revival. Zoot Suit Riot became a hugely popular song. It kind of broke through where Swing became more acceptable on a national scale. Zoot Suit Riot went double platinum, which is pretty good for a Swing album. They actually just released a new album in July called At the Pink Rat. And then there was one that if Cherry Poppin' Daddies wasn't the one you associate with Swing, it was probably the Brian Setzer Orchestra, which was led by former Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer. He was already well-established. The early 80s Stray Cats music was kind of swing, but he had a name. So his music, including the 1998 album The Dirty Boogie with the hit song Jump, Jive, and Wail, that might have branched swing out even more thanks to the established audience that the Stray Cats had, the name value that Brian Setzer had. The Dirty Boogie went double platinum, just like Cherry Pop and Daddy's Zoot Suit Riot. But like the title said of this podcast, the brief return of swing music. So it kind of broke through 96 with swingers. You had swing bands playing the Super Bowl in 1999. But it wasn't too long after that it fell off. It wasn't quite something like disco where there was a segment of the population that just hated it and wanted it to go away. I think with Swing, it's sort of like if you hear one song, you've heard a lot of them. It's got a very catchy, dancey style, and it's a fun, upbeat type of music. But there's not a lot of variety, really. And I think that's part of it. You get three, four, five years into this Swing revival. It's like, okay, we've heard all there is with Swing. Plus we've got a back catalog of albums from the 30s and 40s. And it's attention span. Attention spans of the public are shorter and they keep getting shorter. So what was hot one day, one month, one year, it's gone pretty quickly for whatever is new and next forever. Obviously, swing music isn't gone. It's just not mainstream anymore. I was naming off all those famous swing bands from the revival, and they're still around. Brian Setzer, Royal Crown Review, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, they're all still around. They just aren't playing any Super Bowls or being in Gap commercials. It was brief. It was fun. It was all the nostalgia you could want. That brief revival of Swing music in the mid to late 1990s. Do you remember it? Do you have any albums? I had the Cherry Poppin' Daddy Zoot Suit Riot. I would say if you're curious about the Swing revival, go listen to that one song. You've basically heard the whole Swing revival. That or Brian Setzer Orchestra's Jump Jive and Whale. But until next time, that will wrap up episode 157 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you so much to all of you who tune in, whether you're from Cape Cod, New England, the rest of the United States, over in Europe. I've got people from all over the world that listen to the show. I couldn't do it without you all sharing it. Ratings, reviews. That's how I get more eyes and ears on my content. And as a creator, that means everything. I love putting together these shows, the podcast, the blog, the videos on YouTube. I must enjoy the content creation because I just plop down money to get the camcorder to make new travel videos, maybe live podcasts, video podcasts, all that stuff. And I'll keep on pumping out the content Next week's going to be episode 158 of the podcast. Among the topics we're going to be discussing from the nostalgia department is a look back at MTV's famous celebrity deathmatch show. That's something I've wanted to talk about for a while. So that'll be a part of next week's show. If you can't get enough of me and my content, go subscribe on YouTube. Find me all over social media. I have podcast specific pages on Instagram and Facebook. Make sure to check out the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. A wrap up of my week that's always random foolishness and every now and then something profound that I think. $5 a month to subscribe on Patreon will get you access to the bonus podcast episodes that are where I look at the old, original, and initial impressions blog from 2010 to 2012. If you're interested in any of my nine books, visit my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. There's links to all the books, but if you want something more in-depth about If you're interested in The Lady of the Dunes, Cape Cod's infamous murder case, visit theladyofthedunes.com, the website that I built. It houses my book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, the amazing documentary Lady of the Dunes by Frank Durant, newspaper archives, things about the case if you've never heard of it. When this podcast goes live, there's still about a month left of summer. But I'm not going to lie. I can't wait for fall. You who have listened to this podcast long enough know that I've said forever that fall is my favorite time of year. Basically from Labor Day weekend all the way to the end of the year, it's just one nonstop fun time. Tons of holidays, better weather, the foliage, my birthday, family members' birthdays, fun holidays. I know a lot of you love summer more, and that's fine. Just make sure you get out and enjoy the weather while you can. It's steamy and humid, even on Cape Cod, but I know it's worse other places. I wouldn't want to be in the Southwest. I lived in Vegas. I dealt with the 115 degree days. But hey, at least it was a dry heat. But get out there and enjoy it. Lean into the things that make you happy. Favorite foods, favorite places, favorite people, favorite podcasts. And just make each day the best it can be. Not to be cliche, but like I always say, you never know what tomorrow brings. And like I always say, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path. Whatever that path is, if it's content creation, writing, or it could be something totally on the opposite side, landscaping, construction. I'll just keep naming professions until I fade out. But it's whatever your path is. And just keep moving forward. You never know what tomorrow brings, so enjoy today. Thank you all so much for tuning in to episode 157. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew me. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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