[Dixielandjazz] FW: Shtick

[Don Kirkman]

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:45:10 +0000, Bill Gunter wrote:

>The question has been raised:

>>What is the origin of the whole garter belt/straw hat/red suspenders/red
>>vest mentality in OKOM?

>Calling such a thing a "mentality" is a way of denigrating it. One calls 
>certain attitudes they dislike a "mentality."

>I read the question and I immediately sensed that the writer views such a 
>thing (the whole garter belt/straw hat/red suspenders/red vest etc.) 
>negatively.

>Now if one sees this stuff in a positive way they use a different term 
>("retro").

>If the question had been phrased "What is the origin of the whole garter 
>belt/straw hat/red suspenders/red vest retro look?" then I would have 
>assumed the writer viewed this as a positive thing.

>In today's mentality "retro" = "cool."

Appears to me Mr. Gunter has a good ear.  :-)

>I personally like the look.  It's a sort of costume party where we all can 
>get transported back in time to an era which seems to be simpler, less 
>hectic and pleasant in our memories.

>It's called "nostalgia" and we all experience it from time to time. It is a 
>yearning to experience things belonging to the past.

>So . . . "mentality" versus "retro" -- isn't language a spiffy thing to 
>contemplate!

Before I stumbled across OKOM some fifty or sixty years ago I associated
the boaters, striped weskits, sleeve garters, and all the other
paraphernalia with barbershop quartets.  Which causes me to wonder:
which came first, the quartet or the band, and did they emerge from of a
single source or were there other things bubbling up in US (and I
suspect English) society at the time?

I haven't been able turn up authentic Google pictures of the costume
more than half a century old, but weren't English gentlemen of the
vintage of Bertie and Jeeves about in the countryside in the 1920s
costumed that way?  Of is that purely the pigment of Mr. Wodehouse's
marvelous imagination?  (Or mine.)

BTW, in my travels through Google I also stumbled across a November,
2005, discourse on this topic in this same forum.  The good obviously
live on. :-)
-- 
Don Kirkman