“You and your band absolutely made our wedding!”
This is music to our ears! We love hearing it from our brides and grooms and their families.
We also love it when your guests tell you: that was so you!
Because your wedding or event is not about us. It’s about you…
We’re just there to give you a pink cloud to float on.
Music is a great way to express feelings and emotions.
Colors, seasons and settings count, too!
Let’s talk about the best wedding band in America.
Huh?
OK, let’s talk about reality.
Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Dorothy Fields and Nelson Riddle would all be rolling over in their graves if they’d heard what I just heard….
Fields wrote some of the best live music for weddings, Astaire sang it..and in later years Sinatra did, too, with arrangements by Riddle.
Did they “do” weddings? Probably.
If you were a friend to them, definitely.
How about today. Is there such a thing as the best wedding band in America?
Who knows?
One thing’s for sure: there certainly are a lot of bad ones.
People tell us that finding the right music for their wedding or event is the hardest part of the planning experience.
To be a seriously good wedding band it’s important to have a great repertoire — and actually understand the history and the lyrics of the songs, not just the titles. That’s where DJ’s fall apart, after the most obvious selections. So do many bands. Phrasing counts, and musicians who are out of their element in all but one or two of the genres they’re playing probably don’t have the phrasing skills needed to put over the others with any credibility. Maybe they are a “cover band” that plays 80’s rock. Standards? Please….
I was just on the website of one such band, and listened in horror as as the singer absolutely had a field day — and not in a good way (please pardon the pun) — with the Dorothy Field lyrics to “The Way You Look Tonight,” adding words and cute little phrases and completely screwing up the time and the meter.
Even worse, it took a twenty piece group of them to do it. Screeching, out-of-tune-horns, dated arrangements… and while they weren’t down in the bottom-feeding element of bands that use tracks and just look like they’re playing, it was still awful. There was no musical phrasing. These guys couldn’t swing if Benny Goodman jumped up and kicked them in the butt.
Who could dance to that?
The videos are all staged, by the way.
It’s entirely possible that there are a lot of people who don’t know how to find a good band, or think that such a thing even exists anymore. I’m beginning to think they’re right.
Limited repertoires, reading from books on music stands. Amateurs trying to imitate Frank Sinatra.
Lester Lanin and Meyer Davis would roll over in their graves, too.
I think people who hire a live band deserve better. I think they deserve the real deal, a bunch of terrific musicians who play a lot of styles of music very well. Just like it used to be.
2010 Wedding Trends – What’s Hot and What’s Not….A Style List for Modern Brides
My friend Sheryle Ulyate, who is one of the most elegant women I know, suggested that we compile a list of what the editors of Modern Bride might well be touting as their trendsetter ideas for 1010…if only there were still a Modern Bride, which there isn’t.
Sheryle knows a thing or two about trendsetting; she was one of the founders of Three Day Blinds, a company that nearly single-handedly revolutionized the window covering industry.
Like me, Sheryle is a believer in the old less-is-more Oscar Wilde adage that puts style into perspective. He said, “I am a man of simple taste. The best will always do.”
Here it is, our “What’s Hot and What’s Not” list of wedding trends for 2010 brides. In simple good taste, of course:
HOT………………………………………NOT
Live Wedding Music ……………………iPod
Bandleader ………………………………M/C
Deco………………………………………Disco
Mid-Century Moderne…………………..Punk
Doo-Wop…………………………………The Blues Brothers
Garden Fresh Blooms……………………Flower Towers
Food Stations……………………………Ice Carvings
Natural Makeup………………………….Eyelashe Extensions
Poolside Lounge………………………….Banquet Hall
Family Table……………………………..Sweetheart Table
Home-Baked Sweets Table…………….Cupcake Tree
Organic Everything………………………Fake Anything
Event Designer…………………………..Timeline Police
Swing Band……………………………….Cheesy DJ
Wedding Orchestra………………………Cheesy Wedding Band
Canapes…………………………………..Cheese Platter
Standards………………………………….Top 40
“The Way You Look Tonight”……………”Brick House”
Ballroom Dancing………………………….Rocking The House
Your Backyard……………………………..Harbor Cruise
Gourmet and Modern Bride are gone. This is not good.
I was one of the first “content providers” trained by the Los Angeles Times to write for the internet.
Years ago, ok?
Keep it short and sweet, they told us. Nobody wants to wade through more than a hundred words.
Over a decade of writing content for online news sites, I moderated a message board for Cox Interactive Media.
In depth? Hardly.
In its first foray into online news, the LA Times hired a whole bunch of people, trained them and then fired them. One morning, with a story assigned by each in the works, I called three of my editors who had been in their offices the day before and was told that each was “no longer with the company.”
And that was before breakfast.
There are so many kinds of viral media these days that wading into the melee has become a full-time occupation. Sneeze, and you miss the juicy news of the second. But in this new democracy that encourages everyone to be a critic, anyone with a computer qualifies.
The more free content the viral sites attract, the more they can charge for advertsing. Write hundreds of reviews and you get to be an “elite” reviewer. No matter that you don’t know a truffle from tartufo.
Sauces? Who needs ’em? Or at least who needs to be electrified by descriptions of what’s in them, or how they’re made.
Nobody, evidently.
You’ve heard of never playing the same thing twice?
We never play anything the same way once.
That’s because we are literally the finest improvisers in the world, and can turn a hip hop song into a wedding processional — or a classical tune into rock and roll in an instant if we want to.
Most of my musical colleagues started making music professionally when they were about thirteen years old.
I was a “band singer” at that age. Stand up, sit down…
We’re a little more creative these days.
It’s Benny Goodman meets Bobby Darin, Lena Horne…and Shirley Horn.
Throw in the best of Anka, Sinatra, Bennett, Buble…and vintage doo-wop.
Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, The Beatles, rocking re-mixes, soul, funk, traces of hip hop and classical, mega-ballroom and The Rat Pack…sometimes all in the same set.
What we do seems so easy now, I sometimes forget how long it took to acquire this repertoire.
A lifetime.
The Event: A Sophisticated Old Hollywood Jazz Wedding
The Setting: A Gorgeous Mid-Century Moderne “Old Palm Springs” Hotel
The Theme: Beautifully Designed Poolside Wedding Reception Dinner
The Band: Judy Chamberlain Orchestras & Entertainment
The Vibe: Hip, Elegant Minimalism
First Dance: “Beyond The Sea”
What a wonderful wedding, and it certainly was beyond the sea — as far away from the sea as you can get and still be in California. Palm Springs is one of my very favorite California destination wedding locations, any time of year. For this, an early autumn wedding, the temperature was hot, the music was hotter — and the bride and groom and all of their guests were RED HOT!
We set up our instruments and sound equipment inside the enclosed bar (picture an indoor/outdoor pool house), with huge doors opening onto the pool. The bride and groom, wedding party and some of the guests were seated at a table that ran the length of the pool. Other tables were set up in the pool area, as were dessert stations later in the evening.
Guests ate, drank, roamed around and listened to the soft, hip, elegant and SWINGING music. We are geniuses at not being overly loud, which is an important thing to be able to do in order to comply with the strict noise ordinances in Palm Springs.
The lighting was spectacular. The videographers were flown in from Canada for the weekend. Another wonderful, A-Team wedding.
All weddings should be this lovely, easygoing and sophisticated.
Nothing makes a wedding or event more fun than live music — especially when it’s jazz wedding or event music.
Jazz, swing and big band, Rat Pack — poolside in Palm Springs or in a ballroom in Pismo Beach — the best wedding music is rooted in a jazz sensibility. With overtones of midcentury, doo-wop, funk and soul, of course.
We’re not talking Miles Davis here, although we love Miles. He played a melody like nobody else.
Us, we never play anything the same way once. A room’s mood can change in the middle of a song.
Happy autumn!
September Song
Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill
1938
Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game.
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you.
September Song, by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson
Kinckerbocker Holiday, 1938
Music and the movies are a strong connection!
Casablanca…Three Coins In The Fountain…Animal House…
What would they have been witout exactly the right music popping up at exactly the right time?
In EXACTLY in the right spot….
And all of a sudden it’s 1944…or 1954…or 1962 and you are so there.
You can taste and feel every thing about that exact moment in time.
Even if you weren’t born until 1984.
Some smart “music supervisor” figured out how to transport you to another time and place.
That’s what we do.
Live, and hopefully at precisely the right moment.
We take you on a trip right into your own heart, inside your most meaningful thoughts, dreams and memories.
You could program your iPod, but you wouldn’t get the same results.
And I’ve yet to meet an iPod that can think things through “in-the-moment” the way a live band can.
Or a DJ, for that matter.
Big band, small band….there are plenty of options — and sometimes less is even more.
Timing, though, is everything.
Old Hollywood themed events call for a repertoire that spans every decade of the movies, big band, swing and pop. We do literally thousands of songs that speak to your most glamourous, romantic, elegant and fun moods! The lyrics, the melodies and the arrangements are magical and memorable.
A partial list of the songs our jazz and swing combos play is available at judy chamberlain.com
And if you don’t see your favorites on our list, our bands probably play them anyway. Everything is customized, completely live and in-the-moment.
Now that’s Old Hollywood glamour!
We never play anything the same way once….
Live music can be a very eclectic mix.
Surf punk meets rock meets soul meets…jazz. It’s not canned. And it’s not Kenny G. or Spyro Gyra. It’s not the usual pap, either.
It’s Lynyrd Skynyrd…and Cole Porter. And it’s all swing to us.
It’s mostly vintage, but not the least bit old-fashioned. Nostalgic and contemporary overtones, undertones, passing tones and inner voices are woven into a fabric of spontaneous, in-the-moment re-mixes.
It is at once wonderfully complex and also simple, pure and extraordinarily understated. Even at its most innovative and experimental, it’s happily familiar. We call it “modern vintage.”
When the world gets crazy, good music is more important than ever.