I saw a great local band called “Modern Skiffle Quartet” at Cinema Bar last night. Goofy good fun.

Skiffle is, more or less, a highly obscure British genre of the late 1950s which does stiff but friendly renditions of American jug band tunes from the late 1920s. The mood is happy go lucky and embarrassingly perky. It’s post Elvis and pre Bob Dylan. So this band last night was white Americans circa 2010 reviving white Brits ca. 1958 reviving black Americans ca. 1930. And this is not the same as skipping the intermediaries and going straight back to revive jug bands. The fun of it is copying the copiers.

Modern Skiffle Quartet is too small an outfit to even have a Myspace page. But whatever. If you see em around they’re very worth a drive to the bar.

Here’s Lonnie Donegan, the genre’s biggest star:

Photographic evidence of a band called “The City Ramblers”: