Contemporary skiffle

From time to time, I'd like to link to contemporary skiffle bands, to demonstrate that there's still a following for skiffle.

First up, let me introduce The Ugly Dog Skiffle Combo.

They're from Norfolk, here in the UK, and I'm particularly taken with their tagline, 'destroying musical snobbery one skiffle chord at a time'.

There's certainly something in that claim. There is a musical snobbery about skiffle. The idea that the chords are simple, the idea that some of the instruments aren't instruments at all, but the contents of a hardware store. To sneer at that misses the point, the point being that skiffle lives and breathes precisely because it's simple. Anyone can do it!

We're in a world over-run by software, detached from the simple pleasure of making music without a degree in computer science or years of practice on which the main purpose can sometimes be only described as 'showing off'.

So it's good to know that, for many of us, the 'KISS' approach (Keep it simple, stupid) still plays a pivotal role in music making.

I'll be providing links to many UK (and further afield) skiffle bands as the blog progresses, and I'd encourage you to chase down the links.

As we go along, I do hope that we can kickstart a wider interest in skiffle, and perhaps encourage others to think about getting involved with skiffle.