Ondrej Havelka and His Melody Makers, whose music I’ve featured on-air a couple of times, are like Max Raabe and His Palast Orchester only weirder and farther east. Havelka, a Czech, has been fronting a live-wire retro-swing band since 1995, sleek, chic, everything you could ask for, but what really sets Havelka apart is his videos. They’re trippy black-and-white reinventions of old movies, or what would have been old movies if they’d ever gotten made, scenes he meticulously creates and then blows apart with invasions of song and dance. He’s got all the moves. He can do the Fred Astaire cane thing, the Donald O’Connor hat thing. He’s a brilliantly skilled anarchist, just the thing I guess for an area like Eastern Europe though God knows we could use him here if only to cheer ourselves up. A couple of clips for your delectation and amusement. You’ll love these, I promise:
