Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

Interview

Live At The Purple Pit – An Interview with Nutty

It all started with the familiar opening notes of “Take Five”. It was a lazy day off in 2012 and I was doodling at my art table with the sounds of Cocktail Nation with Koop Kooper in the background. Because the room reverb was slightly flat in the recording, I knew this version of “Take Five” wasn’t The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s original. And I was...

When Satanist Anton LaVey seduced Jayne Mansfield

Halloween is here, a liminal time when the boundary between this world and the nether realms can more easily be crossed by all manner of evil spirits. Lest one be carried away by them, tradition dictates that we mere mortals disguise ourselves to fool the spirits into believing we are one of them. It was part of a tradition the Scots called “guising.” And while...

Let’s Play Swinging JiveCat Voodoo Lounge – A Retro Board Game

Game designer Seth Roback was raised in 1970s southern California and was considerably influenced by Disneyland, Googie architecture, and Jay Ward cartoons. Today, Roback resides in Seattle and has taken his love of mid-20th century pop culture and turned it into his first board game, Swinging Jivecat Voodoo Lounge, which is currently crowd-funding on Kickstarter. Here’s what he had to say when he discussed his...

Guitar Legend: Al Viola
Written by Guest Writer in Interview

Guitar Legend: Al Viola

In 1992, I was performing extensively under the stage name Jimmy Ross through Orange and Los Angeles Counties as a solo pianist/vocalist entertainer and occasionally in jazz trio and quartet settings. I had just started a double emphasis graduate program in piano and vocal performance at California State University. I was performing two nights a week across the street from where Diana Krall was performing,...

Confessions of a Playboy Bunny – Part 2

In 1964 when Sharon Bernstein Peyton was 18 years old she worked as a Showroom Bunny at the brand new Baltimore Playboy Club. Join Ultra Swank as we continue our journey into a more stylish, sexy and sophisticated world as we venture behind the curtain with her to mingle with go getters and high rollers. Working as a Bunny must have made you mature faster...

Confessions of a Playboy Bunny – Part 1

In the summer of 1964 when Sharon Bernstein Peyton was 18 years old, she saw an ad for the new Baltimore Playboy Club opening. This stylish, sexy and glamorous world was quite different from the life she had been living. Nevertheless, she applied for a job and before she knew it, she was working among the high rollers and go getters as a Playboy Bunny....

Gentry de Paris Brings Back the Glamour to Burlesque

For some people, the term Burlesque is something that is associated with a exciting, stylish and perhaps also a little more innocent time. But as many things from the past it is being revived and has for the past years made a grand return with lush sets, glamorous costumes, swinging music, cool lighting and of course luscious women moving in rhythm to the crooners’ finger...

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