DINE & DANCE: As mentioned in a recent review, the classic pre-fab stainless-steel-and-neon diner isn’t common here, but in its Eastern Seaboard homeland it’s enjoyed a recent revival/ preservation movement. Now, a Denny’s franchisee in Florida has put the chain’s menu into a real modular diner building (and added that oft-annoying trend of singing/ dancing waitstaff). The trade mag Nation’s Restaurant News says the place is a hit, and that the parent chain “plans to use the diner to rehabilitate its image nationwide.” Best-case scenario: the chain opens faux-diners in real diner buildings here, they fail, and indie operators reopen them as unpretentious real diners. Speaking of entertainment exhumations…

NAME THAT TUNE: A couple weeks back, Misc. asked you to name formerly-popular North American musical genres that haven’t been subjected to “hip” revival attempts in recent years. I wanted to see what, if any, pieces of America’s musical heritage could still be enjoyed as honest expressions of art and/ or showmanship, without PoMo irony smoothing out their creases. Some of your recommendations, with some of my comments:

• Accordians. Nominated by someone who’d likely never heard of the Black Cat Orchestra, Those Darn Accordians, the various “punk polka” sub-fads, or even Weird Al. Face it: Accordions are hip, and have been for some time.
• Political folk (pre-’60s), such as IWW rally songs. Joe Kiethly (née Joey Shithead of Vancouver punk pioneers D.O.A.) included some of these in his Bumbershoot solo-acoustic set. They fit perfectly with his own kill-the-yuppies ballads, showing how a punk can grow old, stay angry, and stake his place in an older protest tradition.
• Gospel. One of Paul Simon’s earliest homage victims back in the ’70s, its influence can be at least indirectly felt in some of those R&B love-song harmony groups so big on KUBE these past couple of years.
• Ragtime. If the Squirrel Nut Zippers can bring back the jitterbug, somebody can bring back the rag, last revived a quarter-century ago in the aftermath of The Sting soundtrack (Randy Newman’s score for the 1981 film Ragtime doesn’t really count).
• Pan flute. One of the few foreign-exotica musics not yet assimilated by the Luaka Bop/World Beat homogenizers. I like it that way.
• Muzak. The real thing, not merely easy-listening instrumentals like 101 Strings. TheGrunge Lite CD (made in 1994 by Stranger staffer Sara DeBell) came close, but lacked the essential ingredient of real Muzak: “Stimulus Progression,” the Muzak company’s trademark for a 15-minute set of tunes that starts slow-‘n’-soft and ends up slightly less slow-‘n’-soft to enhance workers’ spirits and productivity. God knows plenty of bands could use this principle in planning their sets.
• Lawrence Welk. (And, presumably, other conserva-core ensembles like the King Family, Mitch Miller, and Guy Lombardo.) This would be darn near the ultimate challenge: Making something hip out of something whose utter and complete squareness was its entire raison d’etre. It’d be even tougher if it were attempted on a non-parody level.
• Marching tunes. Now we’re getting somewhere. As local-radio vet Norm Gregory writes, “I don’t think Dr. Dre has sampled march music yet . . . but I might be wrong.” It’s a form not heard on the pop charts since “Tusk” in 1979 (perhaps Fleetwood Mac‘s greatest moment). A decade before that, the Monty Python folks took their theme from ol’ J.P. Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March,” finding the spirit of old English music-hall bombast in this most American of composers. There was an “Anti-Fascist Marching Band” in town in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but if it’s still around it’s kept a mighty low profile lately. Slightly-skewed marches are a big part of the Doo Dah Parade, mounted by Pasadena, CA locals every November as a Rose Parade alternative. Sousa’s compositions helped launch the recording industry 120 years ago–they were short, loud, and brassy; perfect for Edison’s unelectrified horn mics and cylinder phonographs. They’re still loud, short, and brassy, and they involve instruments taught at almost every high school. All they need is a different context, so kids stop thinking of them as something militaristic (or worse, as something teachers and parents force upon kids).

(More of your suggestions in two weeks.)