'The Essentials' of Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, Concord Music Group, Are Not To Be Missed [REVIEW]

Imagine "We Can't Stop" by Miley Cyrus as a 1950s street-corner doo-wop. Now imagine Radiohead's "Creep" as a 1940s torch song. How about Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" as a 1930s slinky, sultry jazz-club showstopper or "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes as a full-blown Broadway-styled musical extravaganza? On The Essentials (Concord) by Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, you get them all plus wildly theatrical interpretations of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Guns N' Roses, Justin Bieber, The Darkness, Celine Dion, Beyonce, Outkast and Beyonce done by a rotating cast in styles ranging from 1920s ragtime and blues to big-band swing and 1960s Motown.

The seed was planted in 2009 to set the scene on invigorating mash-ups of style and content. That's when pianist/arranger Scott Bradlee first put current pop music in a time machine with a series of youtube videos that proved so wildly popular that it led to national television appearances and worldwide concerts.

There's 18 such crazy-sick slices of pure entertainment with current radio songs sliced'n'diced so creatively by such talented performers (who, truth be told, do tend to go a bit over-the-top on occasion) that the 68 minutes slide by in a phantasmagorical dream from another dimension of time and space. It all amounts to a Twilight Zone of incomprehensible but totally enjoyable variety show performances.

More good news: he's taking his troop on the road so add choreography to November excitement in Minneapolis, MN (1), Kansas City, MO (2), St. Louis, MO (3), Grand Prairie, TX (5), Austin, TX (6 & 7), San Antonio, TX (8), Houston, TX (9), Broomfield, CO (12), Boise, ID (15), Spokane, WA (16), Portland, OR (17), Seattle, WA (18), Redding, CA (19), Sacramento, CA (20), Santa Rosa, CA (22), San Jose, CA (23), Los Angeles, CA (25), Las Vegas, NV (26) and Mesa, AZ (27).

TagsScott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, Concord Music Group, Miley Cyrus, Radiohead