StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who will be back in St. Louis to perform next Thursday, July 12 at the Old Rock House.

Founded in 1977 in New Orleans, the DDBB helped reinvigorate the city's brass band tradition by incorporating modern jazz, funk, and other genres, inspiring a new generation of players, bands and fans in the process.

The most recent of DDBB's 14 albums is Twenty Dozen, released back in 2012, but they continue to tour regularly, playing festivals, theaters and concert clubs in the USA and Europe. They were regular visitors to St. Louis in the 1990s and 2000s, playing venues from Mississippi Nights to the Broadway Oyster Bar, but since it's been a few years since their last local appearance, it seems like a good time to share some of their music again via some recent videos of the current lineup.

The first video up above is the DDBB's "Tiny Desk Concert" for NPR, recorded in February 2017, in which they perform four songs: "Use Your Brain," "Best Of All," "Tomorrow" and "My Feet Can't Fail Me Now."

After the jump, you can see an extended excerpt from their show at the Jazz Education Network convention held last January in New Orleans. That's followed by a music video they made in September 2017 for the AV Club's "Undercover" series, a cover of alt-rock singer-songwriter Beck's tune "Debra."

For the fourth clip, it's back to New Orleans for a DDBB staple, "Do It Fluid," recorded at the start of their set at the 2016 Jazzfest. The last two videos are complete sets, from January 2016 in Cambridge, MA and June 2015 in Wayne, NJ.

For more about what the Dirty Dozen Brass Band has been up to recently, read this interview with baritone saxophonist and co-founder Roger Lewis from December 2017, and check out their brief video interview from last year on AV Club.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...