Category: Gentleman’s Philosophy

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from the Young Gentleman’s Guide here! Today, I want to talk about a style of music that sadly is in danger of becoming a lost relic of the past, much like the art of being a gentleman, that being big band swing. Becoming popular in the 1930s and then practically becoming the soundtrack to World War II, this music was, and in many ways, still is a staple of American culture. It was a perfect musical representation of the optimism and freedom that America was known for, and it became a great morale builder for soldiers in the war. In the words of the legendary Glenn Miller, “America means freedom and there’s no expression of freedom quite so sincere as music.” But at this point, you may be asking how this relates to being a gentleman. That has less to do with the music itself and more to do with the attitude and persona surrounding the music. To get the idea of what I’m talking about, take a look at this video.

After watching that video, what did you notice about the guys? I myself noticed that they’re there to have fun, spend time with friends, and just be teenagers. Looking beyond that, just look at how they’re dressed and how they act. The first word that comes to my head is “classy”. They just treat everyone in the scene with respect and dignity, even in the context of a wild party, the women especially. Probably my favorite moment in the scene is when Robert Sean Leonard’s character, Peter, walks up to Tushka Bergen’s character, Evey. Evey asks Peter “How do I look?” and Peter responds “Like gold.” and they start dancing the night away. If you’re asking me, that seems like a pretty classy response. And earlier in the scene, we see a young Christian Bale pull a total class act move and actually ask one of the women in the club if she would like to dance with him. And this is the point I’m getting at; why I consider big band swing true gentleman’s music. This music simply exudes class and dignity, something that all young gentlemen should have. True, while some swing artists like Cab Calloway may have delved into some darker subjects like drug use and mental illness, most swing music, and even a lot of Calloway’s music, if it even had singing and lyrics, was all about very lighthearted things that everyone could enjoy. Subjects like travelling, falling in love, dancing, or simply just spending time with friends. Swing music was and continues to be all about optimism, freedom, and an overall carefree attitude, and it’s very disheartening to me that this once beloved genre of art and pop culture is in danger of dying. I say we bring swing music back into the sunlight again. It’ll be the 20s again in a few years, it’ll fit right in! In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. Please be sure to share the post, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. And on that note, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite swing bands/artists, as well as my favorite songs by those artists so you can check out the class for yourself. This is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!

Duke Ellington

It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing)

C Jam Blues

In a Sentimental Mood

“Portrait of Louis Armstrong” from The New Orleans Suite

Count Basie

One O’Clock Jump

I Left my Heart in San Francisco

Wind Machine

Benny Goodman

Sing, Sing, Sing

Bugle Call Rag

Stompin’ at the Savoy

Glenn Miller

In The Mood

Moonlight Serenade

Pennsylvania 6-5000

String of Pearls

Little Brown Jug

Louis Prima

Just a Gigolo (I Ain’t got Nobody)

Pennies From Heaven

Jump, Jive, An’ Wail

Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days

I Wan’na Be Like You

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Go Daddy-O

Mr. Pinstripe Suit

Jumpin’ Jack

Jump With my Baby

I Wanna Be Like You

2000 Volts

Big Time Operator

I Like It

Save my Soul

Diga Diga Doo

Why Me?

The Brian Setzer Orchestra

Rock This Town

Jump, Jive, an’ Wail

This Cat’s on a Hot Tin Roof

Sleepwalk

Gettin’ in the Mood

Caravan

Drive Like Lightning (Crash Like Thunder)

Ghost Radio

Rumble in Brighton

Trouble Train

Take the 5th (an adaptation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5)

Honey Man (an adaptation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee)

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide here! So, it’s been a pretty crazy week for me with 4th of July celebrations and family visiting from out of town. This led me to fall behind a bit in my writing, but I didn’t want to go without an article today, so here we are! This is an interview that I had with A Vintage Athenian a few weeks ago all about being a gentleman in the modern age. It was incredibly fun and a great experience for both of us! In any case, please be sure to share the post, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. And on that note, this is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide here! So, this article is going to be a little different from my other ones, and that’s because I wanted to talk a little bit my personal beliefs and values and how that led me to consider myself “vintage”. For starters, a lot of my ideas for this article come from this one by my dear friend A Vintage Athenian. She and I both believe that being vintage has a lot more to do than just wearing a dress or suit from the 1950s or listening to jazz music. Believe it or not, actually being vintage goes a lot deeper than that, and that’s what I want talk about. Because even though I love things like rockabilly, swing music, and 1950s fashion, it’s the very values and beliefs that I try to teach on this blog that lead me to consider myself vinage. If you aren’t catching my drift yet, keep reading, and hopefully I can make things a but more clear.

The very first thing that Elena lists in her article is that part of being vintage involves proper manners, which may sound weird at first, but in the end, it absolutely makes sense. One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was so I could teach young, up-and-coming gentlemen proper manners, something that is essentially dying in today’s society. And that’s why Elena and I both consider good manners as vintage. Sure, not everyone was like Adam from Blast From the Past, but back in the day, people in general were much more polite. Children were taught respect their parents and especially their elders. Siblings loved and supported each other, friendships were legitimate, and romantic relationships were stronger than they could ever hope to be today, and that actually leads to the biggest reason why I consider myself to be vintage.

I know I might sound like a broken record here, but I was raised with and strongly advocate for traditional family values, and anyone who’s read this past article may see where I’m going like this. By “traditional family values”, I mean children growing up and being raised by two biological parents with those parents living under the same roof, essentially how I was raised. I consider that such a blessing because today, that’s so rare. And that’s the biggest reason I consider myself vintage. If you look back as early as even the 1970s, the familial unit was so much stronger and had much more of an emphasis in society, even more so in the 1960s and 50s, the period which people like Elena and myself consider actually vintage. Back in that time, husbands supported their wives, wives supported their husbands, and both parents supported their children, and as a result, they were all much happier and even more successful. Men were true men, women were true women, and children were true children. And if you’re looking specifically at young gentlemen, those values can help them in spades. Being a brother, a husband, or a father can be some the biggest tests of commitment in any man’s life, and a man who devotes his life to his family can make that himself and his family stronger in every sense of the word.

So there it is. I’m sorry if I wasn’t entirely clear here, but in summary, I consider myself vintage because I try to teach young, up-and-coming gentlemen as well as myself things like proper manners and traditional family values, on top of having a love of things like jazz, rockabilly, and patriotism. Like Elena says, actually being vintage goes a lot further than just liking old music or wearing old-school clothes. It’s honestly very disheartening that these things should even be considered vintage, because in reality, they should still be around today since they just make life better for everyone. But with all of this in mind, if you’d like to at least get a start on adopting that vintage aura, please be sure to check out my friends over at The Vintage Gentlemen! Their store offers classy and rustic items and accessories, like bowties, pocket knives, drinking flasks, watches, and smoking pipes. I got one of their products as a gift for my dad for Father’s Day, and I’ve used a couple of their products, and they’re awesome! So if you’d like to get a start at at least looking vintage, be sure to check them out! In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. Please be sure to share the post, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. And on that note, this is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide here! First of all, my sincerest apologies for not putting anything out for the past few weeks. I was caught in the darkest pits of finals at San Francisco State, but now that school’s out, I should be back to posting regularly for you wonderful readers! With all of that out of that out of the way, let’s get to today’s topic.

For starters, why is gratitude so important? Well, in short, it just makes us happier. Gratitude leads to satisfaction, and satisfaction leads to happiness. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Two men working a decently-paying office job get their paychecks at the end of the week. After getting their checks, one man says to himself “I earned this, this is a testament to a job well done. Maybe if I work harder, I can make a bit more and maybe get a promotion.” However, the other man says “This is all I made? With the amount I’ve done for this company, I clearly deserve more than this.” What’s the difference between the two? The first man was grateful for what he had earned, which made him satisfied with the work he had done, and that will, in turn, make him happier not just at work, but in the rest of his life if he continues that attitude. The second man obviously felt entitled for more money than he earned, which only angered him, and that’s the biggest reason why gratitude is so important. If you take the time to appreciate what you have and what you earn, you’ll get more satisfaction out of them and therefore will be more happy as a result. Whereas an ungrateful will only demand more and be unsatisfied with what they already have. Unfortunately, with today’s increasingly materialistic attitude and increased feelings of victimhood, people in general are leaning more towards the latter.

It’s impossible to deny, people in general (at least in the U.S.) just have an increased idea that they’re victims, and multiple different activist groups will are trying to convince the mass public that they’re victims of patriarchy, white privilege, or any of that nonsense. And it’s very clear to see where this narrative comes from, and that’s ingratitude. Now I am in no way saying that every single person in any of these activist groups acts this way, it’s just that they are the most vocal minority and the ones who get the most attention. In any case, the people who spew this narrative simply refuse to or just simply can’t see how lucky they actually are, and as a result, they are unsatisfied with everything they’ve already been given (it’s practically become a joke that SJWs will never be satisfied). And I’m just going to stop here, since this is becoming much more political than I was planning it to be. In short, just keep in mind this mantra: gratitude leads to satisfaction, satisfaction leads to happiness. Ingratitude leads to entitlement, entitlement leads to anger.

So there it is. Gratitude, in my eyes, is the greatest key to happiness in anyone’s life. To any of you gents reading, ust take a little bit a time to acknowledge what you have and how lucky you are to have such things. If you do that, then I guarantee you that you will be much happier down the road. In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. Please be sure to share it, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. Also, keep an eye out for a collaboration between me and my dear friend Elena, the owner of A Vintage Athenian. She’ll be interviewing me for an article on her blog that I’ll reblog here once it’s up. And on that note, this is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from the Young Gentleman’s Guide here! So today, I’m going to talk about part of what truly makes a man a man. Let me ask you this: what makes a man a man? If you were to ask a hundred different people, you’d likely get a hundred different answers. If you were to ask me, I would say that a true man is assertive, confident, a strong leader, and is able to stand up for himself. On top of that, a true man is someone who’s agreeable, helpful, trustworthy, and respectful to those who respect him. With this in mind, I’d like to bring up something that many will say is tied to masculinity, what a man can or can’t like or find enjoyment in. Also,  before we get started, I just want to wish a very happy birthday to my dear friend The Vintage Athenian! She has been one of my biggest supporters for a long time, and I feel like this is the least I could so for her. So if you like, go ahead and hop over to her Instagram and wish her a happy, happy birthday, and tell her The Young Gentleman’s Guide sent you! Also, feel free to follow her if you want!