This time, Swing's a different thing

Web posted October 28, 1998

 Back in the Swing

By Richard Harrington
The Washington Post

A good number of swing's new practitioners are reformed punks and rockabilly cats who have brought the driving energy -- and occasionally, the dark lyricism -- of punk to swing. They freely mix traditional swing and jump blues, hot jazz and bebop, honky-tonk and western swing, boogie-woogie, blues and rock -- all styles that underscore Count Basie's definition of swing as anything ``you can really pat your foot by.''

``That's why it works,'' suggests V. Vale, author of the book ``Swing! The New Retro Renaissance.'' ``It's a reinvention, a new form of music we just happened to call swing. The music in the culture has to be relevant to today and influence things of today.''

``The new bands break down the barriers between different styles of music,'' says Michael Moss, publisher of three-year old Swing Time magazine. ``The jazz and rock worlds both have a stuck-up nose. The new swing is not either, it's both, and it invigorates both genres.''

Much of the music is swing as imagined by rockers. Aside from the Brian Setzer Orchestra, there are few actual neo-swing big bands with the traditional swing lineup of five saxophones, four trumpets, four trombones and a three-piece rhythm section, in addition to vocalists. The music simply rocks too hard, and perhaps too loud, to be swing.

It's also full of electric guitars, absent the first go-round for swing. Now the electric guitar is blending with the brass, nowhere more effectively than in the Brian Setzer Orchestra, in which a '50s-style roots rock guitarist is fronting a '40s influenced big band.

Growing up in New York in the '70s, Setzer used to sneak into Village Vanguard to hear the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band and go hear punk rock at CBGB's the next night. ``The big band struck me as being as powerful as an electric guitar through an amp,'' recalls Setzer, who first worked the revival route with his wildly successful rockabilly trio, the Stray Cats. In fact, it was an offer to have Doc Severinsen's ``Tonight Show'' band back the Cats on their hit ``Rock This Town'' that first put a big-band notion in Setzer's pompadoured head.

By 1992, the Stray Cats ``ran out of gas,'' says Setzer, and he put together a 16-piece band in California. ``We hit the road in 1994, but it was slim pickings -- mostly leftover Stray Cats fans and guitarheads. People dressing up and going out was still a couple of years off.''

Not many swing-style bands were touring at the time. ``Even two years ago, we were still the only band on the road nationally week in and week out,'' says Royal Crown Revue guitarist James Achor. He and former punk vocalist Eddie Nichols had first met in an L.A. rockabilly band, the Rockomatics, but by the late '80s, ``the L.A. punk scene had been dead for two or three years, along with the second wave of rockabilly,'' Achor explains. Both genres had strong connections to American roots music, so it wasn't all that much of a leap backward into swing when Achor and Nichols teamed up with saxophonist Mando Dorame, a huge fan of screaming saxists like Big Jay McNeely.

``The culture was already in place before the music got here, with the scene at the Club Deluxe,'' says Swing Time's Moss. ``It was the first retro-swing hangout in the nation, where people could listen to records and celebrate the culture. When Royal Crown Revue appeared in 1989, there was already a built-in audience for this music and this band.''

While some have dismissed the neo-swing culture and its revival of partner-dancing as little more than a new singles scene in old wolves' clothing, Vale suggests it signals what he calls ``a reemergence of diplomacy, social grace, courtesy.'' Swing Time's Moss says the swing social scene represents ``the return of manners, a backlash against grunge and rap where manners are the least thing they are concerned about.''

Certainly it represents a fun alternative to the dressed-down angst and anger of grunge, the assaultive energy of hip-hop and the lack of showmanship that characterizes much electronica.

``The biggest need now is all-ages venues with large dance floors,'' says Vale, who recently did some jitterbugging at Portland's renovated Crystal Ballroom, whose 7,500-square-foot dance floor sits on springs.

Moss estimates there are now 200 swing bands in the country, most of which started without any idea of financial success.

``The band's just now bobbing its head above the water,'' says Brian Setzer. ``I was just barely able to pay the guys until the last tour, when I broke even.''

Now that the music is in the national spotlight again, neo-swing bands find themselves struggling for identity. Squirrel Nut Zippers distance themselves from the swing revival (as they should), and a band like the Cherry Poppin' Daddies is as much ska as it is swing (its platinum ``Zoot Suit Riot'' album is actually a compilation of swing tracks from the band's three indie albums).

Other bands choose to accent different things: Dem Brooklyn Bums emphasize camp nostalgia; The New Morty Show re-creates the Las Vegas chic of Louis Prima and Keely Smith -- and do swing versions of Billy Idol's ``White Wedding'' and Metallica's ``Enter Sandman.'' Bio Ritmo does a Latin-swing crossover.

The music's potential downfall, Achor suggests, is commercial radio with its tight playlists and uninviting formats. For instance, though Royal Crown is credited for laying the foundation for the swing revival, radio has not embraced that band. Neither has MTV or VH1, though the band's new single, ``Zip Gun Bop,'' is getting a little airplay, and its attendant video is slated to show up this week on ``120 Minutes.''