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You people are nuts >>Squirrel Nut Zippers burn up pop radio with their hot jazz sound by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
"I like to describe it as pop music with weird instruments," says guitarist/sax fiend/singer Ken Mosher, "or maybe '20s punk." That's a roundabout way of describing the quick, spicy, decidedly un-ironic mix of downtown swing and back porch shuffle which the Zippers have concocted. "There's all kinds of stuff thrown in there, even a little calypso and klezmer." That secret recipe has earned the band the adulation of freakshow führer Jim Rose, cushy gigs at millionaire's birthday parties and veritable riots on the dance floors of university ballrooms across the States. Indeed, their latest album, Hot, couldn't have a more appropriate title. Oddly enough, the most outspoken detractors of the Zippers are the stodgy jazz traditionalists. "Sometimes you get someone at a highbrow jazz publication who's critical of the band," says Mosher. "They'll say that if we really respected the people we supposedly do, we'd play covers and celebrate their work. Since we don't, it's blasphemy." It's unlikely, though, that Fats Waller or Louis Jordan would show the Zippers the same disdain. Like many other late swing-tinged bands, Mosher's group has firm roots in their hometown (Chapel Hill) punk scene. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Zippers should have elected to do things strictly their own way, crossbreeding styles and idioms as it suits them. "Hopefully, on each album we do," says Mosher, "there'll be several moments where listeners go, 'That's really weird.'" It looks like the Squirrel Nut Zippers are well on their way to grabbing the gold in the swing revival sweepstakes. Mosher acknowledges that the movement, like any other, is a limited time offer. Still, he's optimistic that the Zippers have a long and illustrious career ahead of them. If only because, to so many of the band's young fans (and young Zipper-heads abound), swing is a pretty novel thing, and the Zippers are the ones holding the door open. "This could be ground breaking," says Mosher. "It's like we're starting something completely new." With the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars, at the Spectrum, Saturday,Nov. 11, 7pm, $20 plus tax & service
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If your job, mate or poor judgment have cursed you with any degree of regular exposure to mainstream pop radio, you may have noticed a recurring peculiarity. There among the snap, crackle and dross, the Bush, Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins, are the periodic pepperings of what sounds every bit like sepia-toned gin mill swing. At first, you may have dismissed them as mere hallucinations, or perhaps ancient radio transmissions only now returning after bouncing off the rings of Saturn. But they're not. What you're hearing is nothing less than the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the North Carolina seven-piece who are currently one of the hottest things happening on the FM dial.