Swing was the thing last year, culminating with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s Super Bowl appearance in January. Now swing doesn’t have that same ring.
A backlash was inevitable, just as ska experienced the year before.
Fortunately for Royal Crown Revue, it is seemingly immune.
“There’s been a backlash to swing because it got so hyped up and got turned into this cheesy thing,” horn player Scott Steen said recently. “It got shoved down everyone’s throats, ‘Swing’s the thing.’ Just let it do its thing.”
That has been Royal Crown Revue’s philosophy since its inception in 1989, and it has served the seven-member band well, all the way to its latest album, “Walk On Fire” (RCR Records/Side One Dummy).
“Unlike some of the other swing bands,” Steen said, “we’re getting the respect, because we’re doing jazz festivals. The biggest tip of the hat to us was doing the Hollywood Bowl (playing to 17,000 people in September) with a 90-piece orchestra backing us up. That’s like the highlight of all of our careers combined. You don’t get to headline the Hollywood Bowl very often.”
The group left Warner Brothers earlier this year to start up its own label.
“We’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, because we were pretty disappointed with Warner and basically wanted to do our own thing,” Steen said.
The band’s “Datin’ With No Dough” pops up on the recently released “Swingers Too,” the soundtrack album of movie originally released in 1998.
BWF (before we forget): Swing with Royal Crown Revue on the Web @ www.rcr.com.