Review by:

EVERLOUNGE
Nice Set Of Maracas
Producer(s): Bill Siegel, Alan Douches
Deko Music 1011
Genre: POP CRITICS CHOICE
Originally reviewed for week ending 7/10/99

Click here to see this review on the Billboard Website

Review by:

The Courier News April 15, 1999

Everlounge makes it so much easier to miss Whirling Dervishes, the former band that evolved into this Westfield, N.J.-based lunge-rock act. The band's follow-up to it's 1996 debut CD, 'Vodka Context,' goes down like a martini made with love. 'Nice Set of Maracas' is as romantic - 'Sad Clown,' 'Been to California,' 'Thousand Sundays,' - as it is silly - 'Donny and Marie,' the opening Italian-flavored romp of 'Cousin Cugin.' But most of all, the disc is sexy and funny, such as on the salsa-spiced 'Boot and Crop,' the fashion statement 'Dying to Design' and the jazz-tinged, keyboard-driven elevator funk of 'Johnny Ham'n Egger.'" Bob Makin-"Makin'Waves"

Review by:

Tony Mosquito
February 1999

By:

LO FI

EASY LIVING FOR COOL MODERNS

Band Lineup & instruments played by each member: Bill Siegel: Key & Trumpet; Don Dazzo: Vocals; Bob Ardrey: Guitar, Banjo; Mark Norwine: Lead Guitar; Ed Fleischman: Double & Electric Bass; Nelson Popp: Drums, Percussion. All: Backing vocals.

Band's approach to lounge: What you'd picture playing in a Ramada Inn lunge circa 1974-76. Major influences on the band: Pop culture and American film, Louis Prima, polyester, punk rock and good food.

Where they can be seen regularly: Downtown Café, Red Bank, NJ; Fez - NYC.

Do you have any CD releases or forthcoming CDs?: Currently hard at work recording our new CD which we started in July.

Any plans to tour outside of New York?: We'd love to - can you book us some high-paying, plush weekend dates?!!

Additional thoughts: The caliber of bands we play with is so much greater than that in the alt. Rock scene. Bands like Voodoo Martini and Last of the International Playboys are a real inspiration. They're really good and everyone is striving to be excellent. It makes for a winning musical atmosphere and a great evening.

Review by:

THE HOME NEWS & TRIBUNE (ON THE GO)
APRIL 26, 1996

RICHARD SKELLY

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED
Whirling Dervishes' Offshoot Everlounge is a Cocktail-Music Phenom

Don Dazzo, lead singer for the group Everlounge, reports that lounge music is going over in the unlikeliest of places, Dazzo's group, a spin-off from the Whirling Dervishes, one of New Jersey's most popular all-original rock'n'roll bands, was formed three years ago.

"The basis for most of the songs we play live is blues," Dazzo explained by phone from his Westfield home earlier this week.

"I think that's why lounge music seems to be going over in places I never thought it would. We played this blue collar bar in Kenilworth with pool tables and trucker types hanging around, and I thought these people were going to start throwing stuff at us," he said, laughing. "But they didn't. It went over."

Tomorrow, the group celebrates the fact that their music goes over in the most unlikely places by holding an album release party for their debut, "Vodka Context" on O'Rama/WM Records, a Middlesex-based independent record company.

So why all the fuss about lounge music?

Lounge music, as exemplified by groups such as Combustible Edison from Boston and Dazzo's own group, is not so much a type of music, he said, as it is a style.

"What's great about lounge music is it encompasses blues, some jazz and pop standards and other kinds of music as well. In writing songs for a lounge band there's that much more from for melody, because you're not concentrating on being loud and crunchy all the time. It's easier on the ears, so I believe I get away with more in the lounge band than I do in the Dervishes," he explained.

The roots of lounge music are in 1960s performers such as Dean Martin, Englebert Humperdinck and Tom Jones - not really cabaret singers, but romantic crooners, Dazzo said.

"The most interesting thing about today's lounge music is that people who were weaned on rock 'n' roll are playing it. Combustible Edison is probably at the forefront of this style, "he added. "I suppose there's an element of cabaret in us, but we're not really doing jazz standards," he said. The original songs he and his partners in Everlounge write "are silly, campy, bawdy songs. The covers we pick are mainly just great songs, everything from Duke Ellington to the Pet Shop Boys, done 'a la lounge'."

The band has gained something of a following at Palmyra Tea Room , and they recorded part of the album there, so it seemed appropriate to hold their album release party at the Bound Brook coffee house/hangout last weekend.

Everlounge is comprised of Nelson Popp on drums, Ed Fleischman on bass, Mark Norwine on electric guitar, Dazzo on lead vocals, Bill Siegel on keyboards and horns and Bob Ardrey on acoustic guitar.

For those totally unfamiliar with lounge music, what could they expect?

"It's a real hoot. We dress up in tons of polyester and velvet and we do the whole night, two long sets, mixings all these different types of songs, our own and covers. People can dance and have a really good time and at the same time, it's not really loud, It's a great date band and that's what so great about the Palmyra Tea Room: we're not playing loud, and if you want to pay attention to us, there's plenty to pay attention to, But if you don't want to, that's fine too."