quadzillabynorth

DUTC#124 March 15, 2026

Posted on March 15, 2026March 8, 2026 by quadzillabynorth in QbyN - Deeper Under The Covers

Feature Song: “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)”

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899 – 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C. but was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. He was a master at writing what were then called “miniatures,” which were used for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format. He wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions, making his extensive body of work the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his pieces becoming standards, like the featured song.

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)” is a 1931 composition by Ellington with lyrics by Bubber Miley, first published by Irving Mills. Widely accepted as a jazz standard, jazz historian Gunther Schuller characterized it as a “legendary and prophetic piece with a prophetic title.” In 2008, Ellington’s 1932 recording of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The song was composed and arranged by Ellington in 1931 during intermissions while performing at the Lincoln Tavern in Chicago. According to Ellington, the song’s title was the credo of trumpeter Bubber Miley, who was sadly dying of tuberculosis at the time. He died the year the song was released. The first recorded version by Ellington and his orchestra was for Brunswick records in 1932 with Ivie Anderson singing the vocals and trombonist Joe Nanton and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges playing the solos. Ellington wrote that “the song became famous as the expression of a sentiment which prevailed among jazz musicians at the time.” It contains one of the earliest uses in popular music of the term “swing.”

As you can probably imagine, the song has been covered quite a bit over the years by the likes of The Mills Brothers (1932), Stephen Grappelli with Django Reinhardt (1935), Buddy Rich (1957), Louis Armstron and Duke Ellington (1961), and perhaps the most recognizable one, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington (1967), although technically speaking, these aren’t covers per se. More recent covers belong to Diane Schuur with Stan Getz (1985), Chuck Brown (1987), Dr. John (2000), and my feature cover by Parov Stelar & Band (2015).

Marcus Füreder (1974), known professionally as Parov Stelar, is an Austrian music producer and DJ. He is considered a pioneer of electro swing, only fitting considering his cover of this song, and is one of the most internationally successful artists from Austria. In addition to his music, he is also known for his visual artwork, which has been shown in numerous galleries and exhibitions. His musical style blends electronic music with elements of jazz, swing, and blues, characterized by a fusion of modern beats, vintage sounds, and distinctive brass sections. He first gained recognition in the international and club scene in 2004 with the release of the EP, KissKiss, which was followed by the album, Rough Cuts (2006), which is definitely much mellower, but laid the foundation for his distinctive sound. Later tracks, such as “Catgroove,” “Booty Swing,” and “All Night,” really start to “swing!” These songs, as well as a few others, led to him becoming one of the most-streamed electro swing artists and played a key role in shaping the genre. Beginning in 2005, Selar brought his music to the stage with the Parov Stelar band, a blend of DJ and live instrumentation. I have watched entire concerts of them from all over the world and the music is infectious, making it very difficult to sit still, as you will soon see! To date, Parov Stelar has released over 20 albums and numerous EPs. The featured cover is from his 2015 release, Demon Diaries, which has 23 tracks. Musicians for that album include Michael Witner (guitar & bass), Markus Ecklmayr (Saxophone, aka “Max the Sax”), Jerry Di Monza (trumpet), and Christian Wirth and Johnny Sommerer (strings). Vocalists on the album include Anna F., Graham Candy, Anduze, Claudia Kane, and Lilja Blloom, who handles the vocals on the featured track. There does not appear to be a video of them performing the featured song, so I have included a live performance of “Catgroove” and “Booty Swing” mentioned above.

Enjoy!

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing).” Duke Ellington 1932.

Bonus video #1.

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing).” Dr. John live at the Newport Jazz Festival 2006. As always, Dr. John infuses the blues into the jazz.

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing).” Parov Stelar & Band 2015.

Bonus videos 2 & 3.

“Catgroove.” Parov Stelar & Band live with Anduze on vocals at Sziget 2018.

“Booty Swing.” Parov Stelar & Band live at the “University Days” in (VEN) Veszprém 2011.

Los Angeles 2026

The Zombies

Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by quadzillabynorth in QbyN - Daily Musings

If you are a certain “vintage” you will no doubt remember The Zombies, the British rock band that formed (1962) in St. Albans, a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England. Their first British and American hit was 1964’s “She’s Not There.” Other songs you might remember are, “Time of The Season,” “Tell Her No,” or “The Way I Feel Inside.” Now that I have your attention, this is not about the music group, and some of you may have clued into that fact because the title of this musing is not in italics! Two points for you! No, this is about…

…yeah, these zombies! Well, sort of.

A zombie (Haitian French: zombi; Haitian Creole: zumbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reincarnation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. In modern media, the depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic, but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, and on and on it goes. Our modern interpretation of a zombie as an undead person that attacks and eats the flesh of living people is drawn largely from George A Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, partly inspired by the 1954 novel, I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. The word “zombie” is not used in the film but was later applied by fans. And, judging by the number of zombie films out there (you need to scroll for quite a while to get to the bottom of Wikipedia’s list of films about zombies), the fascination with the undead is (pun intended), alive and well! You want “action” zombies, you got 28 Days Later (2002), 28 Weeks Later (2007), World War Z (2013), or Train to Busan (2016); you want “horror” zombies, you got the above mentioned Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978/2004), or [REC] (2007); you want “comedy” zombies, you got Shaun of the Dead (2004), Zombieland (2009), or Little Monsters (2019). See, something for everyone. Need something more current? Try 2025’s 28 Years Later, or the soon to be released, Return of the Living Dead.

Of course, there is also the “zombie apocalypse,” which is a subgenre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction in which society as we know it collapses due to overwhelming swarms of zombies. In this scenario, only a few individuals or small bands of human survivors are left living, as in The Night if the Living Dead, or the most recent example the first season of Pluribus. The zombie apocalypse has been used as a metaphor for various contemporary fears, such as global contagion (can you say COVID?), the breakdown of society (can you say…oh, never mind), and the end of the world. It has repeatedly been referenced in the media and has inspired various activities such as zombie walks, making the zombie apocalypse a dominant genre in popular culture. And now for a little more about “zombie walks,” or in this instance “zombies walking,” and what this musing is really about!

Over the past year I have been walking, on average, about four miles a day. This form of daily “exercise” has been necessitated by my body telling me that all my former types of exercise, like baseball, football, hockey, skiing, tennis, squash, jogging (okay, I never jogged a day in my life, but you get the picture), are no longer an option. My go-to route is through a portion of downtown Los Angeles, and I am always listening to music when I walk, responsibly of course, as I use bone conduction headphones so I can hear what is going on around me, like car horns and things like: “Have you got and change,” “Wanna buy some crack.” The time of day for my walks varies, depending on a variety of things, but the weekend walks are definitely the most challenging because of the amount of people walking about. It was about a week ago, on a Saturday, that I witnessed what I am calling the Zombie Apocalypse Revisited, best illustrated by the picture below.

Technically speaking, these people are not dead…yet, but if you are walking towards them…well, let’s just say I may have had some evil thoughts. I have seen these hordes scrolling and walking many times, but the other week there must have been a group of 15 to 20 walking towards me with no clue that I was walking towards them. I waited until the last second before being walked into and issued a polite, “uh hum,” which is when the lead person raised his head, with his phone still in his face, and said: “Uh, sorry,” with about as much sincerity a person can muster when they believe that you have wronged them by being in their path. So forget the movies and television shows. Just go out for a walk and you too could have a zombie experience.

Oh, I almost forgot, just before seeing this group the song that was playing in my ears was “She’s Not There,” which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways!

Los Angeles 2026

DUTC#123 February 27, 2026

Posted on February 27, 2026February 12, 2026 by quadzillabynorth in QbyN - Deeper Under The Covers

Feature Song: “You Can Call Me Al”

Paul Fredric Simon (1941) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, know both for his solo work and his collaborations with Art Garfunkel, whom he met in elementary school in 1953, later coming to prominence in the 1960s as Simon & Garfunkel. Their blend of folk and rock, which included such hits as “The Sound of Silence” (1965), “Mrs. Robinson” and “America” (1968), and “The Boxer” (1969), all served as a soundtrack to the 1960s counterculture. Their final album together, Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), is among the best-selling albums of all time. Before becoming one-half of this folk rock phenomenon, he and Garfunkel had written songs under the moniker, Tom and Jerry. As a freshman in college, he met and worked briefly with a different, female partner he met in college, Carol Klein. They tried to earn some extra cash while studying by cutting some demos as a duo named The Cousins. Some of their songs were minor hits, but they didn’t make much money and their partnership was short-lived. The Carol Klein behind those songs soon became Carol King, and the rest, as they say, is history. Paul Simon and Carol King are responsible for some of the most iconic hits of the 20^th century.

As a solo artist, Simon has dabbled in many different genres, including gospel, reggae, and soul. His albums, Paul Simon (1972), There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), and Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), all of which drew disserved acclaim and kept him in the public eye, producing hits like, “Mother and Child Reunion” (1972), “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard” (1972), and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” When this song first came out, my brother and I used to sing it on the long chairlift rides up the mountain, coming up with some memorable additional lines to rhyme along with: “Just slip out the back Jack,” “Make a new plan Stan,” “Just drop of the key Lee, “Get off the bus Gus,” and “You don’t need to be coy Roy”…well, they were memorable in 1972. I doubt if either of us can remember them now!

In 1986, Simon released his most successful and acclaimed album, Graceland, incorporating South African influences. “You Can Call Me Al” was the lead single from that album, his seventh studio album, becoming one of Simon’s most successful singles. Written by Simon, its lyrics follow an individual seemingly experiencing a midlife crisis. The lyrics were partially inspired by Simon’s trip to South Africa and the subsequent experience with its culture. The song reached to top five in seven countries. The names used in the song apparently come from an incident at a party Simon attended with his then-wife Peggy Harper. French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who was attending the same party and mistakenly referred to Paul as “Al” and to Peggy as “Betty.” The song begins with its protagonist wondering aloud why his life is difficult, while asking other questions. Simon structured the song’s lyrics in a way that listeners would be given the simplest information first, before getting abstract with his imagery in the song’s third verse: “A man walks down the street/It’s a street in a strange world/Maybe it’s the third world/Maybe it’s his first time around/Doesn’t speak the language/He holds no currency/He is a foreign man/He is surrounded by the sound, the sound (Ooh, ooh).” It is this third verse’s abstraction that moves the song from a generic portrait-like perspective to a personal and autobiographical one, which echoes his experiences from his journey to South Africa and became the inspiration for the entire Graceland album. Simon has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, has won 16 Grammys, including three for Album of the Year. Two of his works, Sounds of Silence (1966), as part of Simon & Garfunkel, and Graceland were inducted into the National Recording Registry for their cultural significance.

So how did I go from all this fame and recognition of an iconic artist and performer to a somewhat obscure cover band from Canada that I am sure many of you have never heard of? The short answer: “It’s what I do.” Besides, as a Canadian, how could I pass on a band called Dwayne Gretzky! They are labeled as North America’s premier party band, and after watching a few of their videos, including the one you’re about to watch, I can’t find any fault with that label. Celebrating classic pop and rock songs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that unite people across generations, Dwayne Gretzky has delivered electrifying renditions of over 800 songs. Over the last 15 years, they have developed a fervent fanbase across Canada solely on the strength of their live shows – performing timeless classic hist with faithful precision and breathtaking energy. Even though the clip of this cover is not a live performance, that energy and joyfulness is on full display. The culmination of these live performances was the band headlining one of Toronto’s biggest outdoor venues, Budweiser Stage, to over 7,000 people in the summer of 2025. Don’t even get me started as to why it isn’t called Labatt Stage. Also, in the summer of 2025, the band launched their new YouTube series, Dwayne’s World, which has gone viral and caught the attention of music fans globally, expanding their audience across the globe. They are largely a rotating group of musicians featuring core members Tyler Kyte (bandleader, singer, guitarist), and Nick Rose (guitarist, singer), with different guest vocalists and players from the Canadian music scene.

Enjoy!

Paul Simon. “You Can Call Me Al” live in Tokyo 1991.

Dwayne Gretzky. “You Can Call Me Al’ cover. Filmed and recorded live at Dwayne’s World, 2025.

Los Angeles 2026

Chillax.4

Posted on February 25, 2026February 22, 2026 by quadzillabynorth in Quadzilla's Playlists

Given what is going on “out there,” I must admit to the fact that I have been spending a great deal of time “chilling,” because the alternative is too…Ya know, let’s just not go there. Let’s listen to some music instead!

Chillax.4 gives you many ways in which to do so, from “dream-like” meanderings to songs that remind you of Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk (“Small Steps”), what you might see when you look up at a clear night’s sky (“Little Dipper”), be extended an invitation to a country church (“Goo”), and everything in between. But first, some of the contributors on this passport to relaxation.

“To the Sound” from the 2003 electronic album, Is You Is, is by the German nu jazz band Micatone. The band consists of Boris Meinhold (guitar and synth), Tim Kroker (drums), Sebastian “Hagen” Demmin (keyboards – he also was the live keyboard player for Daft Punk), Lisa Bassenge (vocals), Rogall (sequence programing), and Paul Kleber (double bass). They released five studio albums and numerous singles between 2001 and 2017 for their label Sonar Kollektiv. After a six-year hiatus, the band released the single, “Where do You Belong?” a hauntingly beautiful song (like most of their output), which was inspired by singer Bassenge’s now nineteen year-old daughter “at a time when she was trying to find her place in the world.” We have all been there!

“Goo” is from the 2003 the dance album, Echo Parcours by Trio Eléctrico, although here it appears on a 2024 compilation album, Introducing Deluxe (Finest Moments in Modern Lounge) by Monte La Rue (more on him shortly). The name, Trio Eléctrico, arising from the “dupla electrico” (“Electric Duo”), was coined in 1951 by two Brazilian friends, Adolfo Antônio Nascimento (Dodô) and Osmar Álvares de Macêdo. In 1950, the two used a Ford Model T to perform their self-made electric instrument, known as a “pau electrico” (electric log) during Baha Carnival. In 1951, they invited a friend to perform with them, the architect Temístocles Aragão, thus turning their “dupla” into a trio. Though the name originally referred to the band, it became better known for their invention of a motorized band stage. Today, there is a huge industry for the production, maintenance and leasing of “trios,” and many new artists are discovered on them. In 1983, a “trio” built in Italy was inaugurated in Piazza Navona (Rome) in the presence of 80 thousand people who danced to the electric sound of Dodô, Osmar, and Temístocles. That was the first time a “trio” was featured outside of Brazil. The ‘trio” is known worldwide as one of the symbols of Brazilian culture, its music, and its Carnival.

Monte La Rue has often been nicknamed The Lounge King of the Lowlands. The Belgian DJ/producer, currently living in Amsterdam, has made his footprint with a range of ‘relaxed’ compilations, artist albums, and exclusive DJ sets, all of them oozing with diversity, including the one featuring “Goo.” His trademark DJ sound of laid back grooves, electronically submerged in waves of intimacy and sensuality, makes his output instantly recognizable. His ‘Lounge Deluxe’ cd series is hailed all over the world and has become a real blueprint of eclectic compilations. Over the years, he created a diversity of releases ranging from ‘Latin Deluxe’ down to ‘Welcome to Club Jazz.’ He has also developed numerous concepts for clubs such as Club NL and beach house Republiek, as well special shows for fashion designers during Amsterdam’s International Fashion Week.

“Gotcha Movin” is a song by Scott Wozniak from his 2005 EP Soho Sessions, one of four tracks including “Brazilian Bombshell,” “Soho Session,” and “Feelin’ the Music.” Since 1986, Wozniak has been a session keyboard player and has also produced scores for television commercials. He also has taught music production at Dubspot in New York City and is a Senior Sound Designer for a major software company. His career spans over three decades. As a producer and engineer, he has worked with the likes of Mateo & Matos, Jill Scott, Keith Thompson, Angie Stone, and Roland Clark, just to name a few. As was the case with “Goo,” the featured “Gotcha Movin” track on my playlist is from another compilation album, Large Grooves 4 (2008), a release from Jeff Craven’s Large Music, a visionary deep house label that “has been a steadfast pilar of the Chicago music scene since its inception in 1993.” Craven laid the foundation for a label that would end up redefining the boundaries of electronic music for 30 years and counting.

Lastly, “Waves and Sun” is a track from the 2000 electronic album, One by Professor Oz, which is the moniker of Olivier Frossard, a Strasbourg, France born DJ, who started his career DJing birthday and friend’s parties, and then morphed into programing and singing in an alternative rock band. He has released only two studio albums, the aforementioned, One, and his latest release, 2024’s The Lost Experiment.

And now for some music. Enjoy!

Los Angeles 2026