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Over All Score:
Reviewed At:	Scruffy O'Shea's - Marina Del Rey
Albums:	None
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I saw Zoot a few times while they were the regular band at Scruffy O'Shea's in Marina Del Rey (which stopped having swing nights, probably because nobody bought liquor). The music was pretty snappy but nothing really sticks out in my mind. Only a very few songs (1 or 2) are what I would consider too fast (not undanceably fast, just too fast) and their stage presence is quite modest. There isn't a lot of fancy showmanship amongst these guys, but they definitely lay down a decent set (often 3 of them every night, actually) for dancing to. Unfortunately I think I caught the drummer varying tempo wildly (unintentionally, I'm sure) a few times, which can be interesting if you're paying attention and fatal to your dancing ability if you're not, which I wasn't. Oops. The same woman (Billie Freeman) gives a swing lesson every night before a Zoot performance--albeit East Coast Swing only, as far as I can tell. One night she tried teaching us cha-cha and insisted that it was left-right-left, left-right-left for the man, which I thought was wrong because of the same-foot step. I said so; she said 'no, that's right' but corrected herself in a few minutes when it became apparent nothing else was working properly.
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-Julius Yang: July 26th, 1998