I also started to feel that I wanted to express things that rock 'n' roll couldn't convey. But by the time I was in my late 20s, I felt I was aging out of it. "I played rock 'n' roll drums for eight years," Maxwell confesses, "and I had a great time. They didn't have a record deal, a manager, swing chops or even much knowledge to back up their newfound enthusiasm for hot jazz, but that didn't stop them from jumping in with both feet. When they formed the Squirrel Nut Zippers, they started playing Fats Waller tunes on acoustic guitars and horns, but they never lost the punk spirit. The group's two principal songwriters, Tom Maxwell and Jim Mathus, were both drummers in Chapel Hill alternative-rockbands, What Peggy Wants and Metal Flake Mother. But the Zippers attack those examples with the no-holds-barred irreverence of the punk-rock of their adolescence. The North Carolina septet, which joins the Violent Femmes and the Pietasters on New Year's Eve at the Patriot Center, draws on the hot-jazz, Dixieland, swing and jump-blues examples of the past. The link between Harlem's hot-jazz star of the '30s and London's punk-rock terrors of the '70s might seem elusive, but it's such odd connections that make the Zippers one of the freshest, hardest-to-classify bands in pop today. THE SQUIRREL NUT Zippers never would have met Fats Waller's guitarist Al Casey if it hadn't been for the Sex Pistols.
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