This Week's Listen: Return 2 Zero

For the most part, over the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to bar review lectures on CD in my car, in my office, in my house, yadda, yadda, yadda. But on vacation last week, in Disney I heard this band for the second time. Return 2 Zero opens the Beauty and the Beast Show at Disney/MGM Studios. With a young daughter, the show was a must. Performing as "Four for a Dollar" this a capella group provides about 15 mintues of entertainment before the show and they do a great job. This year, I decided to buy their CD--at Disney prices--Wow!!

Now a capella singing may take a little getting used to, after all, the only music is provided by the singing of the band. But if done well, and these guys do it well, the music is terrific and surprisingly quite easy to listen to. If you need an introduction to a capella, this is a good disk to get.

This disk is great!! Most of the songs are covers of easy listening standards, like "How Sweet It Is" and "Happy Together" but what makes these covers so great is the complex arrangments of the singers. In addition to the standard finger-snapping for rhythm you get in most a capella groups, Return 2 Zero also utilizes vocal beat box rhytms interspersed with backing vocals to create some fantastic harmonies and counterpoints that I think a lot of a capella groups fail to use.

So here are the favorites:

"Fly Like an Eagle." I have always loved this Steve Miller Band classic and R2Z does a great job with this cover. As an added bonus, with a capella, I finally learned some of the lyrics I always got wrong in the SMB version.

"December 1963 (Oh What a Night)" Taking a classic dance tune, recording it a capella and still making it danceable is, in my mind a tremendous feat. R2Z does a fantastic job with the arrangement, making this my favorite track on the disk.

"Moondance"--Return 2 Zero's take on this Van Morrison classic is itself a classic of harmonies and melodies.

"I'm Alright" I can never hear this Kenny Loggins classic without seeing the "Caddyshack" gopher dancing in my head. I still get the gopher in my head, but he dances a slightly different jig now.