There's a place where swing and soul meet...where the blues and bop mix...where rock 'n' roll mingles with jellyroll. It's a place where there's a zip gun under every zoot suit, where every topsy has her torpedo and all the pachucos are pressed in pleat. It's a place you'll find in deepest Tinsel Town, tucked away in Babylon by the bay, just around the corner in the city that never sleeps or somewhere beyond the sea. That place? Wherever Royal Crown Revue is on the marquee.

The fact is, when Royal Crown Revue sets up shop it's the only place to be. Just ask the frantic fans in motion from ocean to ocean, flocking to each and every Royal Crown Revue stint and cooking up the hottest word of mouth since the Nazz took an H2O stroll. Haven't got the Royal Crown Revue religion? Then check out Mugzy's Move, their debut Warner Bros. Records release, produced by Titanic Ted Templeman (the man who put the wailin ' in Van Halen and the ooobie doo in the Doobie Brothers) and featuring a baker's dozen of the band's certified show stoppers. You, too, will be shouting hallelujah from the housetops. Guaranteed!

Let's Revue: Royal Crown Revue got its start in 1989 when vocalist Eddie Nichols, tenor saxman Mando Dorame and guitarist James Achor first met on the bustling Los Angeles music scene. It was a mix that matched their far-flung points of origin, with Nichols hailing from Manhattan, Achor from Ohio and Dorame from Watts.

As Royal Crown Revue grew, so, too, did the push-pins stuck in the map: drummer Daniel Glass sailed in from Hawaii, baritone saxist Bill Ungerman blew over from Oklahoma, Veikko Lepisto shook off some Twin Cities frost and trumpeter Scott Steen rumbled over from the Bay Area. All seven had already logged time in a variety of other groups, playing everything from skiffle , punk and soul to rockabilly and swing. The Royal Crown Revue's swingin ' thing continued to take shape over the next few years, adding and subtracting members as they honed a sound that begged, borrowed and shoplifted from virtually every era of American music, in the process creating a style completely their own. It was an audience-friendly approach polished and perfected by perpetual gigging, playing anywhere and everywhere that people got together to get down whether it was rent parties in San Francisco, snowboard keggers in Lake Tahoe, Chinatown punk palaces, even a heavy metal festival in Phoenix.

To this day, the Royal Crown Revue books upwards of 200 dates a year, including extended stints across the Big Pond for a growing mob of Euro-enthusiasts. It wasn't long before Royal Crown Revue fever brought the band to the attention of Hollywood movers and shakers, drawn as much to the group's sharp-pressed fashion sense as their dance-enhancing sounds. The group caught their first big break appearing as themselves in the Jim Carrey-starrer The Mask, performing one of their original tunes, "Hey Pachuco !" Remember the scene? The rubberfaced guy and starlet extraordinaire Cameron Diaz defied gravity and logic in a morphed-out dance sequence while the band played on. The exposure led to another round of seven-night-a-week appearances before they were brought to the attention of Warner Bros. Records legendary producer and A&R man Ted Templeman . Signed to the Bros. in the spring of 1995, the group got to work almost immediately on their debut album, with Templeman twisting the knobs. Taking time away only to play one-off shows, the Revue continued cutting tracks through the rest of '95 and into '96. The result is Mugzy's Move, an album that delivers on all the energy and excitement of Royal Crown live...and then some. Aside from their new and improved version of the abovementioned "Hey Pachuco !," Mugzy's Move spotlights such RCR originals as "Zip Gun Bop," " Datin ' With No Dough," "Trouble In Tinsel Town" and "The Rise And Fall Of The Great Mondello ." Also featured, a rendition of the Bobby Darin classic "Beyond The Sea," the Willie Dixon perennial "I Love The Life I Live" and a standup version of "The Walkin ' Blues." It's a sequence of songs that tells a story, sets a mood and brings home the irrefutable reality that these guys have that thing that separates slavish tribute nostalgia acts from cutting edge contemporary ones. Royal Crown Revue. It's a state of mind, a point of view, a reason to believe and the place to be...no matter where you are.