Emerging as an alternative to the nascent grunge scene in the late 1980s, the eight-piece Eugene, Oregon, group has always been more iconoclastic than many of its retro-oriented peers, mixing ska, punk and other styles with more-traditional jump-blues and big-band sounds. But it was the Daddies' fourth album, "Zoot Suit Riot"--a collection of swing tracks from previous releases--that turned out to be a surprise hit and jump-started this year's neoswing boom. The downside? "At vintage stores, the clothes that we once got for a buck are now, like, fifty bucks," laments singer Steve Perry. "We've created a monster."

"Don't Call It Swing"
Perry: "Last night in New York, for the encore, we played a hard-rock song with no horns. None of the other swing bands do that. And our fans don't necessarily like that either. A lot of people have only heard 'Zoot Suit Riot' and don't know that we like to screw around and do different types of songs. But we still do it. We haven't changed our mission just because of the success."

"Oh, Go Ahead..."
Schmid: "We try to play everything that swings, in a weird way--swing, punk, soul, Vegas-style big-band, funk rock. The Damned are a perfect example of a punk-rock band that swings. Swing is much more a sensation than a metronomic figure. Some people make swing a lifestyle. I don't think I'd take it that far. It's more of a way of being, something that has more to it, like blood and bones."

"Mood Swings"
Perry: "Everything in my personality comes out through the characters in the songs. Sometimes I torture them. It's a weird way of doing things, I guess. In most songs now, it's indulgent first-person, 'I did this,' 'I feel that,' 'Feel my pain, I'm really intense and you should want to sleep with me.' That's not real interesting to me. Of course, it would be interesting if people slept with me, but that's a separate thing from music."

"Style Matters"
Perry: "Some of us couldn't hit the broadside of a fucking barn to dress ourselves--you know, really stupid tie choices and bad shoes. Some of the less fashion-challenged of us try to enlighten the others, really gently. My ex- girlfriend, I saw her the other day and she said, 'You're getting too into this retro look. You used to be punk rock. You should try to vary it.' It bummed me out."

"Dads Vs. Fads"
Schmid: "We didn't really anticipate our success. We thought we'd sell enough records to pay our record company back. We could never envision selling 1.2 million records. We were just in the right place at the right time, like Peter Sellers in 'Being There.'"
Perry: "The problem isn't that next year people are gonna think swing is stupid and it's gonna go away. I don't care about that, because I was doing it in 1989, when nobody cared. The problem is, today we just wanna be ourselves. We have these great songs that we wrote that aren't swing, and we want people to hear 'em. And also, when we write new material, I don't want to feel like I'm beholden to this image thing. I don't think it's right for me to try to be something that I'm not."