Eugene, Oregon's Cherry Poppin' Daddies came together in the gray light of the pre-Grunge dawn, when America's rock underground was defined not by sloppy guitar groups but instead by phenoms like Fishbone, Faith No More, Bad Brains, the Meat Puppets, and early incarnations of the Chili Peppers and ***/ Infectious Grooves; bands that took musical tightness as a prerequisite and sought to bust creative boundaries by daring to traverse territory outside the individual members' stylistic comfort zones. After introducing themselves with a 1989 4-song EP mixing funkadelica with big band charts (which won the approval of legendary jazz DJ Al "Jazzbo" Collins), the Daddies released a series of independently-produced records daring anything and everything an eight-piece with three horns and keys possibly could: swing (Drunk Daddy, Pink Elephant); metal (Midas in Reverse, Bobby Kennedy); funk (Dirty Mutha Fuzz, Equus); country/Americana (Silver-Tongued Devil, Luther Lane) and weird amalgams (Teenage Brainsurgeon, Hazel South Dakota). In 1997 the group compiled all its big band tunes onto a single disc called "Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of...", which inspired Universal subsidiary Mojo Records to load the boys into a tour bus traversing the country with comerades like Argentina's Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Ozomotli, and a host of punk bands on the 1998 Vans Warped Tour. By the time the Daddies teamed with glam legend Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex) for a single called "Diamond Light Boogie", "Zoot Suit" had gone double platinum. Unfortunately, the neo-swing craze had also run its course, and the band's 2000 effort "Soul Caddy" found itself a stranger in a strange land of boy-band bland, monster-voice metal and a president who thinks jazz comes from Utah. After a brief hiatus from touring, the CPD's began performing anew in 2002. In recent months they have been writing new songs and re-dedicating themselves to what may be the weirdest career in show business.