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Press
"Local Artist on KISS Tribute Album
A typical tribute album contains cover versions of songs penned by the band being
acknowledged. But KISS Cover to Cover is a tribute to songs that KISS themselves chose to cover during their career. Originally recorded
by Bobby Lewis, "Tossin' and Turnin'" was covered by KISS drummer Peter Criss
on his 1978 KISS solo album, and has now been re-vamped by digital maestro Marc
Zouhar.
-Connections Magazine, April, 2005, Volume 4, issue 85.
"Moonage Daydream: a conversation with Marc Zouhar By Jay Pluck
Marc Zouhar could be the saviour of underground music and is the most excellent live performer to have blown through Greensboro from where I sit. Maybe he's one part Martin Denny and one part Jade Fair mixed with fascinatingly shy vocal tones, though then you'd have to mention as he does, Duke Ellington somewhere in that description-but I think the point is that he's a true auteur. In a dismal world of homage-rock and unwarranted touring, Zouhar is managing to be inventive and honest at the same time, winning over audiences by using their own curiosity against them before he transfixes things with thick melody and positively enchanting arrangements of the alter-weird. Maybe the point, then, is that his music and performance are just so damn delightful. He recently completed a solitary, self-spun tour of the East Coast, playing more than 50 shows between May and October, among them gigs at New York Pizza, The Green Bean, and the Paisley Pinapple Sofa Bar. I saw him play at the Sofa Bar show and have picked up his three albums since then; I don't think Z opened his eyes once the whole night, strolling to the bar for a shot with the microphone over his shoulder mid-song. Mr. Zouhar graciously consented to a telephone interview and we ended up having, from Ohau [Hawaii] to Orlando, a 90 minute conversation. Zouhar is soft-spoken in a way that belies confidence and seems to endeavor to be precise."
-The Other City, Issue II, August 11, 2003.
Interview
Captain Z
Marc Zouhar, known to fans as "Captain Z," insists he is a composer first and a performer second, but his shows are what have made the 30-year-old musician a local legend. Although he uses only a keyboard and a sequencer, the simplistic strangeness of the Captain's eerie smile and breathy vocals steals the stage. Now that he's tied up his Toy Soldier tour, be sure to keep a lookout for his new album called Solipsism, due sometime this year."
-"Best of Orlando 2003",
Orlando Weekly "Marc Zouhar
Prolific and idiosyncratic solo artist who's been recording original material since his teens in a series of home studios. At times, his hypnotic hybrid of hotel lounge crooning and beatbox percussion bring to mind a dysfunctional marriage between David Lynch and the pioneering NYC synth outfit Suicide. Astute listeners will find traces of the Mael brothers (Sparks) in both the keyboardist's naive, spacey tunes and the unsettling role-playing evident in his promo photos. Winding down a protracted East Coast tour, he holds court for a night at Downtown's most eclectic and unpretentious art and pie space. Wednesday, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m., The Sentient Bean."
-Jim Reed, music editor,
Connect Savannah Magazine, Vol. 2, #2, October 9th-15th, 2002. "The adventures of Captain Z
Orlando's music scene has its fair share of bizarre characters. But few can claim to be stranger than Captain Z. Perhaps you've caught the Captain -- he's the geeky pop patriot, usually decked in full high-school-band regalia, who of late has been working his straight-from-the-80s synth rock at Stardust, Wills and Barbarella.
-Mark Padgett, music editor,
Orlando
Weekly, September 14-20, 2000. "He calls himself the Space Lounge Lizard which is very suitable for this interesting performer who slithers around the stage as he sings hizz post-modern jazz like songs as if he came from another planet. Marc has this luxury of stage theatrics as a solo artist due to the fact that he has his keyboard pre-programmed. Some songs he?ll stand away and sing his romantic ballads like Harry Connick Jr. on valium. While on others he?ll play like a pro lounge keyboardist, playing impressive chording and fluent scales while singing his songs. One of his songs called "I Get Big" will just about make any girl blush. Over all Marc made a BIG impression at his debut for the SSA."
-Songwriters Showcases of America News Letter, Vol. 4, May 1st, 2000.
"...the strangest, oddest, most
wonderfully tongue-in-cheek performer in Orlando today." "...a sort of jazzy, smoky, back the
HoJo lounge sound......mixed with lyrics that make you laugh and smile."
"...a stage presence that can only be
described as a painfully shy shuffle." "...generally charmed the whole
audience with his honesty." -by Musey for Music Mania
"...Marc Zouhar's music is like taking
a trip on some 1940's art deco train,..." "...an Ivory Soap voice that
half-whispers, half croons originals like they were Gershwin standards..."
"...Zouhar is the lounge poster child,
but he takes it to a different level of weirdness that is downright chilling in
it's subtlety." "Soft ballads of incurable romance are
mixed with a mellow stage presence that is almost ghostly." "Zouhar's mastery of the keyboard is
stellar, his improvisations and instrumental noodlings are the work of a studied
and trained musician." -Bing Futch,
Ink 19, January 8th, 2000.
"Space Age Pop - Again for the First Time.
Two nights ago on a rain slicked Monday that looked ironically like a scene from Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", I ducked into a club off of Main Street in downtown Sarasota. I say it was ironic because inside I had a chance to sample the post-futuristic music of Marc Zouhar. His work, all original, is comprised of here-to-please vocals combined with often-times dreamy synthesized keyboard melodies that evoke a sense of edge-of-the-solar system possibilities. That, combined with a boy meets girl romantic optimism reminiscent of the compositions of such greats as Les Baxter and Burt Bacharach, make Marc's work a feast for the ears as well as the imagination.
-A review by Eric McClure, 1997.
Zouhar was 14 when his dad presented him
with an electronic keyboard. "I had access to this double cassette boom box
that had this odd mixing mic input that allowed the layering of audio by
playing along with previously recorded material on one tape while recording to
another," recalls Zouhar. "The fidelity was awful but I began to teach myself the art of
recording and arranging music."
Other artists on KISS Cover to Cover include VH1/MTV regulars Captain T and
Ostronomy, Sky Blues guitarist Jon Rubin, New York rockers Great Jones, among others. The compilation is scheduled for release in April."
"Best Local Lounge Lizard
Peel back Captain Z's uniform and you'll find very shy, soft-spoken singer-songwriter Marc Zouhar. And although he's played a few shows under the Zouhar banner, he feels infinitely more comfortable as the Captain, one of many alter-egos he devised while working a weekly gig back in 98 in Sarasota. Captain Z is the one that stuck.
"It's more visual," says Zouhar, a student and part-time worker who has called Orlando home for two years now. "It's like Halloween for me. Halloween's my favorite holiday. And the idea of dressing up and becoming somebody else I think kind of appeals to everybody."
"There is a part of me that thinks it is a little bit gimmicky, but everybody seems to love it. There's a real serious side of me that thinks it is ridiculous. But then there's this really silly side of me that loves it. It's a constant tug-of-war between the two."
Don't let his silliness steer you in the wrong direction; Zouhar's fashionably late tunes are undeniably top-flight compositions and well-suited for dancing or the occasional trip to outer space.
To get an idea of Z's capabilities, you have to go back to his 1992 project "The Teen Age," a collection of tracks from his teen-age years. But it is in the timelessness of 1995's "Perfectly Sane" and 1996's "Isolated" that Zouhar's talent for song craft truly shines, loaded with glorious sweeping synths and undeniable hooks. Vocally, Z drops into a wispy, prepubescent lounge singer character -- think Andy Kaufman on a good day.
"I love the 80s," says the Z-man, age 27. "I think the 80s are the most colorful decade for pop music."
He also cites jazz as a big influence.
"I soaked it all up, everything from Duke Ellington to Kajagoogoo." Consider Z's music a blend of the two. But Zouhar's days as an agent of the 80s may soon be over.
"My music is moving more and more towards complexity, to satisfy me. ... I feel that I can make a larger stride."
But don't expect anything new on his upcoming release, "All is Fair." The CD, loosely expected before Christmas, will feature unreleased specimens from Z's archives. Then again, Z admits that at present, he "just can't finish it."
Catch the Captain Saturday, Sept. 16, at Stardust Video & Coffee.
"
In the early 1960's a new type of instrumental music was finding it's way to turntables and reel-to-reel decks all over the post-war brave new world. It was music that conjured up images of a galaxy not cold and distant, but one domesticated for men and women using all of the latest technologies and comforts. A kind of tiki arts and chrome-plated bikini imagery that, combined with the weightlessness of outer space, would make it the ultimate make-out spot. The music was all but forgotten by the time America had actually made a trip to the moon and back a reality in 1969.
In 1997, after hearing Marc's melodies, I can say that when we finally can fly coach class to the moon and Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey has become a training film for architecture students, you can almost be sure that Zouhar's brand of music styling will be standard listening from the gridlock of the Milky Way jammed with photon sleds to those quiet evenings back at the geodesic domiciles we may call home."