Casino Royale

'I think it's super!' - Burt Bacharach

'Casino Royale is terrific!' - Nancy Sinatra

'Casino Royale is the best! What fun!!!' - Jackie DeShannon

'Nobody does it better!' - Hal Lifson (author '1966')

'This is great! Just fantastic!'
- Rob Shrock, Music Director for Burt Bacharach

'I've been listening to Casino Royale all day! They're really super!'
- Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders

'Bud E. Luv tells me they're great!'
- Chris Isaak

'Amazing! Really, really great!....Wow!!'
- Dave Morey, KFOG Morning Show Host

'I'm REALLY into it! Keep on shakin'!'
- Darian O'Toole, KSAN Morning Show Host

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Featured Spotlights:

SF Weekly Pick of the Week * SF Bay Guardian Critic's Choice * SF Examiner Bay City Best Event * SF Chronicle Datebook 'Making the Scene' Feature * SF Magazine Critic's Choice Feature by Michael Snyder

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Pacific Sun
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Get Bacharach

A certain music critic...is pained by the recent surge of sugary, Burt-Bacharach-style lounge music. Although I usually agree wholeheartedly with his musical opinions, I recently had to question said music critic's judgement after I listened to CASINO ROYALE's Bacharach tribute CD Back to Back Bacharach. The buoyant Bacharach is as American as baseball and apple pie. Almost every one of Bacharach's swinging little numbers is recognizable, and Casino Royale, a 10-piece go-go/dance band formed in 1999, manages to capture the infectious tunes in all their martini-slugging, fuzzy-high-heeled-slippered glory. Highlights of the album include "I Say a Little Prayer," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and "What the World Needs Now is Love." Casino Royale oozes cheesiness, yet you can't help but love it. With local songstress Susan Z performing lead vocalist duty along with Danny Shorago and Lisabell, the band does a bang-up job making beautiful music out of the fluff. They have received kudos from the likes of Chrissie Hynde and Chris Isaak. Swing into the world of Casino Royale (and Burt) when they perform at 8pm June 16 at New George's in San Rafael. Once you give in to the music, I guarantee you'll be feeling no pain.

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San Francisco magazine

Burt With Love Casino Royale sings Burt Bacharach and Beyond
by Michael Snyder


With her coppery bouffant, Mondrian-patterned mini and white vinyl go-go boots, Susan Z seems straight off the set of the mid-'60s TV series, Hullabaloo. Sultry Lisabell looks like she just cooled down after a midnight scooter ride from a London discotheque.
They're seductively singing the Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 arrangement of Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" as the band offers elegant instrumental support on guitar, bass, keyboards, horns and drums. The group's name comes from the title of the James Bond novel Casino Royale and, more specifically, the overblown 1967 film spoof, which introduced "The Look of Love" on its soundtrack. With its emphasis on the Bacharach songbook, this exuberant ten-piece outfit has gained a devoted following since its debut last March. In May, for its Bacharach birthday bash, the band's vibrant blend of psychedelic pop, hippie chic, and spy-movie sophistication drew lines down the block.
Plenty of other rock-era revival bands are working the bars and clubs these days, as modern musicians and audiences turn to oldies from the '60s, '70s and '80s for comfort and pop craftmanship. With its genial tongue-in-cheek attitude, high energy, and expertise in performing Bacharach's polyphonic compositions, Casino Royale is a cut above the rest. Their interpretations of Bacharach songs and other '60s hits have all the detail and power of the originals. They're serious about the music, but the fun they have in performing it is infectious.
The brains behind the outfit is one-name guitarist-composer Scrote, who also leads a San Francisco Latin-disco-punk group called Baby Snufkin. He'd planned to assemble a quintet but found that he needed a larger ensemble to do justice to Bacharach's material, which ranges from simple pop ("Baby It's You") to complex, bombastic orchestrations ("What's New Pussycat?"). The band includes a third vocalist, suave Danny Shorago, and comes from some of the most quirky, avant garde groups around: Club Foot Orchestra, Charming Hostess, Mood Swing Orchestra, Idiot Flesh, Eskimo, and Herb, a Scrote-spawned project that covers chartbusters by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
The band's debut CD, Back to Back Bacharach, just went into its second pressing. Now, the band is experimenting with other formats. At a recent show, it added a violinist and a theremin to the line-up and mutated into its own opening act, the Jimmy Bond Orchestra, which kicked off the show with a set of themes from nine of the first ten Bond movies. Casino Royale is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a special St. Patrick's Day show, and you can bet it'll be a gr - mixed media