Zonk Tongue In Cheeks CD

A 45 year old at the time of 2002 picked up a small keyboard and played every-time he was doing nothing to make sounds, and it started to sound good, one day he had a thought of making his own exercise video, but he was talking to friends he decided that it was even better then that...so he started to record music. They weren't songs yet because he thinks that songs should have lyrics, and that makes the best music, so day after day he explored many types of arrangements he could make with that little keyboard. At Christmas he got a brand new larger keyboard, and that really seamed to make a huge difference in him, because soon after that he started to sing, and it was horse, because he had no equipment, no mixers no anything to tone and add effects.

Binga & Gogo are siblings; soul mates on a remarkable musical mission. She is the vocalist, a Euro-pop chanteuse one second, heart-melting soul poetess the next. He is a bandleader and arranger, a keyboard player with iconoclastic piano style illuminating an orchestral archway into a vivid sonic soundscape. Together they craft inventive and memorable modern pop songs.

Binga(nee Tomasina Abate) was a performer virtually from birth. She vocalized in the crib while her father, a rock musician, would rehearse his band. At age four, her mother would dress her up as a floozy, have the family all shine flashlights on her while she'd sing "Hello, Dolly." From these auspicious beginnings it was a short leap to procuring costumes from Goodwill and producing entertainment for the neighborhood kids. Tomasina would appear during intermission at backyard boxing matches to sing selections from Annie, while the bruised and bloody were attended to.

Gogo(nee Joseph Abate), younger brother, was her co-conspirator. Due to the limitations of his original instrument -- the TV Guide, which doubled as his drum kit, he progressed to the actual snare drum in elementary school, then learned guitar and trumpet. When the marching band needed a baritone horn, he mastered and marched; when the school jazz band needed a trombone player, he studied the slide. Based on his musical abilities, he enrolled at the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

The two grew up in Lakewood, California, a suburb where vestiges of dairy farms and Dutch Villages were fast dissolving into strip malls and fast food franchises. Binga & Gogo were their childhood nicknames. A convergent musical destiny began as they performed together in show choir and sang and danced for the elderly and infirm at convalescent homes.

This year, Marie Frank's new mini-album, "Swimmingly" is being hailed as her best record yet.

One respected writer called it "deeply demure and wonderfully wry." Another praised it as a refreshing alternative to the current wave of Scandinavian pop, "a brilliant musical stroke in a sea of sameness."But "Swimmingly" is more than just Miss Marie's latest release ... it is the story of an independent-minded artist's break from her major-label past and the tale of how fate works in mysterious ways.