The Skatalites, Aquabats, MU330, Voodoo Glow Skulls, La Banda Skalavera, My Superhero, GoGo13, Monkey, The Remedies and Tuesday After School
One of my favorite shows we’ve ever had here in Vegas was the Ska Summit, an early aside to the Extreme Thing that saw ska bands big and small from every era ascend onto Desert Breeze Park for a day of fun and skanking. Almost a decade later, the people behind last month’s Viva Ska Vegas managed to recapture much of that same fun, albeit on a smaller scale (which will hopefully grow larger if this becomes an annual event). Once again ska fans were treated to a day of horns and upstrokes from a number of national, international and local ska bands that covered every wave of ska, giving everyone something to look forward to.
The biggest response of the festival went to the penultimate band of the night – Huntington Beach, CA third wave heroes The Aquabats. It’s been about 8 years since I last saw the ska-by-way-of-new-wave legends and if you thought that their high energy live show would lose a step due to frontman MC Bat Commander’s busy television schedule, you would be wrong. The band danced, shared the mic with the crowd on favorites like “Super Rad,” “Red Sweater” and “Pizza Day,” and the Commander himself still performed his signature backflip off of Ricky Fitness’ drum riser – with a little fake head trauma thrown in that might have been a bit too convincing for the younger fans. And speaking of younger fans, it was awesome to see so many little kids dressed up as Aquadets, clearly fans of the Aquabats Super Show and Yo Gabba Gabba. It makes me jealous something that cool didn’t exist when I was their age. The Commander even brought one youngster up on the stage to pick the final song of the night, and the kid did well by going with the crowd’s pleas for “Pool Party.”
As much as I enjoy an Aquabats show, the band I was most looking forward to was St. Louis, Missouri’s MU330. I had seen the band once before, becoming a fan during their 2005 performance at Jillian’s with Streetlight Manifesto and fellow Viva Ska Vegas players Voodoo Glow Skulls. So I was anxious to get to sing along with frontman Dan Potthast and the rest of the Viva Ska audience. Aquabats may have had the best theatrics, but for my money Potthast succeeded at being the frontman of the night, spending the entire set leaping from the drum riser or singing from one of the three pits that opened up while the band played. His voice sounded great and I was glad so many others were equally excited to see the third wavers in action (one couple driving all the way from Portland for the event!)
Speaking of Voodoo Glow Skulls, they’re a band I had seen countless times at the Huntridge and Sanctuary while in high school but who I’ve mostly missed out on since then. So it was a treat to get to relive the days when Punk-O-Rama was a fixture of my summers with songs like “El Coo Cooi” and “They Always Come Back.”
My biggest new discovery of the day was GoGo13. I hadn’t checked them out before, but their live show was just so fun and full of non-stop energy that they had the entire crowd leaping and dancing.
Of course, there wasn’t a single bad performance in the bunch, whether it was hometown heroes The Remedies and Tuesday After School opening up the show, My Superhero and their rousing cover of The Mindbenders “A Groovy Kind of Love” and of course the legends themselves The Skatalites still showing everyone how ska is done right nearly 50 years after pioneering the genre.
-Emily Matview
Photos by Emily Matview | https://www.flickr.com/photos/holdfastnow/
Tyler Newton | http://500px.com/spottedlens
and Aaron Bautista | http://www.aarounbautista.net
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