An impromptu ska-revival mini-festival will take over Long Beach next month, when two-toners The Toasters play Blacklight District Lounge.
It’s been a while since the New York-bred ska band played in Long Beach, said singer Robert “Bucket” Hingley, reminiscing on the days when a young No Doubt shared the stage with them at Fenders Ballroom in 1988. But The Toasters will bring their signature ska sound back to the LBC on February 9.
“We’re excited to get back into a part of greater LA that we don’t play much, plus it’s a stacked line-up for a Monday night impromptu ska festival. I like that,” Hingley said in a recent interview.
Hingley said The Toasters started off as just a past-time in 1981 before it became a serious project in 1982. Since then, the band has played with the likes of The Skatalites, Special Beat and The Selecter.
The Toasters helped to popularize the underground ska scene in the 1980s, sharing the spotlight with bands like the English Beat and The Specials, and paving the way for 3rd-wave bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish.
The band, which has recorded nine studio albums to date, also founded one of the biggest ska labels, Moon Ska Records, after they failed to find a label to distribute their 1985 album “Recriminations.”
And The Toasters’ influence didn’t stop there, either; ’90s kids may recognize their catchy tune, “2-Tone Army,” as the theme song from Nickelodeon’s animated series, “KaBlam!”
With the announcement of a ska show in Long Beach, which features a lineup of eight bands, Hingley said he sees a resurgence in the ska scene.
“The popularity of ska goes up and down, and the pattern seems to shift from area to area,” he said. “Right now, there seems to be quite a few new bands coming up again, and that’s always what it takes to push the genre back into the spotlight. Ska music sits astride the nexus of punk, reggae, jazz, blues and rock ‘n’ roll, so there’s a lot of cross-pollination and much stylistic infusion.”
Hingley said the band has totally changed since it was first founded, but in some ways stayed the same.
“We’ve gone 360 degrees,” he said. “We started as a two-tone band, went through influential phases of reggae and jazz, and now we went back to two-tone.”
And obstacles have come with those changes, Hingley said, citing musicians having to face technological hurdles and overall life changes. Throughout The Toasters’ 34 years as a band, Hingley has been the only constant member, with more than 40 members coming and going throughout the years.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is a rough life,” he said. “There are no guarantees and no safety net, so you need to be organized, and ready to absorb the impact of changing members, markets and audiences. The biggest obstacle of the recent year has been the collapse of the indie distribution system and the commensurate devaluation of recorded music. There aren’t many professions where one could say that your own industry is your enemy. In an environment where the musician is now expected to provide content for free, the solution is to play as much as possible, get a good posse of dedicated players and load up on merch.”
The Toasters will play alongside The Maxies, Hooray for Our Side, The Two Tone Boners, JLB, Isolated Victims, SAPIEN and ONE OFF on February 9 at Blacklight District Lounge, located at 2500 East Anaheim Street. Tickets for the 21 and over show are $8 and can be purchased at the door.
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