On the blustery, rainy Sunday night of November 14 I ventured out to see a new ska band from So. Cal called The Undisputed World Champions. The show was at a club near downtown Seattle called Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, a cozy little hole in the wall.
While The Undisputed World Champions’ main focus is ska, there was some hard core, some punk elements and some salsa all thrown into a blender and mixed at high speed.
Front man Edwin Salas strutted about the stage barking, yelling and growling into the mic. Julio Medina played a top notch guitar and wore a lame’ mask with a skull face and a hood shaped like the back of Darth Vader’s helmet. He stood on the monitor, held his guitar aloft and otherwise flailed about without missing a lick. Their drummer (Angel David) slammed so manically I half expected his kit to explode. The horn section (Eduardo De La Cruz on sax and Manny Dmonguez on trumpet) was top notch and said horn section was a lively pair. When not blowing their respective horns they were kicking up their heels and twisting about. Gary Sabido, on bass, rounded out their sound. For the encore Julio was sans mask and looked a lot like Mick Jones.
Opening the night was one of my favorite local bands, the Skablins. During the lockdown last year I had frequent dreams I was seeing live music again and the Skablins were one of the bands I saw in my dreams. When I saw there was a ska show happening in Seattle and the Skablins were the opener, I knew I had to go. I arrived just after they went on stage. Front man Gordy Whyte was not quite as energetic as in the past (how did we all get this old?), but he was still highly entertaining as he danced about the stage and hammed it up with other band members. His sense of humor was fully in tact. They always end their set with a cover of “Hell,” but this time Gordy introduced it by claiming he didn’t even remember writing that song. They also performed old favorites like their cover of the (godly) Kinks’ song “Come Dancing.” When their set was over the small but devoted audience begged for an encore. So they performed a medley of the Specials’ “Message To You, Rudy” and “Blondie’s The Tide Is High.” It was firkin awesome and though he didn’t say so, I bet Gordy doesn’t remember writing those songs either.
All in all, this was a fun night and I’m so glad I braved the bad weather and went out. The rest of the Skablins are, Anton Beck, bass,(the impeccably dressed) Heather Beck, sax, TJ Dunn, trumpet, Kevin Eyre, guitar, Jacob Doss, keys, Morgan Williams, drums.
