Ska is Dead Tour Review
First off, sorry to everyone for posting this so late. I was meaning to get this done earlier but ended up getting sucked into my work sadly. So, me and Tony ended up going this past weekend to Chicago to see the “Ska is Dead” tour. I would like to share with you the awesomeness of the journey we took and the awesomeness of this show.
On Saturday Tony came on over to my place to car pool with me up to Chicago at around 11:30AM. I had everything ready to go including getting some old Mustard Plug songs on my Zune player. As we were heading out of my apartment complex I realized I had forgotten the most important thing, my ticket! (DOH!…at least I realized this before we were too far out on the road, hehehe) The car ride was long but having Tony along with good tunes made the trip much shorter.
After driving through the crazy ass downtown traffic of Chicago we arrived at the hotel we were going to stay in for the night called, “Four Points”. The hotel was right outside of Chicago O’Hara Airport in which Tony had a flight the next morning to CA. So anyways (back on topic), we got checked in and up to the room by 2:30PM CT and had about 30 minutes to kind of chill out for a little.
We proceeded to head out and take the hotel shuttle to the airport where we could get on the L (Chicago’s metro station) to get downtown. We thought this would take a long time to figure out which routes to go on. However, the routes were quite simple and there were plenty of people along the way to help us out. We got off eventually at the Addison stop and walked a short distance to the bus stop where we would take to Wrigley Field (where the venue “Metro” was located around).
We arrived basically right in front of Wrigley field in which we proceeded down to Metro only a few blocks down. Before going in, we stopped into a little restaurant to have some food considering both of us hadn’t had much to eat that day. After having some foodage, we finally got into the Metro venue eager to see the show.
At around 5:30 PM CT, The Green Room Rockers were the first band to come on. If you go back a few posts, you will see a couple of things on them. They’re an excellent reggae/ska band from Indiana and this is the second time I have seen them. The music they play is very easy to grove to and very soothing. For a starting band, the crowd acted very positive to their sound and they put on a great show. They played I think around 5 or 6 songs due to the fact that there were 4 other bands to come and due to weird Chicago laws, all shows have to end by 10PM.
The next band that came up was a band that I was looking forward to hearing live for a long time, The Voodoo Glow Skulls. The Voodoo Glow skulls have been around since the late 80s and are one of the major forces behind ska-core. They opened up with a fierce energy right from the get-go and never looked back from there. The crowd from that point went totally crazy (as expected). While the kids were beating each other up in the crazy mosh pit that had formed, me and Tony ended up in the back just wanting to enjoy the performance from a far view (just a side note me and Tony noticed a kid who went barreling through the pit with what looked like a wrestling “Mysterio” black mask…pretty cool, lol). I enjoyed their music and style especially when they were mixing a number of their Spanish songs in there. One of the songs I really enjoyed was a song they called, “The Delinquent Song”.
The next band that came up on the stage was a band I hadn’t much listened too let alone seen live called, “Deal’s Gone Bad”. They’re a soul/reggae ska band right from the Chicago, IL area. Their sound was definitely different and quite excellent. I knew a few tunes from some stuff I heard briefly in the past, but they put on a hell of a show and I plan on getting more of their music when I get the chance too. They had the crowd going throughout their performance and I was amazed at how much positive energy there was in the people around me. This is definitely a band I would love to go see live any day of the year.
The next band up was The Toasters. Considered to be a legendary American ska band, their performance lived up to just that. Songs such as “Two-Tone Army” and “Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down” were awesome to hear live. The crowd acted as positive as they have been throughout the whole show, it was seriously very awesome. If you have not seen the Toasters live, you definitely need to if you’re a ska fan of any type!
Finishing off the show was another band I had waited a long time to see, Mustard Plug. This ska punk band from Grand Rapids, MI ended off a great night with an outstanding performance. They even provided some entertainment when Rick posed for cameras and eventually picked up Dave and started swinging him across the stage (very hilarious). The energy was through the roof and they even came out for an encore at the end.
In conclusion this show was the best I have seen when it came to the amount of positive energy and excitement I have seen in a crowd. The show was excellent as expected and plenty of shout outs to go around to the bands who performed. If you’re going to be around any of the cities in which this tour is coming to, GET TICKETS FOR IT! YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPOINTED! I tired to find the exact song lineups for each band but I had no luck in finding anything on that. I hope you all enjoyed my very long post and hopefully some of these pictures that will be posted up will give you some clarity to the story I have just told (apologize for their quality but we did the best we could, sorry again)
*the aftermath ridding back to the hotel on the L*
Take care and good night!
Ross
