Ah, Youth

This weekend I took a little trip down memory lane, and I have the incredibly dark and blurry video to prove it. I went to see The Uptones, a band I was obsessed with during junior high (and some of high school). They were a local ska band made up of high school kids (mainly from Berkeley High) and they played a lot--I must have seen them at least 30 times in a span of about 4 or 5 years. The cool thing about having a teeny bopper crush on a local band was you got to see them play almost every month, unlike if I had been obsessed with the New Kids or the like (although the New Kids were a little later than that. Who was the big teen band around 1983-1987?). The chance of speaking with them after the show was also high, and in the case of one friend of mine, she even ended up dating one of the band members.

Once their lead singer left the band (he was the one I had a crush on), I slowly started to lose interest. I don't know if they stopped playing before I stopped listening, but whatever the case, I kind of grew out of my "mod" phase and eventually could hardly bear to listen to any non 2-Tone ska bands.

Seeing the Uptones this weekend was kind of a frightening flashback. They were always a few years older than me, so knowing some of them are pushing 40 is...shocking! There were only, I think, four original members playing this incarnation (and non of them looked like 40-year-olds!) but I was a little disappointed that they only played two of their golden oldies (one of which, "Get Out Of My Way"--is featured in the clip above); they also played way too many cover songs (something I don't recall them doing much of in the good old days).

It was an all-ages show, so there were plenty of the youngins skanking away (and way too many of the old folks doing the same.) If I squinted my eyes, I could almost imagine myself back at Wolgang's in 1985. The only thing missing was the overwhelming stench of clove cigarettes.