Rock-reggae pioneers Long Beach Dub Allstars played to a capacity crowd last weekend at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California.
The Allstars played a high dose of classic tracks from their impressive back catalog before bringing out special guest Pato Banton on stage. Pato Banton joined the Dub Allstars to play “Gwarn!” from the reggae legend’s 1987 album Never Give In.
Daniel Rivas (Instagram.com/danjrivas) was on hand and captured the video of the performance of these two reggae legends coming together on stage. Watch the video below and soak in the irie vibrations!
As we reported, rock-reggae pioneers Long Beach Dub Allstars have been working on the follow-up to their 2020 self-titled album. The band has been working with Long Beach Dub Allstars guitarist Michael “Miguel” Happoldt, bassist Edwin Kampwirth longtime collaborator and Lewis “Lew” Richard to hammer out over 10-tracks. The as-of-yet untitled album was tracked at 64 Sound in Highland Park, California with additional overdubs recorded at Miguel’s 17th Street Recording.
Today’s generation of reggae-rock fans may not fully understand how critical Long Beach Dub Allstars were to the reggae-rock genre following Sublime’s conclusion in 1996.
They played at a time when social media was non-existent. Live videos of their early performances are mostly of grainy VHS quality, while most live-photos shot by fans were with throw-away cameras. There was no Youtube, Facebook, and this was before Myspace or even iTunes.
They were the torchbearers of a genre that Sublime introduced and the original ‘Dub Allstars lineup included most of the players who were involved in cultivating that reggae-rock sound with Brad Nowell. Long Beach Dub Allstars picked up the torch and helped usher in the next generation of rock-reggae.
Opie Ortiz released his first-ever solo album Sound Sensation Vol. 1 under the Opie & Family moniker. The new record was co-written by Ortiz and The Aggrolites frontman Jesse Wagner, who also produced the work with additional engineering and mixing by Chris Brennan (The Aggrolites, The Expanders). The album is a sonic journey into a vortex of easy-going roots reggae and feel-good vibrations.
