Greyboy Allstars: Grab bag of jazz, funk, soul

Greyboy Allstars (Courtesy photo)

This Friday and Saturday local boy wonders The Greyboy Allstars will be blasting their funky goodness from the musical hotspot of Solana Beach, the Belly Up Tavern.

Coming off of a reunion tour, they recently recorded their latest album, and first in a decade, “Whatever Happened to Television?” — a grab bag of jazz, funk, soul, and even hip-hop beats. The band’s namesake, DJ Greyboy, a local legend with a unique ear for music, worked with the band on this album for the first time since their debut “West Coast Boogaloo” in 1995. It seems like 10 years apart has strengthened the group because this album is different (in a good way) from anything they had produced previously.

“Whatever Happened to Television?” is a product of one week of recording, with no music being written before they entered the studio. The way the album was made portrays the essence of The Greyboy Allstars. No computers were used in recording — that’s right, the sparse editing was done the old fashion way, taking razor to tape. The album flows in a way so you can feel they are jamming, but the music is tight and not repetitive like some funk can be. Listen to a few of their songs and tell me you don’t want to see how they flow in live action.

The band’s roots lie in San Diego’s now defunct Green Circle Bar, where the five members coalesced around DJ Greyboy. Accomplished musicians in their own right, they play off of each other in a way that creates unique sounds unheard of in any of their wide-ranging individual projects. “In this band I’m a completely different player than in almost any other circumstance,” said Greyboy Allstars’ guitarist Elgin Park.

Opening Friday night, The Boogaloo Assasins jam a toe-tappin’ latin rhythm that should provide the perfect musical lubrication for the evening. This collection of latin and ska musicians from the L.A. scene lifts the senses with feel good party music. As winners of Best Latin Band in the 2009 OC Music Awards, this group plays some of the best 1960s and ‘70s Spanish Harlem influenced sonmontuno, guaguanco, cha-cha, soul, funk and blues mixings available for live consumption in Southern California.

The acclaimed local jazz band Pocket will be opening up the show Saturday night. This collection of long time San Diego musicians has been nominated three times as best jazz band in the San Diego Music Awards.

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“Pocket is San Diego’s original acid jazz group,” bassist Christian Schinelli told The San Diego Weekly Reader. “We are the only instrumental group in SD playing soul jazz.”

A recently released self-titled album showcases a bare essentials jazz group that makes the most out of jamming. The drums stay tight, the guitar and bass keep up a funky rhythm, and the organ takes off with wild melodies — what more could you ask for?

The Greyboy Allstars are spending two evenings with their hometown San Diego. If you’re a fan of jazz, funk and good times why don’t you join them for a night?

Steven Bartholow is SDNN’s multimedia editor and a lover of local music.

Tags: boogaloo, jazz, latin, local, SDNN

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.