Last night was the fifth annual Ska Luau at the House of Blues Anaheim, and it was an awesome show! I was ready to go with a new (or at least never worn to a concert) Half Past Two shirt, and despite it being 42 degrees outside, it was nice inside!
The show opened with the Magnolia Polynesian Dance Troupe. They did dances from a bunch of a different countries and had both men and women, but I didn’t record very much.
The first band to perform was Failed to Victory. I’ve seen them before, and they’re great.
I’d never heard Skadonna, but they were really fun. You might guess that they perform Madonna covers. I’ll admit, the songs that I didn’t know weren’t as cool, but I really enjoyed hearing the covers.
Los SuperSpies graced us with their debut! Not all of their songs were new to me though. Here they’re playing The World is New. If you’re a fan of Save Ferris or Starpool, you’ll probably become a fan of Los SuperSpies too!
Half Past Two is one of my favorite bands, so it was awesome that they performed as well.
Hey, look what I just found.
Sorry, that has nothing to do with the Ska Luau, but it came up as a recommended video at the end of the one I recorded. I didn’t know they covered this, and I like Vampire Weekend.
Back to the Ska Luau! Here some friends joined Half Past Two on stage.
Suburban Legends! Another one of my favorite bands! I love their awesome choreography (and music of course).
This little guy was rocking out too! Well, honestly, he was mostly napping. But his parents were enjoying the show.
There might have been a surfing contest too. Competition is fierce when a prized pineapple is on the line.
It was such a terrific show with a truly amazing line up. Spending the 30th with excellent ska and the 31st, tonight, with friends is a great way to end 2014.
And the best way to end a night of ska is carne asada fries. My diet was upset, but my taste buds were happy.
It’s a Ska World After All! Sunday was the 4th annual Ska Day at Disneyland! I’m pretty glad I found this flier at The Skatalites’ concert at Slidebar last week.
The festivities actually started Saturday night. There was a pre-party at Las Palomas Mexican Restaurant in Anaheim. I went with Edward and gem. I guess there was a call-out, because there was some staffing and service problems. It was fun anyways! I noticed that we were sitting next to members of the ska band Half Past Two!
There was a hat dance, musical chairs, dance competition thingy! Basically, there was a circle of people, and one person had to wear a hat. As music plays, the person wearing the hat has to dance across the circle and put the hat on someone else. If you’re wearing the hat when the music stops, you’re out, and it continues to another round. gem made it to the last round!
The person with whom she’s dancing in the photos was the guitar or bass player (I couldn’t see) for The Pocketeers I think!
She technically came in second, but they gave her a prize anyways. She got this sweet 45 of David Hillyard & The Rocksteady 7’s cover of “Evil” by Moondust Records. Pretty cool!
On Sunday, we started the day by trying on some hats.
Next we went on Space Mountain. We didn’t even realize it was already Ghost Galaxy!We had lunch at the Hungry Bear Restaurant for the meet and greet. After we sat down, we noticed we were sitting next to some of the members of Half Past Two again. Cool coincidence or destiny? We chatted for a bit with out new friends and took this photo!
While in line for Splash Mountain, we met two women from Sacramento here on vacation. We had fun talking to them, and then I got soaked on the ride. We also gave them our fast passes to Indiana Jones because we were running late for the group photo.
This is as good as a group photo as we were going to get, because we were a little late. Oh well.
Look how many security guards it takes to deal with ska fans! There were actually a few more here at one time. Let’s skip over the negative part of the day.
After the group photo, we all went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad together! We had a rather large group. The plan was to ride It’s a Small World together as well, but gem and I decided to go on Indiana Jones instead.
This is not a good place to leave a diaper.
We also managed to go on some rides that didn’t involve photographs. For example, we had to go on Star Tours of course (twice!) as well as the Haunted Mansion to see its Nightmare Before Christmas version. We played a lot of Heads Up, a game gem introduced to me, on our phones while in line. It seemed to be a popular game with other people as well, and we even told others about it. There was a woman in line with us for the Haunted Mansion who downloaded it after we told her about it, and then we played with her and her son too!
I also battled the Evil Empereror Zurg!
Pew pew pew!
And another Toy Story shot.
Before the concert, I just had to play some Fix It Felix Jr.
While we were waiting for the show to begin, we saw that the latest It’s a Ska World SKAvenger Hunt goal was near us. We headed there and got there first, winning some Dulce Cookies by Melo! Oh my goodness, they were so amazing. We gave two to Remy, the host, for him and girlfriend as well as one to a woman who got there after us. Then I ate some more of them. They were really tasty!
Next it was time for the highlight of the evening, Suburban Legends! They’re so amazing. Their sound is great, their choreography is stunning, their ability to engage the audience is always superb, and their sets consist of covers and awesome originals.
There’s gem with the band!
Here’s a clip of them playing DuckTales. Very awesome.
I danced a lot, and boy was I exhausted. I even got to be a firework. The crowd all crouched down. They began to count to eight, using “cicero” to switch to a “Cell Block Tango” reference, and then went back to counting normally. When they reached eight, we all jumped up, threw our arms in the air, and yelled, “boom!” It was fun!
Also, you know how gang fights always involve singing, dancing, and hand snapping? Yeah, the audience split in two for one of those fights. Super rad.
After the concert I wanted to try on this helmet even if I looked dumb.
After a break, The Suffragettes, an all-girl cover band, played at the Tomorrowland Terrace. They were pretty good, but they just didn’t do enough for us. We listened to a few songs before heading back to Main Street, U.S.A. We had some delicious ice cream before calling it a night.
It’s too bad that this was the fourth annual Ska Day at Disneyland and that I missed three of them. I’ll be going in the future!
Last night was the Ska Luau IV at the House of Blues! It was an awesome show, and I’ve learned about some new awesome bands.
The show began with Magnolia High School’s Polynesian Dance Troupe. I only took one photo, and it was pretty bad. Sorry! They had men and women, but they danced separately. They did dances from a variety of Polynesian cultures. Pretty interesting.
CodeName: Rocky was the first band to perform. I hadn’t heard their music previously but was very impressed. They had a great variety of instruments too. Sax? Of course. Trumpet and trombone? Yep. French horn?! Heck yeah!
Save the Swim Team described themselves as “the most screamo ska band,” and I suppose that was true. I liked the ska, but didn’t particularly like the screamo parts. However, they did mesh it pretty well, and I could understand why they’d have a lot of fans. This was actually their last show ever.
Suburban Legends was absolutely amazing. I’ve actually been listening to their music all day today now because I’m hooked. The lead singer was a lot of fun, but their guitarist was pretty charismatic too! Their brass section consisted of two trumpet players and a trombone player. The band also danced together with great choreography. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was so amazingly good.
Starpool came on the stage wearing tiki masks before starting the set and releasing the confetti that’s in the photo at the top of this post.
Besides throwing bags with chocolate penises into the crowd (some sort of joke from previous concerts I’d assume), they also threw these glowing sticks.
They played an amazing set full of a lot of songs that I loved. I sang along, danced, jumped, and was pretty tired at the end honestly.
And what concert would be complete without a band member crowd surfing in a giant ball? That was pretty cool. Starpool ended the show with their cover of Shout that I absolutely love. This might have been my favorite concert I’ve ever attended. If not, it would be the show with the Aquabats and Starpool, so I guess that’s good for Starpool anyways!
Hopefully Friday’s Reel Big Fish show at the same venue is as awesome.
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