The Aggrolites Clean Up With Their Dirty Reggae

The Mod Club

Toronto, ON

on Aug 1 2007

Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

08/02/2007 6:00pm

With Me, Mom & Morgentaler, The Planet Smashers and The Kingpins, Montreal has produced some of Canada's best ska bands of the past 20 years. Now you can add One Night Band to that list.

The young septet — featuring both a female and male lead vocalist and an instrumental lineup featuring guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, trombone and two saxophones — played a set of original old-school ska that had the front third of the Mod Club dancing and skanking their troubles away. They closed their set with a ska/R&B version of the Motown classic "Rescue Me" and impressed me enough that I threw down $10 for their full-length Stomp debut, Way Back Home.

The Aggrolites call their music "dirty reggae" and, while it's not a bad description, it doesn't convey the ska, rock, funk and soul elements in their sound — particularly on their most recent album, Reggae Hit L.A. But the quintet (singer/guitarist Jesse Wagner, organist Roger Rivas, guitarist Brian Dixon, bassist J Bonner and drummer Korey "Kingston" Horn) alternately traverse and combine the genres into something that comes out distinctive and unique.

And make no mistake, these guys know their stuff and can play it. It's no wonder that they're the first-call band when ska and reggae veterans like Prince Buster and Derrick Morgan come to Los Angeles and need a backing group, or that Rancid's Tim Armstrong used them throughout his recently released A Poet's Life solo album. They were all decked out in matching red pants and shirts that resembled prison leisure wear, but the musicianship was easily strong enough to grant them forgiveness for their collective fashion faux pas.

Kingston's drumming was spot on all night and kept the rhythm locked in through the group's mixed set of instrumentals and tracks sung by Wagner. Rivas' flourishes on his Hammond organ, which was kept at the front of the stage for good reason, had me envisioning the late, great Jackie Mittoo's playing from the '60s and '70s.

The Aggrolites had the fair-sized audience onside from the start and, if fans weren't singing or dancing along, they were forming an orderly circle pit and moshing away. There was a good balance of material from the band's two Hellcat albums (The Aggrolites and Reggae Hit L.A.), including the heavily funky yet soulful "Funky Fire," the instrumental "Thunder Fist" and crowd favourites "Work It," "Countryman Fiddle," "Lucky Streak," "Someday" and "Faster Bullet." The group reached back to their harder to find 2004 Dirty Reggae debut LP for "Hot Stop," "Jimmy Jack" and the title track to help round out their 50-minute set.

The audience at the all-ages show was an intriguing mixture of male and female teenagers and men around my age (41), with the proportion of 20- and 30-somethings seeming unusually small. But most of those in attendance weren't just bandwagon jumpers trying to catch a ride on some cool new thing. The group's encore medley featured Wagner asking for requests and quizzing folks on certain songs, and the knowledge level exhibited by the youngsters at the foot of the stage was surprisingly impressive.

The medley included parts of Derrick Morgan's "Moon Hop," The Clash's "Bank Robber," Junior Murvin's "Police & Thieves," something from A Poet's Life, Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and Symarip's "Skinhead Moonstomp."

Another surprise was in store when the show ended with the crowd flailing about and singing unabashedly along to a cover of The Beatles' "Don't Let Me Down" done in The Aggrolites' trademark style.

As smiling, sweating fans were leaving, frontman Adam "Doom" Sewell of the newly reunited Monster Voodoo Machine came up to me and declared that The Aggrolites are the "best band in the world." I'm not prepared to go that far, but let's just say that they're pretty damn great and deserving of an even bigger and better reception the next time they roll through town.