New CD of VERY Early UpTones Recordings!

Time to fire up this website and our email list and all the TwittyFaceBonkerGrams and announce this skawesome new release! Get Out Of My Way (The early recordings) is now available on the Liberation Hall label. This contains the band’s very first studio recordings, from 1983 at John Altmann and Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, plus the long out-of-print KUSA EP, recorded at the Automatt in 1984. All these songs feature the Uptones’ original lineups with Erik Rader on lead vocals, Thomas White and then Jay Lane on drums, Gregory Blanche on Keyboards, Michael Wadman on Trombone, Kenny Brooks and then Dave Ellis on Sax, Paul Jackson on Trumpet and then Keyboards, then Scott Jensen on Trumpet (Ska-T!) Charles Stella and Eric Dinwiddie on Guitar, and Ben Eastwood heroically holdin’ the whole thing up from start to finish on Bass. Whew! What! That’s a lot o’ cats. Did I miss anyone? Probably. Read the full credits in the cool CD booklet by artist Peter Montgomery who was there when and knows. Oh! Liner notes by Sarah Cain, who saw the whole thing up close and tells the saga from her perspective as a friend, a fan, and a mod. Out now on CD and streaming services. God knows how the timing worked out this way, we’ve only been thinking of compiling and remastering these old tapes for three decades. More to follow about some of the songs and stories behind them, but for now, wanted to let you know this is up.

OUTBACK EP re-release this month!

Big news! OUTBACK, our six-song EP from 1986, is being re-released on Berkeley Cat Records. It’s on Bandcamp as of now, and will be on Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, TIDAL and Google Play starting August 31. This was the last studio recording The UpTones made in the 1980’s, and it has been out of print for 30 years! The opening cut is the original version of Burning Sky which was a hit on San Francisco’s Live 105 radio. Give the tunes a spin here and buy the download and share it up on your socialnets!

A Flashback From Barrington Hall

Wayback Weds post! Paul found this poster from Barrington Hall, 1982. This was our 3rd “club” gig and maybe our 5th live performance ever. Barrington was a student co-op with a long and wild history which included many insane punk rock shows. We were the only ska band on that scene at the time and we were quite a curiosity for Dave Dictor and the MDC guys! They shouted the words to “Nightclub” by The Specials from the side of the stage while we played. Thing is, we weren’t playing Nightclub but it didn’t matter cos the chords were the same! Deadly Rain was actually A Deadly Reign – mind you this was the Reagan era – and we became fast friends. They were awesome and so was Whipping Boy. MDC of course tore it up. Those bands played so FAST! We tried (probably in vain) to keep our ska tempos groovin in the midst of stage diving and other mayhem. All-ages shows then were often underground affairs, not sanctioned by the authorities or whatever, so each event had a sort of one-off feel and anything could happen. This was some years before Gilman opened and gave all-ages shows in Berkeley a more permanent home. I don’t think I even saw this poster back then! But, by the magic of the Interwebs, here it is 🙂