Hepcat

A ska-revival band from Southern California. They are awesome. Using reggae, rock steady, R&B, and jazz along with Caribbean melodies, soul, and swinging rhythms. These guys are awesome. And I believe Elyse Rogers from Dance Hall Crashers is involved with them some how. Alex Desert you might recognise from the movies Swingers, PCU, Playing God, and the tv shows Becker, Boy Meets World, The Flash, and others.

The core members were going to many ska shows, but weren't finding what they really wanted to hear. They would get the DJ's to spin some rocksteady and what not between sets and wonder why nobody was playing any new music like that. So they finally decided to do it themselves.

Band:

• Greg Lee -- vocals
• Alex Desert -- vocals
• Deston Berry -- keboard
• Aaron Owens -- guitar
• Dave Fuentes -- bass
• Efren Santana -- sax
• Raul Talavera -- sax
• Kincaid Smith -- trumpet
• Scott Abels -- drums

Albums:

• Out of Nowhere (1993)
• Scientific (1996)
• Right on Time (1998)

I know a hepcat. Not fashionable and/or interested in swing music, Antoinette sells flowers outside Au Bon Pain at One Broadway, The One True Center of the Universe (at least as far as many New Havenites are concerned). She also knows the names, relationships, and business of a good number of people who pass by -- ask her whether So-and-so has passed by, and she'll tell you, also what they were wearing, which store they entered last, and so on. Very useful!

In African villages, the hepcat was an important person: sitting at the edge of the marketplace, he/she was a living bulletin board, messenger, and news/gossip/rumor source, just short of being one of the living geneologists you saw in Roots. On this side of the Atlantic, the word (originally "heppicat", or "one who has opened their eyes") got cut in two to become "cat" (as in random person) and "hip" (as in "hippie", or "someone who knows what's going ON!") Interesting, eh?