In downtown El Paso sits an old building on Texas Ave that has been growing slowly as a music venue, bringing in legendary artists with a variety of different genres of music. One cold Texas night, the ’80s band The Toasters unloaded their van and set up on a stage, anticipating a crowd of ska fans to welcome them to town. They had two local bands join them, La Chapuza and Mia Antifa, both of which have established their position in the ska community here in El Paso.  

Mia Antifa, an El Paso, Texas-born band, started in 2017 as a solo project. By 202,0 the band started adding members, and by 2021, after the pandemic, they started performing shows. They are a punk ska band with attitude. They walked out on stage, and the crowd stepped closer to the barrier, creating a space in the middle for the crowd to form a mosh pit. This all started a wild night of ska music flowing into the streets of the city.  

They have one studio album released, their debut album Coming Home, and three self-recorded EPs since 2021. There is a new album, hopefully to be completed later this year; their fans are eagerly looking for its release. Their most recent tour was a short run of five shows in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Menifee, Los Angeles, and San Diego, California. Their next tour is coming up Feb. 18-21, supporting our brother band, Worm Ceiling, and playing in Albuquerque, with a few shows in Colorado, and ending at the Crested Butte Ska/Punk Festival in Crested Butte, CO. 

Mia Antifa recently came off a tour in time to perform in their hometown. The crowd was excited to see them on stage. If you want to follow them, here are a few links. 

https://www.facebook.com/miaantifa

https://www.instagram.com/miaantifa

La Chapuza, another punk ska band from El Paso, which I recently caught their performance at another location just a few weeks ago. They didn’t disappoint me at this evening’s performance at Lowbrow. They are a 7- to 9-piece band that fills a stage with a full brass ensemble, keyboardist, guitarist, drummer, and bassist. They also have guest musicians as well.  

La Chapuza has been together since 2008; they have had various musicians come and go, but the core music and theme have not changed. Their presence on stage is moving, I mean, physically moving. At any given time during their performance, someone is dancing, and so in tune with the music, they make you want to dance with them.  

Here are a few links to their social media and music pages. 

https://www.facebook.com/lachapuza

https://www.instagram.com/lachapuzaska

The Toasters is a band formed in New York City in 1981 by Robert Hingley, known as Buck, an Englishman who settled in NYC the year before forming the band. The original members of the band were all employees of the Forbidden Planet Comic Bookstore. They are part of the original American third wave of ska bands. Their first single was released in 1983, and 21 albums later, in 2023, they produced the last album, titled Men In Underwear.  

The band has been through a lot of musicians, and the number of band members on stage at a live performance is constantly changing; the only original member is Buck. The band had four members, with Buck, and by the end of the night, you would have sworn there were eight to 10 members there. Buck announced at the beginning of the show that he was going to sit during the performance because he had done something to a disk in his back, but he asked the crowd if they could do all the moving for him, which the crowd had no problems doing; there was a continuous mosh circle going throughout the night. 

The playlist was long, and they played many of the fan favorites, some songs older than the fans dancing to them. The Toasters blend of ska, pop, R&B, and calypso makes them one of the most unique-sounding ska bands out there, and that is what has kept the band as popular as it has been, and from looking at the crowd at the Lowbrow Palace, the age of the fans was in their mid 20’s on average.  

If you want to know more about The Toasters, you can go to these links and learn more.  

https://www.facebook.com/TheToastersNYCSKA

https://www.instagram.com/toastersnyc

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