Greyboy Allstars: Como De Allstars

Como De Allstars is the fifth studio album and sixth overall from The Greyboy Allstars and it’s terrific from track-to-track. GBA formed over than 25 years ago in San Diego and immediately rekindled the light of “boogaloo” music, a popular Latin form from the 1960s in New York City. Their music has a feel for funk, jazz, beach and soul music.

Since their seminal album West Coast Boogaloo, this group has been hitting us with great but all too infrequent albums and even less frequent live shows. The Greyboy Allstars play together a few times a year now finding perennial respite from their busier gigs. On one such trek, they were in Texas for a rare weekend of shows. In Dallas, though, their set was canned due to raging weather. They found an open rehearsal room and challenged themselves to write their first new tunes in half a decade. They reveled in the same rapport they felt when they first stepped into a practice so long ago. “Getting the physical bodies together is almost impossible, given our schedules,” says Elgin Park (Michael Andrews, guitar). “But it immediately feels like it did back then. We have such a great time.”

Denson captured the Dallas jams with his laptop and passed them around. The Allstars soon reconvened for another writing session in San Diego, the band’s cradle that remains the hometown for half its members. They decided to capture these songs much like they’d done in their earliest days, particularly for West Coast Boogaloo—on the cheap and on the quick, without overthinking a concept or production.

They dubbed the sessions Como de Allstars as a spin on the Spanish phrase como de costumbre, or “as per usual,” since they’ve always been at their best when plowing through tunes without hesitation. The Greyboy Allstars’ dual missions—to preserve the heritage of jazz-funk giants and empower it to grow on their terms—seem timeless now, as witnessed by their return with Como De Allstars.

Check out my comments and listen track-by-track below.