DUB PISTOLS /
TOUR
STYLE(S)
ELECTRO-DUB / DRUM & BASS
ORIGIN
UK
CONTACT
XABI / live@soulbeatsmusic.com
NEWS
EUROPEAN TOUR 2024
AVAILABLE BOOKING FRANCE 2024 – 2025
BIO
Sometimes, we need to be tested to find meaning in our existence on Earth. This is certainly true for the Dub Pistols, the reggae-breaks-jungle mashup gangsters who have become festival pillars, with a remarkable story that resembles an inspiring tale of the rock’n’roll life.
With over 20 years in the music industry, the Dub Pistols have collaborated with heroes such as The Specials, Busta Rhymes, Horace Andy, Madness, and Gregory Isaacs. They have gone through band members just as they have gone through hedonistic adventures, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds and having “more drugs than we knew what to do with” – as stated by Barry Ashworth, the dapper frontman of the Pistols, a child of the Summer of Love generation from South London who formed a band because he loved the Happy Mondays and never looked back.
That should have been a recipe for fading into obscurity. “In this band, we have a motto,” says Barry. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” (Murphy’s Law). Instead, it became the birth of the Dub Pistols.
The group, which initially started in the mid-90s with Barry as a DJ on the turntables and musicians improvising over it (“a fucking racket,” he says with a laugh), transformed into a powerful live machine, becoming a regular at festivals and continually gaining new fans at Glastonbury, Bestival, Beat-Herder, and across Europe.
Today, the Dub Pistols are one of the few working-class bands carrying the flame of reggae sound system music, the secret rhythm of Britain, from ska and rocksteady to grime and dubstep, and everything in between, including Soul II Soul. “I always thought being in a band wasn’t for people like me,” admits Barry. “It was more of a middle-class thing. The Mondays changed that. We’re part of street music, working-class music. It’s never going to go away.”
Not long ago, the reformed Happy Mondays tweeted that the Dub Pistols were the best live band they had seen in years.
“I say we’re the most successful unsuccessful band of all time—and the laziest hard-working bastards in the world. Sometimes, I can’t believe we’re still here, but we’ve survived and we’re better than ever.”
“You know what? It’s like they say,” he smiles. “If you do something you love, you never work a day in your life.”
EUROPEAN TOUR 2024 :
12 APRIL – MJC PICAUD – CANNES (FRANCE)
19 APRIL– QUERBEAT FESTIVAL – (GERMANY)
20 APRIL – FREEDOM SOUNDS – KÖLN (GERMANY)
02 MAY – ZAANDAM – PODIUM DE FLUX (NETHERLANDS)
04 MAY – OSRODEK KULTURY – BOGATYNIA (POLAND)
05 MAY– HYDROZAGADKA – WARSAW (POLAND)
07 MAY – LUCERNA MUSIC BAR – PRAGUE (CZECHIA)
08 MAY– VINTAGE INDUSTRIAL – ZAGREB (CROATIA)
09 MAY – A38 – BUDAPEST (HUNGARY)
11 MAY– THE PURGATORY – SOFIA (BULGARIA)
15 MAY – SEDEL – LUZERN (SWITZERLAND)
17 MAY – GROUNDS – ROTTERDAM (NETHERLANDS)
18 MAY – ESPACE BRASSENS – MANTES LA JOLIE (FRANCE)