Despite being best known nowadays for his upcoming role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Oscar Isaac actually got his start in the entertainment industry more on the music side of things. He was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday, and he told Kimmel that he was in a variety of ska bands in south Florida in the 90s.
He rattled off a few of the band names, and we’re surprised at the lack of ska-based puns, which ska bands seem to love doing. His former groups include Petrified Frogs, Closet Heterosexuals, The Worms, and Blinking Underdogs. In the video above, you can see a younger Isaac wearing an undershirt and playing bass for The Worms on May 29, 1996, at Ray’s Downtown Blues in West Palm Beach, Florida.
He saw more success with Blinking Underdogs, though, as that band actually “opened” for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, arguably the most popular ska band of the ’80s and ’90s. “Opened” is the word Isaac used with Kimmel, but he clarified that to mean that they played on the same festival stage hours before The Mighty Mighty Bosstones went on. Coincidentally, Bosstones frontman Dicky Barrett is also the announcer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, so that was a serendipitous sort of reunion for him and Isaac.
You can actually listen to a few Blinking Underdogs songs on YouTube, and if you’re sad that the band is no longer together, as you probably expected, you have Isaac’s acting career to thank for that. In an interview earlier this year, Isaac said the reason the band broke up is because he moved to New York to go to school, and then acting started to take off, and here we are.
Blinking Underdogs lives on in a way, though: The bassist for the group went on to join alternative metal band Orgy, whose 1998 album Candyass went Platinum in the U.S.
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HT: ScreenCrush
Featured image courtesy of Katrin Neuhaus
