You need to be listening to the Super Soul Bros.
“The Super Soul Bros are what would happen if you jammed a James Brown record into a Super Nintendo.”
That quote, found on their website (www.SuperSoulBros.com), perfectly sums up the Super Soul Bros., a band I’ve come to absolutely adore over the past five years. Let me start by telling you how I discovered this funky video game music band.
Back in 2014, my husband Jimmy and our best friend James and I headed to Boston for PAX East, a video game convention we used to attend annually. We were walking around the marketplace, looking for more Sega Saturn games to buy, when we stumbled upon the Fangamer booth. Obviously I HAD to have the BioShock Infinite pins, so I promptly bought those. While waiting in line, I couldn’t help but tap my foot and bob my head to video game music medley being played on the keyboard by the guy with the cool hat right outside the booth. We said hello to him, told him we loved his playing, and he told us about his band: Super Soul Bros. That guy was Robbie Benson, the keyboardist and bandleader.
Fast forward to MAGFest 2016, where we finally got to see the full band perform after listening to their music nonstop for two years. We have now seen them more times than I can count … definitely at least 10. I make it a point to try to see all their sets every year at MAGFest, because the set list is always slightly different, and find myself still in awe every time I get to hear them play live.
I was elated the first time I heard them play their version of Dire, Dire Docks from Super Mario 64, which happens to be one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever. Hearing a band play music that means so much to me, and play it so damn well, is a feeling I will never be able to describe.
If you want to hear five incredibly talented (and also super friendly) dudes play jazzy, funky versions of your favorite video game (and sometimes cartoon & anime) tunes, I highly recommend you check out the Super Soul Bros.
Check out their music on Spotify and YouTube, and buy their albums and other sweet merch once you’re as obsessed with them as I am.
Follow the Super Soul Bros. on Twitter: @supersoulbros. Follow me, too: @cgottowhite.
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Cassie Gotto-White is a gamer, a planner babe, and a boba tea fanatic. She discovered her passion for video games at age six when she was given an NES Top Loader by her aunt. Her current main consoles are the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Some of her favorite games include The Last of Us, the Uncharted series, the Yakuza series, Persona 5, and Night in the Woods. Follow her on Instagram at @planningwithcass and YouTube at YouTube.com/PlanningwithCass.
