Untouchables is a collaboration of two bands, Dawap my self Tony Thompson and Morris Russell and a Philadelphia band called Rated X, whom i had the pleasure of performing with to replace their guitarist.
I met Reggie Young bassist and band leader while on a trip to KL Malaysia. I walked into this club and i couldn't believe my ears Rated X was beyond hot. They had the place smoking. My self and Reggie exchanged numbers.
They asked me to join, and later i pulled in Morris Russell. Some member changes and host of gigs later, we decided to call our selves The Untouchables. We added a super vocalist Chad who also comes from a different band.
Chad performed great Bob Marley songs to The Untouchables. A great dancer and just a great person to hangout with. May he rest in peace.
Our first gig together was a place called Where Else in Singapore. However we had to stay in Malaysia for three weeks prior to our visa application.
Untouchables consisted of 6 sometimes 7 members, mostly 6 as the budgets for bands weren't consistant.
So we were in a place called JB Malaysia, town across the border from Singapore with not much money. We settled at a hotel there, and we would go to one room and rehearse the songs. The hotel was not very nice either, it had huge cockroaches and rats that kept us company, so we started venturing out to see if there was another place with better conditions. and wah lah we found it and it sat on top of a another club in JB called Stephanie. We would ask the manager if we could sit in a rather practice to get our show together for singapore.
And the band Untouchables was born.
The club owner said : hey you can perform here and practice. He payed for our hotel rooms and food while we were waiting for our visa to clear so that was right on time.
The Untouchables performed and was based in Singapore. We played Hardrock Cafe, Where Else club, Paulaner Brauhaus, Cesars night club, Top Ten night club.
We then were offered a contract to Jakarta and performed at a club under Radisson hotel
by the time we got to Jakarta, the hotel wasn’t ready, so we ended up on a month vacation at the hotel all expenses paid, but it got a bit boring there so we started doing a few show in Bandung Indonesia until the hotel was ready.
Bandung was a nice sort of quiet town, We would perform there and had a very nice time. The crowd was very receptive. At this time Untouchables became a very strong band, the fire of Rated X and the showmanship of Dawap. The Untouchables while in Jakarta we sat in other clubs just to crush the bands. We sat in Hardrock Cafe in Jakarta. The band that was performing there invited us on stage so we decided to take their offer and walked on stage in a single file. The audience cheered as we picked up the instruments. We then controlled the room. We were immediately offered a contract to perform the Hard Rock Cafe in Jakarta.
Upon finishing the contract in Singapore we were offered to open the Sheraton Club in Thailand. Once we got there, there were no amps or drums or anything. So we were handed a blank check to buy what ever we needed. And with that we bought 40000 dollars worth of equipment. Of course it belonged to the club but it was a great feeling. hahahah
The club was jumping and this was the first time i witnessed other club managers would try and sabotage the show by asking to sit in on an instrument like drums and start playing until we asked them to get off the drums. They would do this because we were attracting their customers. So we had to be careful who we let sit in on our shows.
The Untouchables were more than friends. We were brothers. We had the bond and it showed in our music. Our keyboardist was Darryl Austin, he was also our musical director. He now performs with members of the 5th dimension Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis junior, also works with Aretha Franklyn.
Whenever a customer requested a song Darryl could play it or fake it. He was a master and still is and i'm sure doing quite well in Los Angeles today.
Most of the gigs were done by myself and Reggie Young a solid pocket bass player, Reggie has played with Maze, Patti Labelle and host of other name acts. He also comes from musical family.