MUSIC / THE UPBEAT : Reach for the Ska : Dancing will be mandatory when these locals crank up their horn-powered sound Friday at Toes Tavern.

Careerwise, the Upbeat are in no big hurry. Eight guys, eight years, two hours of material, no tapes, no T-shirts, no MTV, no record deals, no big deal. There’s an Upbeat sticker on the bathroom at Toes Tavern in Santa Barbara, which completes this year’s advertising campaign. The Upbeat play about once, twice, maybe three times a month, and that seems to be plenty.

Maybe it takes that long to recover from one of their gigs. This band, which plays raging ska music, is sort of the Raging Arb & the Redheads of Santa Barbara. They make any place happen. They are like the A-1 Sauce on the zebra steaks at a lion stag party.

Remember when Fishbone used to be good? The Upbeat are like that, only on 78. They’ll have Toes Tavern jumping on Friday night. The place has 25 kinds of beer, and when the Upbeat plays, one kind of drunk, dancing.

Toes used to be an auto detailing shop. Now it is one big room decorated in a finhead motif because it’s a surf bar. Here’s the important part--free peanuts. Thus, there should be a picture of Jimmy Carter or Mr. Peanut somewhere, but instead, there are old surf pictures all over the walls and surfboards hanging from the ceiling. And instead of MTV or one of the million sports channels showing high school badminton from Florida, the televisions show vintage early ‘60s surf films made back when there were plenty of waves and places to park.

What a band of Warriors these Upbeat guys are--Carpinteria Warriors, that is. The band started when they were freshmen at Carpinteria High School in the town known for “The World’s Safest Beach” and not much in the way of venues for live music. Despite their somewhat sheltered upbringing, singer Mike Organista seems to have gained a Jamaican-by-way-of-Carpinteria accent for introducing the songs.

“They call it ‘The World’s Safest Beach’ because no one has died in the water for awhile, but we have some killer waves in Carp,” said bassist and finhead Brandon Seider.

The thing that makes the Upbeat so supersonic is their wild and crazy horn section featuring Grant Cox on sax, Billy Keller on trombone and Mike Pussard on trumpet. These guys could turn a riot into a dance.

When the Upbeat cranks up one of their relentless high-powered ska tunes, the slammers, nearly all males, turn into dancing sharks throwing elbows like it’s a hockey game. There’s a larger-than- life-size plastic yellow rearing horse on stage behind the band with a UCSB stencil on its flank--even plastic horses shake their money makers when the Upbeat plays.

“We used to play parties in Carp, but the cops always came,” said guitarist Eric Vallen. “Then we used to do a lot of parties for students at Santa Barbara High School, which ended up being just like ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.’ They’re afraid to book us anymore. Now, we basically play all the clubs on State Street--Toes, Zelo, the Brewhouse and the Beach Shack. We opened for the Selector once at the Anaconda Theater.”

So is the world ready for the Upbeat, the album, the video-- anything more than they’re doing now? That remains to be seem, but the band has never even played Ventura. The Upbeat did appear on a CD compilation of California ska bands, but it’s on some obscure label.

“We don’t know how to get signed,” said Seider. “We’re absolutely clueless. We’ve just been jammin’. We don’t even have a manager; I take care of the bookings. Everybody has a job, so it’s pretty hard to set up practices, and to just keep people interested. But gigging, playing in front of a bunch of people, that’s the fun of it. We play good party music, about 70% originals and about 30% covers--the most we could play is two hours.”

Friday night’s will be, perhaps, the final Upbeat gig for December; the band and the world need a rest. Show up and, for cheap, you can skank to your heart’s content at a scene where you’d have to blow it pretty bad before the bouncers reintroduce you to the real world by winging you out onto State Street. Grab a pocketful of peanuts first if you feel a fit of too-much-fun coming on.

* WHERE AND WHEN

The Upbeat, Killer Green, Toes Tavern, 416 State St., Santa Barbara, Friday night, 9ish. For more information, call 965-4655.