Social Green is a reggae rock band fronted by brothers Jordan and Adam Chini. Their earliest gigs were at Escondido’s Metaphor Café. They’ve since appeared at the Jumping Turtle, Squidd Joe’s, Dream Street, 710 Beach Club, Winstons, and elsewhere around town.
“We have been playing in the San Diego and L.A. area for two years,” said Adam Chini. “We have opened for Eek-A-Mouse at Canes, and English Beat and Panto Banton and Buck-O-Nine at the Belly Up.”
The band’s song “Never Gets Any Easier” was a finalist in the “Social Action” category at the 2006 Independent Music Awards.
In April 2008, guitarist Sean Cox and bassist John Carter took part in a Fox TV pilot, Mythological X, partially shot at Winstons in O.B. The show is based around a cast of thirtysomething women, one of whom is in pursuit of a rock front man named Johnny Diamont (played by Eric Balfour, who appeared in Six Feet Under).
Winstons was used to film a segment in which the lead character meets Diamont, whose band was appearing at the club.
“I thought it was a scam,” says Cox, who was chosen to act in the scene. A Fox producer called him at 10 p.m. one night. “I told the lady she had the wrong number. There are so many people out there who are trying to rip you off. But then she told me she heard about us from the San Diego Independent Music Festival, so I knew it was legit.”
Cox, Carter, and drummer Emily O’Bannon (of local band Runhoney) were also hired to act as backup musicians. Cox says they lip-synched their way through two prerecorded music tracks.
“We happened to get picked for our looks,” says Carter. The Winstons shoot took 14 hours one day, 10 hours the next. “We pretended to play the same song, like, 100 times,” says Cox.
Carter says he was treated well. (He would not disclose how much he earned.) His only complaint is how the extras were treated.
“They were treated like shit, yet they were working harder than us,” says Carter. He says members of local reggae band Vegitation were among the 80 or so extras hired for the shoot.
“When we took a lunch break, this coordinator yelled out, ‘Nobody eats till the band eats,’ ” says Cox. “Me and Jon yelled out and said, ‘Hey, man, let them eat.’ ”
In 2016, Sean Cox and Adam Chini teamed up again in the band the Lucy Ring (formerly known as the Sinclairs).