COURTESY OF GLORIA CHUNG Six-Five-0 comes back from Vegas to headline a night of cover bands at Kapono's.

6 bands to rock
Kapono’s

The word "ultimate" has several meanings, such as farthest or most remote, last, utmost, supreme elemental and maximum.

"Get Down Tonight! The Ultimate Dance Party" Featuring Six-Five-0, Aura, eight0eight, Shining Star, H20 and Planet Jane Where: Kapono's, Aloha Tower Marketplace When: 8 p.m. tomorrow Tickets: $20 presale and $25 at the door, 21 and over. Available at Kapono's, Liquor Connection, Cheapo Music, Rainbow Music & Books, Samurai, Jelly's Aiea and Hungry Ear Kailua Call: 545-3642

Honolulu will learn tomorrow night which of those meanings is most apt as six bands pool their talents in "Get Down Tonight! The Ultimate Dance Party," a veritable cover band extravaganza at Kapono's.

Cover bands -- nightclub and lounge acts whose repertoire solely consists of covers of the hits of the day -- ruled Waikiki back in the 1970s and early '80s. That time is long gone, however, and few local musicians who are serious about their profession these days take the description of being a cover band as a compliment.

All too few play "oldies" with any degree of respect to the original either.

Joi Mendoza, lead vocalist of Six-Five-0, the designated headline band tomorrow night, says things are different in the band's hometurf of Las Vegas.

"People are more into cover bands playing '50s, '60s, '70s to the present. The bands who want to (play original music) aren't seen much in the lounges here," she explained, calling from Vegas Tuesday afternoon. A former isle resident and member of local cover band Aura, her children by ex-husband and former bandmate Vincent Mendoza are already in Hawaii, catching up with their grandmother and numerous Mendoza uncles, aunts and cousins.

"It's pretty the same front line as when we played at the Outrigger (in 1996)," she says. Back then, however, they were all members of Aura, the Mendoza family band whose roots stretch back to the late-'60s when the oldest Mendoza siblings were performing as the Nomads.

Aura's 1996 engagement at the Outrigger Main Showroom seemed to be a new beginning for the band as the most promising show band since the original Krush 15 years previous, and it appeared that the group was being groomed for bigger things.

It was then that four members of Honolulu abruptly quit that veteran show band and invited Joi and Vincent to join them in forming a new band called Soul'd Out. The remaining members of Honolulu were then fired from their regular gig at the Esprit Nightclub at the Sheraton Waikiki and replaced by, you guessed it, Soul'd Out.

Vincent's brothers, Michael and Cliff, were among the musicians in Honolulu who lost their jobs, but Michael ended up joining Soul'd Out in 1997, and Cliff signed on a couple years after that.

Now, Michael and Cliff are current members of the renamed Six-Five-0, along with Joi.

"It has been an interesting transition," Joi says politely, summing up the group's move to Las Vegas six years ago, the assorted personnel changes, and her divorce from Vincent.

The bottom line -- in a totally bottom line business -- is that cover bands are working in Vegas.

"I'm doing a lot of alternative rock," she says. "Evanescence, Avril Lavigne, and also Alicia Keys, but we put some horn section in it. Michael and Cliff are also doing some Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang and R. Kelly. Working with them is almost like a reunion."

On a personal note, Joi has since remarried for over five years to a chips boss in a Vegas casino.

His name -- Vincent.

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