Never been a big fan of the US variants of ska. I think The Beat, The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, Bad Manners, and that lot brought the Trojan sound to the modern day. Two exceptions for me would be Rancid and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I really enjoy both of these bands’ music, and it’s really ska. The Bosstones’ Let’s Face It is a great, great album with plenty to dance to.
Sublime was fun, and should be lauded for blending punk, reggae, ska, dub, and hip-hop together, but they weren’t the first to make ska “danceable.” They missed that landmark by a few decades. They weren’t even the first third-wave ska band to play poppy, danceable music. Don’t get me wrong, I like them too, but they will go down in history for their blend of styles and for Brad’s overdose, and that’s pretty much it.
Hours and hours of music to make a girl feel ayrie. Thanks you guys!
What did you end up downloading or buying? Let us know!
Try some Doper Ska! My old band Fenster has 3 CD’s, quite a few danceable tunes on em. There available on CDbaby.com, free samples of tracks there too!
My favorite Ska band has to be The Skoidats. IMO their best album was The Times, several good danceable tracks there too. Their drummer is one of my heroes, so tasty. Johnny Socko has a ton of good songs you can dance to as well.
In case the Sublime thing interests you, my Sublime cover band, The Reefers, is actively playing out now Reefers (reefersband) on Myspace. There will soon be audio and video available there.
This is what I already had: Tosh, Marley (jr and sr), Supercat, Yellowman, Mad Lion, and Steel Pulse. Ska: Sublime, Madness, Skoidats, Skindred, Fishbone, Bosstones, Slackers, No Doubt, Specials.
This is what I bought: Skavoovie, Pietasters, Toots, Buster and Toasters
This is what I picked for the party: Lumidee, Madness, Bosstones, Shaggy (cause he’s familiar), early No Doubt, Toots, Hepcat, Pietasters, Buster, UB40, and Sublime. (Ska early, reggae late)
I don’t know if my uptight friends will loosen up, but after hours of touring Jamaica, the UK and Socal- I am tanned and relaxed.
I’m heading over to dnooman’s recommendations now…
Oh, absolutely.
I hope my post didn’t make it sound like that’s what I thought.
They made it “danceable” for ME.
Cheers.
I’ve been meaning to start a thread about recommendations for ska music - think I’ll just subscribe to this one instead. Bring 'em on!
If you like poppy ska-punk, I can recommend no better than Gainesville, Florida’s own Less Than Jake, a great bunch of hard-working guys who were very good to my own ska-punk band when we were starting up in the same town. Their earlier albums are best, since they started phasing out the ska rhythms and horn parts later on. Pezcore and Losing Streak are necessary ska-punk albums.
Rancid is a punk band that only dabbled in ska, but …And Out Come the Wolves is one of my favorite albums of the '90s, and it’s full of catchy, poppy, danceable tracks. Almost any song on it could have been a radio single at the height of ska’s mainstream popularity in the late '90s.
Other ska-punk recommendations:
Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off (even though almost all the songs are about being a poppy ska-punk band making it big and selling out).
Save Ferris - It Means Everything (worth it for “Spam” and the cover of “Come On Eileen”).
Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Let’s Face It (their most accessible and danceable album).
Goldfinger - their self-titled album is also full of ska-pop-punk gems.
Most of these should be easy enough to find cheap, perhaps in the Amazon Marketplace.
check out Monkey Mafia for some technoish danceable reggae influenced tunes, I live the album shoot the boss
I always say you can’t go wrong with Dread Zeppelin http://www.dreadzeppelin.com 
Well, actually it is very wrong, but still needed to be linked to…
If you’re open to trying some Asian-influenced ragga, sometimes called bhangramuffin, give Apache Indian a go. A lot of people have probably heard Boomshackalak before, but some other good songs are:
Raggamuffin Girl
Chok There
That Girl
Global Talk
Acting Shady
In that case, I can’t let the thread go by without mentioning my second-favorite ska band (after Madness): Bad Manners.
The Suburban Legends
Streetlight Manifesto
Goldfinger
Mad Caddies (Good band! Their song Cannonball rocks my pants!)
The Hippos
The Toasters
*The Pinstripes
tons more…
Surbey is a big ska fan 
- How could I forget the Pinstripes?! Great indie band out of New Jersey. Pretty up-beat, pretty fun
F’ing awesome!
I saw them live once, in Oxford, MS.
They put on an absolutely wonderful reggae/Elvis/Zeppelin show.
Of course my perception might have been alterred slightly due to certain medicinal herbs. 
Nice guys. My band played a few gigs with them on a Florida tour back in 1997.
We need more love for the Plug. Mustard Plug
Very fun, very danceable (well their first 2 full albums…haven’t listened much since) and very cool guys. Oooh and free downloads on their site!
And if you want to top off that burger try a little bit of Skankin’ Pickle.
Lest we forget the Scofflaws who’s membership seems to have changed in recent years…but their stuff is still smooth as silk.
What exactly is “Ska” anyway? It’s kind of like I know it when I hear it, but it seems like basically an awesome mishmash of reggae, punk, swing jazz, funk and God knows what else.
Skater music. Music to accompany mad shredding, grinds, and cheeba. Half reggae/ half punk.
Erm…a bit of a woosh I hope?
Ska is the precursor to reggae. You know reggae, right? Accented up beat (one - AH - two - AH - three - AH - four AH) Ska tends to be a little faster and harder then reggae and include horns. The First Wave was all pretty much Jamaican. Second wave focused more on the UK. Third Wave went from the UK to the US and mixed more with punk (the stuff Beaucarnea describes is more “ska core” - ska + hardcore (punk)). The Mighty Might Bosstones, for example, would be ska core.
There’s a lot of image and culture associated with ska. First having to do with Rude Boys (the ska punks), then in the 70’s 2Tone era the message became more about having a good time in the name of fighting racism. Third Wave was also about that but more emphasis on the “having a good time.” There’s a lot of clothing and shoes associated with ska 
Bands like Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger are at the “end” of the ska wave cycle - more punk with horns than ska sometimes. A lot of it depends on the fans and how much they embrace the Rudy culture. Bands like these are usually just lumped in with the Blink 182 fans and stuff so you don’t find the culture so much at shows.
Check out the Wikipedia article it’s pretty good.