Saba by Mephiskapheles played on the iPod a bit ago, and when I think of Mephiskapheles I can’t help but think about The Bumble Bee Tuna Song. Save Ferris’s version of Come On Eilene played today, too. And there were other songs from my Ska playlist. (I’m playing the general library on shuffle, so it’s getting a bit of this and a bit of that.)
Ska reminds me of hanging out with friends, partying, and generally having a good time. I’d rather be doing that than looking at this data and being all old an’ shite.
Yeah my “ska era” was when I used to go to shows, dance, seek out particular fashion, read 'zines, collect cool sticker and dig through record bins. I was even in a ska band for a short while! Fun times.
It’s still pretty useful for house cleanin’ music.
And… Another one by Reel Big Fish playing right now.
It’s definitely ‘happy music’. Nowadays nobody invites me to parties, there are no cool shows where I live, no time for reading much… At least the SO likes my black ‘stingy’ pork pie. I should start wearing it again.
You were in a ska band? You know how to tell when ska ended? It’s when the bands got bigger than the audiences.
The other day I was in a thrift shop and found a Less Than Jake CD for $2. They studied at the University of Florida right around the time I was in school there, but I had never heard their songs before, and I thought it was cool that I found their album. It turns out that I’m just not much of a ska fan–the songs were OK, but I don’t know if I need to listen to them again. It may end up being a single-use record, if you will. It wasn’t quite the thrift shop come-up that Macklemore rapped about.
Ska-punk hits me in the nostalgia glad heavier than any buzzfeed article can ever hope to. Funny enough, it also gets me all pumped up and ready to jump around for hours on end.
(I just noticed that sounds like a good name for a Ska band. The Skalives. Or how about Skalive Oil? I always admired the creative names for Ska bands. Chicago’s own Skapone is one of my favorites. And, of course, the original Ska group The Skatallites. Anyway, check out the link. Some great stuff there.)
Ska was a scene, which had relatively old-school dress and required horns to play. In that sense it competed with swing dance, in that neither could really thrive outside a strongly urban subculture. That, I think, killed both off as national crazes.
I love how ska keeps rising from the dead, infecting each generation anew, and each generation leaving its own imprint. There was the 60s Jamaica scene, then the 1979-1984 British scene, then the 90s American scene – plus the Latin American scene, which had some great ska in the 90s and 2000s (Fabulosos Cadillacs in Argentina, and others). Is it ripe for another revival? I’d say so.
