Reel Big Fish. Save Ferris. Less than Jake. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
I used to love these bands back in the late 90s. What happened?
I’ve seen ads for both Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake shows here in the Tampa Bay area within the last year or so. Reel Big Fish is playing the Warped Tour this year as well. Save Ferris broke up in 2002, according to Wikipedia. I always thought Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was more of a swing revival band, and I haven’t heard much of anything about them in a long time. Lots of other ska bands that were popular in the late 90s/early 2000s are still around and touring. Others broke up or decided to do other things, just like any other type of band. Ska isn’t hugely popular right now, at least not in terms of radio or MTV play, but it’s still around.
I agree with that. Maybe thinking of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones?
I like the Third Wave ska. Got Reel Big Fish and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones on iTunes. Also Madness, The Specials, AWOL (formerly 7 Minds – or currently; I’ve forgotten), and one or two songs each from Undercover S.K.A., Mephiskapheles, Downbeat Rulers, and others. GPCs by Insatiable is one of those songs that pops into my head all the time. I love that music! 
Fishbone played in town a couple of years ago. They played an all-ska set, which kind of ticked off my friend because he was a big fan of their punk songs. I liked it though.
Gwen Stefani used to be ska, in the band No Doubt. Now she is a fusion of techno and r&b.
It was a niche thing for a while, then it got huge, then it died back down to a nice comfortable niche status again.
Ska was around a long time before Reel Big Fish and it will be around for a long time to come.
What happened to motown and hair bands?
Wait until 2015 or so, the nostalgia circuit will come back around to ska. 
The ska & 2 tone of “my generation” was Madness, The Specials, Special AKA, Fishbone, Untouchables, Prince Buster, The Skatalites, The Selecter…
It looks like the only Untouchables video up on You Tube right now is “Free Yourself,” but damn, that took me back! Lots of Fishbone up there right now…
A lot of those 3rd wave ska bands that made a blip in the late 90s were around for years before and are still around. The mainstream toyed with them, just like they’re toying with emo now, but it wasn’t a love affair destined to last. Most people who weren’t into that stuff anyway won’t remember the 5 minutes it was popular for.
I still like the 1st and 2nd wave stuff, but as much as I loved the 3rd wave stuff in the 90s it has not aged well. Hey Brother, Can you Spare some Ska? was one of my favorite albums for years, but I dusted it off a few months ago and could not even maintain my excitement throughout one listen. I think I made it halfway or so. Reel Big Fish and Less Then Jake sound almost cringeworthy to me now.
Big Bad Voodoo Lou will no doubt get on this thread and educate us - this is his domain.
Have you heard the new band Vampire Weekend? They sound like a cross between, oh, New Order, Modern English and The English Beat. In other words, totally derivative of the 80’s but really good…
I thought the whole ska / swing revival thing sort of peaked around 1998.
Interestingly, a bunch of guys I used to hang with in high school formed their own ska band and one of them went on to play with the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones.
Other than that, I got nothing.
I have been looking for Untouchables for years. I miss that band. I did find I Spy for FBI and it’s on my player along with some Madness and The Specials.
Wasn’t there usually like nine people in these bands? I imagine that would make it tougher to make a living than in a smaller band, when there’s less people to divvy up the pay. I wonder if that was a reason for less ska bands than other bands.
Somewhere I have Wild Child on vinyl… such a great album. Go watch “Free Yourself” and you’ll feel better! Damned, but Clyde Grimes looks young in it…
I saw Pauline Black (The Selecter) a year or two ago, playing with the revival of the Specials. She was awesome. Of course.
One of my biggest music-related regrets is not seeing the Pilfers before they broke up. If you’re reading this thread and you’ve never heard of them, listen to their self-titled CD. Coolie Ranx from the Toasters on vocals and Vinny Nobile from Bim Skala Bim on vocals and trombone. Fantastic stuff.
Yeah, I wish I could say it was mine, but I wasn’t into swing and ska more than simply enjoying the music. I just thought Bosstone made for a damn fine internet handle. 
This led to the poignant Onion headline, circa 1999, heralding the decline of ska: “Ska Band Outnumbers Audience”. There was no story attached–the headline said it all.
Before my SDMB membership expires, I figured I’d chime in. I was in the midst of both the ska and swing scenes from 1996 to '98, when they were at their peaks. I was in college, a sax player, away from home for the first time, and I owned some pretty cool ties, so everything fell into place for me. I had always loved this kind of music, and for the first time it seemed like other people were digging it too. Sadly, they were just fads (at least in Florida), but many of the bands are still around, and fanbases still exist as well.
I played sax in a ska-punk band called Baker Act during this time – we actually have a postmortem Myspace page with some song samples and other goodies. Less Than Jake from Gainesville, FL had recently signed to Capitol Records and gone on tour with Blink 182, so they were hometown heroes enjoying some national exposure during those years. Their bass player Roger actually recorded a demo tape for us in his apartment studio, full of action figures and Pez dispensers. Unfortunately, we never shared their success – we released a few songs on compilations as well as unmastered demo tapes, but never came out with a real album. At times we sounded a bit too close to them as well, and one wit actually dismissed us as “Less than Less Than Jake.” But we toured Florida and made it as far as New Orleans, and it was still one of the most fun and exciting times of my life, being part of an honest-to-goodness music scene, however short-lived.
Beyond that, I went to every show I could in those days, and being a college town, Gainesville got a lot of great bands passing through. Between that and having a few back-to-back Warped Tours in the late '90s with great lineups, I saw the legendary Skatalites, the Specials, the Toasters, the Scofflaws, the Slackers, the Pietasters (one of my favorite ska bands ever), the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Hepcat (featuring actor Alex Desert, the black guy from Swingers), Skavoovie and the Epitones, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, the Aquabats, Goldfinger, Rancid, the Mad Caddies, Bim Skala Bim, Mustard Plug, MU330, Skinnerbox, the Decepticonz, the Hippos, Spring-Heeled Jack, Magadog, Skif Dank, the Usuals (a wonderful female-fronted traditional ska band from Gainesville), and countless others. Many of those ska bands are still around, although some, like Less Than Jake and Reel Big Fish, adapted to changing trends by phasing out their horn sections and shifting to more of a pop-punk sound.
On the swing side of things, I also got to see Royal Crown Revue (my favorite of all the ‘90s swing bands), the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (who could play everything from swing to punk, ska to country, metal to ballads), Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (my namesake, though not my favorite), the Mighty Blue Kings, Rocket 88, Seven-Foot Politic (an almost-forgotten swing/rockabilly quartet from Athens, GA), and many more.
Of course you got swing crossing over into rockabilly, which brought the Reverend Horton Heat to town along with the Amazing Crowns, the Hillbilly Hellcats, the Frantic Flattops, Psycho Charger, and Gainesville’s own DblWide, and once you turned up the reverb on the guitars, you got surf music bands too: Los Straitjackets, Man… Or Astroman?, the Red Elvises. To this day, I’m still crazy about ska, swing, rockabilly, and surf music, even though hardly anyone else seems to be anymore. I love the fashions that go along with them and even the dancing… and they all remind me of good times in the late '90s.
For swing, I always like Big Time Operator- they had nice mix of originals and covers on the album that I inherited along with my Grandpa’s Lincoln. Seriously- my brother had started turning our 80 year old grandpa on to the “new swing” right before he died.
Actually those were the guys I knew (three of them at least). I’ve never heard them play though.
We played a show with them at the Cow Haus in Tallahassee, Florida (now long gone, I’m sure) in March 1997. Small world.