So between 1983 and 1998, in the United States, Ska had gone from being a fringe genre known only to a handful to a medium sized youth movement.

It was small compared to Punk, which it was often regarded as a poor relation of. 

Ska was largest on the washington-boston east coast and the san francisco-san diego west coast, but they were significant pockets of popularity in Florida, the midwest, and throughout the inland western cities.  Almost every american city of any size could boast a reasonably popular local ska band.

It had enough popularity that occasionaly in the mid-90s a song by a band would get propelled into the lower and mid level of the charts.

After starting out as an english inspired style, American ska had developed its own sub-genres.  For better or worse.  Punk-ska. Skacore.  Third wave ska.  ska jazz.  trad ska.  and a million more names Im sure.

American ska bands had put out 100s if not more than a thousand albums.  For an up and coming American band by 1995-6 or so, you were probably much more aware of American ska bands than English or Jamaican ones.  God forbid other European, Asian, or Latin American ska bands.  Your immediate inspiration to play "ska" was 90plus percent American. 

In 1998, it seemed almost overnight ska went from being somewhat popular to being reviled once again.

I always find it funny that in Ska bands you often find lots of derision of ska.  I guess part of it its the nature of bands.  You usually have part of a band that has the original creative impulse that sets the musical direction.  They start the band.  But then they have to find the musicians to fill out the ranks so they end up grabbing people with all kinds of musical backgrounds.   

Horn players are amongst the worst.  So many of them would rather be playing some sort of jazz.  A bunch of effette sophisticates.  Guitar players chafe at playing upbeats.  Drummers hate hitting rimshots.  Bass players want to know why they can’t slap...just a little bit!

Of course, ska bands have always had inferiority complexes.  Friends say, "hey, your songs are pretty good, why dont you play one normal?"   "If you change your style just a little bit you could really get a lot more popular."  "you know, you got too many guys in the band? you’re never gonna make any money." 

A lot of it just feeds into a special strain of middle american suburban low self-esteem.  The guy who gets on stage and goes, "yeah...um...um...we really aren’t that good y’know...like totally not good."  Who the fuck wants to hear what he has to say after that? 

In the best cases, the different styles different players bring into a band come to a harmonious whole, at least for a time, and the band grows stronger.  Innovations are made.  Bands end up developing an unique style.  Ideas from diffferent genres complement each other.  Look at the specials or the skatalites as examples of this.

In the worst case, it can just lead to sloppy, indifferent playing and the everything but the kitchen sink eclectism of most American Ska bands.  One minute they’re playing a police style rock-reggae thing, the next fishbone style fast skank, next a distorted heavy metal solo, then football pep band style horns, then back to a rock-reggae thing with a jump around neo-hip hop moment.  Oh yeah.

American ska musicians are hardly the only ones to feel hostility towards the genre.  I remember reading interviews with Madness, former members of the Specials, and the Beat where they talked about "limiting" it was to be part of the 2 Tone movement.  Various members saying "I was never that into ska", "it was just what was happening at the time", "I think my music is much more about that."  Of course being that these interviews were done while these same members were hawking such fine music as General Public, Fun Boy 3, the Colour Field, or Voice of the Beehive.  I mean who can forget those bands?  What talent.

Anyways, I guess my point was that as ska got popular a good chunk of the musical subculture had conflicting allegiances about whether what they were doing is ska and whether they should promote themselves as such.  Bands that had the big "ska" hits like Rancid were a punk band that was ambivalent that their biggest hit was a ska song. No Doubt wanted to promote themselves as a pop band.

So when things began to turn against ska bands, there wasnt anyone with any sort of stature to buck the tide.  Not that it would have really mattered.

Part of the problem was that trends change.  Ska was counted as being "in" for some vague way from 1995 to 1997, by 1998 it was out.  1998 was the year of swing.  to be followed by 1999 the year of the "latin" craze.  So ska was just one of the "crazes" that happened somewhere between grunge and the boy bands.  Going down is inevitable. 

But I think a lot of it was more than that.  At some point in the 90s, the infrastructure of the whole music business changed.  The major record labels decisively moved from a model where scouts and a&r guys would find bands with promise and then put money into promoting them.  The new model was that the record company would create the group, usually what was known as a "boy band", and then write the music, market the image.  They would control everything.  The "band" would be employees of the record company/management.  They would be eminently replaceable in the same way that you can replace a secretary or a vice president of operations. 

This was connected with a generational shift.  The indie music of the 80s and 90s was the result of "generation x" which was demographically smaller than the next demographic group coming up.  So it made sense to market stuff to a bigger group and more easily malleable group of 12-15 year olds than to a trickier, more fickle 18-21 market. 

The result were record sales of cds in the mid-late 90s and then the sacking of most record companies A&R departments.

But this probably only affected the indie bands that were on the ’edge’ of making it. 

Ska had built up its own d.i.y. circuit and shared a larger one with a lot of the punk scene.  The internet had enabled bands to share information through websites and email lists of gigs.

With the rise of ska in the mid-90s these circuit had gotten clogged and bloated.  Too many ska shows by not enough good bands is the quickest way to kill a scene.  The uninitiated show up to see what "ska" is and hear bad punk/metal with horns.  They immediately lose interest and think poorly of the genre.  Multiply that times 100,000 and you have a problem.

As ska got bigger, labels like Moon ska kept on pumping out the cds.  The quality control that had been weak before went to being non-existent.  I’ve heard that in the mid-90s Bucket had been offered a pile of money by a major label to buy the moon catalog and he refused them.  He should have taken the offer because in a couple of years, Moon couldn’t give its cds away.  A couple of years after that they were bankrupt.

A lot of American ska from fishbone to op ivy to the bosstones had flirted around with the punk scene.  After 1998, it became decidedly less cool in the punk scene to play some sort of ska. 

Live shows have always been the most important part of the genre but here too, ska took a hit.

The small and mid-size venues that had been making money promoting ska concerts began tto shy away as too many bands began dividing up and oversaturating the audience.  If only 1 in 4 ska shows does well, clubs tend to go, "well all ska shows are..."  

Suffering the most were the big ska package tours and the bands that depended on them.  As I’ve said before, to the best of my knowledge, the last successful ska package tour of the 90s was Hepcat/Slackers/Gadjits in 1998.  It ended in March I think.  The spring and summer ska package tours that went out after that all ate shit.

For me, the ’fall" of ska wasnt necessarily a bad thing.  I didn’t like most of what people had been calling ’ska’ for a long time. 

I also had come up in California in the mid-80s when ska was out of favor.  I had seen several ups and downs.  So this just seemed like another one.

More on this to come.

So what was going on around me while ska was big?

Well, things had gotten more serious with the slackers. We finally recorded and released our first cd, on Moon records, Better Late Than Never in 1996.   We were just beginning to do more regular touring and starting making runs down the east coast down to florida and back. 

I was really excited.  With the slackers we were spending a lot of time on original material.  I had been ambivalent about the band initially but I got drawn in.  The band was moving towards a coherent unit with an unique sound.  So that was exciting to me.  There are always ups and downs but when you feel like you’re a part of something good it doesnt matter so much.  When things are going good, it can still be hard if you’re not happy musically.

A little bit before the Slackers cd came out, Jeff Baker had gotten together the Stubborn All-Stars cd, Open Season. I think that came out in 1995. That was exciting for me too.   Jeff had spent a lot of time arranging the music. It was the first time that I had to read charts for a project.  So that was a challenge too.  I was really relaxed on this cd.  In some ways I play better on it than I do on the Slackers stuff.  Probably because I didn’t have to think about anything other than saxophone on it.

Well, Jeff hooked Stubborn into an opening slot for Rancid in the Uk.  I got the call to make the tour, almost as a fluke.  This was in late spring of 2006.  Then from the touring we got the offer to play horns for Rancid on the Lollapalooza tour on 2006. 

I dont really know what Rancid’s motivations were.  If they had know what was good for their careers they wouldn’t have called me!  Hehe.  They should know that Im the kiss of commercial death!  I guess I snuck in the door behind Jeff.

So with Rancid I got to see them at the end of their run from Out Come The Wolves.  They were playing for pretty big crowds for Lollapalooza. Thousands of people.  Of course, the headliner was Mettalica that year.  There was also the Ramones and some grunge band, I cant recall their name right off the bat.

Rancid was pretty popular at the time.  After our first rehearsal with them in Kansas City we were at a Dennys.  Eating.  We got mobbed by people who recognized them.  There was definitely a crazy factor hanging around them.

It was funny coming back from touring with Rancid because I had been running around on a tour bus, getting perdiems, and having people take care of me.  Then I was back in my apartment in Brooklyn and hustling to get by. 

The Slackers were definitely not playing stadiums at this time.  We were lucky to get 200 people to our New York Shows.  We would get 200-300 people at a really good show on the road but most of the time we would just do 100-125 when we were headlining.  Did a lot of shows to 50 people.  But I was having fun.  I dont think I really cared.

But we were about to take a step up.  Tim Armstrong was getting Hellcat together and signed the Slackers, Hepcat, the Pietasters, the Gadjits, Us Bombs, and Dropkick Murphys.  

Right after we put out Red Light we went out on 4 tours in a row.  Red Light was the first cd that we had that had decent worldwide distribution.  We first did a US tour headlinging little clubs with Chris Murray as our opening act.  It had a couple of good shows, but for the most part we were playing for small crowds.  For example, our first LA show was to maybe 50 people.  Flogging Molly was our other opener that night! 

The next tour was the "Ska Mob" tour with the Slackers, Skinnerbox, and Stubborn All - Stars.  I was playing sax with all 3 bands.  It was great for my chops but really tiring.  This was a frustrating tour.  It happened in late 1997.  You could already see the writing on the wall.  Too many ska package tours in too short a time.  We got booked some really shitholes too.  Playing to a dozen people in Arkansas.  Lots of half empty shows in the midwest and upper south.  There were also some good shows in south florida, atlanta, and maybe somewhere else.  But it was clear that we still had a long way to go to become popular.

The third tour was with Hepcat. This was early 1998. It was Hepcat, the Slackers, and the Gadjits.  Now this tour was very successful.  There were sold out shows in LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Orlando.  Lots of good shows.  Even on these tours its important to remember there were still a couple of dud nights like Dallas (50 people?).  But this was one of those kick ass tours when a band is coming close to breaking. Hepcat was at the peak of their popularity and they were really killing.  They were on the edges of the charts but couldn’t go any further in.

The final tour was our first european tour which was one of the funnest tours I’ve ever done.

At the end of these tours we had definitely increased the Slackers popularity by a lot but it was clear that our path was not going to be quick or easy. 

So while Ska was "big", I was gigging.  Recording a lot.  Occasionally on the larger stage but for the most part the Slackers were headlining small clubs or playing opening slots.

So now we have reached the halcyon years of 1995 through 1998, the years when Ska was "big" in America.

There are so many misconceptions about these years.  There is a popular perception that during this time all ska bands were playing stadiums and having gold records. 

 The truth is ska’s successes of the time were unevenly distributed and only a handful of bands had hit records.  A lot of other bands flirted with mainstream success and the charts only to see their crossover dreams go ultimately unfulfilled.

I got to play big festival gigs but it was as a sideman with a band that had made their successes without my help.  They were doing me a favor in keeping me around.  Hehe. more on that later.

It was a funny time because it seemed like no ska bands were breaking up during this period.  On the contrary, Bands that had become defunct reformed.  English bands from the 2 Tone period reformed and came over.  Everyone joined in the frenzy.

Some of the bands that came to have successes in the mid-90s came out of the strong local ska scenes that had been existing since the mid-80s.  Yet most of the bands came to success by expanding out of the punk and hardcore scenes.

The most prominent of this movement was Rancid which is primarily a punk band but their ska songs, especially Time Bomb, were more popular and influential than most ska bands out there.  Rancid wasnt completely unknown to ska fans prior to the mid-90s because Tim and Matt had been in Operation Ivy before.

Time Bomb is basically an extension of the Specials sound.  Straight up. When Rancid plays jamaican style songs they draw on the Specials, the Clash, and I think also a little bit from the 4 skins when they would play a ska influenced songs.  Maybe the last influence is just coincidence and speculation. 

I’ve been trying to get a timeline together of when the different "ska" hits happened. Nowadays, it all seems like they happened about the same time.  But im pretty sure that 2 of the first hits were by Rancid and No Doubt in 1995.

They were followed by Sublime having several single hits in 1996 and 1997.  Then the Bosstones, Reality of My Surrounding was a chart hit in 1997.

To be honest, Im not gonna stand by any of these dates.  Let’s just say there were a string of significant chart hits by a bunch of different bands in the mid-90s.

Both Rancid and Sublime were as popular in the Punk scene as in the Ska scene, if not more so.  Their popularity had risen as bands like the Offspring brought punk into the mainstream of American music.

In a funny aside, I had seen Sublime at an early show in either 1990 or 1991.  It was when I was in Hepcat.  They opened up for us at Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach.  Sublime had a little following that was supporting them really vocally. 

As usual, my snooty snotty self was underimpressed.  I just saw a couple punks playing sloppy versions of punk and ska including a cover of the Selecter’s Danger.  It was one of those really local shows, where of course the smart ass in the corner yells, "play freebird."  They noodled a lot in between songs.  Corny metal solos.  I thought, "goofballs."  I remember Raul and Narvas laughing about them saying how "sublime" their set had been.

Imagine my surprise several years later when I saw their video as I was flipping through channels on the tv.  it was right after their singer had died because of an od.  I was stunned.  Was this the same band? 

The Bosstones are credited by some as starting "ska core" or at least coming up with the name.  I dont know about that.  They were one of those bands that like mixing ska-reggae with american hardcore and metal. 

They also were the only band to make it "really big" from the East coast.  They were the college party band of their era.  Their plaid shtick went from regional to national on the back of the converse commericals and a lot of touring.

No Doubt was the most geniunely pop of the "ska" bands to hit it big and they were the most commercially successufl of the bunch.  Ever since I had first seen No Doubt back in the 80s, they were trying to be rock stars.  In the mid-90s they turned this into reality. 

No Doubt was signed to interscope?  Mighty Bosstones were signed to Mercury. Sublime was with MCA. 
Rancid was on Epitaph which was one of the biggest "indies" of the time.

So major labels had a hand in breaking these tunes which had previously only been the province of small indie labels. 

Another, somewhat ironic commonality of all the "ska" bands that made it big, is that they all had issues with being called "ska" bands.  They wanted to be known as alternative rock bands, punk bands, bands with eclectic sounds.  Something MORE than a ska band.

And in truth.  The most "ska" of the hits in a historic sense was Time Bomb which was by an avowed punk band. 

Sublime and Bosstones were somewhere in between.

"Dont Speak" which was the biggest hit by No Doubt has NO - NONE - ZIPPO - ZILCH - NADA influence in the ska department.  Its a fucking 70s power ballad complete with the switch between acoustic and electric guitars that could have been on a Led Zeppelin album.  I dont know if I want to sully Led Zep with the comparison.

That always pisses me off.  When people tell me ska was big in 1996.  I ask which songs?  The biggest goddamm hit had nothing to do with SKA.   

Right below the bands I’ve been talking about that charted were releases by a pack of bands that hung around the edges of the charts.  Songs like "sell out" by Reel Big Fish or "come on Eileen" by Save Ferris.  Also flirting with larger success during these times were Buck O Nine, Mephiskafeles, the Pietasters, Less Than Jake, MU330, Mustard Plug, the Suicide Machines, the Aquabats, Hepcat, and countless other bands.

The only traditional band that had any significant popularity on a national scale during this time was Hepcat and their flirtation with the charts with "no worries" came in 1998 just as the mid-90s ska wave was starting to look a little long in the tooth.   

So success.  Pop the champagne bottle.  kudos. good fucking job.

I’ll get into my own experience of this time in the next chapter. Thanks for reading.

So right now I am going to write about the years of 1993 to 1994, the last couple of years before ska "went big" and "made it" in the mid-90s. 

There was a lot of talk during this time that "this year" is gonna be the year that Ska breaks big in the US.  I was a bit jaded cause I had heard this every year since 1989. 

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Im a negative mother fucker.  I can find the dark side of any sunny day.  Just give me a minute.

So from my eyes, the NYC ska scene of the time seemed a bit smaller than what I had seen in the late 80s in california.  The biggest band was probably Mephiskafeles.  Followed by the Scofflaws and the Toasters, who were pretty much the only survivors of the mid 80s nyc scene.  I keep on thinking Im forgetting some major band from that time, but I cant think of any.

If I remember correctly, the New York scene of the time was crippled because a lot of clubs didn’t want to book ska cause there had been some fights at previous shows.  Club windows broken.  I think it was a legendary Meph show at the continental that was the culprit.

There were a lot of bands in the 2nd tier, kicking around New York at the time.  The Defactos. 

Agent 99. This included the Ara and Jay who are now in the Slackers.

Skinnerbox.

 Metro Stylee. 

 King Chango, a "latin ska" band that basically was playing the same mix of revved ska as everyone else.  They went on to do a more latin-rock thing.   

 Then there was the Slackers.

I was introduced to the Slackers through a friend of theirs who was going to the same school.  I started jamming with them.  Im not sure exactly why I stuck around.  At first, I didn’t really like their music.  It sounded like a lot of the sloppy ska stuff with a punk edge I had heard before.  I just heard the sloppiness and didn’t hear the pop hooks underneath.  Now I was adding horns to a punk/ska mix.  Great.  Just what the world needed.

But I did really like jamming with Vic.  Mush was hanging around and we had similar musical tastes and ideas.  After rehearsal we would jam with whomever else in the band would stick around. We would play old ska songs, boogaloo, rnb, jazz, and reggae.  These jams became the new slackers’ sound and gradually replaced about 70% of what the band was playing before.

Their warmth started melting my cold cruel heart and against my inclinations I started getting attatched to those lovable louts.

Anyways, the sound of the band changed and we started play stuff with old ska, rocksteady, and early reggae rhythms.

This move towards roots was happening all around the ska scene.  Jeff Baker started Stubborn All-Stars and began his King Django persona.  The insteps behind the drumming of Eddie Ocampo moved towards roots.  Victor Rice started becoming important as both a songwriter and an engineer.  Agent Jay was around too and in addition to playing in Stubborn he began recording rhythms.

The center for all this activity was a dirty stinking basement on 3rd street where the Slackers, Skinnerbox, and Stubborn All-Stars practiced.  Jeff began buying recording equipment and making recordings down there too.  So this is where the whole ’version city’ and ’ska mob’ stuff began.

It would be great to say that this scene was popular in NYC in 1994 but it wasnt.  It was still small compared to the more "mainstream" ska scene.

Visiting the moon records store at this time you could see that Ska bands were popping up all over the place.  The moon plan of getting every band from every part of the country onto a comp had created a leviathan.  They had put out discs by Lets Go Bowling, the Pietasters, Hepcat, Scofflaws, and 1000s of other bands.  A lot of ska bands 1st discs were put out by moon.  It wasnt that the Toasters’ sound was so influential or that Moon records had a distinct influential sound.  It was more that they provided the infrastructure through which "ska" music got around the USA.  That different local scenes would become aware of each other through moon. 

Of course there was the quality control problem.  For every good band, there were 10 horrible bands that made me question what I liked about "ska."  But as we got towards the mid-90s that didn’t seem to matter.

Package tours like Skavoovie and Skapunksnoloozas snaked around the country.  At least I think that’s what their names were. I’ve heard so many ska themed festival names it all starts to run together sometimes.

I remember around 1993 or 94 seeing the Bosstones on a converse commercial.  This was a sign that ska was closing in on the mainstream. 

Mainstream music mags like Billboard began mentioning ska.

So the stage was set for the halcyon days of the mid-90s when ska was ’big’. 

So in 1992, I left Los Angeles for New York City.  I thought I was gonna stop playing saxophone seriously.

For whatever reason, I had got it in my head that it was time to grow up and take school seriously.  That music was just a hobby that wasnt going to get me anywhere in life. 

I got a scholarship to go to grad school at the new school for social research so that’s where my head was at.  I found New York City to be fascinating anyways, so basically I was focused on that.  I studied urban sociology officially but my real major was new york city - its geography, architecture, history, society -everything.

I was still listening to a lot of reggae and ska.  Plus jazz, blues, jump, boogaloo.

I was vaguely aware that stuff was happening in the ska scene.  Mephiskafeles was probably the biggest NY band at the time.  The toasters, skinnerbox, and the scofflaws were also banging around.   It wasnt very exciting to me musically.  

When I went back home, I could see that Hepcat was just starting to blow up.  The first time I came back they were playing a packed show at the palomino.  There were actually people coming out to see them.  What’s more over the next couple years is that a whole scene of bands was coming up in the wake of Hepcat and Jump with Joey.  Bands like Yeska, Ocean 11, the Allentons, and Mobtown. 

Jump with Joey had more of this hollywood scene and didn’t play as much in the "ska" scene.  They were almost a ska influenced version of the swing scene that was also happening at the same time with bands like Royal Crown Revue.  But Hepcat ended up creating its own ska scene around it.  There was now a "traditional" or "old school" scene in opposition to the "third wave" ska scene. 

In new york , there wasn’t a traditional scene at all yet.  This is 1992. 

Bands like Skinnerbox would do an occasional nod to older ska but for the most part they were strugglin with the funk virus and other maladies of the time. The Scofflaws played skatalites and jackie opel material, but they always had this "paaar-teeee" vibe that made the music speed up.  I think they ended up re-creating bad manners style instrumental songs by default.   I got a soft spot for the scofflaws though.  When I first saw them in 1989 they were killer and i have always enjoyed their live show since.

In the meantime I started hearing about this band called Op Ivy.  I had never heard of them when I lived in california but when I moved to New York, they were the first California band I was asked about.   They were creating a new "ska" scene which paralleled the 2 tone bands in that it came out of Punk.  It wasnt very influenced by the US ska bands of the 80s but more the Clash and english punk of the 80s. Probably a bit of Minor Threat and american hardcore like the descendents too. Y’know, that earnest, its all about "the kids" and "the scene."  Bringing the "d.i.y" ethic to the ska scene.

Here is an interesting question for me....

What kind of influences would a "ska" band have around 1992? What kind of music would you expect a "ska" band to play?

 Well, 2 tone would still be present but it would often be filtered through the local anglophile bands that had come up in the 80s.    Depending what part of the country you were in that could mean the Untouchables or the Toasters or Public Service or whatever.....

Outside of LA, you would only have occasional glimpses of the original ska like the Skatalites or Prince Buster. (although it was much easier to find old jamaican records in nyc cause of the huge jamaican community.)  So possible but unlikely.

More likely would be a Fishbone style rave up ska.  As fast as can be played with as many flailing limbs as possible.  Maybe with a slow reggae part in the middle or at the beginning?

Reggae was also part of the typical "ska" bands repetoire.  In NYC, this meant the "dancehall" break where the toaster would breakout and rhyme.  Donkey Show was guilty of this.  It goes back to Neville Staples, Rankin Roger, and Gaps Hendrickson of the 2 tone bands.  The dancing toaster guy who chats/talk sings.  For the most part, in my opinion, the 2 tone bands did it best.  By the early 90s, it was usually horrible enough to make you cringe.

Regardless, reggae in general was a major influence.  The wailers of course. Pop-reggae like Jimmy Cliff.  Steel Pulse.  Dancehall.  Dub.  I played for about 6 months with an effects pedal.  There it is. I said.  So did Raul from Hepcat.  Sorry Raul. It had to be said. 

As I’ve mentioned before, funk would be a major influence into the mid-90s. Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Oh how many ska bands did you guys ruin?

Lots of english rock from 80s.  Elvis Costello’s ’watching the detectives’ was only the tip of the iceberg.  The Redskins were a common source of bites.  Someone in the band would get the bright idea, "hey I could just play on the onbeat instead of the off and we could add that jaunty beat and voila...."  I remember hearing the NY Citizens towards the end of their career going through a  Redskins inspired sound a like song.  I also think someone in the Bosstones probably listened to the Redskins..."If I could knock on wood...."  Check out the onbeat part of that song sometime.  Then listen to the Redskins "neither washington nor moscow" album.  

The Jam especially "a town called malice" also pervaded through the scene. 

And of course, punk.  The Clash were easily as strong an influence of most American "ska" bands as any 2 Tone band.  But overall, they took a back seat to American hardcore.  A lot of people came to ska from the punk scene and were versed in Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, Black Flag....  Bad brains was big, especially cause they went through a couple of reggae phases. 

 Occasionally, Oi would pop up but outside of a few skinheads I dont know how influential songs like "plastic gangsters" were. Then again, via Rancid, some of those 4 skin sounds have made it around.  Now that I think about it.

And of course the metal influence.  Im not sure who was the first guy who thought, "wow, i could mix metallica and acdc with 2 tone and it would be a wonderful thing" but I would sure love to meet him.  The metal and punk influences were often entwined.  The late 80s and early 90s were a good time for metal guitar solos over punk.

I guess the result is that if you went to a "ska" show in 1992, you could hear this crazy mix of everything from Dancehall to Heavy Metal.  Someone would tell you this was "ska" and you would just accept it. 

That’s always the problem with names is that once they are used so much.  Why were we still calling it "ska" when jamaican ska was only a small small part of most of the bands influences? 

Was that it was ’white’ versions of black music?  Well, all of Fishbone definitely wasn’t ’white’ and they started the 3rd wave sound.  I dont know if that disproves anything though.  Hmmmm. People say hardcore is ’white’ music too, but what about Bad Brains then?

Maybe it was because Ska was less identified with Jamaica than Reggae.  It was held less tightly and thus it was more easily borrowed without a lot of the cultural baggage?  You didn’t have to have dreadlocks.  You didn’t have to sing in patois (although fakin jamaican is another blog i guess). 

At the same time, you could have dreadlocks.  You could sing in patois.  You can play a polka beat with a metal solo in the middle and still get called ska.

You can play a song with a quiet upbeat and goofy horns and have it called "latin" cause you’re Ricky Martin.

  Names and labels can be so frustrating.   But most people dont listen with their ears, they listen with their eyes.  They listen using labels and names first. So much they dont hear the notes.

Hi again.

My spelling seems to be getting worse and worse, the more of these things I write.  So I’ll try writing something during the day and we’ll see what happens.

So right now Im getting up to around 1991. 

From my point of view, ska had gone down a bit since the early 90s.  With Hepcat we were getting opening slots for a lot of different bands that were coming around.  We opened for No Doubt at the Whisky and it wasnt sold out.  We opened for the Toasters at the Roxy and it was a pretty big crowd too but it wasnt a sell out.   One of my last hepcat gigs was opening for Desmond Dekker in early 1992 or late 1991.  That was one of my better Hepcat shows.  But that wasn’t sold out either.

The country club in reseda was getting towards the end of its run as a venue for ska music and those shows weren’t sold out anymore either.

A lot of the bands who had lasted from the late 80s were stumbling.  The whole mod/ska trenchcoats & suits look of the mid-80s had been replaced by weird striped fat ties over a t-shirt.  People trying to look like cartoon characters from 80s alternative comics.  The beginning of what they would call the "3rd wave ska" look although I dont remember anyone calling it that at the time. 

It seemed to me that it was in a bit of an eclipse.  But at the same time, I was not into that kind of music anymore.  I wanted to have as little to do with it as possible.  In retrospect, it was probably just a time when the style was re-gathering and re-energizing and all the bands that were gonna make it big in 4-5 years were going through a woodshedding period.

Of course, from a Hepcat point of view, we couldn’t headline shit.  Hehe.  We would play little bars in the valley to 20 people.  But I didn’t really give a shit, cause I was down on the music industry.  Hepcat to me was a hobby.  A fun important hobby but I had been burned with Donkey Show, so I always kept a little distance.  Thinking I was too ’mature’ to be a musician.  Wow, that was a conceited mistake.

I remember Bucket telling me how we sounded "just like the Skatalites."    This is right after we had just played Skavez, Same O Same O, Prisoner of Love, and our cover of Green Dolphin St.  People said that Hepcat sounded just like the old ska but to me this just meant they weren’t listening really carefully. 

Basically, what they really meant is that you dont have distorted guitars, no one is rapping, no bass slapping, no metal solos, no hardcore beats to inspire stage diving.  This is true.  

But at the same time, we didn’t sound exactly like the old ska.  Ska was doing its magic again.  It was hybridizing.  Mixing.  This time we were adding latin touches. Swing. Jump blues. jazz. The early 90s was a big time for lounges and lounge music in LA so we probably picked up on that too.

We wanted the ska to swing.  Not in a goofy ballroom dance kind of way. But in the raw hard way that Lloyd Knibbs swings.  In the hard way that Art Blakey swings. 

This woman I was talking to at a show in San Francisco put it best.  She said that the other ska band that played that night was like "boom boom boom" smacking her fist into her palm for emphasis.  She said that Hepcat was like "uhh uhh uhh", she raised her arms and shook her ass when she said this.  Right on. 

With Hepcat, we definitely felt out on our own.  There was Jump with Joey. They were a bit older than us.  Probably thought we were a bunch of dumb kids at the time.  The bands we got along with best were bands like the Loved Ones, a garage band from San Francisco. 

In retrospect, I wish I had tried harder with Hepcat.  That I had paid attention to my saxophone teacher more.  Practiced more.  Kept my horn in better shape.  Written better horn arrangements. 

Recording Out of Nowhere is a blur for me.  I cant remember much about it.  I knew I was moving to New York but I wanted to finish this cd before I left. So many stupid mistakes.  I wish I had a producer.  Deston did his best but I was a hard head and wouldn’t listen.

Its funny cause Out of Nowhere is the best selling cd that I was a band member on.  When I listen to it now, the rhythm section is pretty together.  The vocals are mostly together except for 1 or 2 songs.  The horns are easily the weakest thing on it.  I’m always embarassed hearing it except for the solo on Dance With Me.  That solo came out cool but I owe it all to Deston.  He rode me and rode me at a previous recording session until I had a coherent solo.  That one wasn’t improvised and as a result it was good.  My improvised solos were shit! hehehe.

So anyways, I finished the cd.  We did a last gig in Sacramento and I moved to New York.  I would visit and sit in with Hepcat when I went "home" to visit but that was it.  I didn’t hear the cd until it was mailed to me in New York.

Well here we go again.

So I’ve written about the Ska scene up to around 1990.  Why is this year important to me?  This is the year I quit Donkey Show and started playing with Hepcat.  But more on that later.

I’ve been talking to some people from different parts of the country about ska in the 80s and its interesting how different perspectives are about what bands are important.  There seems to be a lot of localism.  People from Boston think the Bosstones and Bimskalabim are important.  People from California think about Lets Go Bowling.  There is a big divergence between the east coast and west coast as to who was important and popular.

Here is what my opinion is of it.  By 1990, there were a lot of ups and downs in individual bands histories, but in the larger picture, ska had become established as a music genre in the US.  By 1990, most major cities had a handful of bands playing something called ska.  Some of them were very successful locally.  Ska shows in the late 80s in LA would draw up to 700-800 people.  When Donkey Show opened for Bimskalabim in 1988 they were playing the Paradise which I think has something like a 1200 capacity and it was packed.

For the most part, most people in the scene were only tangentially aware of scenes outside their cities.  California bands were known mostly in california. New York bands in New York. Boston bands in boston.  etc etc. 

There were bands that were touring outside their home areas in the late 80s.  Donkey Show did 2 US tours.  Lets Go Bowling did some touring.  Toasters toured. Bimskalabim toured.   Fishbone toured. 

The Skatalites got back together in the late 80s and began to play around.   I think I saw them for the first time in 1990.

There were also some UK bands that did tours of the US in the late 80s.  Bad Manners was one.  I think the Potato 5 did one around 1990. 

Plus there was beginning to be a bunch of releases.  LA bands for whatever reason played with major label releases.  Fishbone was on Columbia.  No Doubt got signed to a major too, but it took them years to make a success of it.

There were also a lot of indie releases.  English labels like Link and Unicorn.  the first Donkey Show 45 we put out by ourselves.   Bim had their own label and put out mashing up the nation compilations which got around.  The Untouchables put out their first ep on Twist records and then later went to stiff? i think.

Here is where Moon Records came in.  I dont think that the Toasters were ever the most popular ska band in the country. They probably werent the most popular ska band in New York City except for the late 80s.  In 1988, when Donkey Show opened for the Toasters and Bimskalabim in New York, we played at CBGB’s and there was maybe 150 people there? 

But the Toasters were Bucket and Bucket had the bright idea to start Moon records.  First he was putting out Toasters stuff but then he did compilations that included NY bands.  The Hit and Run comp got around.  Then as he toured he kept inviting bands to be part of moon records releases.  They would get their stuff out and he would send them toasters cds to distribute locally. 

The quality level of moon records was never very high.  When I first heard the Hit & Run compilation I was excited that someone was putting out new Ska.  I was disappointed that only about 4 tracks ended up being any good.  So what’s that? about 25% of moons initial stuff was any good?  this rate only went down over time.

But that didn’t seem to matter.  There’s something about the american ska of the late 80s.  Its exciting when you first listen to it but after about 6 months to a year, you listen back to it, and you go..."what the fuck was I liking about this?" 

So what was this music?  "Ska" meant a lot of things by 1990.  There was the world beat influenced ska of Bimskalabim or the Beastie boys meet Bad Manners of the early Toasters.  With both these bands you could hear the 2tone influences and the occasional glimpse of the older jamaican stuff.  With Let’s Go Bowling you could hear even more of the older jamaican stuff, older rnb, swing, and a suave late 80s ritchie valens in Dave Molina. 

With Fishbone you heard glimpses of 2 tone but you were just as likely to hear heavy metal or funk. 

Eventually the bands playing at a late 80s "ska" festival would be following a formula.  The song with the slow reggae intro followed by the hyper fast main part of the song.  The song with the "jazzy" intro followed by the hyperfast main part of the song.  Maybe a reggae song that talks about smoking weed.  Some heavy metal funk with a reggae break down.

The "ska" bands were getting so far away from the source it was hard to tell what was "ska" about them? 

At a certain point in the late 80s I couldnt stand it anymore.  I was listening to the Skatalites, Prince Buster, Count Ossie, Alton Ellis, the Upsetters, Jackie Opel, Toots,  Justin Hinds, Desmond Dekker, and the Wailers.  I didn’t like the new Ska.  I still liked 2 Tone but older ska was more important for me.  I was also digging Rocksteady from the mid-60s.  I was digging all the early reggae up to around the mid 70s. 

After I quit Donkey show, I was back at UCLA finishing up my degree.  I put out a flyer saying that a saxophone player was out trying to form a band that mixed together Reggae, Jazz, and Ska.  The only person that responded was Joey, the original bass player of Hepcat.  He got me a tryout for Hepcat and it wasnt exactly what I was aiming to do but it was fun.  Real fun. And it grew on me.

When I joined Hepcat was playing a bunch of covers and a couple of originals mostly written by Alex Desert and Deston Berry.  There were some 2 tone influenced songs around "rude boys" and the ubiquotous minor key "jazzy" instrumental but this was getting eclipsed by a focus on mastering  the older ska sounds of the 60s. 

I think it was Greg Lee that told me that Hepcat started because the guys were going to shows in the late 80s and they started liking the old ska that was being spun in between sets more than the new ska of the bands that were playing at the shows. 

We weren’t the only guys returning to roots.  A bunch of bands had tried to make music that was more Jamaican influenced.  The Potato 5 from the Uk was one of the first I heard.  They did some songs in a skatalites style.  There was also this band from Santa Cruz called Liquidator that did a lot of old ska and reggae covers.  I even sat in with them for a show once.  It was fun.

Jump With Joey was playing every week at the King King.  They were playing a lot of jamaican influenced stuff and mixing it with old latin and swing. 

Its a well known fact that most of the Skatalites set is the same as Mongo Santemaria’s set.  Same songs.  One’s ska.  One’s latin.  They’re musical cousins.  The jamaicans got a lot of their stuff from Cuba. 

So Joey basically remade these connections and thus began a whole stream of latin ska through bands like Yeska.

I went to see Jump With Joey a bunch of times.  I was amazed by their swing, the quality of the solos, the suppleness of the rhythm section.  That they could mix stuff up, put in funny quotes, seque between different songs within the same song.  It was really influential.

Im sure there was more but i cant remember who.

With Donkey Show we played a couple of Skatalites covers.  Lets Go Bowling played some too.  We were all listening to the stuff.

I think Hepcat just took it to the next level.  The band was on a mission to master the older style of Ska, Rocksteady, and Reggae.  Basically everything from 1960 to around 1975.  Its funny.  We weren’t aiming to change the world or anything.  We were just playing music that we really liked.

So it didn’t matter to us that no one got what we were doing.  I remember this one show at the Country Club where we were opening for some other more popular "ska" bands.  The crowd was dancing for the band before us.  When hepcat hit, the dancing completely stopped!  We just got stares and an almost completely empty dancefloor.  I think maybe a couple of our girlfriends were dancing but they werent even brave enough to go the front of the stage.  Then once we stopped and the next band came on, it only took 2 songs for the crowd to hit the floor and start dancing again!

But eventually, people were gonna get it.  Mostly after I left the band.  Only at the very end of my time in Hepcat did we get a positive response from crowds. 

The thing with Hepcat is that we were aiming to play old style ska but along the way other influences came in as well.  The band was listening to lots of soul and rnb.  We were digging salsa and the boogaloo.  Plus the swing and jump blues that was getting around LA at the time.  So we ended up creating another hybrid style that was just as mixed up as the "new" ska bands but it was a different mix.  It was a mix of music that everybody in the band dug and that’s all the mattered.

I want to talk some more about the late 80s.  As I re-read my ramblings my thoughts became a little clearer.  Or maybe my ramblings are so convoluted they need clarification....regardless...

The late 80s were a time of "rebirth" after the last of the 2 Tone ska wave fell apart by around 1984. 

In the UK there were a bunch of bands like the Hot Knives and the Loafers that came up around the Link, Gaz, and Unicorn labels.  They were continuing 2 tone traditions.  Then there was the Potato 5 which reached back to the Skatalites and the Trojans which did "Gaelic Ska."  Yeah, you still hear some of that stuff around.  Especially played by German djs.

Donkey Show put out a track on the "skanking around the world" compilation and put out its "bali island" ep on the Unicorn Label (worst album art ever!). Unicorn fell apart when its owner fled the UK on the heels of charges of child molestation.  yup. A classy operation.  Heard he fled to Turkey.

In addition to the UK, they were a bunch of continental bands like  Mr. Review, the Busters, and Skaos. 

Then you had strong scenes in the US on the west coast and the east coast and scattered pockets in the midwest and canada.  On the east you had the Boilers, the Toasters, Bimskalabim, Urban Blight, Second Step, Public Service, New York Citizens, and new bands were just getting started like the Scofflaws, Bosstones, and Skinnerbox.  On the west coast you had Donkey Show, No Doubt, Skeletones, Lets Go Bowling, the Liquidators, some bands hanging around from the early 80s likes Fishbone, the Uptones, and the Untouchables, plus a bunch of new bands just getting started like Skanking Pickle and  and I guess, Operation Ivy (whom I actually never heard about until I moved to NYC in 1992.)  Then you had bands scattered all over the US and Canada, often in improbable places like Swim Herschel Swim in Utah.

I remember the talk about how Ska was coming back and it was gonna get big.  I might have believed that Donkey Show was gonna be the one to lead the way. Im sure that other bands had similar delusions.

The scenes which had started out being completely isolated were being tied closer together.  The toasters came out the west coast in 1988 for the first time.  Bimskalabim came our way too around the same time.  Donkey Show did 2 tours out to the east coast in 1988 and 1989.  Music was starting to get round from the UK, East Coast, West Coast. 

For most of the USA the music was completely fresh.  It really opened my eyes when Donkey Show played in such places as Omaha, Youngstown, St. Louis, and Houston.   We weren't playing for ska audiences.  We were playing for people, 90% of whom, had no idea what were doing.  BUT THEY LIKED IT!

I saw the potential of this music.  That it could work anywhere. 

But Ska didn't take off in the late 80s. Its not that the shows didn't do well. As I mentioned in my last writing, the shows in the late 80s in LA were bigger than most ska shows until the mid90s.

 Like I mentioned there was the Funk Virus.  Band members were restless working in the ska idiom and wanted to "evolve" or "move on." 

There probably wasnt the critical mass of ska fans yet.  Outside of a handful of major cities, you wouldn't know the music existed.  More Americans still needed to get used to the music.  They needed to get their eyes and ears around it.

I think its also natural that most bands break up. You dont make a huge amount of money doing a band so without hope of "being the next big thing" or a serious infrastructure, people do other things with their lives.  Your mom is always hoping for that graduate school degree y'know?

So what were the important legacies of 80s ska in the USA?  It laid the foundation musically for what was to come later, mostly through Fishbone.

It also set up the infrastructure.  Mini-festivals and events with "ska" in the title like "modskarade" and "skalloween."  Oh joy.

 Plus a lot of indie (later called D.I.Y) record labels. A lot of the early bands put out their own records and there were small labels that put out stuff from the 80s ska bands, but Bucket aka the Toasters not only put out his own stuff, he put out other bands on his label.  Thus it began to build into an important indie label and way for people around the country to connect to "ska."

Finally, a few of the 80s bands like Fishbone and No Doubt managed to get major record deals and despite their ambivalence about being called "ska" bands they were never able to shake the moniker either.

From my own personal point of view, things changed cleanly for me as the 80s changed into the 90s.  In 1990, I quit Donkey Show and I guess about 6 months later I was in Hepcat.  So I was about to get into a new scene myself.

So thus continues my ramblings about the secret history of American ska.

So it was two tone that was the initial inspiration of the first American ska bands.  Now I dont claim to know which of these bands came first so Im not going to pretend.  Im just going to write about what I know.

In southern california where I was growing up, the early to mid 80's were the time of the "mod-ska" craze.  Ska was part of a mini-universe of vintage scooters, parkas, suits, and penny loafers.  It was listened alongside the Jam, the Who, and the Style Council. 

In a bizzarre fashion twist, fans would create placards of band buttons completely covering trench coats. 

Shows were often connected to scooter rallies and would have rows of vespas and lambrettas parked out front.

The flagship band for this scene was the Untouchables from Los Angeles.  Their first 45s and "free yourself" Ep gave fuel to this scene which thrived from about 1982 to 1985 or so.  In retrospect, their writing leaves a lot to be desired but I remember seeing them in 1985 and being blown away by their specials like stage show.

Being from LA and being ambitious with the music industry, they soon lost their way with their horrible LP, Wild Child.  Victims of the funk virus.  More on that later.

Also from Los Angeles, was probably the most influential "ska" band from the early 80s, Fishbone.  Because they mixed together heavy metal, funk, punk and other "junk", they were not at the center of the scene at the time but in terms of sounds that would later pop up in Reel Big Fish, No Doubt, Skanking Pickle, MU330, Mustard Plug et al, they are the originators.   They were creating the template for was going to become "third wave ska" although no one was calling it that at the time.

 In addition to their first ep that was massively influential they had these series of demos that got all over LA.  Songs like "Alcoholic" and "Skanking to the Beat" are prototypes for the third wave ska cliches that were gonna get all over the country.

I think Fishbone was ambivalent about the ska fans they attracted.  They didn't want to be pigeonholed as being one of "those" bands.  They also got signed to a major label early so they probably had a lot of "crossover" discussions.  As the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Living Color blew up, they probably figured they should go that way too! Unfortunately, that meant that by the time ska came around in popularity in the 90s they were out of the loop.  So they missed out on 2 counts.

There were also a lot of bands that would play some ska on the local level.  In San Diego, I remember NE1 (anyone -clever right?).  They would play some light ska influenced stuff in addition to more straight ahead 80s pop.  In the early/mid 80s it wasnt that rare to run into cover bands that would play some ska bands.  I remember a college dance at UCSD that I got into even though I didn't go to school there being that I was 15.  This band, Limbo Slam, that was absolutely horrible stumbled their way through a horrible cover of the specials,"Concrete Jungle."

If you've ever seen an 80s teen movie you have a pretty good idea of how these bands looked and sounded.  San Diego's a weird town.  Back in the 80s it was dominated by 80s cover bands.  Now 25 years later, its dominated by 80s cover bands.  And people wonder why it doesnt have a music scene comensurate with its population?

Also, big in California was the movie Dance Craze.  It would travel around different independent theaters and be shown, often as part of a double bill with a punk movie like decline of western civilization.  People would gather at the theater and dress up for dance craze like it was a show.  Go up front and dance.  It was really quite something. 

Dance craze was so popular that most of the ska covers you heard from local bands were off the soundtrack.

The mid-80s were a tough time for ska in california. It was often seen as something from the early 80s and "passe."  The mods who stayed in the scene rejected ska as "kiddie" music and went for more of the 60s rnb and rock.  I spent the year of 1986 not seeing a single ska band play.  Pretty pathetic.

It was during the mid-80s that I found out that there were other ska scenes happening in the USA (and Canada).  Through bleeker bob's record store which had branches in both LA and NYC, the first records by the Toasters, BimSkalaBim, and the Boilers (on cassette) started to make it out to LA. 

The toasters were going for a 2-Tone thing mixed with the beastie boys (remember Sean and Lionel?).  They wore suits so were obviously playing "ska" right?

Bimskalabim and the other Boston bands like Plate of Shrimp could easily be classified as "world beat" as well as Ska.  Bim didn't dress up at all but I think they werent aiming for a "college" audience.   I was really into their sound at the time.  The power of vinny nobile's trombone was really exciting.

The boilers from NYC were also exciting.  Oliver rhee's voice had this nice gentle quality and the music didn't have funk or metal influences, it had a "roots" reggae vibe if anything. Me and my friends wore out their cassette from listening to it so much.

Besides these guys I was aware of during the early-mid 80s that there were bands such as the Uptones from San Francisco, the Villians from Vancouver, the Hopping Penguins from Toronto (I think?) plus Urban Blight, the NYC citizens, and Second Step from New York City. 

My first band that I was involved in was called "the Saints" (no, not the band from Australia).  We lasted a little under a year in 1985 and were a "mod-ska" band. We played some ska like the selecter's "Danger." We also played Thats Entertainment by the Jam I think.  Fortunetly, we were torn apart by serious artistic differences and never amounted to much.

I was really hungry to form a ska band and spent most of 1986 trying to make this happen.  Everytime I got a lineup together it would fall apart. I even had a gig booked that I had to back out of because we couldnt keep the same group of people from rehearsal to rehearsal.

Finally, by 1987, the Donkey Show, was ready to start playing.  We played our first gigs and immediately had some success in San Diego and soon afterwards played our first LA shows.

We were directly influenced by 2 Tone, occasionaly would reach back to 60's ska like the Skatalites or Prince Buster, and for lack of a better term, world beat.  yeah, I know. Hang my head with shame.

At about the same time as the Donkey Show, a bunch of other bands like the Skeletones, No Doubt, and Lets Go Bowling hit the scene.  Things were booming.  Shows at the Country Club in LA, the Variety Arts  Theater, and Fender's Ballroom were packed.  Its hard for me to say how many people there were at these shows because I wasnt as business savvy then...I would guess that the LA shows were doing 300-700 people. 

The scene was very underground.  Not on the radio.  Shows were rarely mentioned in the papers. It went counter to what people were supposed to be listening to at the time.  But the shows were big.  At least as big as the "ska" shows in LA are now.

This local success was being duplicated around the country in Boston and New York.  So what happened?  How come most of these bands broke up, went into obscurity?  How come so few of the 80s bands continued to be active in the 90s?

One big culprit is the "funk" virus.   Once the Red Hot Chili Peppers had their success.  At least 50% of the musicians in the United States wanted to follow their lead.  Ska band after ska band turned into funk bands.

Another trend that watered down the ska was world beat.  Before you knew it, to be "creative" you had to be combining calypso with rock with hi-life with zouk with...well, you get the idea.  Unfortunately, a lot of this dreck sounded similar to the funk stuff!  Apparently you mix 12 kinds of 'ethnic' music together, you end up with funk.  And you must wear tank tops and mullets/rat tails start sprouting.

Ska was so far out of the mainstream through the 80s that bands were always subjected to pressure.  Whispers of "if you want to be popular you should..."  "you never are going to be popular if you keep playing ska...."  "you got too many guys in your band..."  These were the common words of advice you would get from the guy who worked in the mailroom at Warner Brothers and was pretending to be a big shot at your gig. 

For some bands, it worked out.  No Doubt were always wanting to be rock stars and they ended up doing it. 

Fishbone ended up being important musically but never acheived the popularity that they probably "should" have.  They made the sound and no doubt ended up selling it.

For other bands like the Untouchables, the funk virus was a disaster.  Anyone remember their song,"Freak in the Streets?" Wow. 

It also broke up my band, the Donkey show.  Half the band wanted to play a mix of Bad Brains and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  The other half wanted to do a ska/reggae thing.  The result is that the band broke up 1990.

Regardless, by the end of the 80s, it was unclear what was going to happen with the Ska scene.  New bands were multiplying but it was as underground as ever.

Introduction

A lot of other people have written histories of American  Ska.  So why bother?  Well, to start with they get it wrong.  So Im going to call it from my perspective.  Im not gonna bother with any sort of neutrality and just call it as I see it.

Ska is funny music, against all odds it has managed to survive and persevere.  How the hell has this once obscure music from Jamaica managed to capture so many people's imaginations and win over so many hearts?

In case you are reading this and have no idea what the hell "ska" is or just associate it with a special mix of marching band horns, heavy metal, plaid suits, and shorts, let me set you straight.

Ska began in Jamaica sometime around 1959 and lasted in its classic form up until around 1967.  It was the sound of jamaican independence.  It mixed together mento (calypso), jazz, jamaican hand drumming, latin, gospel, and jump blues into a heady mix.  The first thing most people notice about ska is that the guitar plays rhythm, on the off beat.  I mostly pay attention though to the bass and drums.  The weird thing about ska is how it swings and doesnt swing.  It has a beautiful elasiticity of time.  If you dont know what Im talking about listen to Lloyd Knibb from the Skatalites play.  If you dont hear it then, well, Im sorry.

Ska died out in 1966-67 and got replaced by rocksteady/reggae and a hundred other jamaican styles.  For a small island, its got a lot of music.  Its constantly taking influences from all over the place, but somehow its own identity pulls through.

Yeah, stop me if you've heard this before.  Or just skip to the American stuff.  It starts in a couple of paragraphs. 

So where was I?  Oh yeah, Ska.  It came back in the UK in the late 70s with 2 Tone.  Bands like the Specials, Madness, Selecter, Bad Manners, the Beat etc etc.  Well actually you those are the important bands, the etc. is pretty much etc.

In some ways, the only thing that came back in the UK was the name, "ska".  The bands were playing stuff that was influenced by the Sex Pistols and Ian Dury, punk and pub rock, plus all of the Jamaican music that had happened between 1967 and 1978.  Ska was the name but it was only part of the musical picture.  Uk drummers tended to play fewer rimshots and more open snare hits.  Bass players would sneak in octaves from funk and disco, plod like punkers, or add bits of reggae.  The skank became more trebly and nasal. Whatever it was, although I like it a lot for the most part, it didn't really swing in the same way as the 60s stuff.  But hey, they sold a lot more records.  At least for the 2-3 years they were popular before the trendy british moved on!

In the states, ska had never gotten out of Jamaican immigrant communities.  Reggae got picked up by every hippie and surfer who liked to smoke a joint but ska, even when it was played was mostly unrecognized.  "My Boy Lollipop" and "Ob-la-di-Ob-la-da" were just music.  The ska overtones went over most american listener's heads. 

So where does American ska start?  Does it come out of 2 Tone? Well yes and no.

One of the first American bands to play ska that I know of is the Blue Riddim Band from Kansas of all fucking places.  Can you believe that? NOT from NYC or LA!  They used to do a cover of the Ska version of Simmer Down.  They were around in the late 70s and are remembered for being one of the first  american bands not composed of jamaicans to convincingly play reggae.

But they werent part of a movement.  Maybe they were a pioneer of what was to become the "world beat" movement but they didnt have that much impact on what was going to become the American "ska" scene as far as I know.  Their 1981 record was floating around bargain bins in California by the late 80s.  Most of my friends response to the record was "who the fuck are these guys?"  They were actually pretty good and should be better known than they are.

From what I can tell, a handful of Americans heard about "ska" for the first time when the 2 Tone bands did their first tours in the wake of the success of 2 Tone in the UK.  Apparently most of these tours were big disasters.  Outside of a few pockets on the coasts and the odd college campus, the US didn't get it.

Well...at least a few people did.  Here and there the 2 Tone uniform began popping up.  Someone was digging it.  2 Tone flavored anglophile bands began forming.  But more on them later.  Cause the english bands kept on coming over and growing in popularity.

Thats right, the Beat, Madness, and Bad Manners had not given up on the US of A.  They kept plugging away and as 2 Tone faded to memory in the Uk, it began to gain some popularity in the states.  Between 1982-1983, you had hits by Madness with "our house", The Beat with "Save it for Later" and "I confess", and Bad Manners with "that will do nicely son."  Of course, the irony was that by this time the 2 Tone bands were going for a slick watered down pop-rock sound that had only the vaguest of Jamaican references.  Our House is trying to be the Beatles.  I confess wouldnt sound out of place on a ABC album.  Save it for Later has the confident guitar strum of 80s rock.  I guess Bad Manners had the most reggae/ska influence at this time but they also had crossover dreams (check out their mid-80s lp Mental Notes for some pure dreck.).  They toured the US several times and probably were the closest to keeping the energy of 2 Tone going far into the 80s.

So from the begginning American conceptions of "ska" are far from the source.  Im not gonna say they are wrong cause all things change.  But the fact is that most americans thought of ska as english first and jamaican second.  That it was some sort of mix of rock and reggae.  And that it was a brief fad in the 80s and went out of style sometime right after the US festival. 

So how the hell did it survive?

---end of chapter 1.  chapter 2 is soon come.