In Defense of Ska

Asian Man Records has released some breakout records, like Pezcore (Less Than Jake), Goddamnit (Alkaline Trio), and People Who Eat People Are The Luckiest People in the World ( AJJ ). But the label has also released several great, lesser-known albums. For this episode, we will focus on Language by Short Round, which was released in 2002.  More specifically, we brought in Jason Thinh, leader of Sho...

In Jordan Morris graphic novel Bubble, a character finds a flyer for the hip new DJ in town, a person that was in Mighty Mighty Bosstones for a short stint and won’t shut up about it. And yet, in the strange post-apocalyptic world of Bubble, this ex-Bosstones DJ dude is cooool. It’s a tiny detail that makes Morris’ book such a fun read. However, the primary story is quite unsettling. A monster-fil...

If there’s anything we’ve learned this year, it’s that deep down, everyone loves ska. This week we provide yet another example of an unexpected band releasing a ska song: Screaming Females.  They will be releasing a cover of The Selecter’s “On My Radio” next month. The song is being released as part of the deluxe edition of the comic series What’s The Furthest Place From Here? which is written by...

In the first few months of this podcast, we used to joke that this was the “Animal Chin” podcast because, even though we’d never had anyone from Animal Chin on the show, we talked about them a lot. Well, guess what, now we have Animal Chin’s singer-songwriter Jamie Woolford on the show. So we finally get to ask him all of our burning Animal Chin questions. (Ie: this is kind of a long episode!) Ani...

LA ska band Hepcat once appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. They were an early signing to Epitaph subsidiary Hellcat Records and were flown all over to open for a wide variety of bands. But they were—and the band admits this—never going to blow up. The group consisted of several LA ska scene kids from the 80s who loved original Jamaican ska. Not a commercially viable genre. And back then, y...

By now, most of us know that ska wasn’t dead in the 2000s. But it was uncool. Really uncool. Bands were fleeing from the scene, and describing their sound as “Rock with horns”—anything other than “ska.” But the scene continued, fueled by the passion of dedicated fans. During this weird time, one group that did quite well was Boston’s Big D and The Kids Table, who even managed to chart on the Billb...

Up until last year, alt-rock group Eve 6 was best known for their hit 1998 single, “Inside Out,” or as some people refer to it, “the heart in a blender song.” But times have changed. Now Eve 6, specifically lead singer Max Collins, is best known for taking over Twitter. It started last December when he tweeted that he was a virgin when he wrote “Inside Out.” Since then, he hasn’t stopped tweeting...

Augusta Koch’s first band was called The Blue Bananas, a ska band. They had a few originals and performed a Choking Victim song. They didn’t last long. She’s since gone on to play in some incredible non-ska bands like Cayetana and Gladie. And she even sang vocals for the fictitious group DUH in the horror-comedy film Uncle Peckerhead . But ska has remained important to her. During the pandemic, sh...

Avant-garde band The Residents have spent the last five decades anonymously creating music that is at times unsettling, goofy, bizarre, and always pushes the boundaries of music. Even the very idea that The Residents are a band is up for debate. They are more of an art collective that pretends to be a band. And though they prolifically create music, they are perhaps best known for the imagery they...

Asian Man Records will be remembered as one of the best outlets for ska-punk in the 90s, with bands like Slapstick , MU330 , Slow Gherkin , Less Than Jake, and other bands that still hold up decades later. The label is the brainchild of former Skankin Pickle singer/saxophonist Mike Park. Initially, Skankin Pickle started Dill Records, as a means to release their own music, and eventually, put out...

The 90s was a weird time for mainstream music. After Nirvana and the “Grunge” scene blew up, major labels were on the prowl for the next big thing. A lot of unlikely bands and music genres had their 15 minutes of fame. Ska, of course, was one of those trends, as was the “swing revival.” We could debate whether it was good or bad that a handful of ska bands got launched into the mainstream for a fe...

A couple of years before ska broke on the radio, Fishbone—who was on Columbia Records at the time—released arguably the greatest ska song of the 90s: “Unyielding Conditioning,” a beautiful tune with a deep message that challenges us to re-examine the very fabric of our shared reality, and to grapple with the forces that control us and make us miserable. In 1993, the public was not ready for this a...

Soul music has never gone away, but different versions of it come and go. In 2007, when Sharon Jones, 51 at the time, released her third album 100 Days, 100 Nights, she reached a significant audience. That made a lot of people declare "retro" soul back. But Sharon wasn’t retro, and the story around her success was much more complex. It is tied to the record label Daptone Records and her ba...

Why is it that most stand-up comedians pretend that they hate ska? We all know that they’re big nerds, so why don’t they relish in their dorkiness and not put on some big show that they’re cynical, sophisticated tastemakers too intelligent for ska! Oh well, at least not every comedian is this insecure. New York-based comedian Ian Fidance—the ska king of comedy—is an unabashed lover of ska music an...

Leftover Crack is a band of dumpster-diving, drug-abusing, cop-hating crust punks…so begins the opening section in the book Architects of Self Destruction, an oral history of the band. The story of Leftover Crack is strange—unbelievable at times—and filled with bizarre decisions, weird characters, and as the title implies, copious self-sabotage. They were also a very unique band, formed in the ash...

At one of the first out-of-town shows that St. Louis ska band MU330 played, booking agent Steve Ozark, approached them, interested in working with the band. MU330’s members were excited and told him yes! But only if he agreed to book them as much as humanly possible. From Ozark’s perspective, it was a strange request, but one he was happy to meet. For much of the 90s, MU330 hit the road as much as...

In 2019, My wife and I took a week-long trip to Jamaica. It wasn't just a tourist trip to Montego Bay or Kingston, we went a few hours into the mountains to the small village of Accompong and experienced the Maroon Festival. Every year, on Jan 6, this village of roughly 600 balloons up to 10,000 people to celebrate hundreds of years of Maroon independence. It began in 1759, when the Maroons si...

Many of the 90s ska bands signed to major labels were based out of sunny California. Then there was Detroit ska band The Suicide Machines, the only band in their area to ink a big deal. And there is nothing sunny about The Suicide Machines. Taking influence from the city’s gutter punk and lawless hardcore scene, while also pulling elements from local chaotic ska legends Gangster Fun , Suicide Mach...

It’s been a rough year and a half. This past April—in response to our collective trauma—Laura Jane Grace tweeted that the “current ska revival is a sign of just how emotionally vulnerable we all are after the past year.” A perfect sentiment for the moment we’re in. While a lot of people have been using ska as a cheap punchline, her tweet honed in on just how meaningful and earnest the music is, an...

The US had a healthy, diverse underground music scene in the ’80s. Among the goths, art-punks, and lo-fi freaks were plenty of rude boys and rude girls. And yet for some reason, the story of ska in the US is nearly wiped clean from the oral history of American music during the ’80s. You even had bands like Fishbone —who mostly played ska at the time—and The Untouchables signed to major labels! Not...

Philadelphia 4-piece ska band Catbite have only been together a couple of years, but for a lot of people—and I’m one of them—they are one the top new bands currently in the genre. This is largely due to how incredible their debut 2019 album turned out. The band seemingly came out the gate, fully formed, with a unique approach to ska that incorporated power-pop, soul, and garage-rock elements, with...

Many of us collected action figures as kids. And guess what, it’s OK to keep on collecting them, especially if you’re buying the offbeat variety that you can't find at Toys r us: Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze’s Chippendales dancers. Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Will Forte’s SNL character Macgruber, or Bill Burr’s Star Wars character, but with a heavy emphasis on his Boston accent (Wicked Awesome!)...

In Los Angeles, in the early ’80s, you would see rows of scooters on the street outside of ska shows. Inside the clubs, kids would be dressed in their best suits. And there was a full-on mod revival happening. At the heart of this local scene was The Untouchables, one of the best bands in the US ska scene at the time. And one of LA’s biggest bands in the ’80s. Unfortunately, they never made it to...

Touche Amore drummer Elliot Babin wasn’t always a post-hardcore kid. In Fact, he spent many of his formative years on the Aquabats forum in the early 2000s. He’s even an official aquacadet. And for Elliot, t’s not just the Aquabats. He’s a big-time ska fan and he’s not afraid to shout it from the mountain tops, no matter what the rest of his music peers think of the genre.  Elliot joins us on this...

SoCal ska band Half Past Two have a lot of great songs. But there’s something particularly special about their track “Heather.” It’s a simple track about lead singer Tara Hahn’s aunt, Heather McNeil. Heather played a fundamental role in Tara’s life. She introduced her to ska. In the late 90s, she started lending Tara her ska CDs and eventually started taking her to ska shows. Without Heather, Tara...