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Fast forward to 1995. I was around thirteen, in junior high, and mostly unhappy teenager. Unlike everyone else at that age, am I right? Up top! Ahhhh... Anyways, I lived in a small town. It had it's upside, but a mostly larger downside. Especially to someone who was deeply interested in music, movies, books, comics or as I like to call it, Life. Summer was the setting again, but now I had graduated to MTV. It was an odd time. Grunge had reached it's pinnacle with the rise and fall of Kurt Cobain, but MTV and the mainstream music business in general didn't know what to do. Either willfully or ignorantly. So along with the second tier grunge acts (Stone Temple Pilots, Candlebox, and Pearl Jam) there were a lot of out of the ordinary things getting air time. There was a new British invasion from the likes of Oasis, Radiohead, Pulp, Elastica, and Lush among others. Björk was starting to make waves with her sophomore album Post. Then there were the likes of Garbage and the Cardigans. Lastly there was No Doubt. MTV was a swirling mix of late era grunge, brit pop (for lack of a better term), rap, a smattering of electronica, and ska. Read that last sentence again for impact. There was a time in recent (20 years counts as recent, yeah?) history when a ska band could have a hit let alone three on MTV or radio for that matter. Like I said, it was an odd time.
In 1995 ska was in the middle of, what has now been labeled, it's "third wave". A quick history of ska music will now happen. In the 1950's Jamaica was exposed to American radio for the first time, and as a reaction to jump blues and R&B, bands began recording their own version of it. Ska was born, and unfortunately gave birth to reggae. Then in the 1970's there was a rebirth of ska in the UK brought on by bands like the Specials, The Beat (or the English Beat to us yanks), and Madness, known as 2 Tone. The two-tone wave were closely tied in with the punk scenes of the time, and produced ska's most recognizable sound. Then came the third wave birthed in the late 1980's from a mixture of punk and ska.
I say mix because most of the third wave acts are barely recognizable as ska bands. I don't mean that as a negative. There is a fine line between influence and stealing. For any genre it takes a kind of alchemy in order to move forward. If the form didn't evolve, it would stagnate and lead to things like Christian music. Not every step forward leads to greatness, just look at nu metal or mainstream country. In fact most seemed to follow the the basic blue print of first album is a fairly straight ska album, rest of the albums become weird amalgam of ska and punk. Still with me?
No Doubt had released one album, the self titles No Doubt, of straight up ska, but with the release of 1995's Tragic Kingdom they were clearly branching out. They stood out for a number of reasons, but I have to say it was a lot to do with Gwen Stefani. It wasn't that often you saw a girl lead singer of any kind of rock band in the mainstream, let alone one that sounded so pissed off. Whether because of some jerk calling her all the time or just being mad at a life of sexist double standards. No Doubt as a band were capable of writing some of the catchiest hooks known to man. It was angry, but up tempo music, and I was in love with the sound.
Oddly enough in both teen and media terms, a year seems like a life time. So imagine how immensely excited I was in 1996 by the weirdly funny video for "Sell Out" by the one and only Reel Big Fish. If No Doubt were the respectable party guests invited to pop music party of the ska revival, Reel Big Fish were the party crashers looking to have some fun and few laughs. They were a new ska band for me to obsess over, and they more than lived up to my expectations. Say what you will about Reel Big Fish or ska in general, but I can't name another band that thoroughly flips off the record industry and it's fans for their first major label single. It was a ballsy move and paid off at the time. Turn the Radio Off can be directly linked to my love of music, as well as my drive to seek out bands off the beaten path. There was a time I could sing all the lyrics to this album from memory as there were many an afternoon spent headphones plastered to my head as skanked out hard in my bed room.
No Doubt spoke to my angst as a largely unpopular kid and to my yearning for a life far removed from my actual life. A life where I could talk to other people about common interest and be myself. However it was Reel Big Fish that gave me the real escape. They made me laugh and helped teach me not to take everything so seriously. They also made playing trumpet seem infinitely cooler, a major factor in any teens interests. Especially if the teen in question played the trumpet themselves, which I did. Honestly it also gave me plenty of ammunition against all the kids I hated for making my life a living hell. Songs like "Trendy" and "Everything Sucks" put a lot of things into perspective for fourteen year old me.
In 1997 ska was starting to lose it's footing as mainstream music, now in league with MTV, decided bubble gum pop and label created boy bands were due for a revival, a mere seven years after they were driven from the airwaves. Not only that, but the country was in the middle of a swing music revival. A revival that was even more short lived than the ska revival was. A clarification is needed, I am aware that MTV was always a pawn of the music industry. I remember at the time hating MTV for turning it's back on "real" music, and instead giving us the Spice Girls. But there was MTV2! See, MTV did care about music. You just had to pay extra for it. I always wondered what it must be like. A cornucopia of the coolest music known to man, surely! Then a friend of mine had satellite and MTV2 was just another in a never ending stream of let downs for poor ol' teen me. But it was alright for 1997 was the year that gave us Save Ferris. Yes, Save Ferris the band that did the ska cover of "Come on Eileen", a crime many a music critic has never forgiven them for. As 80's music was entirely out of vogue with teen-me, I didn't care, in fact I thought it was far superior. I have softened this stance a bit. I like the Dexy's Midnight Runner version better, but I also enjoy the Save Ferris cover. Save Ferris don't get a lot of respect, and I get it to a degree. It Means Everything is fairly slight in the lyric department. It does contain a song about Spam after all. A great song about Spam, but a song about Spam none the less. This album had teen-me skanking out in my bedroom, far from the prying eyes of everyone. The band walked a fine line between No Doubt and Reel Big Fish. They had the pop sheen of No Doubt, and the humor of Reel Big Fish. I would also like to point out that, had they not been ska Save Ferris might have had a completely different career as a pop rock band. But ska is kind of the bastard music genre, that very few practitioners get respect for.
1997 gave us the release of the Dance Hall Crashers album Honey, I'm Homely. While I wasn't cool enough to have heard it upon release (I didn't hear it until 1999. I know, poseur) it was another milestone for me. With two lead female vocalist, DHC, a band who had been at there at the start of the third ska wave, expanded upon the sonic pallet of ska. Among the fifteen tracks on the album, there are a lot of great sarcastic moments, but also some genuinely heart felt songs with something to say. To be fair I had heard of them through the Angus Soundtrack, I just didn't follow their output at the time. 1997 also saw long time third wave ska band, and Clueless famous, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones finally get a hit with "The Impression That I Get". It was fairly inescapable that year and (much like all the ska bands of the time) after that they went back to doing what they had done for the previous decade. In 1998 Reel Big Fish released their follow up, Why do They Rock so Hard?, much to my delight. This saw them move a little out of their ska zone, and gave us one of the most misunderstood songs ever written. "Thank You for not Moshing" is perhaps one of the funniest satires on a scene ever written. It was also woefully misunderstood, so much so that they constantly had to state it's meaning in concert. Less Than Jake also released Hello Rockview in 1998. Again I didn't hear this one until a few years later, and probably for the better as it gave voice to unexpressed feelings to a troubled time in my life. With songs like "History of a Boring Town" and "Al's War", I was able to vent frustrations that seemed very oppressive to the time period. 1999 gave way to No Doubts third album Return of Saturn, a very big step outside their ska sound. Songs like "Ex-Girlfriend" and "New" showed a very polished rock side. But they made sure fans followed along with songs like "Bathwater".
That brings me to the end of my life as a teenage ska fan. I moved from my tiny hamlet to the big city, and with the move I found a much deeper source of discovery. Lawrence didn't have just one music store, they had four independent stores and two chain stores! A little over a decade later only two of those stores are still standing, but that's a whole different article. So I kept buying albums. Towards the end of my teens, I discovered something new. Indie and all the baggage that term brings with it. However it wasn't just indie music I began to find myself drawn to. There was punk, electronic, rap, jazz, blues, and yes even country. This isn't to say I cut ska out of my life completely. Far from it. I found even more bands to obsess over. Bands like the Specials, Mad Caddies, The Gadjits, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Toots and the Maytals, The Beat, and I even found my way back to the band that started it all, Madness. I was shamed long ago into hiding my ska past for a time, lest everyone realize what a dork I was. As if the constant talk of comic books, obscure movies, and scifi novels didn't tip people off to that. But I never forgot the times spent skanking out in my bedroom, road trips with ska to soundtrack the drive, and the sheer joy of it all. So yes it's true, I was a teenage skank.
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