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Underground > Radio & Music >

Gwen Stefani: "Love Angel Music Baby"

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Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:56 / 01.12.05

*absorb absorb absorb* Done. Actually, I had read that before (was midly shocked to discover reggae is an offshoot of ska, and not the other way around) during my own explorations into ska and its family.

This doesn't change the fact that the ska "craze" of the early nineties (the only only "wave" of ska I was around for), during which it was cool merely to be seen listening to ska, lasted about as long as an episode of the Simpsons, which, although brief, was longer than swing music's rule.

Anyone who says otherwise obviously wasn't very hip.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:36 / 01.12.05

Depends on how many punks and crusties you hang out with, really... ska (both Jamaican and 2-Tone- not so much the US ska-punk stuff) never really went away, in my experience...

21:58 / 01.12.05

likewise.
i spent a good few years watching ska bands in among the punk and hardcore acts that played glasgow. my exposure to no doubt is from that time, and the gig i saw them play would have been at the peak of that.

one of the main bands in the glasgow scene was the amphetameanies, more famous globally as the band wot that guy franz ferdinand was in before his solo career. they are still a going concern, i believe.

i also played bass in a ska punk band for a while.
tony kanal was definitely one of the dudes i watched back then.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

02:16 / 02.12.05

ska (both Jamaican and 2-Tone- not so much the US ska-punk stuff) never really went away, in my experience...

You can't see it, but I'm smirking and making "can you believe this dork?" hand gestures to my imaginary friends.

Nah, I'm only half-serious. Maybe the in the UK it was different, but in the US, in the early nineties, pop culture-wise, ska was a rapidly passing fad. It's sort of a joke where I'm from (not ska music, mind you, but its very short time in the spotlight of pop culture).

05:06 / 02.12.05

When I was mentioning some band to someone, a third party non-participant suddenly chimed in. She asked with a grimace, "Aren't they, like, ska or something?" She looked ill from having to use the word "ska." The band I was referring was definitely not ska for the record.

I asked her about her dislike of ska, and she was utterly vague about the whole thing. According to her, an eighteen year old fresh out of a Canadian high school, ska is probably teh most uncool thing evah. She tells me that her entire social circle feels the same way.
[sarcasm alert]
Well, everybody, the debate's settled. Ska sucks, apparently. Go back to your homes. Nothing to see. Move along.
[/sarcasm]

(Hooolllldddd up, reggae comes from ska? Awesome)

05:16 / 02.12.05

And another thing about Gwen

Her "new" single, Bubble Pop Electric... yeah, I liked it back when it was called Night Moves by Bob Segar.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:32 / 02.12.05

Tuna Ghost: We didn't really have a ska craze in the No Doubt/Mighty Mighty Bosstones/Mad Planets sense. Ska in the UK has been around for ages, but had its floruit probably in the lae 70s/early 80s. I'll leave it to Gypsy Lantern to do the rest.

07:39 / 02.12.05

...and reggae and ska both come from mento.

ska is what happened, as gypsy pointed out earlier, when jamaicans who were used to playing mento and calypso did their impressive take on american RnB and jazz styles.

mento doesnt seem to get the same global audience, perhaps because its too old and the production quality too poor.
its kinda like the blues in that respect.

i'd definitely reccomend grabbing yourself some.

15:48 / 02.12.05

The things written about ska in this thread make my eyes hurt.

16:06 / 02.12.05

The ska sound in the UK actually reached its peak in the 60s and 70s and was a part of the first wave of Mod over here. Central to this was the UK release of compilations such as "Tighten Up" which were massively popular. Mod splintered off into the flamboyant psychedelic scene on the one hand, and skinhead on the other. The original skinheads in the UK were working class, non racist, white boys who listened to Jamaican music. The skinhead look, and actually a lot of the original mod look, were imitiations of Jamaican rude boy style. This further developed into 2tone in the early 80s, which was heavily influenced by the ska sound, crossed with post-punk, performed by black kids from the UK's large Jamaican communities and white kids who liked the music. Not unlike other UK genres like grime in that regard, a new sound from a melting pot city. It never really went away, and loads of bands play music in a ska-punk style. (In my opinion with increasingly diminishing returns, I only really like "first wave" jamaican ska).

We never had a "ska craze" in the No Doubt mold that you are talking about here at all. That never happened. I don't even recognise that stuff as ska. When you say ska, I think Don Drummond, not Gwen Stefani.

You people sniggering at ska as if it were some flash in the pan US pop-punk craze from the 90s are fucking laughable. Get yourself any of the ska comps available on Trojan or Soul Jazz and squirm under the weight of your own painfully misinformed foolishness.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:28 / 02.12.05

The ska sound in the UK actually reached its peak in the 60s and 70s and was a part of the first wave of Mod over here.

Soz, you're right, of course - I was thinking of the tail end of that because it's when I became aware of it, I guess - when the Selecter, The Specials AKA, Bad Manners, early Madness and other (what you may or may not think of as proper) ska bands were in the Top Ten.

17:31 / 02.12.05

i'd saythey were proper ska.
they were british ska, a different breed, and were dubbed second wave or 2tone to differentiate between them and the dudes from jamaica.

i called them punk ska before. in my mind they were still ska, but with a punk mindset, hence the word order. ska puk was massively about the stuff coming out of late eighties/early nineties american punk scene represented by bands like nofx or bad religion, themselves inspired by acts like minorthreat or rich kids on LSD.

operation ivy are pretty much the only band from the third wave to be do anything that was truly evocative of the ska of the original variety, and they died with only one real album's worth to their name.
luckily they spawned rancid.
unluckily rancid didnt know when to stop...

i would put no doubt in that 'so-cal punks who dont really like hardcore very much' bracket.
they remind me of acts like homegrown and goldfinger in terms of their sphere of influence/fanbase andthey often played on pop punk and 3rd wave ska bills.

i think dont speak was a bit of a departure, and rocksteady more so. i reckon rocksteady wouldnt have happened without the success of dont speak, so i guess stefani has the success of that terribly twee song to thank for her career.

in fact, my mum bought that single, and i got her LAMB for christamas last year on her request.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:17 / 02.12.05

You people sniggering at ska as if it were some flash in the pan US pop-punk craze from the 90s are fucking laughable.

Relax buddy. Nobody's actually saying you're not cool.

From the ska FAQ:

Ska was *not* recently invented by ska-influenced bands like No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish or any other 90's band.(1) Ska *is* a forty-year-old music form now in a fresh, vigorous "3rd Wave". Ska is rich in history, broad in scope and guaranteed to make you shake your groove thang.

Yeah, we all know that. It's great stuff. It's always been great stuff. That doesn't change the fact that, in the early nineties, in the US, pop culture-wise, it was a passing fad. I'm sure it's because of this fact you and several other ska enthusiasts seem so intent on making sure nobody ever entertains the notion that it has only recently been discovered.

04:26 / 03.12.05

RE: the entire post above me -

oh snap! You got hir good

15:56 / 03.12.05

That doesn't change the fact that, in the early nineties, in the US, pop culture-wise, it was a passing fad. I'm sure it's because of this fact you and several other ska enthusiasts seem so intent on making sure nobody ever entertains the notion that it has only recently been discovered.

No. As has been pointed out at least twice in this thread already, the early 90s passing fad of "ska" in US pop culture, didn't really happen at all in the UK. Sorry. It didn't happen. Over here, the ska sound has been a constant presence in UK music to one degree or another and in various permutations since the early 60s. Probably due to the proportionally large presence of people from Jamaica that have made the UK their home. 40 years of musical history. Not exactly a passing fad, you see? Hence it grates a bit when people speak of "ska" as if it's "that late 90s fad, how uncool, what a flash in the pan, haw haw haw." It displays a certain degree of supercillious ignorance about the subject under discussion. My comments are not about point scoring over who is "cool" and who isn't, but about having some understanding of the history and influence of particular genre of music before you make huge and innaccurate sweeping statements about it.

15:59 / 03.12.05

oh snap! You got hir good

I'm sorry, have you got something to say or are you just providing background ambience?

00:09 / 04.12.05

Gypsy Lantern: As has been pointed out at least twice in this thread already, the early 90s passing fad of "ska" in US pop culture, didn't really happen at all in the UK....Not exactly a passing fad, you see?

TunaGhost: That doesn't change the fact that, in the early nineties, in the US, pop culture-wise, it was a passing fad

So Gypsy Lantern, what's your point? Tuna Ghost is pretty explicit about the fact that it happened in the US. Your post about the history of ska in the UK is interesting (not sarcasm) but unfortunately barely relevant. Ska was mentioned by Flyboy, then TunaGhost mentioned it and asked if the ska "period" in the UK was similar to the ska "fad" in the US. You jumped all over that.

You wrote: You people sniggering at ska as if it were some flash in the pan US pop-punk craze from the 90s are fucking laughable.
But a good portion of people on this thread are "sniggering" at No Doubt.

The reason why I'm taking you to task is because one could make absolutely any claim similar to this:
If it wasn't made in Kingston in the 1960s, it wasn't ska. Just replace the city, time, and the style, and you have a weird sentence like this:
If it wasn't made in Atlanta in the early 1960s, it wasn't rhythm and blues.
To use this example quickly... if I said that Usher or R. Kelly was R&B, the speaker of the italicized sentence could say, "That's not R&B; Aretha, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding was R&B" The point is...

Toksik wrote: a lot of music evolves as it ages and spreads

It evolves, man.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

00:10 / 04.12.05

...before you make huge and innaccurate sweeping statements about it.

Hardly "sweeping". I'm pretty sure I was reasonably specific with my times and places.

As has been pointed out at least twice in this thread already, the early 90s passing fad of "ska" in US pop culture, didn't really happen at all in the UK. Sorry. Didn't happen.

I'll take your word for it. I don't really remember anyone saying otherwise, actually.

Hence it grates a bit when people speak of "ska" as if it's "that late 90s fad, how uncool, what a flash in the pan, haw haw haw." It displays a certain degree of supercillious ignorance about the subject under discussion.

If the subject I was discussing was, or had ever been, "Ska's History in British Popular Music", you would be absolutely right.

All Acting Regiment

00:18 / 04.12.05

I think this is an argument over an argument, to be honest. Why not get back to discussing L.A.M.B.?

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

00:30 / 04.12.05

Gypsy: Just read your pm and feel a bit of a douchebag. Now that we've got that settled, lets go fly some kites or something.

01:33 / 04.12.05

Legba's right. I also feel like a douchebag. So, sorry Gypsy Lantern.

All Acting Regiment

11:59 / 21.11.06

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