What follows here is some sort of vague allegory involving ska music. No, I’m not drunk at the moment. You see, in fall of 1997, ska music became kinda trendy. You had bands like Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger and Save Ferris release one or two little singles that everyone kinda liked, and a mini-trend was born. All the "newly cool" people would listen to it and say "Dig that crazy sound! They’ve got, like, horns and stuff! I like it!"
Meantime, all the people who had been following the scene for years and years looked at this development with rather mixed feelings. On one hand, it was great to see something they were passionate about finally get some exposure nationwide. On the other hand they listened to this stuff and realized that it wasn’t REALLY ska music in its purest form. It was some watered-down, pop-diluted version of the music they knew and loved. And of course, these people got ROYALLY PISSED.
For about, oh, nine to twelve months, this bastardized version of ska-pop music was where it was at, yo. One could even say that "the kidz liked it". Some of the less-educated said, "Hey, that song by that Sugar Ray guy called "Fly" is kinda ska! It’s got a black guy who sounds like he’s from Jamaica on it, so it MUST be ska." Once again, the experts and long-time followers of the scene just got more and more jaded about the entire situation as they saw the scene they had worked long and hard to cultivate just be overrun by the fanboys and wanna-bes. It was like watching a modest crop field get destroyed by a passing swarm of locusts.
Eventually the craze died down and things returned to normal, right? Not quite. The fanboys left ska and went on to other pursuits like Limp Bizkit, moshing, and doing stupid and annoying stunts to get on TV. The old guard took a look at the scene, and it wasn’t pretty. All the bands that had been on the verge of the big record deal went ahead and took it, and totally sold out their sound to get radio play. Without the well-known bands in the scene touring in the old style, "true" ska was even weaker than ever. Bands got discouraged and broke up. Album releases became less frequent. Tours were shorter and in smaller clubs. At this point, a good many of them threw up their hands and vowed never again to get involved in ska music because "it got ruined", or "pop killed it", or any other sort of bitter, cynical statements those kind of people usually make. They just holed up in their domiciles and listened to their old CDs by the Specials and the Skatalites, never again giving the music they loved a chance to survive again.
Where do I fit into this equation? I was one of the fanboys. Reel Big Fish’s "Turn the Radio Off" was the first "ska" CD I ever bought. From there I picked up "It Means Everything" by Save Ferris, and Goldfinger’s self-titled release. The thing is, I was a bit more curious than most of the other new crowd. I wanted to learn a little more about the roots of the music. So everytime I had a spare $20 I would wander into the Camelot music store in Westmoreland Mall and go to their small ska section. I’d look at the CDs and just randomly pick up a band that I thought might be good. From there I noticed that a lot of the musicians would collaborate with other bands and find out which particular horn players and songwriters I enjoyed the most. I got to see which labels were more "ska-punk", which were more traditional ska, and so on. From doing this and buying the occasional cheap compilation CD, I soon got familiar with all the major labels and the bands and musicians affiliated with them. I grew to appreciate the styles and nuances of something I really enjoyed instead of just hopping on the bandwagon speeding toward the "next big thing".
The label I enjoyed browsing through the most was… you guessed it, Moon Ska Records. Diverse bands, great musicians, fairly available records, big-ass catalog. It was run by the gentleman I mentioned above for well over a decade. I think the reason I enjoyed most of the bands on that label so much is pretty simple… the guy heading up the operations there truly loved what he was doing and didn’t go to bed each night dreaming of profit margins. It was a labor of love for all those years, driven by the desire of the musicians and the support of the fans. This is the guy who even sold the T-shirts after a show on the 4th floor of a cramped, poorly-lit club on the University of Pittsburgh campus. I had the opportunity to talk to Bucket for just a few seconds after the show. You could tell he was tired and wearing down by the second, but everytime a fan came up to shake his hand or just even say "Great set tonight, Buck", his face would light up. Front-man of a legendary band, head of his own record company… and a simple compliment was all he needed. The fact that I bought a T-shirt and two CDs from his label that night surely helped, but we’ll let that slide.
If I bored you to tears here, let me try and draw you a sense of the big picture. Small but underground pastime has a fiercely devoted following, then briefly becomes all the rage. After a few months, it quickly becomes stale as the new fans and old-timers alike desert it. From there, the smaller companies and "fringe players" in the little industry suffer and eventually go under.
The old-timers say "It never used to be this way, it was better when it was underground. These new fly-by-nights ruined it for everyone, so now I’m just going to forget the scene I used to love to spite myself and cry ‘Sellout!’ at everyone." They never saw that if they had just kept the faith and loved their music and bands for enjoyment and not analyzing every little thing that was wrong with how culture viewed their passion, their scene would still be thriving today.
This little piece draws an analogy in my twisted mind, but I’m not sure if I conveyed it well enough in here. Bitter old-guard fans… a passing trend… pop culture overkill of that trend… the future does tend to repeat itself. For the record, upon further listening to the second Reel Big Fish CD "Why Do They Rock So Hard?", it wasn’t bad at all. A little hollow, a little pop-ish, kind of predictable but not the Great Satan of the ska scene. It holds the same sort of kitsch and fun appeal as, say…
… A wrestling match involving the Rock.
(©2000 Matt
Etling. Originally posted on OraclesWar.com;
reprinted by permission of the author.)