Hello and welcome to the first installment of (probably) many, many visits to my ska CD library.  Let me give a little background on how this whole ska obsession started:

In 1997, I was listening to WXDX from Pittsburgh, back before those ClearChannel fuckers (note: MS Word’s spell check doesn’t like me using the words “fuckers” or “ClearChannel”.  Wonder if these two phenomena are related?) bought them and turned them into a zombie nu-metal station.  No, friends, back then they played honest to god alternative music.  Stuff I hadn’t heard before, and I loved it.  The station really helped me stay awake while doing my nightly drive of 45 minutes over a foggy mountain after working a 13-hour day at a rural amusement park.  The main thing for me was their format.  There was the typical alt-rock and such, but they’d play some stuff a couple times per hour that would make me go “Whoa, what the hell was THAT about?”

I loved it when that happened.

One of those moments was the first time I heard Reel Big Fish on the radio.  1:30 am, I’m on PA route 711 cruising my ass down Three Mile Hill at rate of speed unsafe to anybody, and up comes this song.  First thing I noticed: HORNS.  LOTS AND LOTS OF BRASS.  That instantly snapped me to attention, being the band nerd (music ed. major for two years, thank you) that I was.  And boy howdy, did that song rock.  It rocked so hard that the few fragments my addled brain remembered rattled around for days until I was able to hear it again and put it all together.

Later in the week I ran out and bought their CD “Turn The Radio Off”.  It opened up a brave new world for my naïve, western PA ears.  A world of funky-ass brass with up-tempo reggae-style guitar riffs on crystal meth.  And this, dear readers, is my review of that CD about five and a half years later.

The album opens with “Sellout”, the song mentioned above.  It’s quite a shock going from hearing the Eels on the radio to that big, jarring horn riff at the beginning, and the song just never really lets up.  It’s a great way to start the CD on a high-energy note.  “Trendy”, “Join The Club” and “She Has a Girlfriend Now” serve up a little more of a pop flavor but keep the tempo going.  “Beer” has appeared on a couple movie soundtracks, most notably Baseketball… it’s another fine, danceable tune.

The last half of the album takes a different flavor.  Lyrically there’s a little more of a bitter humor directed against “posers”, hypocritical vegans, the business of being “famous”, and emo-alternative girls.  This last is a couple years ahead of its time, and makes the song that much more fun to listen to today.

Overall, it’s quite a fine little album.  Very upbeat and energetic, yet somehow hollow.  As much as the first track “Sellout” railed against the recording industry, it’s pretty apparent that RBF bought it hook, line and sinker.  They’re a talented group, but I’ve always felt they produced music that was “designed to sell” instead of something really adventurous.  Later in this series (at some point) I’ll review some CDs by artists that never gave a damn about their Billboard numbers.

If you want a prime example of “fourth wave” ska in the mid-late 90’s, pick up this CD.  Just keep this in mind… the “ska craze” only lasted about nine months, then died a quick, painless death away from the hordes of pop culture.

Reel Big Fish did their part to introduce me to the world of ska.  The deeper I dug, the more I loved it… and the more I discovered the futility of the movement. But I discovered a new form of music that I hadn’t heard before, and it was wonderful.  A whole new world of jazz and reggae and punk fused together in a way I hadn’t imagined.  Soon enough I discovered bands that dropped the punk part of the formula and went with a mellow, more jazz-club style… but that’s a story for another review, isn’t it?