Ska-boom!

The incredible persistence of the Two Tone sound

by Matt Ashare

You can weld metallic guitars to it, the way the Mighty Mighty Bosstones do. You can coat it with a sugary pop crust ˆ la No Doubt. You can grease its gears with a little punk snot in the manner of Rancid or Sublime. Or you can dress it up in a suave cocktail-hour suit of Latin jazz and lounge exotica, which have been two of Jump with Joey's popular tricks for the past few years. But no matter what gets piled on top, beneath, and around its rock-steady beat, ska music is still immediately recognizable as ska. And more and more often, it seems, bands are popping up on the radio, in the charts, and around local scenes across the country and putting their own stamp -- or maybe one borrowed from the examples set by the Bosstones, Rancid, and No Doubt -- on ska's buoyant rhythms.

Yes, there's a ska revival, explosion, or at least eruption going on in America right now. It was spearheaded by the commercial success of bands like No Doubt, Sublime, and the Bosstones, whose Let's Face It (Big Rig/Mercury) has climbed into the Top 40 of the Billboard 200, and who will be headlining the Warped Tour when it hits Northampton on July 29. We're also seeing an upsurge of newer groups, like Southern California's ska punk Reel Big Fish, who are charting modestly with a debut CD on Mojo titled Turn the Radio Off and getting heavy national airplay with "Sell Out."

Currently hovering just under the range of the mainstream radar are the likes of Moon Ska Records, a 14-year-old label devoted to ska with a growing roster (which includes Boston's Skavoovie & the Epitones and the Allstonians); classic ska reissues like the new Time Marches On (Heartbeat) CD by 40-year ska/reggae veteran Derrick Morgan; novelty compilations like Shanachie's Ska Down Her Way: Women of Ska; and underground institutions like LA's Jump for Joey, a cult band whose three Japanese-import-only CDs (Ska-ba, Generations United, and Strictly for You Vol. 2) have just been reissued by Rykodisc's Hifi imprint. Later this summer, on August 23 at Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, a giant New England Ska Festival is scheduled, to include national and regional veterans like the Skatalites, the Toasters, and Bim Skala Bim, as well as up-and-comers Skavoovie & the Epitones, Spring Heeled Jack, and the Pilfers.

This isn't the first time ska has poked its bopping head into the pop arena. Back in 1964, less than a decade after ska first emerged in Jamaica as a proto-reggae synthesis of New Orleans R&B, Caribbean rhythms, American jazz, and indigenous folk music, England's Millie Small scored a transatlantic hit with "My Boy Lollipop," a ska-inflected ditty that set the precedent for the genre's long-running tradition of novelty numbers. A few years later, one of the original Rude Boys, Kingston's Desmond Dekkar, crossed over from Jamaica to America with his ska-flavored "Israelites," a Top 10 hit in 1969.

But it was in England, where a strong community of West Indians had resettled among future punks who would come to feel a social affinity with the oppressed minority Jamaicans, that Dekkar and ska in general had their biggest initial impact outside of Jamaica. By the end of the next decade, rude boys of all colors had united behind the Two Tone movement, a British-based ska craze fueled by the rhetoric of racial equality, hyperactive reggae beats, mod fashion styles, a close relationship with punk rock, and bands like the Specials, the female-fronted Selecter, and the English Beat.

Tighter, faster, and in many cases cleaner-sounding than the original Blue Beat ska (named for the Blue Beat label that released many early ska singles) of Jamaica, or the more relaxed grooves of reggae, the British ska wave of the Specials, Madness, and the bizarre and humorous Bad Manners incited American punks like the Bosstones to pick up on the infectious beat. And there ska remained, eking out a meager existence as an offshoot of the all-ages hardcore scene in America for the better part of the '80s, years during which the Bosstones released discs on the Boston punk label Taang!, No Doubt played parties in Orange County, and half of Rancid's membership fused ska and punk at the Gilman Street Project in Berkeley, as Operation Ivy. Ska had become, as a friend of mine likes to say, punk rock's happy cousin -- an upbeat, often politically fueled, but largely nonviolent outlet for youthful energy in American suburbs.

So it's no surprise that in the wake of the rise of the '90s platinum punks (Offspring, Rancid, Green Day) American ska punks would be given a profile boost. It certainly hasn't hurt that both Offspring and Rancid have recorded their own ska tunes, or that ska outfits have found themselves side by side with popular punks like Social Distortion on the Warped Tour. It's maybe more surprising that ska's lively dance grooves and pop melodies didn't translate into greater mainstream success earlier. After all, it's been clear since the days of Madness, the Specials, and the English Beat that kids + ska = fun.

Ska's inner strength -- that indestructible groove -- is also its Achilles' heel. If rock's guitar/bass/drums basics sometimes seem limiting, they're nothing compared to the tyranny of the ska beat. Although endless variations have been and are being invoked -- from the crunchy power chords of a Bosstones tune like "The Impression That I Get" to the Latin swing of Jump for Joey's take on "Un Poquito de tu Amor" to the bebop-inflections of the New York Ska Jazz Ensemble doing "Teardrops from My Eyes" -- a ska drummer invariably comes back to that unmistakable pattern that defines the genre. (Legend has it that poor radio reception of New Orleans R&B stations in Jamaica led the first ska musicians to place the emphasis on the first and third beats of a 4/4 measure, instead of the second and fourth, as is common in rock and blues.) Perhaps that's why some of the biggest hits by ska bands -- Madness's "Our House" and the English Beat's "Save It for Later" -- have been more rhythmically in tune with American pop than with the groove of Jamaican ska.

But the market and the charts are different from what they were a decade ago. Alternative-radio formats have opened new holes through which singles by bands that might not appeal to a broader rock audience can sneak into rotation. SoundScan's computer-calculated sales figures coupled with the fragmenting of the mainstream rock audience into smaller, more specialized demographic units has made room for bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Sublime on the Billboard charts. The new ska bands haven't had to shy away from sounding too ska, or make a point of putting their rockiest foot forward first. Their music may take on the trappings of punk, metal, jazz, funk, or pop. but it's still unmistakably ska. And now it's begun to be more profitable and more popular than it was back when the Specials were roaming the concrete jungle of the '80s.