Tidbits of the ska scene and music from 10+ years ago. Pictures, videos, and nostalgia!
How did you get into ska?
I always enjoy stories about how people got into ska. How did YOU get into ska? Reblog this post with your story, or submit a post and I’ll post my favorites!
My story is pretty simple. My neighborhood babysitter in the late 80s early 90s LOVED ska - he mostly listened to Skankin’ Pickle and Fishbone. He’d play it when he was babysitting us kids. I was batty for it. He even asked my mom if he could take me to a Skankin Pickle show (of course she said no, I was like 5..). I don’t think I could really understand that ska itself was a genre.
Fast forward to grade school - the mid 90s. Ska boom hits. Ska is everywhere. That’s when I really started to get it. I loved it, but I had no idea there was a subculture attached to it until I started 7th grade, when I went to my first show. I’ve been enamored ever since. The End.
Send your stories! I want to know how you got into ska!
Anorak Thing: My Ska Odyssey
cassettes with original versions of tunes all of the 2-Tone bands had covered as well as a host of other classic ska/reggae/rocksteady tracks. I was on my way. At the same time in 1984 I met the first mods I’d ever encountered. They were all from Northern New Jersey or the NYC metro area drawn together by a love of music etc. Sadly by 1985 there were already little “factions”, a “scene war” if you will with music being the root of the division. Utterly ridiculous when there were never more than 50 of us. I was firmly in what I’d like to think was a more progressive camp. Unfortunately this degenerated into a classic narrow “us vs. them” scenario. “Them” being a coterie of NYC mods who listened to pretty much nothing but ska (both original and mostly second wave bands), The Jam and pretty much acted like the music world existed from 1979 to 1982 (oddly being all but ignorant towards any ‘79 U.K. mod bands). They wore the “uniform”: Fred Perry’s, Dr. Martens, Harringtons, bomber jackets, monkey boots, porkpie hats (actually stingy brims but I’ll save that rant for another post), braces, etc. “Us” being people who wore more post 1965 clothes like paisley shirts, Nehru jackets, patterned 60’s style trousers, polka dot shirts, red jeans, tinted granny glasses, Beatle and Chelsea boots, etc. We listened to all of the above but also were spreading out a little further and enjoying new English bands like The Prisoners and The Times as well as American 60’s garage, less well known UK bands like The Creation, The Birds, The Eyes or The Artwoods, British 60’s r&b like Georgie Fame as well as “dangerous” sounds like The Pink Floyd, The Herd, etc. “We” had a variety of bands we followed. Though the two “mod” bands (Mod Fun from Northern New Jersey) and The Secret Service (from Long Island, NY) were the only ones from our age group on the NYC “scene” there were a multitude of 60’s type garage bands. “They” had The Scene, an NYC mod band (not to be confused with the vasty superior UK mod band of the same moniker) and a handful of local ska bands. Though people came from a variety of areas out mutual stomping ground was NYC, fortunately there was never any real stomping, just silly arguments (usually in print in our own fanzines) and lots of scowling, sneering, dirty looks and the usual juvenile stand offishness.
