If you know anything about music, you know that ska is cool. When you take the typical rock pieces (guitar/bass/drums) and throw in a bunch of horns, what you get is something sweet. There are still a bunch of directions you can lean within the "ska" family -- punk (MIghty Mighty Bosstones, Less than Jake), reggae (The Skatalites, Sublime), pop (No Doubt), or what is considered just ska (Reel Big Fish, Five Iron Frenzy).
Here's the issue: ska is dead. Consider the above bands, which were all the ones I could think of off the top of my head:
Mighty Mighty Bosstones: last successful venture was in 1997; fell apart, for all intents and purposes, in 2003
Less Than Jake: popularity in the late 90s, successful album in 2003, then a slow fade into anonymity and an abandonment of ska for pop-punk
The Skatalites: a 60s band who had some success as they re-formed in the 90s, but now it's a group of dudes that continually changes members and tours for the heck of it
Sublime: hugely popular in 1996, when their lead singer died of a heroin overdose
No Doubt: very popular in the 90s, but went away in 2001 so Stefani could launch her successful dance-pop career, or something
Reel Big Fish: started a pretty steep decline in 1998, with the exception of one hit in 2002 that didn't feature horns
Five Iron Frenzy: not really popular outside their "cult following" (of which I'm a member); disbanded in 2003
As per yoozh (I don't know how to write the abbreviation for "usual"), wikipedia says it best -- "By the late 1990s, mainstream interest in third wave ska bands waned..." My question is "Why?" Here are some theories I have:
Reasons ska (or any extinct sound) died* and went to heaven**
1. Maybe it was a top-heavy genre
When you think about the era of crooners, you think of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Bing. Maybe when those three guys called it quits, there were no comparable talents to fill their shoes and the genre died. Maybe the demise of the Bosstones, Sublime, and No Doubt ended this party.
2. Maybe people were worn out from all that skanking
3. Annoying pretentious music insider comment: Genres always come and go because music is an organic thing that is constantly being innovated. People started making better music than ska, so people stopped listening to ska.
4. Maybe the youth of America has a collective attention span of about 10 years
5. Maybe the sound of ska naturally appeals to a certain narrow age range (say, 15-22)
If so, it might have a natural lifespan of 7-14 years in this culture of myriad competing fads.
*As with all living things, every music genre eventually dies
**Like dogs, all music genres go to heaven. Except death metal and whatever genre Marilyn Manson represented.
Help me speculate
Do you like ska?
Why do you think ska died?
Jon
Ska is awesome! I actually went to a Reel Big Fish/ Less Than Jake concert about 3 years ago. My guess is that the demise is a combination of reasons 1 and 3 above. The top talent stopped making music and this allowed focus to shift to up and comers in other genres.
ReplyDeleteSka is and always was the illegitimate love-child of the improper cohabitation and illicit affair of reggae with pop-punk. The fact that it camouflaged itself in the "rock" section of the music stores was enough to make me resent it in the same way the wildebeest resents lions in grass.
ReplyDeleteI'm really getting my schadenfreude on about this. But to each, begrudgingly, their own I suppose, and for it I shall say a proper farewell.
1 - Yes
ReplyDelete2 - Haha, Sure this one also
3 - Kinda, music IS always changing, but the music now is not better than ska, it's just different and at the forefront now rather than ska
4 - This is true, leading to the death of the popularity of ska
5 - I don't think so
Note on your small note above: As a believer that all music genres have worth (and a metal fan), I say you just need to find someone who is playing good Death Metal because you obviously haven't yet
As for the questions:
Do you like ska? When it's done well, yes I love it. (Jon you know how much I love FIF, so I'll spare everyone else here how great they are, because they are so very great)
Why do I think ska died? See my comments on your reasons above. Also, it was a fad, there are still some bands (rather obscure/hard to find) doing good ska, they're just harder to find now because people aren't as interested.
I may respond to Nick's bizarre diatribe at a later date, but for now...
ReplyDelete@Will- The joke about Death Metal had nothing to do with the quality of the music. It was a joke about how (like Marilyn Manson), the artists seem... well, evil. For example, the wikipedia page on Death Metal credits the following bands with pioneering the genre:
Sodom
Possessed
Death
Carcass
Deicide
Suffocation
Ahem. Death Metal will not be in heaven.
oh ska music.. never quite found a foothold in my hearts. probably because it didnt have the drive of a rock anthem or the finesse of an acoustic set among other things.. that being said though, its death does seem as a mystery. for example, i dont have any personal attachment to folk music, but it certainly has quite a following. maybe the setting for such music, though, is much more broad than ska. people can kick back to a good folk song or work on their car to a good classic rock song or revel in the brokenness of a those classic love songs.. but ska seems to have lost its place..
ReplyDeleteMy apologies for, well, whatever exactly that was. Couple things:
ReplyDelete1 - Bar studying = slow, painful torture followed by a 3 day period of agonizing humiliation and presumably death.
2 - The bar makes me grumpy.
3 - I had no fewer than 3 experiences of trying music labelled as rock only to find out it included brass instruments. I hate being duped by faulty labeling, much like I hate eating something with an expectation of particular taste and it turning out to be something wildly different.
4 - I went back years later to try it, found I still preferred brass in orchestral settings (but intriguingly not by itself, because it sounds a very tinny, nasty sort of music; very tinny), rather than in conjunction with rock music.
5 - It seems a discordant mish-mash of instruments simply for the fun of it...and unlike the cello or violin (occasionally employed by some artists I enjoy) never seemed to "fit"
6 - Quite honestly, I'm ambivalent and grumpy and still slightly, though mostly illogically, resentful of music stores incapable of labeling music by correct genre.
But what if I wanna listen to Death Metal in heaven?
ReplyDelete@Will- In heaven, there will be no death, so "death metal" wouldn't even make sense. But I'm sure there will be some redeemed version of it... Life Metal?
ReplyDelete@Nick- In your frenzied, grumpy state of studying for the Bar, no apology is needed for a strange rant.
In defense of the music stores (though I don't like music stores, so I'm not sure why I'm defending them), ska is a small subset of rock. It certainly doesn't fit in any other major category. Since even at the height of ska's popularity there were probably only 10-15 ska bands selling CDs in that store, it probably didn't warrant its own section. Thus, those CDs got grouped under ska's parent section -- rock.
At any rate, sorry you were heart by bad music labeling.
To be fair...I would have settled for a loud, very likely [primary color] neon and black/white checkerboard sticker on the label.
ReplyDeleteI lament the fact that ska is dead. And I feel it is my duty as a ska fan to give props to the O.C. Supertones. Perhaps their 2010 reunion tour was their own personal (while admittedly unsuccessful) rebellion against the realization that something great had died? One can only speculate...
ReplyDeleteAs I skimmed over this I felt the need to comment that my 18 year old brother is in a Ska band, and they have gathered a mini-following and have won several contests.
ReplyDelete