If That's What They Call Normal, Then I'd Rather be Insane

The thing that I am ripped on for most, by an extremely wide margin, is my love for ska music.

I've accepted that pretty much nobody that I meet in my everyday life has the same level of appreciation or understanding of what ska truly is. It bugs me, because I like to think that I have a lot of knowledge on the subject and the music has proved to be something hugely influential in my life. It made me a better musician. It instilled anti-racist and anti-sexist ideas in me at a pretty young age. It showed me what a class war is and what it means to be a part of it.

I don't want to act like I like I had some atypical introduction to ska music for a white kid and was listening to Jackie Mittoo as a 13 year-old. I discovered through the usual avenue of 90's punk bands and third wave ska. But when I started taking bass lessons in 9th grade, I found out that my teacher, a friend of dad's, had been in one of Toronto's first reggae bands in the 60's and had a level of ska and reggae cred that I could never even dream of reaching. So while I was bringing in Catch-22 and Big D records to learn from, he would also supplement each lesson by teaching the deepest reggae and first wave ska cuts that you can imagine.

This was huge because it expanded my understanding of the genre extremely rapidly. You have a much deeper appreciation for ska music when you understand the nearly 40 year history that preceded kids from California wearing Hawaiian shirts and fedoras.

Hell, I even played in a first wave band while I was in high school.

So something that angers me is when people poke fun at me about ska music with their basic understanding of it being kids in high school covering "Beer" and "The Impression That I Get". That is not what ska is. That is not what ska means to me.

On that note, I offer up this mini documentary narrated by Tim Armstrong. which I think does a good job of hitting the important parts of the second wave of ska and how it influenced later music (though I would cut out the Aquabats and Sublime parts):



You think I don't know that Reel Big Fish ruined this shit? I don't need to hear about it every time my musical preference comes up.