It's Been a Long Time since I Could Look in the Mirror and Fake a Smile

Something that has warmed my heart over the last 2ish years is the growing community of new ska bands and the scene they've fostered online. Pretty much all of these bands are involved in some way with Bad Time Records, who have done an amazing job of proudly trumpeting new ska bands, and then move towards being proud of playing ska has been so necessary.

 About five years ago, Duff made a joke to me that every new ska band that started was a clone of either Reel Big Fish (the most popular), Sublime (the least ska), or Operation Ivy (the best version of this, but still not great). This is a hyper-simplified way to sum up an entire scene, by someone who's not remotely involved, but it mostly tracked. There were definitely new bands that excited me, like the new permutations of the Bruce Lee Band, Dan P and the Bricks, and the Nix86, but those were vastly outnumbered by white kids from the suburbs who were starting a band that sounded like RBF and wrote joke lyrics. I hate that people rip on ska without giving it a chance, but there were also many bands that weren't doing them any favours.

Jeremy Hunter, A.K.A. Skatune Network, A.K.A. JER, who has also played a huge role in the recent growth of ska, touched on this issue in many interviews over the last couple of years.* Ska has always been good, but so many people are hung up on the big bands from the 90s and still only supporting them, rather than seeking out new bands to see what is developing. Another problem is that what has historically a diverse genre, featuring mixed races and genders in bands, was boiled down to its whitest version. The saving of ska will rely on bands featuring POC and queer members emerging and everyone supporting that.

*I've read a bunch, but I feel like I remember their interview on blink-155 the best. It's at the end here. 

That's been mostly borne out in the last few years around Bad Time Records and I love it. People are constantly asking "When will the fourth wave start?!" (puke), but Bad Operation gave this movement a great name by calling themselves New Tone. I really fuck with that term, so here are my favourite New Tone releases:

Frightnrs

Out of all these records I'm about to list, this one qualifies least as "New Tone", as it came out in 2016 and doesn't have any of the punk influence that the others do. It is an amazing trad ska/reggae/rocksteady album in the vein of New York's many masters of that style, like the Slackers, David Hillyard and the Rocksteady Seven, and Inspector 7.

Grey Matter

Grey Matter reminds of a a tonne of bands that I would try to listen to in high school, but find too abrasive and not understand. I would understand that they were cool and that there was interesting things going on, but was too conditioned to only like things that sounded like blink and NOFX. Fortunately, I am now ~mature~ enough to appreciate Grey Matter.

Bad Operation

Bad Operation popped up out of nowhere and immediately started promoting singles for a forthcoming album. My favourite thing about them is how different they sound from every ska band I've heard for the last 15 years. It's "Ghost Town" by the Specials filtered through DIY punk. And they coined the term "New Tone"!

Kill Lincoln

My favourite active ska band. Poppy and upbeat ska combined with super catchy pop-punk. All the best parts of Anthem and B is for B-Sides. No ska band since ASOB has put out two back-to-back releases like Good Riddance to Good Advice and Can't Complain. If ska were a wrestling promotion, they would be the Television Champion, and I mean that in the most respectful way possible.

JER

Skatune Network has been the loudest and most important voice in ska over the last few years and I truly appreciate all the work they've done. Their covers are fun, especially the excellent Pick It the Fuck Up!, but all they've done has made me eager to see what sort of original music they could make outside of We Are the Union. JER is their solo project and it fulfilled that promise. Can't wait for the full-length.

Other enthusiasms!

One of the most relaxing things during the pandemic has been watching skate videos. Like everything else in the world, it's found a home on Youtube and most companies now just just upload their stuff to stream online, instead of selling it. The Thrasher series Homies has been my favourite series this year bar none. It follows a group of skaters as they hang out and film for a day and I love the vibe of skaters not caring about getting tricks and just having fun. It also helps that skaters I love to watch, like the Deathwish team and Ishod Wair are front and centre.

I have heard through the skateboarding gossip machine that it is apparently no longer fashionable to like Toy Machine, a company that I've always loved. Vaccine is the company's first video in a little bit, it kicks ass, and it features a lot of new faces. Tyshawn Jordan is the big signing, but the supporting cast of flow riders and Braden Hoban really show up too (I also still love DanLu, Axel, and Leo). Fuck the haters. I'll continue loving Toy for as long as Ed Templeton runs the show.

Fruit Stand Watermelon Wheat

One of my favourite nights of the past year occurred during a trip home at the end of the summer. Every time that I come home, Paul, Damien and I make a point to have at least one night out together during which we drink entirely too much and stay out late and end up not coming home until the very early hours of the morning. We started doing this during the last winter break and since then it has it been great every time and has come to be known as "Wardies' Night Out"*. This night in particular occurred during one of our Wardies Night Out.

We started the night out at the Ballroom, which is a bar in downtown Toronto near the SkyDome, for the birthday party of one of our friends who was back in town for the night. However, that bar isn't really our scene, so we left to go to a couple of bars in Kensington Market. We eventually ended up at a bar whose name I will not be able to remember for the life of me, because I am usually a little more than half in the bag when we end up there. ANYWAYS, this was the end of the night and it must have been about 1:30 or 2 in the morning, so the bar was beginning to empty. There was a trap DJ mixing that night and this was also the only time I have seen real, legit twerking done properly. Paul, Damien and I had already spent a ton of time at a few other bars in the area that night, so we were content to just sit down and have a few beers before we started the perilous trek back to Scarborough.

While we were working on our drinks, I noticed that there were these two girls who kept glancing over to our table from the dancefloor. Eventually, while the three of us were speaking to each other, they came and sat down at our table. These two girls were DRUNK. One sat across from me and (I think?) tried to court me. She was obviously at the end of a pretty long night and was saying things like "Yeah, you know we live on Spadina. We're pretty chill and stuff. I'm pretty much down for anything. I just want you to know that I'm not going to sleep with you tonight. But like it's cool when guys come and stay the night and stay to play Bioshock in the morning. So yeah, like, I'm down for anything."^ Her level of intoxication didn't make it the most charming thing in the world and I wasn't exactly interested, but she was probably just drunk and felt like taking someone home that night, so who am I to judge?

Her friend, on the other hand, was one of the drunkest people that I have ever seen in my life. She sat across from Damien and Paul which I assume was to occupy their attention while her friend made her moves on me. Immediately upon coming over she fell onto the bench seat across from us and had a lot of trouble sitting up and putting words together. We were (understandably, I think) taken aback by her and her friend tried to defend her saying "Yeah, she worked like 120 hours this week. She works at Steamwhistle. We have free beer all the time. Our house is pretty chill. But yeah, she works crazy hours and she stretched really thin, that's why she's passing out." Yes, she worked the equivalent of five complete, 24 hour days at a brewery where she was obviously not employed in any type of long-hour position. It was definitely that and not her extreme level of alcohol intake. Paul went and got her a glass of water from the bar to try to help her out, to which her friend snapped that we should leave her alone. I understand that women have to be wary of men that they don't know when they're out at a bar, but we were just trying to help and we all took sips from the glass to prove that we had not tampered with it, which obviously none of us would ever think about doing in a million years.

Eventually, after this enthralling conversation we parted ways for the night. After leaving the bar, the three of us decided that our number one priority was making our way over to Burger King so that we could take in a hard day's munch. What ensued was one of the funnier conversations I've had in my life while we ate what seemed like the best meal of our life at the time. Damien started taking a video of the entire fiasco on his phone and that continued while we spilt out onto College Street so that we could take the streetcar home. Unfortunately for everyone not named Tim, Damien, Paul or Pat, this video will not be seen by anyone ever.

One of the downsides of living in Scarborough is that if you go to a bar downtown, you have the problem of finding your way back to the east end waiting for you at the end of the night. The last subways eastbound leaves Kipling Station at 1:30, meaning that you have to leave earlier than that in order to catch it when it comes downtown. This and the reduced service of Scarborough bus routes (thanks Ford!), means that generally your best course of action is to catch a streetcar, take it as far east as you can and then take a fairly pricey cab ride the rest of the way. This generally takes about two hours.

We knew that this was the most likely outcome of the night and started to try to contact whoever we knew that lived downtown to see if we could somehow avoid that marathon of a commute back to Scarborough. Realistically, the big payoff of this night if the video on Damien's phone, but it's kind of impossible for me to post that here!

RELISH IN THE LACK OF DELIVERANCE.

But actually though, this night (and all the others like it that we've started to collect) is one of my favourites ever.

*The term "wardy" comes from the American south and is used to designate somebody from your ward. It's used as a term to describe a good friend, notably by the rap groups on No Limit and Cash Money Records. I would point you towards the excellent piece of cinema Baller Blockin' made by Cash Money Records in 2000 for examples of how it is used.

^This is actually what she said to me, to the best of my recollection.