Never Say Goodbye

Something about I, Musical Genius that is interesting to me is that I'm able to interact with past versions of myself by looking at what I was writing on the internet. In addition to the many awful posts that exist in the archive, there's also a pile of drafts that sit in the platform and haven't materialized into anything. As much as there's many swings and misses from when I was trying to process breakups online, most of these drafts didn't even make that cut.

One of the things that comes up a bunch in the drafts, that I may have mentioned on IMU in the past, was a series called Under the Radar in which I would talk about bands I thought were underappreciated. How did I not name that name was corny and hackneyed as fuck?! The drafts are all from September 2013, so my only excuse is that I was wired on coffee in my office at Guelph and trying to come up with ideas to write about to get my chops back up as I entered academia again. Folks, it was a moment of weakness and I will never use a title that bad ever again, promise!

Pretty much all of the bands that I chose for the project were ska bands where I was the only listener I knew of among my friends.* I guess some people would say "Wow, glad you dodged that bullet!", but TBH, I still like all of the bands I chose, even if I don't listen and relate to some of them as much as I used to. Anyways, one of the bands was The Impossibles, and all of this was the intro for the following.

*Turns out I ended up finishing one, on The Stereo, in October 2013. Funny that the only one I did was on the only non-ska band, right?!



The Impossibles are now more of a signpost for true power pop heads to me than anything else. There will be times when the discography still appeals to me, but for the most part I find that I don't turn to ska-punk music from the late-90s as readily. I still love all of it, but it's so nostalgic for me and the more I age, the less I want to indulge nostalgic feelings. They can be a bit of a trap that keeps you living in the past and not moving on from things. There's proper ways to go about it, of course, but having all your main interests be nostalgic is a little poisonous, is what I'm saying.

That all being said, whenever I hear someone from a band mention that they love The Impossibles (and loving The Stereo often goes along with that), my ears perk up and I become way more interested. In fact, what kind of inspired me to come back to this post was Barry Johnson from Joyce Manor mentioning in an interview that he loves the Impossibles and that was why he got Rory Phillips to produce Million Dollars to Kill Me.* They never ascended to the top of the genre in the way that a Mighty Mighty BossTones or Reel Big Fish did, so they occupy this interesting space for me, as an invested ska fan in 2019, of having been around and put out lots of material and having toured, but not being a band that most punks know, in my experience.

*Bud, there's a huge fucking Rory stink (especially Three Hundred by the Stereo) all over that album. I love it.

I guess, what I'm interested in is why does the discography hold weight with people nearly 20 years later? Why does this album still kick around and allow the band to do reunion shows, while pretty much all of their contemporaries from the late-90s don't get the same treatment? People aren't exactly knocking down the door to demand Animal Chin and Hippos reunions.

My theory is that it's because the Impossibles' music (and especially the contributions from Rory Phillips, who went on do similar work in the Stereo) is indebted to a certain tradition of pop-rock songwriting that gives their music more staying power than some others. Most of the verses on Anthology are fairly standard fast ska-punk, but they build around that with huge chorus hooks and distorted intros that elevate the songs from being just "genre". There's nuance in the way the songs' parts flow into each other that for me recalls power-pop of the early 80's or album-oriented rock. Knowingly copping the tricks of hook-centric rock bands is an easy way to beef up your music, and the Impossibles were smart to do it in a genre where most other bands didn't focus on song-writing. This was further emphasized on their farewell album Return, which was entirely power-pop with no ska.

I think one of the first bands to really pastiche that late-70s and early-80s style of writing rock songs was Weezer, who did it perfectly on Blue and also managed to work the idea of bringing back that music into their lyrics (especially "Buddy Holly" and "In the Garage"). So much so, that now a band trying to put big overdriven riffs, catchy chorus melodies and guitar solos in their songs is now just referred to as "Weezer influence". That type of thing has gotten fairly common today, but I think that the Impossibles were one of the first to start doing it and the fact that they did so in a genre with pretty narrow sonic parameters, ska, is commendable.

As a musician, it's hard to stretch ska out and make it work in a variety of ways. A band like Reel Big Fish, who for better or for worse are a mainstay of the genre, hasn't changed its sound at all since its formation. The same can even be said of better ska bands, like the Slackers, who stick to a 1st-wave/reggae formula because it works and they can live in the subtleties and nuance.

When ska-punk bands are more song-writing focused than, for lack of a better term, "playing ska-focused", they inevitably move towards albums that downplay upstokes and dance-y parts in favour of better songs as a whole. Less Than Jake did this on Borders and Boundaries and Bomb the Music Industry! did this on Get Warmer. It's a jump that you need to make if you are part of the weird niche of loving ska, but also loving song songs. I guess that I just wish more people respected the Impossibles for making that jump.

Under The Radar Vol. I: The Stereo

I find that while I do share a ton of favourite bands with most of my best friends, there are a multitude more where it seems like I'm the only person in the world (re: southern Ontario) that listens to them. As is the case with most things that you become obsessed with, you always want to share them with everybody you know, because there are few things that feel better than getting somebody as into something as you are. This is really hard with music though, because most people already have fairly specific tastes when it comes to tunes and they generally roll their eyes whenever you say "Wow! You have to listen to this!", myself included. Unfortunately for me, music is one of the things I know most about, so it winds up being one of the things I like to talk about a recommend, but it seems like nobody every cares to listen.

But I swear I'm good at recommending music!* So my thought was that I would start on series here on Imu^ where I write little synopses of some of my favourite, more obscure bands and explain why I like them and why you should like them too. Now, you may ask yourself "But Timmy, don't like more than half of your posts consist of that already?" and I would reply "Yes. But now it has a name!" I also want to focus more on broken up, forgotten bands than current ones. It will probably end up being a whole lot of never-made-it third wave ska bands, so bear with me.

VOLUME I: THE STEREO

I chose The Stereo as the first entry in this because I seriously am the only person I know, aside from Boston/Baltimore's own John Flynn, that listens to them and I can't for the life of me understand why. They have everything my friends like in music! Big pop hooks! Distorted guitars! Solos! Cleverly crafted pop song structure! Lots and lots of love-like feelings in their lyrics! They were what inspired me to start this series because I keep coming back to them and they keep being a perfect rock/pop band.

The story of the beginning of The Stereo is an interest on if you are as into ska as I am. In the early days of Fueled By Ramen*, there were two especially great ska/punk bands on the label: The Impossibles and Animal Chin. While both of these bands were obviously primarily ska bands, both definitely had a bit of power-pop (in the sense of Weezer) to them, which really set them apart from their peers, in my opinion. They both also had very talented song-writer/singer/guitarists at their helms in Rory Philips and Jamie Woolford respectively. Both of these bands also broke up at roughly the same time, while on the same label. After the demise of the two bands, both singers started to work on more straight poppy rock music on their own until somebody at Fueled By Ramen had the stroke of genius to recommend that two start working together on songs. What resulted was the wonderful band known as The Stereo.

The two did essentially everything on The Stereo's debut album Three Hundred themselves and released it in 1999. Right away you can see all the influences that were subtly hinted at in their ska bands (Weezer, Billy Joel, The Raspberries), but now they were free to be as poppy and hooky and rocky as they could imagine. The end result is fucking amazing and so catchy that it's impossible to do anything but smile and air-guitar for the entirety of the record.

For example, the lead track:

The constant chugging guitars! The amazing vocal hooks! The lyrics that make me want to put this song on for somebody that I care about! The "Woo!" right before the guitar solo! THE FUCKING GUITAR SOLO!

It's also easy to see how more or less every band (especially Fall Out Boy) heard this and thought "Okay, let's play guitar and sing just like that." after hearing this album.

The Stereo went on to fill out their lineup and record two more albums, despite the departure of Rory after Three Hundred, before breaking up in 2004. Though I haven't been able to track down a copy of Rewind+Record (impossible to find anwhere), I can vouch that New Tokyo Is Calling is every bit as good as Three Hundred and just as deserving of a spin and the best example I can think of for that is this cut from the album:

Every time I listen to that song I think that if I were to write a pop song, that is exactly what I would want it to sound like. The vocal hooks in the chorus and verse are amazing, I can't enough of the main riff and the stop/start rhythm of the song is amazing.

I don't really know how else I can sell you on this if it doesn't sound like something you would into already. If you like old Weezer, this is a poppier version of Blue Album. They're a louder, faster version of Billy Joel. A punker version of Cheap Trick. It's very clear when listening to it that Jamie, and on Three Hundred Rory, have really honed their craft and are expert song-writers. Every song transitions perfectly from verse to chorus to bridge to whatever else. If you start listening to a song and aren't that into it, chances are you'll be belting out the chorus in a minute or two.

And man, THE GUITARS. HOLY MOLY, THE GUITARS.

These release are a little hard to find, as the band has really fallen off the map^, so your best bet to track them down would be to just buy them. But man oh man, will it ever be worth it.

*See: How much Bomb the Music Industry!, Less Than Jake, Smoking Popes, etc. that Brian listens to. Can I take credit for Selly's interest in The Wonder Years? Party Pat's interest in Municipal Waste?

^Oh, you know that shit is gonna become a thing.

*When they were started by Vinnie of Less Than Jake, Fueled put out more or less an even mix of ska and pop-punk. Eventually they moved towards the latter and started bathing in money, but I absolutely love their early output.

^They reunited to play the Fueled By Ramen 15th Anniversary show in 2011, which is how I found out about them. Despite the band still sounding amazing, nobody in the audience seemed to care as they were all there to see Paramore.