I ran across this mixtape podcast and the DJ’s name immediately struck me as familiar. After digging a little deeper, I found that the man in question, DJ Wade, was a Ska and Reggae jockey for a St. Louis college radio station, and toured with the STL’s own Isaac Green and The Skalars. You might also recognize his name from his dub version of the Skalar’s Don’t Count, which appeared on the Bang Soundtrack.

His podcasts are literally mixtapes, which he made in 1995- ripped, encoded and organized by side. They lean towards Roots Reggae, Dub and Dancehall, and he knows a lot about where his various riddims come from. Link to DJ Wade’s Reggae Mixtapes

If you aren’t familiar with the Skalars (or it’s earlier incarnation, Isaac Green and the…) then hot tail it over to Amazon for a cheap used copy of either of their albums. They were the best local Ska band during my youth, and raised the bar considerably for the marching-band turned-ska-band wannabes that flooded the STL scene in the 90′s.

However, their tempos were often too fast to be considered First Wave revivalists, like their colleagues in Cali, Jump With Joey and Ocean 11. Still, their lack of power chords and abandonment of any punk elements set them apart from the Ska-Rockers that shared their bill. They weren’t doing the Big Band-Ska thing, but there were some Swing elements to their approach. Many of their songs could be considered Rocksteady, but bursts of tempo changes and heavy horn solos prevent them from being strictly so.

They were college kids who, while trying to figure out how to play this music got signed to Moon and hit the ground running. The resulting sound was completely unique, Rootsy Ska played on the banks of the Mississippi in the last years of the 20th Century.

Link to Keep on Keepin’ on With IGATS (a documentary of the Skalars tour of the West Coast)

Links to The Skalars YouTube videos presented by 3rd Wave TV clip 1 clip 2

Link to The Skalars video for the single, High School

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQkSILlj_fU]

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Comments (0) Feb 28 2008

I am pleased to announce that the newest issue of Make Magazine will feature a small article by yours truly. While the article has nothing to do with Ska music, I did get a nice plug for the web site at the end.

It is an honor, not just to be published by the legitimate press, but because of the publishers and editors in particular. I’ve been a reader and sympathizer with the BoingBoing.net kids since I first picked up The Happy Mutant Handbook in 1996. It was a surprise when Boinger, Mark Frauenfelder answered my email about magicians and patent law, but it blew my mind when he asked me to write about it in Make.

Make is a kind of How-To/DIY mag, for the digital age. It’s published by O’Reilly Media, who also put out Craft and The Missing Manual series of books. I could not have hoped for a cooler group of people to be associated with.

My contributor page.

Link to the article The Conjurer’s Dilemma (Make subscribers only)

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Comments (0) Feb 25 2008

It’s well over a year old, but it’s news to me. This MOJO Magazine article covers the Skatalites from the Alpha Boys School up to their current legacy in JA. There’s even a special insert covering Don Drummond’s sad story, specifically.

It’s in PDF format and hosted by skatalites.com – Link to PDF

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Comments (0) Feb 24 2008

Here’s another of those “bands that time forgot”. When we tell the story of Ska we tell how the Two Tone movement revolved around the UK in the late 70′s- we say that the US had very little interest in the sound until years later, when the likes of The Toasters and Fishbone hit the scene- we tell a story that isn’t inaccurate, just incomplete.

What would you say if you learned that a New York band was playing Traddy Ska and Roots Reggae before anyone had even heard of The Specials? They were called The Terrorists and you can still hear their original material compiled by ROIR records.

From CDBaby.com-

The number one band playing reggae, ska, dub and punk on the East Coast, particularly New York City, were Terrorists. They were regularly gigging in N.Y.C. at Max’s Kansas City, CBGBs, Irving Plaza, Mudd Club, Hurrah, Tramps, the 80′s. Their unique punky, reggae, dub, ska were in great demand….

Because of the involvement of Lee “Scratch” Perry, who traveled with and fronted the Terrorists over 20 years ago, and the many tracks with Roland Alphonso of the Skatalites, also from 20 years ago, this is an important slice of reggae, ska, punk, dub from Manhattan in the late ’70′s. This is an historic document with material that is absolutely marvelous and unique. It puts a totally new perspective on reggae in Manhattan evenings during that period just before Marley was breaking through internationally with “Exodus” and brought reggae to a new tidal wave.

You can get the CD at Amazon, CD Baby and eMusic.

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Comments (0) Feb 19 2008

It is not surprising that Tel Aviv has it’s very own Ska group , what’s surprising is that they are so good. Hoodska Explosion aren’t Ska-Punk formula pushers, in fact, each of the 4 tracks found on their MySpace page show a wide range of influence. Tracks, Misleading and Cigarette, hint that the band listens to a lot of Firebug and Victor Rice, while The Whistle finds Hoodska in a late ’80′s Game Show Ska kind-of-mood. They’ve got songs in English and Hebrew, and they boast that their sound incorporates elements of Polka, Klezmer, and American Jazz. Truly, music for the world. LINK

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Comments (1) Feb 02 2008