This is the song I’ve been waiting for, since I first heard about Yo Gabba. It’s Alex from Hepcat singing with GOGO13, in an animated segment about cleaning you’re room, aptly titled, Pick It Up. Check out the apparent love of Two-Tone culture- from Rude Boy Dad, Skinhead Son and Beat Girl Daughter to Go Feet t-shirts and spinning Mod Targets.

I’ve seen dead links to this for a while now, but this is the first active one I’ve found.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-R47vp2XQ]

Yo Gabba is the best ska on cable since USA’s Up All Night: New Years Ska Dance Party or maybe that one time when Mtv played Mephiskapheles.

Comments (1) Oct 18 2007

I’ve been into live set trading since Ska.About.com posted a link to The Slackers 01-01-01 show. That was back when About Ska was still vital, and it had yet to be incorporated into Worldmusic.About.com. And for a while, SoulSeek was the place to find and trade live ska sets. But these days, if you want to find or share live recordings, Archive.org is the site to go to. Find the artist you like, review the set on the provided flash player, and pick your compression method, download freely and you are good to go.

Archive.org uses online tools to collect any kind of info that has fallen out of copyright. Old films and websites are compiled here, but its the Live Music Archive that I’m concentrating on, today.

Here’s some sets of interest:

The Allstonians from 1996
Camper Van Beethoven from 1985
The Toasters (2 shows)
Fishbone (5 shows)
The Slackers (3 shows)

Dub Trio (9 shows)
Dub is a Weapon (8 shows)
Antibalas (24 shows)
Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad (8 shows)
Matisyahu (94 shows)

This is several days worth of listening, and I’m sure that there’s more to be found. Browse by band and find what I didn’t.

PS – The archived link to Ska.About.com was provided by Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.

Comments (0) Oct 08 2007

I’m not sure everyone’s opinion on Bedouin Soundclash; I’m a little conflicted, myself. The first time I heard them, I was very turned off by their clean, radio-friendly sound. I gave their brand new record, Street Gospels, a shot and ended up liking a couple of tracks, which lead me back to Sounding a Mosaic, their penultimate album. While the vocals still remind me of the whiney boy hipsters that are popular in the current indie scene, the songs and rhythms come from a very rootsy place. I gotta say, they’re winning me over more and more.

Here’s an online live concert by AOL Music Canada Link (not a direct link, choose Bedouin Soundclash from the list of bands. A GoogleVid search Link Some of my favorites:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/2-lg1fa_MGQ]

[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/dCdWUjdLRJI]

Bedouin Soundclash Official Links: Website MySpace Wiki page Amazon List

Comments (4) Sep 30 2007

A few years back, the BBC made a great documentary, Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. It was fantastic, covering the birth of Ska during Jamaica’s independence and all the way up to Dance Hall.

I was most interested in the first episode which dealt mostly with the early ska days. The film takes us to the Alpha Boys School, and introduces us to the nun that helped raise the Skatalites, as well as many other notable Jamaican musicians. The cameras travel down the neighborhoods of Kingston where the original studios and clubs have been left to rot. We hear from likes of Lord Creator, and the then Prime Minister of Jamaica, before the film follows ska’s path to the UK, where we are privy to interviews with UB40, Paul Simonon, and many others.

If you have friends that need a good primer on Jamaican Roots music, I highly recomend this show. My only complaint is that the narrator states outright that Ska is Jamaica’s first type of music, even though the guests anecdotally refer to both Mento and Nyahbinghi in the interviews.

Here now, is the first episode of this great series, broken into four parts (as per Daily Motion rules)

UPDATE 05/10/08: DailyMotion is not cooperating with my embed plugin, but the links are still active:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

P.S. DailyMotion is a great site. They let you upload longer segments than YouTube, and I love the way they display their tags, making the more popular tags more prominent than the others. Try searching for obvious tags: Ska, Reggae, or your favorite band. But given their constant embedding issues and increasingly limited content, I don’t really advocate the site any longer.

Comments (2) Jun 28 2007

Swift River, Jamaica, located at the foot of the Blue Mountains has had a string of bad luck stretching as far back as the late 1930′s. Massive floods and hurricanes brought the once busseling village to the brink of extinction several times since 1937. But things have been looking up for Swift River lately, according to Greenstar, a US non-profit that helps rebuild poverty stricken towns around the world.

Greenstar is very cool, as far as I can tell. They have a very keen take on promoting culture, as well as commerce, education and agriculture. They find towns that are down on their luck and bring in Portable Community Centers:

“Using solar power generated by large photovoltaic panels, the center can drive a water purifier, a small clinic, a vaccine cooler, a classroom, a digital studio and a satellite or wireless link to the Internet. We work with the people of each village to develop an ecommerce website, employing local musicians, teachers and art professionals to record the voice of the community. Greenstar packages the materials for various markets, both direct to the consumer, and through licensing to businesses.”

This helps bring in money for the town, and gives them a way to show their cultural distinctiveness to the whole world.Greenstar has photos, art and music posted on their site. In fact the main reason I’m posting this is to point a few of you to the great collection of mp3′s. The people of Swift River have passed on the musical traditions of Mento and Nyahbinghi music through the generations. Here are a few from the Greenstar mp3 page:

- Mento tune, Banana
- Nyahbinghi version of Nobody’s Business
- Swift River child gives some solid advice, No Drugs
- A capella toasting from a local man, Skatel

Check out these and others at the Swift River, Greenstar site.

If you want to support this town, bring your business to it. Not far from Swift River is the Rio Vista Resort. An alternative to the sheltering Club Med style resort, Rio Vista is locally run, with authentic cooking and proximity to rural Jamaican life.

Comments (0) Jun 14 2007