January 4–11, 1996

music

Return of the Rude Boy

Ska's third wave skanks through Philly.

By Neil Gladstone

It's Friday night at the Trocadero and hundreds of ska fans are swinging their knees and elbows with so much joy you'd think the Berlin Wall just fell down on Arch Street. The upbeat sound of local band Public Service energizes an adolescent audience dressed-to-mope. Greasy hair shimmers with every strut of the neck. Nappy sweaters wiggle with a swing of the hips. A style of dance music born over 30 years ago in Jamaica has hit the shores of Philadelphia with a brassy bang.

Few people know more about the ebb and flow of Philadelphia's ska scene better than Chris Manos, guitarist for Public Service. When Manos started the band in 1982, most of his peers saw it as a quirky act riding out the end of the English ska phenomenon, which is also referred to as the second wave. That movement, which started in the late '70s, mixed elements of the original '60s Jamaican ska with punk to form hard-edged dance music. Groups like The Specials, English Beat and Madness were top-ten sellers in England, but had little more than a marginal fan base in America. The recent American resurgence of the music has been coined the third wave and U.S. bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Mephiskapheles and Dancehall Crashers are leading the way.

Philadelphia's contribution to the movement includes Public Service and Ruder Than You, both bands who have been toiling away for many years to a growing, loyal audience.

Public Service started in the mid '80s, when the English ska movement had just about petered out. Manos admits that audience numbers were scant the first couple of years. The band brought people out by networking with out-of-town groups and putting on shows that featured an evening's worth of great dance music. The hundreds of teenagers who come out now are a welcome reward for several years of "working our asses off," says Manos.

Onstage and off, the 33-year-old guitarist displays the youthful ebullience of a great aerobics instructor. During a show, he often jumps up and down to get the whole crowd pogo dancing. The music almost forces it. This music's signature is a curt, staccato strum of the guitar — similar to reggae, but much more upbeat. That scratching sound gave skait's name and seems to infect the backbone of everyone who hears it. According to Jamaican music lore, reggae was born on a hot summer night in the '60s by a ska band that wanted to slow down the pace to stay cool. Although ska is reggae's musical precursor, the slower music has made much bigger waves internationally and unintentionally relegated ska to the underground.

Ska music doesn't require a horn section, but one or more brass players are usually included in the mix to fortify and/or play off the high-end guitar.

The performance itself is a workout, laughs Manos in between sips of Powerade. Freddie "3-D" Weaver, a singer with both Public Service and Ruder Than You, says a set's worth of dancing helps keep his arthritic knee from getting too stiff. It was permanently damaged in a high school football accident. He relies on the healing power of music to keep him going.

During the English resurgence of ska, the music was embraced by working class kids introduced to it by young Jamaican immigrants. Fans saw the movement as a catalyst for racial harmony and took to dressing in black and white. Checkerboard shirts, porkpie hats, thin black ties and suspenders, houndstooth pants and wingtip shoes were all the rage. These days, someone who sports the two-tone fashion is often considered a "traditionalist."

Tonight's audience at the Trocadero seems better outfitted for a Green Day show. Nose rings, blue hair and ripped jeans are easier to spot than the old-school, "rude boy" look of closely-cropped hair, wraparound sunglasses and a Fred Perry shirt.

In the third wave, ska music and fashion combines influence from everywhere, says 19-year-old Mike Ali, a WKDU (91.7 FM) DJ who features plenty of the music on his radio show, "Identity Skarisis." He's also starting a band with two other WKDU ska enthusiasts, Ben Davis and Andrea Gingerich. (All of the time slots for their shows will change with the new semester that starts next week. It's best to check with the station at 895-5917, for specifics.)

The musical background of ska instrumentalists varies greatly. Horn players are often trained in jazz theory which is helpful to improvisation. Public Service's 39-year-old trombone player, David Chamberlain, teaches high school music. His students often come to shows and scream "Mr. Chamberlain!" from the audience. While other members of the band may only know punk rock basics, they pick up the feel quickly. Unlike rock, it's usually necessary for someone in the band to have an understanding of music theory because arranging for a large band with a brass section is no simple task.

New ska bands may incorporate aspects of funk, rock, hip-hop, hardcore, techno or even polka in with the traditional, Jamaican structure. Fishbone, one of the pioneers of the hybrid style, borrows from funk and metal. More recently, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who toured on Lollapalooza, sparked the interest of college music fans with their brand of skacore. Rancid's hit single "Time Bomb" — reminiscent of the Clash's forays into Caribbean music — brought a new generation of punkers into the fold.

The demographic for ska shows is particularly young, says Jo Ngyuen, who manages the Trocadero. Tonight, there are only a handful of people sitting in the over-21 balcony of the club while the all-ages dancefloor is packed. However, the dancefloor is the place to be, says 24-year-old Keith Purcell, pointing to the hyperkinetic frenzy.

"The collective energy is awesome," explains the University of Delaware grad student. He got into the music only recently by way of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. "I'm working on an M.B.A. degree and after studying, it's the release I need," he says.

This is the first ska show for Lauren Fitzpatrick. The 19-year-old says the dancefloor is great for girls because people aren't trying to slam into you like they do in a mosh pit. "Everyone is really nice out there and just trying to have a good time."

A steady stream of audience members gets up on stage to dance with the band and wave to their friends. Couples get between the musicians, swing each other in a jig and the band hardly seems to mind. Even the bouncers don't rush to push the intruders offstage. They politely tap kids on the shoulder and point to the dancefloor. It seems strange when the exuberant fans opt to step back down into the audience rather than stage dive.

Skanking is the quasi-official dance for the music. But, it appears in countless different styles. Most often, it resembles skipping in place with a jerk of the neck and swing of the arms. If you want to know what it looks like, you could try to track down a copy of the English movie Dance Craze, featuring the bands Bad Manners and The Selecter, but it won't be easy because it's been out of print for a while.

Doug Dubroski of Ruder Than You, says kids are the key to the burgeoning scene. He says that New York has always had a strong movement, but there are a lot of all-ages clubs in the Big Apple. Philly only has a handful of accessible clubs and the 27-year-old often hears pre-teen fans say there's no places to check the band out live. Over the past five years, the nine-piece has steadily built a strong fan base by playing warehouse spaces and small parties as well as clubs. Younger fans appreciate ska's underground status, says Dubroski, and quickly identify the music as their own. There's no catty competition between bands because no one is signed (yet) and they all need each other to survive.

For Your Information (F.Y.I.) is a good example of the new ska generation. No one in the Havertown band is over 17 and they've been a band for the past year and a half. They blend rock and funk in with traditional ska and sing about high school, masturbation, and Septa's Route 100.

F.Y.I. member, John Abercrombe, says each line of the song, "Suburbanites" refers to a different person they know: Gap clothes, Pearl Jam, raves and Doc Martens are all name-dropped with an air of self-mockery. Still, there are drawbacks to being so young and talented. F.Y.I. can't play shows on school nights and most of the members don't want their parents to know they sing about masturbation.

Like many bands, F.Y.I. utilizes the Internet for self-promotion. They have their own web page at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~johna/FYIand regularly post to the newsgroups alt.music.ska and phl.music. Abercrombe networks with other ska bands via e-mail (johna@ccat.sas.upenn.edu.) Their new demo tape is also available for $6 from Abercrombe. His address is 256 Lee Circle, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-3726. Other important world wide web links include: Links to the Ska World (http://www.colby.edu/wmhb/revenge/links.html#regional),the Attempted Ska Page (http://www.nettap.com/~tanner/ska.html),and SKAngster Page (http://www.cluon.com/~moore/SKA/).

If you want to sample third wave ska on disc, check out the compilation Spawn of Skarmageddon (Moon Records). Public Service appears along with luminaries such as N.Y. Citizens and Stubborn All Stars. The same record label also released Ruder Than You's first album, Big Step, and will be putting out their second album, Horny For Ska, in April.

Moon Records can be contacted at P.O. Box 1412, Cooper Station, N.Y., N.Y. 10276. Dubroski, along with many other ska band members, is waiting to see what the ramifications will be of a distribution deal Moon records is working on with Mercury Records. The major label is home to the Bosstones and is one of the only big companies investing in the music's resurgence.

On Friday, Jan. 6, Ruder Than You headlines a show at the Theater of Living Arts, 4th and South sts., with Scofflaws, Mephiskapheles and Skinnerbox. It's all ages and a porkpie isn't required, but is always appreciated.