POLL: Which left a bigger shit-stain on the '90s? Swing or Ska

Love Ska revivalism, fucking hate Swing revivalism. No question.

Seriously, fuck this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-m4HpnzAHA

90s ska was horrid.

But it might not be worse than this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNy3l3Me5o

Ska okay because it's part of the tradition of modern pop music I guess, plus as a rhythmic option it's kind of undeniable and doesn't have to sound arch or forced, whereas Swing mostly relies on awful misappropriated signifiers of an era alien to the understanding or memory of its revivalists. i.e. Ska-punk is reappropriation but all modern Swing is pastiche.

First of all, if you're gonna deploy the empty phrase "the likes of" you need to cite a minimum of two more acts. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies were a novelty act with one hit. Now cite a few more. I'll help you out by spotting you the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

Secondly, I don't wanna turn into Chuck Eddy, but I'll for damn sure take novelty hits over the mainstream alternative rock of the 1990s. Take the collected works of Nirvana, grind the CDs into shards and pound 'em up Billy Corgan's ass with a mallet.

I was just cutting to the chase... you want more shitty swing revival namechecks? BSO, yes. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Royal Crown Revue. I'll give Squirrel Nut Zippers a pass because they were just kind of awesome in a trapped-in-amber sort of way.

i dig ska to an extent -- swing revival is just...

I almost feel bad calling these ska punk bands "ska," though. Just because you're mixing horns and guitars with dancehall time signatures doesn't make them proper ska. It just makes them garbage.

Squirrel Nut Zippers were awesome. Can't recall at the moment a ska band which I enjoyed back then. Does Sublime count?

third-wave ska is/was dorky and embarrassing, but it produced some catchy tunes.

there's something malevolent and evil about the swing revival though.

I fell for both for hot minute in middle school and I suppose I regret my crush on the lead singer of Save Ferris, but it was a very short-lived and certainly minor misstep compared to the year I spent watching Limp Bizkit's "Faith" video nearly every day. There's your shitstain.

see by 90s ska revival i was thinking more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVuORePKQQ4

or better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Dxpd4ThfY

the 90s were plenty big enough for multiple shitstains

also i still hear goddamned brian setzer songs on in-store/restaurant/public space playlists all the time, whereas the closest you get to hearing any third-wave ska these days is old no doubt tunes, which i think even non-fans would have to agree were a magnitude better than setz and his briefly lived but oddly enduring ilk, so in summary, swing.

will rep for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBrBzdTLjig

if this doesn't drive you to murder, then you're beyond help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASYjHQIatc8

The Slackers live w/ Susan Cadogan five or six years ago was fucking great, pretty sure no-one posting on this thread can school those guys on ska and the like

It really was fascinating in a really horrifying way to see how quickly that swing revival took over and, just as quickly, faded away again. I mean, really, was there ever any fucking reason for seven(!) different campus bars in Champaign-Urbana to host their own weekly swing nights? Of course fucking not. It was ridiculous and unsustainable. I kinda wish I would have gotten to know the few dudes I saw that showed up all over town wearing fedoras to dance to Brian Setzer, mostly because I'm still oddly curious to know what they did after that scene dried up.

ska concerts = more fun too

I'm still oddly curious to know what they did after that scene dried up.

Watch Mad Men but not get the joke?

Ska. Swing was a flash in the pan and then it was gone, but Ska really hung around, especially the shitty ska punk variety. Swing was like someone did a fart, then a window opened and the smell cleared, while Ska was like something had died and was rotting under the carpet.

xxxxxpost couldn't even make it a full minute before HULK SMASH

There are still swing nights here in London, e.g at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes and in hipsterville central Stoke Newington.

i'll stan for ska. Streetlight Manifesto are great!

B-b-but Swingers has multiple memorable moments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOFkcj4iDvM

Less Than Jake blew tho.

Also Sublime, No Doubt, Rancid all classic imo.

Swing had some good stuff, like that "Hey Pachuko" {sic?} song from The Mask. It's fun to drum along to, which I did countless times in my high school jazz band. I even got a standing ovation once after I did the drum solo.

Fuck the ska revival. Oooh cool, you've put horn arrangements into your punk rock. Whooptie fucking do.

HATE Sublime. But I also hate stoners and hacky sackers, so those things kind of go hand in hand (at least in my mind). Have love for Rancid and No Doubt, though.

did swing have that much of an impact in the 90's? because ska is still pretty huge with the youth in my experience. i was in ninth grade five years ago and we all went to ska shows, and were in a ska band for a bit, and there were a lot of kids at those shows. looking back it was kind of a ridiculous anachronistic way to have spent my adolescence but it was loads of fun. some dudes still cling to leftover crack & co but that's basically the worst shit of them all. operation ivy are good.

Fuck the ska revival. Oooh cool, you've put weak, spindly horn arrangements into your tuneless mall-punk rock. Whooptie fucking do.

Whooptie f---g do is right.

def the best stuff from ska-punk slays the best stuff from swing-revival to the point where i'm guessing johnny fever wasn't even thinking about operation ivy when he started this thread

How '90s ska punk began (I saw it happen)

4 friends: "Hey, we're gonna start a rock band."
2 other friends: "We want to be in your band too, but all we have and know how to play are this trumpet and trombone from school."
4 friends: "Fine, we'll just call ourselves ska."

Not an Op Ivy fan. xp

The swing revival was "Zoot Suit Riot," "Hey Pachuko," and "Jump Jive and Wail" and maybe some Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and absolutely NOTHING else. And now that I think about it, I'm not even sure "Hey Pachuko" counts, since that came out in like '94.

xp mordy - ya definitely. also most of the album is punk songs anyways.

The swing revival didn't have as much to do with the bands themselves as it did with all the music's infiltration of tv/radio advertising, local swing nights in every town in america, and boys and girls/men and women dressing the part because flannel and combat boots had lost their appeal.

Will admit, my xmas music collection still count a Big Bad Whooptie Fucking Doo Doo Ding Dong Daddy cd in it, and I will lazily play it again come xmas 2010.

i don't think it would be controversial to say

a) 90's swing revival is, on the whole, much shittier than 90's ska revival

b) 90's ska revival had a wider and more lasting impact than 90's swing revival

depends on how you measure shit-stains

the swing thing being in the air got a lot of us gen-x types to take dance lessons that we never would have otherwise. i only did a few courses and wish i'd done more, but as a couples date-night thing it was fun, and at least i know a few fundamentals i didn't know before. the actual neo-swing music was mostly dire and i never owned any of it, but as a brief pop-cult fling swing revivalism was a good time. (one nice memory: this one hotel in knoxville had a monthly big-band dance with a live orchestra that as far as i know had been going on for years attracting the same aging crowd. and suddenly there was an infusion of all these young people, and the older couples totally loved having all these kids around to show off to. it was sweet. third-wave ska didn't produce anything like that that i know of, though i suppose there may have been some multi-generational skanking going on somewhere.)

The 90's were full of talk about the "next big (musical) thing" (grunge, electronica, etc.) but I was stunned when people seriously tried to pass off swing as some sort of game-changer.

Can't find that Gap ad w/ Louis Prima's song on youtube :-(

I my mind, the two are pretty interchangeable. Didn't a lot of these swing bands do ska too? Swing dancing is pretty fun though.

I think the real answer to this question is post-grunge though. I mean, that one still dominates alt-rock radio through its influence. Whens the last time you heard a swing or ska song on the radio outside of retro/specialty programming? But turn on any "current rock" station and you'll be bombarded with Seether, Three Days Grace, Flyleaf, Puddle of Mudd type bullshit. That shit-stain has yet to fade.

The swing revival was "Zoot Suit Riot," "Hey Pachuko," and "Jump Jive and Wail" and maybe some Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and absolutely NOTHING else.

You're forgetting Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Hell."

Yeah, I think my old roommate's twenty-plus compilations of swing revival music points to it being a lot more than just a handful of singles. Man so much of that shit was terrible though.

Let me guess, nineteen of those were on a Cleopatra Records sub-label and all the bands were tenth-tier hair metal acts 'reinventing' themselves.

Well I never really investigated them too deeply, but I would imagine you are right. I just remember they went by names like Swing This Baby and had covers like this:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000I0Q8.jpg

Anyway, they're still out there...waiting...

http://www.daddies.com/

http://www.daddies.com/images/interfaces/header-03.jpg

the swing thing being in the air got a lot of us gen-x types to take dance lessons that we never would have otherwise.

Part of me wants to defend the swing revival along these lines, not that it's how I got into partner dancing (or whatever you want to call it). I think people are overly mean about the swing revival. I can't defend any of the swing revival groups mentioned so far, but I suspect there were also a lot of more established jazz musicians who got a boost from the swing revival. I have a cousin (I don't know particularly well) who is a pretty accomplished jazz saxophonist (whose preferences lean toward the Archie Shepp side of things) and I remember him talking about some swing band he was playing with in Philadelphia (I can't remember the name) in the late 90s (or possibly a hair later) and if he said they were good, damn it, they were good. (I never did get to see them though because I only took a couple swing classes, enough to improve certain things about my salsa dancing and to leave me pretty certain I wasn't into swing.)

For someone who likes to dance but tends to be socially awkward, partner dancing can be a life line. It may sound dorky to state it flat out like that, but I just don't see why there has to be so much hatred toward it. (But I guess people on this thread are hating the music and the whole hype around the fad, which is understandable.) Lead/follow partner dancing probably just doesn't fit in with our culture at this point and isn't likely to come back (and is maybe somewhat of a cultural anomaly globally even?) but I hope it stays around as another option.

(Actually, salsa dancing is still going pretty strongly in its own niche, and not just as something for people my age.)

The ska revival largely passed me by. I did buy a Rancid CD that I never liked.

At least the swing revival helped keep some dance instructors and jazz musicians off the street.

Guys Rancid is really not ska, please stop using them as an example.

Ska-punk? They sounded like ska to me some of the time, but I can't really argue since I'm not interested enough to even track them down on youtube.

But I wanted to add a link to this thread which seems relevant for overall weird revival trends in the 90s context (and has some good stuff on it):

Looking back at the easy listening revival.

They really only added horns to a couple songs, I'm not sure why they have a rep on this thread as a ska-punk band. They were (still are) very much just a mediocre punk band that tossed horns on a few songs. Hardly enough to make them ska.

I remember him talking about some swing band he was playing with in Philadelphia (I can't remember the name)

It was Joe Sudler's Swing Machine.

I would have felt better about "swing" if they'd just called it a jump blues revival. But I guess, "Hey kids, like race singles?" would have been hard to sell.

There was a band from Chicago called the Mighty Blue Kings (who were actually pretty fun) that always bristled at the "swing" tag and insisted they were a jump blues band.

The Squirrel Nut Zippers were ok

i'll stan for ska. Streetlight Manifesto are great!

― Mordy, Monday, February 22, 2010 5:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

lol was going to stan for catch-22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8woy5IPHojY

^^ still is k-k-klassic btw

I sometimes what my music taste would be like if I hadn't spent my formative years listening to pop punk/ska

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ndNjrD90a0

I vote swing. At least those groups sound like they listened to the original records. Ska revival music has no soul.

I mean I voted for ska as worse.

where do the Mighty Mighty Bosstones fit into this shit? I still have some Bosstones-related PTSD, I think.

I am voting ska, because I barely noticed the swing thing. I did used to like this local Phoenix ska group called Kongo Shock, though.

If I say I like ska it's more likely that someone will assume it's 3rd wave shitstain ska than someone assuming I like Cherry Poppin Daddies if I say I like swing. So, ska.

swing gave us this though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGlIqjszsR8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQgs

I tend to identify the ska genre almost entirely by its rhythm, so an absence of horns isn't an issue for me, but I'm not a skaficianado.

bad ska puns

Skaficianado was def. my favorite Voodoo Glow Skulls record.

what's funny is that, in my socal 90s experience, ska and swing were pretty intermingled. they both kinda came out of high school band class! at least that was the way it was at my high school. Suddenly dudes who could play horns were playing in swing and ska bands. both sucked! oh well.

actual skapunks in the wild circa 2009:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax87yohhNds

where do the Mighty Mighty Bosstones fit into this shit? I still have some Bosstones-related PTSD, I think.

― richie aprile (rockapads), Sunday, February 21, 2010 10:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

loooooooooooooooooooooooooool

The first show I ever saw was Mighty Mighty Bosstones with Murphy's Law opening up in Ithaca, NY - 1995. I fucking loved a lot of that ska shit at the time and would be lying if I said that it doesn't still hold a soft spot in my heart. That swing revival stuff was much more annoying imo.

skankin', the dance everybody could do

ha true

One thing that confuses me about 90s ska revival is that, in Philadelphia at least, I remember bands being around who were kindof ska (usual with some punk mixed in) in the mid-to-late 80s, so I'm not sure when it was supposed to have gone away (but Philly tends to be late in letting go of musical trends, genres, etc., something I like).

Skanking consists of a “running man” motion of the legs to the beat while alternating bent-elbow fist-punches, left and right.[2] The punk version features a sharp striking out look with the arms, and is sometimes used in moshing to knock around others doing the same.

Skanks include the "Jungle Skank", the "Migraine Skank" and the "Tribal Skank". These are renowned as the truest and purest form of skanking. Any other skanks, notably those involved with drum and bass and dustep music are rubbish.

Scott can probably back me up on some of that.

x-post

I grew up in Philly in the 90s, and I don't remember any Philadelphia based ska bands - all the regional ones I listened to were from NJ

OK thing #518 that I probably should not admit on the internet:

The beginning of this song was my outgoing answering machine for a while when i was a freshman in college. I was 17 - cut me some slack!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z70jVUTAbo4

x-post:

Well maybe it died in Philly while it was reviving elsewhere.

xp Did people actually leave messages or hang up in disgust?

"Scott can probably back me up on some of that."

scram?

xp - ha.

scram were weirder though than most hyper jumpy skapunk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzeMN4coQ8M

there was some good Japanese ska from the 90s too iirc

Scott, yeah I was thinking of Scram! though really only a small percentage of what they did was ska. They were one of my favorite local bands. Too bad "Here Tonite" is not on youtube, that really was a classic song. If I ever get some of my old cassettes digitized. . .

I do remember some lesser lights being around doing similar things.

most cities had SOMEONE doing ska since the 80's. just like there were always at least 3 to 4 mods on scooters or 5 to 6 trad skins or 2 to 4 mohawk punks in philly at all times.

ska. swing was ignorable.

was 311 ska?

I think that what made Swing forgivable for me was that it was a hop, skip and a jump from Swing to Lounge and from Louge to Space Age Bachelor Pad Music and I am full of love for Esquivel and Spike Jones (and if you keep going that way, you get to Stereolab and Broadcast which is just fine with me.)

The Cherry Poppin Daddies were a ska band first, then they became a swing band, and now they're back to being a ska band. They just released an album last year called "Skaboy JFK: The Skankin Hits of...".

Clearly, they're the most evil of any band on this list.

Seriously, what the fuck?
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nIyvp6ga5Tw&hl=en_US&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nIyvp6ga5Tw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Shit, I meant this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIyvp6ga5Tw

have a huge soft-spot for these guys and this song in partic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZOyQT4aVz4
interviewed dicky barrett BITD for melody maker when i was just starting out and he was hilarious. we junked my prepared questions and just talked abt how awesome madness were for ages

i think Rancid are pretty ace too, tho more when they're in hardcore mode than skacore mode

Somehow every local band in my hometown was a mediocre ska revival band. I guess this was ok in the context of the time but it's *still the case,* like 90% of the bands there play 'ska.' There's four or five '90s-style ska-punk bands here, too. I voted ska bcz its detrimental effects have been so long-lasting.

Whatever ska's crimes, the convention of naming your band with a bad 'ska' pun is endlessly hilarious to me (though you might count this as part of ska's crimes).
Where are the swing-pun bands?

The first show I ever saw was Mighty Mighty Bosstones with Murphy's Law opening up in Ithaca, NY - 1995.

― t(o_o)t (ENBB)

which venue was this at?

ska didn't register much with me either way except i liked what i heard ok enough. the swing revival was ubiquitous for awhile there and i think half the people i went to college with who ended up in l.a. were still riding the wave of 'swingers' nostalgia w/r/t fashion and language. that shit was embarrassing, ska is not.

All the shitty third wave and beyond ska-punk bands made neo-traditionlists like Hepcat sound like the Maytals. But Hepcat was still pretty great, regardless.

Ska is one of the worst genre ever imo

I don't think ska is inherently bad, its just a very narrow genre that is virtually impossible to do really well.

a lot of the 90s ska bands got sucked into the 311 vortex, ditch all ska elements for that revved up, glossy mall rock.

Ska is one of the worst genre ever imo

― Zeno

Mercifully I kept my distance from both during the '90s, but I wonder, which revival was more successful in terms of helping people get into original ska or swing? I agree with the comments above that '90s "swing" was more like jump blues, so I don't know if it turned a lot of people on to (say) Ellington.

had a high school friend that was really really into 1st-2nd wave ska in the early 90's, i think it was all he listened to at one point, and he sniffed at the later stuff. he mustve hipped me to hepcat, pretty sure he 'approved'. so I already had a little persective and took the 90's stuff in song by song (most of it was bad yes). i wasn't opposed in principle to the swing stuff (meant less 'grunge' for one thing) but i didn't end up liking much beyond squirrel nut zippers, they laid it on thick but there's some good songs and production there

I think the real answer to this question is post-grunge though. I mean, that one still dominates alt-rock radio through its influence.

^^^This. I saw and enjoyed a good number of the bands in the 90s being bitched about above (learning swing dance certainly helped.) If you offered me three tickets today -- Squirrel Nut Zippers, Slackers, Staind -- I know which one I'd refuse, or which one would make me hit my car radio button.

One of the worst things about the Swing revival was that it crushed the much more fun Lounge revival off the dancefloor. The lounge scene had a large range of great music, both old (Sinatra/Herb Alpert/Sergio Mendez etc) and new (Fantastic Plastic Machine/Pizzicato 5/Bertrand Burgalat/Tipsy/Arling & Cameron etc), and lots of other stuff too - even Stereolab could get played. I can remember having a few drink-soaked rave-ups in the name of lounge - great nights of dancing, comedy, spoken word, and a fair amount of weird experimental stuff. When the swing nazis showed up, all that eclecticism disappeared almost overnight, the music got really boring and conservative and it was all over. That was my experience with it anyway. It may have been different in other cities.

i think a major thing that distinguished the squirrel nut zippers -- who were never exactly "swing" anyway -- was katharine whalen. there weren't a lot of women in that whole neo-swing thing. i have one of her solo albums, more traditional lounge-jazz stuff, she's not bad.

yeah that's fair, they rode the wave somewhat but would have been doing what they were doing anyway

SNZ really predated the revival and were only associated with it out of writer laziness.

That's really true of Cherry Poppin' Daddies, too -- although most of their other influences (Oingo Boingo-ish smartass new wave, white boy funk) aren't generally critically accepted either.

well alot of these bands predated the revivals but to leave out bands like them and say, bosstones for ska doesn't leave much of a revival to talk about. i guess you gotta question which bands individually contributed to the stain ('put their two shits in') and go from there

every generation has its "we should dress up and wear suits" movement, doesn't it? seemed like the clothes mattered a lot.

So far none of the bands mentioned have a ska pun in their name which to my mind disqualifies them from being a proper 3rd? wave ska band. (were madness and specials 2nd wave or 1st wave?)

Mephiskapheles was the band name that finally sent me over the fucking edge.

Is some of the hate for swing coming from it being popular with the wrong kind of white people?

What kind?

Mephiskapheles was one of the best groups though! xxp

That's like saying radon is one of the best carcinogens.

I don't remember the swing revival making much impact over here besides 'Zoot Suit Riot' and some people in my sixth form who'd seen Swingers going on about how great Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were. Ska-punk was a big thing with the punk kids though - I mean I liked the Voodoo Glow Skulls album I taped off someone but I knew people who were really into, say, Skankin' Pickle and Mustard Plug... I liked Rancid at the time too but as people have said, they only had a handful of ska songs anyway (I guess they got lumped in 'cos one of them was 'Timebomb' which was their big rock club hit). So yeah, ska was worse.

Omar - that MMBT show was AT Ithaca College in some sort of gymnasium. I did see a bunch of stuff at The Haunt.

How '90s ska punk began (I saw it happen)

4 friends: "Hey, we're gonna start a rock band."
2 other friends: "We want to be in your band too, but all we have and know how to play are this trumpet and trombone from school."
4 friends: "Fine, we'll just call ourselves ska."

― Johnny Fever, Sunday, February 21, 2010 5:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Ha! I witnessed this as well. Both of these things sort of neatly intersected during my freshman year of college & I would say a good 75% or so of my ex-band geek friends ended up in ska and/or swing bands (mostly ska tbh). So ska takes this easily for innumerable shitty fucking ska punk bands I had to sit through & in fact even pay money to see in the interest of having a social life. The worst was when this shit college ska punk also included slap *funk* bass. Ugh.

I had some greaser-punk friends in Detroit who hated the swing revivalists with violent rage for infringing on their pompadour/Cadillac/combat boots thing. Such a meta-clusterfuck of "authenticity" that was lol.

The only two bands from either thing I would return to these days are Rancid & The Squirrel Nut Zippers. I like No Doubt OK too, but not from their ska days. Fuck all the rest of it imo.

I agree about post-grunge, but I really don't hate Nirvana (just want to put that somewhere).

Did they do this kind of thing at ska shows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTg5V2oA_hY

OK thing #518 that I probably should not admit on the internet:

I attended a few sessions of a swing-dancing club my freshman year in an attempt to do what the guys above are doing

One of the worst things about the Swing revival was that it crushed the much more fun Lounge revival off the dancefloor.

That last Combustible Edison album (The Impossible World) is pretty terrific - too bad only 12 people bought it.

Also as mentioned up-thread post-grunge is a much greater blob of suck in the 90s than either swing or ska. Being in a ska band is the greatest thing ever when you're 18 and at least with swing you had pretty good chance of going to a party and drinking something better than cheap convenience store beer.

Best commentary on 90s swing comes from the "Life In The Past Lane" episode of Daria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn0EOgCPqRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aZOTX1UIWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_VG7A1LGSo

post-grunge is a much greater blob of suck in the 90s than either swing or ska

I figured that was just a given. Anyway, if I'd included post-grunge in this poll, it would've won overwhelmingly.

To emend what I wrote upthread, there was a notable exception to the litany of crap ska bands in mid-Michigan at the time: Mustard Plug, who had been around since the late-80s or so, I believe, were super-tight did a kind of Specials via Op Ivy thing.

I'd also give a pass to Royal Crown Revue if only because the Youth Brigade guys wanted to play some music that their parents would like too.

The swing stuff barely scratched the surface, so I am going to say that the ska stuff tried too hard and ended up blowing more in the long run.

What about Bop (Harvey) ?

http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/obamas_embarrassing_ska

Swing, so completely.

At least the 90s ska bands had a sort of lineage…one that went from Skatalites, Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, and Desmond Dekker to the UK mods, who were simultaneously being influenced by Punk and created 2-Tone—where bands like The Specials and the Beat gained popularity, and in turn found fans in the US. Bands like The Toasters have been doing their thing since the early 80s, and might have even been considered 2-tone themselves, if not for other US acts like Fishbone, who folded in their metal and funk influences, and by around '87-'88, there were bands like OPIV, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and the Bosstones who were liking where the music was going and made their hardcore punk w/ ska rhythms and other signifiers. From there, it kind of went all over the place…from a bunch of OC "mallpunks w/ horns" like Reel Big Fish and Jeffrey's Fanclub, to the neo-trad stuff of Hepcat, SeeSpot, Chris Murray, and The Slackers.

As for Oingo Boingo, there is a connection: while they had some elements of the ska rhythm in a few of their songs, their bassist John Avila produced many late-90s ska LPs.

My own preferences tended towards the Neo-trad groups, if only for the emphasis on rhythm and the great vocal harmonies.

going to go out on a big old contrarian/challops limb here and say that as shitty as a lot of this stuff was, i'll take it over the fucking maudlin interchangeable other rock options available at the time. i had a lot of drunk fun at crappy ska shows at the time, and danced with a lot of good looking ladies at swing crap as well. better than getting stuck at a better than ezra show, because as stupid as the ska revival was and as shitty as most of the neo-swing was, at least it was fun.

also, the drummer from royal crown review was a badass gene crupa channeling motherfucker, and anything that gets peeps to listen to louis prima and keely smith is ok by me.

Was the 90s swing revival purely an American thing? Because I can't remember anything like that happening in here, in fact I only learned there had been such a revival when I was reading ILX in the 00s. (Whereas 3rd generation ska had much bigger impact here, and is still going on.) Back in the day I thought that band in the school dance scene in Clueless was just a curiosity, I didn't realize it was part of some swing revival.

(American) ska has a pretty respectful history, though. Certainly not in the mallpunk-with-horns movement, but the whole scooter/skinny tie sort of scene is kind of enjoyable. Before it went mainstream ('80s - 1994), it was a really impressive underground scene that encapsulated a LOT of musical diversity and a ridiculously strong indie DIY culture. There were strong regional scenes all over the country with their own distinct sound and aesthetic. Provided, only about half of it was *good*, but it's all nonetheless fascinating. In the aftermath of Green Day, the media focused only on the shitty pop-punk hybrids like Reel Big Fish, which forever ruined the scene as thousands of bland ska-punk clones flooded the market and continue to spawn despite our best efforts. At least there was *some* tolerability...Less Than Jake were decent lyricists, if nothing else.

Neo-swing, on the other hand, was rooted entirely in nostalgic kitsch. There was no diversity, it was all novelty. Unlike ska, which took an older form of music and updated it with a modern sensibility, neo-swing was just a pointless rehash that added a gimmicky retro angle. Just about every band sounded the same and they were all devoid of lyrical substance, instead preferring to do straight covers of big band songs. Brian Setzer is the worst: he's just a phony retro-whore who's successful simply because he's pandering to the public's inexplicable love of nostalgia. And that's all the swing revival was.

Now, I hate neo-swing, but I'll rep for the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Prior to "Zoot Suit Riot", they were a really decent punk-funk-jazz-psychedelic band that were sort of like Oingo Boingo and the Butthole Surfers meets Funkadelic and Duke Ellington. It's a love-it-or-hate-it deal, but I like it. They converted a ride-on lawnmower into a giant drivable dildo that shot fake cum out of the tip, so that's okay with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb6fOIMSwBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNORXC60_4
They tried latching onto the ska scene in the mid-90s, but after that failed, they jumped onto swing as it was becoming popular, put on suits, released a swing album and that's when they took off. Yeah, they sold out HARD: all the swing stuff they did at that time is painfully trite. If there's anything redeemable about it, it's that they were the only swing band that swore, and they were the only ones who didn't do the whole "retro" schtick. They wrote songs about child abuse, social alienation, alcoholism and suicide, and they did very few covers, one of which was an Operation Ivy song. I think they also did a Suicidal Tendencies cover, as well. As a swing band, that's a move that sorta takes balls, even if the outcome is most likely awful.

I voted "swing", because it was awful from the get-go in concept alone. Ska's been getting progressively worse, but there are at least a few bands that make it bearable, like The Slackers.

guys get ready cuz ska is back
http://www.sublimewithrome.com/

uh... great I guess? I'm totally fine with Sublime ruining their legacy.

Can't find that Gap ad w/ Louis Prima's song on youtube :-(

The Götterdämmerung of 90s swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzFkZb4OlDM

this thread is tldr for me right now but i voted swing. either way, i'm so fucking glad i didn't live in southern california in the nineties.

It...was a time.

I guess I can stomach bad swing because they are generally better players. I just have no use for ska on pretty much any level. At least not after about 1987. Maybe there's some good No Doubt that I'm missing.

As for the Daddies, they were around doing their own thing for at least 8 years before they had a fluke of a hit. Of course they ran with it.

Ska was fun, even though not by any means as good as the original British ska-punk movement in the late 70s/early 80s. Swing was also not the worst of 90s music, unless you mean New Jack Swing, which was indeed horrible (as in, almost as horrible as the hip-hop that influenced it)

Has anyone heard this band 23 skadoo? Do they combine ska and swing -- skwang?

I can't stop laughing at that.

I'm not joking. I was googling to see if someone had actually taken this name and someone did.

I've stopped laughing.

http://www.cinemotions.net/data/films/0181/42/1/affiche_Swing_Kids_1992_1.jpg

Ha! I completely forgot about that movie.

godwin's law amirite

DANS UN MONDE >>>>> IN A WORLD

Hen Fap vs Ska Punk

Ska Skank Redemption guys

from WAY upthread:

It really was fascinating in a really horrifying way to see how quickly that swing revival took over and, just as quickly, faded away again. I mean, really, was there ever any fucking reason for seven(!) different campus bars in Champaign-Urbana to host their own weekly swing nights? Of course fucking not. It was ridiculous and unsustainable. I kinda wish I would have gotten to know the few dudes I saw that showed up all over town wearing fedoras to dance to Brian Setzer, mostly because I'm still oddly curious to know what they did after that scene dried up.

my armchair socio-economist take: yeah, in a way the swing revival (such as it was) was a good metaphor for the entire dot.com bubble. these bubbles both appeared and disappeared @ roughly the same time and worked on underpants gnome logic. at least we got cheap high-speed bandwidth outta the dot.com bubble; hard to think of anything good that came outta the neo-swing trend.

an example: this one club in my town circa 1998-1999 used to have weekly swing nights. since then, it's been a total bottle-service guido-pandering joint. dunno which incarnation is aesthetically worse, though pandering to NYC-metro area guidos definitely seems like an infinitely more sustainable & profitable business model than pandering to Dean Martin/Louis Prima wannabes.

both were fairly harmless, no? of the two, ska was more annoying simply cuz it is aesthetically less pleasing to me, and swing at least brought the style to the kids who were much too young...can't say I listen to either, or give a rat's ass about either.

i am more hostile to ska revival b/c it was more inescapable during the late 90s. plus i had nothing but hate & contempt for Sublime after hearing their indefensible-by-any-standard "date rape" song which carried over the entire neo-ska thing in my mind anyway. the swing revival was just a weird passing blip.

sublime fail for their "romeo" cover which was essentially just them saying "OMG DESCENDENTS WERE STUPID TO NOT KNOW THIS SONG WORKED BETTER AT A FASTER TEMPO"

anyway, i agree most w/ the numerous folks on this thread who pointed out that neo-grunge bands were infinitely worse than either of the ska or swing revivals. esp. since we still aren't rid of neo-grunge (i.e., Nickelback et. al.). i can only praise the kids from back in the day who at least were looking for a fun alternative to late-90s "alternative," even if the music that they got into was just as shitty.

I'm not joking. I was googling to see if someone had actually taken this name and someone did.

So that means there's an ACTUAL ska-swing band???

So that means there's an ACTUAL ska-swing band???

Why is that so surprising? Ska and swing hit the mainstream at almost exactly the same time, of course there'd be cross-genre fusions. Ska bands played swing songs (esp. the Bosstones), swing bands played ska songs (esp. the Daddies), and there were tons of only-lasted-a-month garage bands that fused the two together. From what I can tell, only one group achieved moderate success, a Christian ska-swing band called The W's, who are exactly as God-awful as you would expect, no pun intended.

Just for that, I'm voting for BOTH in the poll. :/

From what I can tell, only one group achieved moderate success

Well, that's why it's surprising. Needless to say, I've never heard of The W's, thank (their) god.

their indefensible-by-any-standard "date rape" song which carried over the entire neo-ska thing in my mind anyway.

No idea why you would think this song is indefensible. Do you actually approve of date rape or something?

I mean, I could see getting upset about one of their songs that advocates drinking or drug-use, but this is a song about the justice system working for women. Oh no, people shouldn't write songs about that.

Ha! I completely forgot about that movie.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, February 26, 2010 1:59 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Swing Heil! Swing Heil!

Since I already revealed on this thread that I was a p embarrassing teenager, I may as well go ahead and admit that Swing Kids was my favorite movie for a while in HS. Granted this was largely due to the fact that Bale and Leonard looked damn hot in those suits but yeah, still. I recently found a photo album I kept when I was 14/15 and on the inside cover I'd doodled the following "The Cure, Yaz, Depeche Mode and . . . Swing Kids."

ha! that is funny.

No idea why you would think this song is indefensible.

Lyrical intent aside, it is really shitty.

No idea why you would think this song is indefensible. Do you actually approve of date rape or something?

yes, i am aware that the song is anti-date rape (how very white of them, as my grandparents would say). doesn't stop it from basically being a extended fag joke (b/c he "gets it in the end," you see, prison rape is so funny), a smug Cautionary Tale for drunk frat-boys who like fag jokes and weren't above a little date-rape themselves (and probably missed the point [such as it was]). plus the music was shit (even by Sublime's standards).

Can we seriously stop with the "guys who like questionable music are frat-boy date-rapers" meme please? I mean, fuck, ILX should be a little bit above that. It's a shitty song, but at least hate it for the many, many legitimate reasons.

I sure do hate those frat boys

I was an assistant manager at a record store in a small resort town during the 90s, and in a rare moment of market awareness, my boss had us create a separate ska section to meet customer demand. We then got a reputation as having a lot of ska CDs for sale (like, two rows of them!) which attracted the most annoying clientele ever. Now my feelings about ska as a music are way too caught up in my residual feelings of rage about the many times I had to chase some mall punk tourist junior high schooler in a Less Than Jake t-shirt and JNCO shorts down the boardwalk to retrieve stolen ska CDs.

man you could probably fit a whole ton of ska CDs into a pair of JNCOs

Definitely the shorts of choice for the shoplifting youth of America. At least the swing revival costume involved tighter pants and in my experience, no dude ever tried to hide a Squirrel Nut Zippers CD in his pompadour.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 14, 2009

CHERRY POPPIN’ DADDIES TO RELEASE TWO ALBUMS IN SEPTEMBER

In celebration of the bands 20th year in the music business, Eugene, Oregon’s horn-heavy, genre-bending, multi-platinum-selling Cherry Poppin’ Daddies are giving store shelves a double shot of musical goodness in September: both “Susquehanna” and “Skaboy JFK: the Skankin’ hits of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies” are scheduled for release on September 29, 2009, on Rock Ridge Music/Space Age Bachelor Pad Records. “Susquehanna” will finally receive its national release, as it was previously only available on the band’s website, while “Skaboy JFK” is a compilation of new ska tracks with older Cherry Poppin’ Daddies ska songs (some of which have been re-recorded) in a collection that comes off like a classic of the genre.

Says CPD band leader Steve Perry: “We are excited to be working with Rock Ridge Music on the release of ‘Skaboy JFK,’ because we have had a previous successful working relationship with their CEO Tom Derr, while we were both at Universal Records. Rock Ridge has done a great job promoting and distributing Reel Big Fish records (our ex label mates) and this record is directed at some of the same markets, so it’s a perfect fit for us. We also made a deal to have Rock Ridge distribute and promote our 2008 recording, ‘Susquehanna,’ which had previously not received distribution outside of our web site. This is our coming-out party after a bit of a self-imposed hiatus, and we are happy to be with a company with such great industry bona fides.”

“As has been done by Steve and CPD, Rock Ridge again sees the opportunity to break some ground, break some rules, and break into dance," says Rock Ridge Music CEO Tom Derr about the upcoming Cherry Poppin’ Daddies releases.

“Susquehanna” brings together the Daddies West Coast retro style and Latin influences: Flamenco, Greaser Rock, Swing, Ska, Glam, and Soca to name a few. The album is an experiment in narrative storytelling through shifting genres. “I wanted each song to come across as a chapter in a modernist novel,” Perry says of the record, “like James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ where the literary style/genre that each chapter is written in is radically different. So it’s a pop album, disjointed, and maybe even jarring, in style and structure, but it’s thematically coherent.”

Like their 1998 multi-platinum smash “Zoot Suit Riot: the Swingin’ hits of…,” the new album, “Skaboy JFK: the Skankin’ Hits of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies,” will emphasize a single genre, this time the 60’s era up-tempo form of pre-reggae Jamaican soul known as ska. “Skaboy” will combine four new recordings with tracks from the group’s earlier catalogue, reflecting all the waves and varieties of ska: Traditional/Bluebeat (“2:29,” “Soul Cadillac”), Two Tone (“Hammerblow,” “Skaboy JFK”), Third Wave (“Hi and Lo,” “Sockable Face Club”). There are even funky Fishbone-esque hybrids for good measure (“Slapstick”).

With “Skaboy” the Daddies plan to reconnect with a ska audience that is largely aware of the band as merely a swing band. “We toured with many of the iconic ska bands when we were coming up,” Perry says, “like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Fishbone, Reel Big Fish, The Specials, No Doubt, and Madness, but at that time, we were really touring behind ‘Zoot Suit Riot,’ so we didn’t play a ton of ska in our sets. Now we will.”

Speaking of sets, the band plans to tour in support of both albums, with tour dates to be announced soon.

Cherry Poppin’ Daddies can be found online at: www.daddies.com or www.myspace.com/cherrypoppindaddies.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

omg I forgot about JNCOs and yeah, I def owned a couple - ;_;

With “Skaboy” the Daddies plan to reconnect with a ska audience that is largely aware of the band as merely a swing band. “We toured with many of the iconic ska bands when we were coming up,” Perry says, “like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Fishbone, Reel Big Fish, The Specials, No Doubt, and Madness, but at that time, we were really touring behind ‘Zoot Suit Riot,’ so we didn’t play a ton of ska in our sets. Now we will.”

Truly a bold statement.

I think the bolder statement was that their album is modeled after James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. You don't see a lot of Modernism in the ska world.

As for the Daddies, they were around doing their own thing for at least 8 years before they had a fluke of a hit. Of course they ran with it.

True, but they ran with it at the expense of losing their aesthetic and the entire musical/performance ideology they were founded upon. They gave into the cliches: they cut their hair, starting wearing suits, starting referring to themselves in interviews as "a swing band"...totally disregarding their history (sans the ska material). Of course, as said, you can't blame 'em...it was their big break, any one of us would have done the exact same thing if we had finally found fluke success with our own multi-genre-art-rock-band-who-develop-concept-albums-based-off-early-20th-century-literature. However, the swing revival would have had a lot more longevity if the musicians approached it in an evolutionary sense, promoting cross-genre fusions and an iconoclastic visual style, instead of just a conservative nostalgic rehash.

Not to say CPD didn't maintain artistic credibility: their follow-up album, released in 2000 at the tail end of the swing revival, was another multi-genre effort with very little swing; the lead single was even a 70s-style T. Rex-y glam rock song, produced by Tony Visconti no less. Even in the last few years, as they've been more or less relegated to playing shows at the Idaho State Fair and the Muncie Festival of Cheese, they're still doing the artsy multi-genre deal. Their last studio album didn't have ANY swing on it, nor does their ska album, obviously. Points for perseverance of vision.

Regardless of whether or not one likes CPD's music (of any genre), it's obvious the Daddies were a unique and versatile act that had heaps of (arguably pretentious) substance to match their style. The fact that they're remembered/reviled by 95% of the world as the total opposite is quite a gross injustice, in my opinion. :/

<3 Idaho State Fair

Does the short-lasting 1999 bossa nova revival count as swing? In which case, swing deserves to achieve a landslide win here. I mean, surely Lou Bega's "Mambo #5" must be one of the most annoying summer hits EVER!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

57-48. Justice would've been a tie, but this is fair.

(Ska should've "won" though)

over 100 votes!!

third-wave ska is/was dorky and embarrassing, but it produced some catchy tunes.

This could be said of second-wave/two-tone as well.

yes, i am aware that the song is anti-date rape (how very white of them, as my grandparents would say).

Is there some obvious reference I'm missing here that makes ^this not incredibly o_0

http://www.stencilpunks.org/ska_against_racism1.gif

Skacism

Ska Against Racism, Swing Against Dignity

I love how the "ska against racism" graphic looks like some racist caricature from a KKK pamphlet. I'm not saying they are racist, I doubt that, but perhaps some of the fourth generation ska (or whatever generation they are up to) sucks because they are too stupid to recognize this.

I don't think that graphic is from the current generation of ska bands, fwiw.

looks like some racist caricature from a KKK pamphlet

I found it on a site for punk rock stencils, so that's why it's very simplistic and two-toned. But I don't think that a KKK pamphlet would have a black person and a white person smiling together.

punk rock stencils

If I ever saw this spray painted on a wall, I might very literally die laughing.

If someone where I live saw this on a wall they might call the cops: "don't vote Obama, your kids will look like this!" I know they don't mean it, but, like, TRY HARDER ok.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZKJwdJRbCo

4th wave ska fwiw

yes, i am aware that the song is anti-date rape (how very white of them, as my grandparents would say).

Is there some obvious reference I'm missing here that makes ^this not incredibly o_0

― sometimes I feel like throwing my glands up in the air (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 10:01 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

"how very white of you" is old-timey American slang (used by, as in my example, one's grandparents). it's basically meant to be sarcastic or as damning w/ faint praise -- as in, calling someone out when someone is patting themselves on the back for taking a "virtuous" or "heroic" stand on an issue that really isn't controversial at all in polite company. e.g., saying that you're anti-date rape (as in that sublime song) as if ANYONE is going to come out w/ a full-throated defense of date rape. i guess that the phrase COULD be interpreted as racist (though i didn't mean it as such), and it isn't that common anymore.

"as if ANYONE is going to come out w/ a full-throated defense of date rape"

Somewhere, Fred Durst is raising his hand sheepishly.

If someone where I live saw this on a wall they might call the cops: "don't vote Obama, your kids will look like this!" I know they don't mean it, but, like, TRY HARDER ok.

― Earth Dye (u s steel), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 5:26 PM (Yesterday)

uh wha?

always fun, this thread

friend was talking to me about less than jake on twitter wondering what they were doing and I said i bet they are still going those ska bands have crazy loyal audiences, but jesus christ look at this tour schedule these dudes are road warriors....cali across the whole US to europe to UK to germany with a zillion shows everywhere and barely any days off!

http://www.lessthanjake.com/shows/