This Is Your Song For....April 24th, 2013: The Rascal King (Live) by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Back In Plaid....

I guess it’s appropriate, after what happened last week, that my randomizer comes up with a track from one of my favorite Boston bands playing one of their bigger hits at a legendary show.  And it’s a track about one of the most notorious Boston politicians who ever lived, an example of the sort of graceful-but-tough-as-hell sensibilities we all saw on display during that horrific experience.

Let’s Face It, the album where ‘The Rascal King’ first appeared, was as big as the Bosstones would ever get.  Partially bouyed by one of those periodic surges of interest in ska music that hits the cultural zeitgiest every decade or so and bolstered by the eminently hummable lead single ‘The Impression That I Get,’ the album gave the band extensive exposure on alternative rock, AOR and--to my surprise at the time--Top 40.  This was just as the creep of the dance sludge that passes for Top 40 was gaining a foothold, so Dickey Barrett and his crew hit at the very last moment where pop music was open to alternative styles, and they exploited it like their life depended on it.  The success of Let’s Face It prompted the Bosstones to release a video compilation, appear on Saturday Night Live and--God Help Me--the prime-time Sesame Street special Elmopalooza, where they danced with the Count.

Yes.  I watched a Sesame Street television special.  Deal with it.

This comes from the excellent album Live From The Middle East, a recording of their annual year-end Boston concert-cum-holiday party.  The album as a whole gives you a great sense of the energy and enthusiasm that the Bosstones brought to their performances, and it’s a great little artifact of how the band was at the height of its power.  It’s also a snapshot of the classic line-up before the group fractured, as slowly over the next three years members left to form other bands or, in one case, to obtain their degree from Brown University.

Apparently, the song is about James Michael Curley, a notoriously corrupt but notoriously popular Boston politician who served as mayor four times (he was once re-elected mayor while serving a prison term!) and ultimately became Governor of Massachusetts.  The song is peppered with oblique and direct references to Curley’s life; Hell, the chorus begins by citing both the title of his autobiography and the Edwin O’Conner novel that was inspired by his colorful career.  Curley’s impact on Boston life is still clear to this day, and the Bosstones manage to address how ambivalent his former constituents are about him.  The song, after all, never comes out on one side or another about whether Curley was a crook or a hero...as Barrett puts it, ‘in the end they knew his name,’ and that might be all that matters.  I wonder if a parallel could be made between Curley’s tightrope walking between rogue and saint, and the way the Bosstones briefly did the same thing, striving towards popularity while trying to stay faithful to their ska-core roots.

After a break in the mid Oughts, the Bosstones are back on tour--and you can see Dickey Barrett every night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he plays Ed MacMahon to Jimmy’s Johnny Carson.

Here’s the video, which features footage from the film based on that Edwin O'Conner novel, The Last Hurrah.

And because I feel like it, here's Dickey dancing with the Count...

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirteen: Nothin' by Reel Big Fish

You see that object out of the corner of your eye?  It's your lack
of record sales catching up with you....

Wow...I guess we're on a ska kick for this cycle.

And here is one of the acts that seemed to break into the mainstream during that last Third Wave revival. Hailing from Huntington Beach, California, this combo made its way onto radio airwaves with a single from its fifth album, Turn The Radio Off, 'Sell Out'....and then promptly sank from view, becoming a one-hit wonder in most people's eyes. Of course, as with anything relatively geeky and faddish, Reel Big Fish gained something of a cult following and has managed to survive on increasingly smaller record labels--although through this plummet down the charts, they've ended up producing an impressive thirteen albums over the last twenty years.

This song is from the thirteenth of those albums, A Best of Us For The Rest Of Us, which has a particularly peculiar pedigree. A greatest hits compilation, A Best of Us.... was originally available only through Best Buy stores in 2010. However, in 2011 it was re-released to other outlets as a three-disc set that contained not only the original greatest hits compilation but a disc of the band's favorite cover performances and, ummmm, Skacoustic. And this is the 'skacoustic' version of 'Nothin', from Turn The Radio Off. The song itself is a pretty simple affair, a sort of surrender song that sees the singer giving up after what is presumably another bad break-up--he tried so hard to make this work, and he comes up with nothing, see? Not a very deep little number...but the way it's presented here, however...

I really don't know what to make of this, and the other songs off of the Skacoustic album. More than almost any other subgenre of pop or rock music, ska more about the presentation of the song than it is about the song itself. The strong beat, the rhythm and the brass section is vital to this particular genre of music. After all, this is reggae by way of Big Band with the relevance removed...even the darkest ska songs have a strange sort of shiny wrapping surrounding them, giving them a gaiety no matter what their intentions. Stripping out the horns and the drums makes 'Nothin'...sound like any other song. And evaluated as if it was 'any other song,' it's slight and shallow. Without the ska arrangements, it actually comes off as something some amateur high school student would write in his garage deluding himself into thinking he was like, you know, deep, man.

I know on paper the idea of 'skacoustic' versions might have sounded intriguing...but ultimately they're not.

Supposedly, Reel Big Fish do have a new album of original songs forthcoming this summer. I applaud them for thinking outside the box a little--but I hope they got this idea out of their system, because abandoning traditional ska instrumentation while playing ska songs just doesn't make any sense.

But don't take my word for it...check the damn thing out yourself...

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twelve: The Shark Fighter! by The Aquabats

It's another return to the shores of ska....and you'd think I'd be pretty excited.

Welllllll.....

Some time ago, I said when writing about Jane Siberry , "while I am always for an artist evolving and growing...I have to also accept that sometimes an artist will evolve and grow into something I won't care for." 

These words come to me again as I listen to this, without a doubt the best cut off of the Aquabat's latest album.

The Aquabats are a ska outfit from California, and I first became aware of them when the great cartoonist and ska aficianado Evan Dorkin namechecked them in one of his many cartoon strips. Not surprisingly, the first song of theirs I heard was their theme for Welcome To Eltingville, the aborted pilot for Cartoon Network based on one of Dorkin's creations. I liked that song so much I sought out a lot of their work and liked much of it. It was ska, plus it had that proto-geekcore obsession with the ephemera I tended to love--let's be honest, people, third wave ska was geekcore before geekcore was even invented yet. And I even liked the strange affectations of MC Bat Commander, who always sounded like a game show host who lost his way. Yeah, this is one of those bands that changes its line-up more than some geeks change their underwear, but for a long time their music was consistently satisfying.

But this year, when Hi-Five Soup came out, I had an odd feeling picking it up. Maybe it was the way every single cut on the album had an exclamation in its title. Maybe it was seeing long time guitarist Chainsaw, Prince of Karate's name absent in the line-up.

Of course, maybe it was just because the songs, well, sort of sucked.

I guess while I wasn't paying attention, as The Aquabats divested themselves of their horns and brass, they were quietly transforming into what we used to call a 'college rock' band back in the 90's, only one with serious geek intentions. You know, like Weezer....only not.

This is probably the most Aquabats sounding song on the whole album, which is why it's probably my favorite. A sort of television pilot in song form, 'The Shark Fighter!' is the story of a Shark Fighter (well, duh) who has been on a crusade to eradicate sharks ever since a shark killed his girlfriend. Even though the brass is noticeable in its absence, the band still manages to simulate a ska-like sound through some really bright guitar work from new addition Eagle 'Bones' Falconhawk, vigorous drumming and a really compellingly odd backing vocal. It's goofy fun that's exactly what I used to expect out of this band, and if there were more songs like this, I'd be singing a different tune.

Look, I can understand why the group seems to have moved away from its ska roots and repositioned itself as a geekcore outfit. It's not like a fourth wave ska revival is coming anytime soon. But I can't help thinking that this particular song showed that the Aquabats were capable of positioning themselves thusly without abandoning what made them unique and, yes, fun. But instead of the band that did 'The Shark Fighter!', I've got Weezer...Only Not.

...sigh...

Here is a fan-made video for the show.

And because I think it's cool, here's the Welcome To Eltingville theme I mentioned above....

30 Songs, 30 Days (2009 Version), Day Thirteen: Chasing The Sun Away by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Here's something that combines two things I adore: bands from Boston and ska.

While the Bosstones weren't the most successful of the 'Third Wave' ska bands--arguments can be made for both No Doubt and 311 having that distinction--the Bosstones were certainly amongst the top ten acts from that revival, thanks mainly to the surprise popularity of "The Impression That I Get" from Let's Face It. The strength of that single allowed Dickey Betts and company to keep going for a live collection and two more studio albums, the last of which, From A Jacknife To A Swain, spawned today's song.

I think the biggest impediment to the band's popularity is also its greatest strength, namely the vocals of Dicky Betts. By no means a polished, professional singer when the Bosstones started out, Betts still had a raw emotionality that propelled their songs, making them into more than they maybe should have been. Oddly enough, one of the reason Jacknife may have been something of a flop is because Dicky seemed to have gotten some singing lessons and become more pleasing to the ear....but at the expense of that emotionality.

The song itself is a little fluffy (which might also explain why the album tanked; there are a number of lighter songs like this which both blunts the impact of the overall album while also making the more 'traditional' Bosstones songs like "Mr. Moran" and "I Want My City Back" sound uglier by comparison), but it's pleasant enough for what it is.

The Bosstones still play together, including their legendary Christmas shows at the Mid-East.