The Uptones

Oh ska. Even though it originated prior to (and indeed evolved into) reggae, ska always seems like an uncomfortable add-on to me, perhaps because it attracts such an inordinate percentage of white boy wannabes, even by reggae's standards. I grew up in such rural isolation that I didn't even know that ska existed until I ended up at a baffling, anachronistic showcase gig, completely at random, at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis in my twenties. Prior to that I'd assumed that Madness was an isolated freak of chance. Ska doesn't have much mainstream currency: No Doubt is the closest thing to a current thing going in recent memory, and frankly it ain't all that close (Gwen Stefani's work these days is ska in about the same degree as Green Day's is punk). I'm not sure this is a bad thing. How much staccato horn does a person need?

And yet somehow ska persists. I bet that if you could catalog and categorize all of the legally free music on the internet, you would find that ska occupies an inordinately high percentage of the genre breakdown. I figure I can use at least one ska tune in my collection.

Scrivener downloaded... (please read the download etiquette note)
Bonnie and Clyde

Practice download etiquette: Rather than just clicking on MP3 links, please right click + "save as" (Windows) or control+click and "Download Linked File" (Mac). It will reduce the artists' bandwidth demands!

Don't know what this is? Read the FAQ