Ryan McKern » music

A word about ska bands

Ryan — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:31:13 +0000

In the last month I've been to two ska-punk shows with all-or-almost-all-cracker ska bands opening up, and one thing is abundantly clear to me:

There is a reason people say that white folks have no soul.

I've realized that generally these cracker bands play ska too fast, too clean, and too mechanically. They're almost always lacking any sort of groove, and their drummers are sort of just keeping the beat, not contributing towards the sound. Dorayne described them as music school students who dropped out before they learned how to break the music theory rules.

Examples? The Allstonians, The Agents, Easy Big Fella, Skavoovie and The Epitones
Exceptions? The Pietasters, The Gadjits, The Slackers
Honorable mention: The Aggrolites, who while not a ska band per se, have got more soul and groove than most any ska band out there that isn't Hepcat.

Yule time soundtrack

Ryan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:23:19 +0000

My favorite thing about Christmas is that it's perfectly (un)acceptable to crank The Vandals record "Oi to The World" all day at work.

When you want to mix it up a little, the No Doubt cover of "Oi to The World" will also suffice for a quick interlude.

Spring Cleaning

Ryan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:42:43 +0000

I've been busy not being busy. In the interim I decided to hack apart a wildly simple theme to redo this nonsense of vanity posting yet again.

Witticisms? Nothing lined up this month. The funniest thing that comes to mind right now (which is about as funny as Dane Cook when he's not allowed to move like a retard) is that today I watched someone dismiss Ruby (as a language) offhand while flipping through The Ruby Cookbook (O'Reilly) as there was no one page disclaimer regarding Ruby and SOAP; It would likely have read "Don't bother" if it was in there. I suppose one should save something for the second edition.

This may or may not be of relevance to anyone but me and Colin, but the debut LP (See You In Magic, Swami/Vagrant Records) from The Night Marchers feels like the logical culmination of a musical evolution stemming from Rocket From The Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, and The Sultans. Not so much Pitchfork. Overall I give it a solid B+ as a rating. It's no "The State of Art is on Fire" but not many records are these days.

Collin: yeah it's a bit vanilla
Ryan: i am aiming for vanilla
Ryan: i am aiming for one step above plaintext and three steps below "fancy"
Collin: ok thats frozen milk with a drop of vanilla

My friends, always so supportive.