HIDE YR SECRET SKA SHAME WEEK grinds to a halt

Sorry about yesterday; I was trapped in the Applying For Jobs closet. To make things right, I will bring this horrible theme week to a close, Twin Fistz style:

Ruder Than You, "Future Girl" - The first day I ever skipped class was a pretty eventful one; over the course of those seven hours away from Riverside High, I drove on the highway unsupervised for the first time, bumped into some poor guy's fender and sped the fuck off like a pussy for the first time, nearly ran out of gas for the first time (I had no money, and my friends decided to blow their last five bucks on cigarettes), lost my mind for a chick that all my friends would end up making ruthless fun of me over (sadly, not for the last time), and most crucially, learned how to skank, if that's what you want to call my slightly organized flailing, to this song. To this day, skanking is as close as I've ever come to "legitimate" dance moves. You'll understand why this is so ridiculous after I explain how to do it and you can't help but try it.

STEP ONE: Hop twice on one foot. Now hop twice on the other one. Repeat. You should be going (left foot) hop-hop (right foot) hop-hop, and repeating.

STEP TWO: Replace the second hop with a kick.

STEP THREE: Bring your fists up to your face; now extend your arms at the shoulders. As you hop and/or kick, try as best you can to swing your arms in time.

ADVANCED: Fix face with incredibly goofy scowl. Loudly proclaim your rudeness, either directly or by spitting out the word "SKA" as loud as you can.

I find it deeply hilarious that the person who taught me all of the above is now finishing up his graduate-level work in child psychiatry. (Click here to buy Big Step from Amazon.com)

Regatta 69, "You Light Up My Life" - I've always been a bit ambivalent towards ska covers. Obviously there were way too many of them, of course, but the only ones that ever really grated on me were the ones that felt like acts of appropriation rather than tribute - it's one thing to hear Save Ferris use THEGREATESTGODDAMNEDSONGOFTHE1980s as their springboard to fame, but it's quite another thing entirely just to watch a bunch of geeks dorking out over their mutual enjoyment of the same lame song, and it's impossible for me to think of Regatta 69 as anything else. They are, to this day, probably the biggest ska act ever to come out of Durham, North Carolina, which is a statement that can only get funnier the more I describe (1) how painfully aware me and all my friends were of this fact (hell, my friend Jonathan fed one of their cats when they went out on tour), and (2) our pathological lack of giving a fuck. Regatta 69 were that band for my friends and I where it wasn't so much about the band or even their music (although I still think they were a fine little band, and still probably own one of the three copies of any of their CDs not occupying space in a Schoolkids Records used bin) as it was the event of the band - they were like the Peach Pit with a horn section. EVERYONE I know from Durham went to a Regatta 69 show, including a surprisingly large number of steak-headed Young Lifers, and EVERYONE I know had at least one, usually both, of their albums at one time or another; it's the same kind of grass-roots devotion to the idea behind the band that these days, you mostly tend to see out of fans of Motley Crue tribute bands. And then they covered Debbie Fucking Boone on the last song off their second album, and all of a sudden EVERYONE I knew was admitting that yeah, they even liked that song. I mean, these were people who turned to ska music because they were sick of corny shit exactly like what Debbie was pushing, only to INSTANTLY crumble the minute someone couched the argument for that song in their terms. It was like 2004 all over again, except it was happening in 1996.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why ska music gets its own week. (Click here to buy Prime Time used from Amazon.com)