BY JEREMY HAAS
Whether it’s the obnoxious smacking of some guy chewing his gum too loudly, or the ridiculous views of an opposing political party, everyone has their pet peeves. It’s just human nature to hate stuff. I, however, am a little more hateful than the average person, and my hatred spans spectacular lengths. Ska music is something I have experienced first hand, and grown to loathe. If you’ve never been to a ska show, or even heard a ska band, I envy you. This painfully tacky offshoot to punk has been tainting young minds since some summer in the 90’s when, by some unholy miracle, a Reel Big Fish song found mainstream popularity. From that point on, ska has gained an underground following, hoaxing kids into circle pitting and wearing fedoras. Yuck.
What is ska exactly? Well, to be as literal and unbiased as possible, ska music takes influences from punk rock and reggae, while also featuring large horn sections. It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea on paper, but through the uniform ideals that already plague today’s abundant rock-and-roll offshoots, ska has morphed into another scene of snooty kids with a homogeneous music and style. The scene abhors and ignores any new sound to come its way that hasn’t first been played, and therefore approved by some super-famous, reverent ska band, like Streetlight Manifesto. Similar to other irritatingly specific subgenres, the local ska scene is all about unoriginality, taking every aspect of its music from bands who’s words are revered as those of screwed up, horn-toting messiahs.
Still, there are plenty of annoying subgenres, why am I giving ska this extra special treatment? It all started my sophomore year, when my band, KatsuroLeadsTheWay! began to play more shows, many of which were with local ska bands. That’s when things went downhill. While a lot of ska enthusiasts like to preach a message of acceptance, and judgment-free fun when it comes to their music, I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted, and rejected even, when my band stepped onstage and our audience immediately walked out of the venue. It’s like they saw the lack of brass instruments, heard the first five seconds of our set, and left because we weren’t “ska” enough for them. The scene is not very “accepting” or “judgment-free” at all, in fact, the only thing separating them from every other cultish subgenre out there is a pair of checkerboard suspenders. For me, ska is an annoying enough sound to begin with, and when the members of the scene are such elitists, there’s really no reason to put up with it in the first place. So ska kids please, lose the stupid gimmicks, most of you are marching band kids who are just too tame for punk rock anyways. You all radiate the same, irritating faux-fun noises. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you weren’t so smug about it.
