The search for ska... I

Back in the day, when I was 15(10 years ago), I was in a band. That band is well documented, and not worth mentioning more than to say that I was in fellowship with 3 other musicians. So as I'm trying to find myself amidst a group of insecure artists, while dealing with my first year of public schooling as a sophomore, I heard The Supertones.

The OC Supertones were a ska band from California(Orange County, surprisingly), who when I heard them blaring out of the boombox at church immidiately caught my attention. Apparently, Bill, our Youth Pastor, had bought a handful of CD's from Northwester Bookstores to play at youthgroup to appeal to us young jerks. It sat there for a few months, and when it was finally played, several of us took notice. The ironic thing was that from that point on, it was a battle to get any style of music(including the suptertones) I enjoyed played on the youth group boombox.

From that point, ska became an obsession for me. I only made it to a dozen actual ska shows before I left high school, but I scooped up every $4.99 ska sampler from Best Buy and Media Play, and used the interweb to look up ska bands and histories.

I saw the Suptertones live for the first time at the Sonshine festival, with the rest of my band, and was hooked. I saw them a total of 4 times, and none of those instances were good enough compared to that hot, sweaty day in a field in 1996. Part of that could be their lineup changing, original members leaving, and younger/whiter musicians replacing them. Either way, by the time their fourth album rolled out in 2000, I was done with them. Partly due to the fact that Toby Mac was on the album. If you don't know who he is, imagine Justin Timberlake, except imagine him if he was in and then left New Kids On the Block. See what I'm talkin bout?

It was ok, though, because I had another ska band with which I could follow, and they didn't dissapoint nearly as much. To Be Continued...