August 18, 2004 | Posted by mark at 12:09 PM

I Waste My Time Singing Love Songs

Age of Insects

Skandalous All-Stars - Sunday Maladay Skandalous All-Stars - Parking Lot. Skandalous All-Stars - American Psychopath

Go ahead and fucking hate ska. Hate it with a passion reserved for book-burners, or for that that lady down the hall that hacks up a lung every fucking morning at 8 a.m. on the dot and continues ceaselessly all day. Go ahead. Hate it. But, don't hate poor Vic Ruggiero. Principal songwriter for the Slackers, Vic handled duties here for the All-Stars as well. It's hard when a really good songwriter is stuck in a completely unrespected medium. It's hard to defend it. It's hard to get people to listen to it. But the All-Stars were one of the most undeservedly underrated bands of their era. Wonderful melodies, sharp horn lines and Vic's perfect singing. Seriously, I could listen to this guy sing the phone book over a chorus of nauseau and still probably like it.

Anyway, they put out two completely shitty and worthless cover albums that should be avoided at all costs. However, their third album, Age of Insects, is a real gem. I looked around on-line, but I'm pretty sure it's out of print, or expensive. But if you like it, it's worth tracking down. Maybe the folks at Shanachie can help you out.

Comments

NO HATING SKA.

I smell a few more Ska Posts in the not too far off future over at Teaching...

Posted by: Keith TTIKTDA at August 18, 2004 12:46 PM

Okay, here's what I did. I used Download Accelerator to suck down every mp3 mentioned on this page. Then I put the whole damn list on random and waited to be impressed.

This got me.

Posted by: Michael Duff at August 18, 2004 01:34 PM

I used to be all about the ska. And then I stopped, but these tracks make me want to go on a nostalgia trip, because good ska is just awesome. Thanks for the tracks

Posted by: Justine at August 20, 2004 07:36 PM
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