Illegal Foreign Object

Despite being one of the most authentic, creative times in rock history, the much-ballyhooed grunge era was, for those of us who felt the music as it happened, soul-crushing. Where the previous generation was treated to decades of greatness from bands like Van Halen, Aerosmith, and KISS, my generation watched as drug addiction, suicide, and mental health issues picked off our musical heroes, one by one. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Mad Season, Temple Of The Dog — none of these bands will be reforming to do anniversary stadium tours like Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe.

It’s hard to believe that grunge, despite leaving a mark on the music scene that lives on to this day, really only lasted four years. Aerosmith and KISS are still road dogs, 50+ years after they got going. Alice Cooper has been touring the world for 60 years! The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Journey, ZZ Top, Styx — every last one of ’em are still touring off songs they released 50 years ago. There’s something to be said for just surviving.

For teens in the Nineties, there was undoubtedly a sort of trauma fatigue that came from the loss of so many of “our” bands. The record labels tried to mix in some “sound-alikes” to keep the wheels turnin’, but as much as we tried to love Silverchair and Bush, as much as we tried to tell ourselves that it was the same, we knew we were just bullshitting ourselves. No one was gonna confuse Sugartooth with Alice In Chains. It was good, it just wasn’t special. Once the labels saw the shift, they quickly went in search of “different”.

They found it in ska.

Originating in Jamaica in the late-’50s, ska combined rhythm and blues with calypso and Jamaican folk music (Mento) to create a unique sound that, when done right, can be both happy and menacing all within the same collection of chords.

The genre had seen a resurgence in the late-’70s and early-’80s thanks to UK “two-tone” bands like The Specials, Madness, and The (English) Beat. These were the bands that many of the groups that made it to the top in mid-’90s had grown up emulating, and by 1994, we all needed to smile a little. Bands like No Doubt, Sublime, Save Ferris, and Goldfinger were only too happy to deliver a new, radio-friendly version of the long-ignored genre. Blending ska with straight-up pop sensibilities, the “3rd wave of ska” took over the radio. We all had a low-level case of musical PTSD. We needed to get away from all the doom and gloom — to invest in something that wasn’t so serious after too many years of slogging through audio trauma. Ska gave us that break in the clouds.

One of the forerunners of the ska music renaissance was ska-core granddaddy The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Though the band began receiving some mainstream attention in late-1994 with the release of Question The Answers, The Bosstones had been around for more than a decade. Question The Answers was my introduction to the band (and the ska-core subgenre). It’s an album with plenty of bite (“We Should Talk”, A Sad Silence”) but also has some truly joyous moments (the intro to “Kinder Words”, the bridge and horn parts on “Hell Of A Hat”).

A few years later, The Bosstones would hit it big with the song “The Impression That I Get”, a glorious slab of pop perfection. The single would be certified Gold, selling more than 500,000 in the U.S. and fueling the platinum certification of the band’s Let’s Face It album (the lone album in the band’s career to achieve 1 million sales). It was a fun record but was an attempt to cash in on the current music climate. Hey, after almost 15 years of slogging for crumbs, why not take a shot at the big time?

Still, Let’s Face It just didn’t have the same edge to it as Question The Answers. The more songs like “Rascal King” and “Royal Oil” played on the radio, the more I found myself going back to the previous album. It’s the one record by the band I still play to this day.

Ska-core as part of the mainstream proved to be more palate cleanser than a main course. It was all but over by late-’97, replaced by a wave of grunge copycat artists. Turns out, the listening public still needed that “sound”; it just didn’t need all the drama that initially came with it when it crawled out of the Pacific Northwest and cut the head off of Hair Metal in ’91. The next wave of sound-alikes (Creed, Godsmack, and Days Of The New) were only too happy to oblige.

Though it had a short(ish) run at the top of the charts, the importance of ska-core bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones cannot be ignored. They were there for a lot of us during some dark musical times. Perhaps we should’ve been a bit better about sticking with them after the record label marketing departments told us to move on to the next thing.

Track List:

1. Kinder Words 10/10
2. A Sad Silence 9/10
3. Hell Of A Hat 10/10
4. Pictures To Prove It 10/10
5. We Should Talk 8/10
6. A Dollar And A Dream 7/10
7. Stand Off 7/10
8. 365 Days 7/10
9. Toxic Toast 8/10
10. Bronzing The Garbage 7/10
11. Dogs And Chaplains 6/10
12. Jump Through Hoops 7/10

Grade: 80