Happy Mo’vember, Ska-Style.

I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me earlier, with my Twitter addiction and all, but, it’s Mo’vember. To promote mens health, November has been nicknamed Mo’vember!

How about that? That dapper man has a fine mustache, and is in a fine band that does the ska. Speaking of the Aquabats, if you live on the west coast, grab your tickets, and head out to see them LIVE. They’re only doing a handful of shows over the holidays, but these shows promise to be something no less than AMAZING. (For more info, please see the website of The Aquabats.)

Upon trying to maintain a Movember theme, I came across this band out of St Louis, MO The Mustache Heroes (yes, they have real ’staches). Check ‘em out!

As for sticking to the Mo’vember theme, I leave you with an awesomely fun Less Than Jake song, but must apologize for the less than stellar video.

The Rise And Fall of Five Iron Frenzy

Let’s take a jump back in time to when a little band from Denver, CO released the album “Upbeats and Beatdowns” on Five Minute Walk. This band of course being Five Iron Frenzy. As most fans of Five Iron know, 2003 was a sad year when they played their last shows but soon we will have the chance to revisit our warm memories of this great bands past. That is right, Five Iron Frenzy will soon be releasing a DVD documentary sometime this winter. So far there aren’t very many details out but I’ll be keeping an eye out looking for the release date and any other information.

Until that time check out the Five Iron Frenzy website and download some wallpapers and read up on all sorts of other information being released. Don’t forget to follow Five Iron Frenzy and FIFdvd on twitter too. And if you are really anxious check out all the hype in the teaser trailer!

Ska is Dead Tour Review

First off, sorry to everyone for posting this so late. I was meaning to get this done earlier but ended up getting sucked into my work sadly. So, me and Tony ended up going this past weekend to Chicago to see the “Ska is Dead” tour. I would like to share with you the awesomeness of the journey we took and the awesomeness of this show.

On Saturday Tony came on over to my place to car pool with me up to Chicago at around 11:30AM. I had everything ready to go including getting some old Mustard Plug songs on my Zune player. As we were heading out of my apartment complex I realized I had forgotten the most important thing, my ticket! (DOH!…at least I realized this before we were too far out on the road, hehehe) The car ride was long but having Tony along with good tunes made the trip much shorter.

After driving through the crazy ass downtown traffic of Chicago we arrived at the hotel we were going to stay in for the night called, “Four Points”. The hotel was right outside of Chicago O’Hara Airport in which Tony had a flight the next morning to CA. So anyways (back on topic), we got checked in and up to the room by 2:30PM CT and had about 30 minutes to kind of chill out for a little.

We proceeded to head out and take the hotel shuttle to the airport where we could get on the L (Chicago’s metro station) to get downtown. We thought this would take a long time to figure out which routes to go on. However, the routes were quite simple and there were plenty of people along the way to help us out. We got off eventually at the Addison stop and walked a short distance to the bus stop where we would take to Wrigley Field (where the venue “Metro” was located around).

We arrived basically right in front of Wrigley field in which we proceeded down to Metro only a few blocks down. Before going in, we stopped into a little restaurant to have some food considering both of us hadn’t had much to eat that day. After having some foodage, we finally got into the Metro venue eager to see the show.

At around 5:30 PM CT, The Green Room Rockers were the first band to come on. If you go back a few posts, you will see a couple of things on them. They’re an excellent reggae/ska band from Indiana and this is the second time I have seen them. The music they play is very easy to grove to and very soothing. For a starting band, the crowd acted very positive to their sound and they put on a great show. They played I think around 5 or 6 songs due to the fact that there were 4 other bands to come and due to weird Chicago laws, all shows have to end by 10PM.

The next band that came up was a band that I was looking forward to hearing live for a long time, The Voodoo Glow Skulls. The Voodoo Glow skulls have been around since the late 80s and are one of the major forces behind ska-core. They opened up with a fierce energy right from the get-go and never looked back from there. The crowd from that point went totally crazy (as expected). While the kids were beating each other up in the crazy mosh pit that had formed, me and Tony ended up in the back just wanting to enjoy the performance from a far view (just a side note me and Tony noticed a kid who went barreling through the pit with what looked like a wrestling “Mysterio” black mask…pretty cool, lol). I enjoyed their music and style especially when they were mixing a number of their Spanish songs in there. One of the songs I really enjoyed was a song they called, “The Delinquent Song”.

The next band that came up on the stage was a band I hadn’t much listened too let alone seen live called, “Deal’s Gone Bad”. They’re a soul/reggae ska band right from the Chicago, IL area. Their sound was definitely different and quite excellent. I knew a few tunes from some stuff I heard briefly in the past, but they put on a hell of a show and I plan on getting more of their music when I get the chance too. They had the crowd going throughout their performance and I was amazed at how much positive energy there was in the people around me. This is definitely a band I would love to go see live any day of the year.

The next band up was The Toasters. Considered to be a legendary American ska band, their performance lived up to just that. Songs such as “Two-Tone Army” and “Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down” were awesome to hear live. The crowd acted as positive as they have been throughout the whole show, it was seriously very awesome. If you have not seen the Toasters live, you definitely need to if you’re a ska fan of any type!

Finishing off the show was another band I had waited a long time to see, Mustard Plug. This ska punk band from Grand Rapids, MI ended off a great night with an outstanding performance. They even provided some entertainment when Rick posed for cameras and eventually picked up Dave and started swinging him across the stage (very hilarious). The energy was through the roof and they even came out for an encore at the end.

In conclusion this show was the best I have seen when it came to the amount of positive energy and excitement I have seen in a crowd. The show was excellent as expected and plenty of shout outs to go around to the bands who performed. If you’re going to be around any of the cities in which this tour is coming to, GET TICKETS FOR IT! YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPOINTED! I tired to find the exact song lineups for each band but I had no luck in finding anything on that. I hope you all enjoyed my very long post and hopefully some of these pictures that will be posted up will give you some clarity to the story I have just told (apologize for their quality but we did the best we could, sorry again)

*the aftermath ridding back to the hotel on the L*

Take care and good night!

Ross

Mighty Mighty Bosstones New Album!

Seven years after A jackknife To Swan, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are releasing the next full lease album December 8th 2009. Pin Points and Gin Joints is creating a decent buzz lately and from listening to the pre-released song, “Graffiti Worth Reading”, sounds like it should be a pretty awesome album. If you haven’t yet, download the pre-released song at the MMB Store or check out their MySpace.

Unlikely Alibi – At The Ready

I know I’ve mentioned them before but if you missed it Unlikely Alibi is a great midwest ska band from Fort Wayne, IN. These guys just recently released their first full length album, At The Ready, and it sounds great. I’ve seen Ulikely Alibi live several times over the past couple years and was pretty excited to hear about this album. All the songs are very well done and very enjoyable to listen to, the thing that threw me off was the style presented, Unlikely Alibi is a band reaching into some new musical territory and has a great way of putting it together.

“Dancin’ On Coals” starts off At The Ready with a great guitar intro that says, “Hey! We’re here and we’ve got something you’re gonna love!” After the intro we get to hear some great upbeats from the organ tieing in with a smooth walking bassline and solid vocals from Todd. Throughout the song you hear each of these songs melding in a way that creates a great reggae/trad feel to it.

Following up perfectly is “Pretend” which follows the same feel but a little more laid back. It almost feels like they only changed a few notes around, backed off on the guitar, and brought the organ up front a little more. None of this, however, prevents it from being a really catchy tune and warming up your ears for the rest of what you’ll be hearing.

The album continues pretty solid in that vein pretty until we get to “In Your Eyes” which keeps some of those basic sounds but has some great new vocal stylings thanks to legendary reggae/ska producer King Django who has been working with Unlikely Alibi on this album.

The real change in the album comes in on “What I want” where the guitar upbeat seems to kick in a little more and the songs seems to feel a little brighter. “What I Want” is really a great ska/reggae song that brings in some pretty common lyrical ideas of loving, unity, and freedom.

Two songs on this album really have me second guessing the artist when I have my shuffle on and one of those is “Everything My Way”. Every time I hear the intro I keep thinking it’s going to be a song by Ore Ska Band or maybe a number of different US east coast ska bands with this sound. Then just as soon as Todd’s voice comes in I realize Unlikely Alibi completely switched gears and showed their true versatility; it’s horn heavy, there’s a solid guitar upbeat, and a busy bassline that doesn’t stop. It’s a great, upbeat 2-tone song that is all sorts of fun to skank to.

A couple more 2-toneish songs go on then we get to “Colder”, which every time I hear the opening horn line I think of Big D & The Kids Table’s “Been Wishing On” [From their newest album Fluent In Stroll]. After hearing this song I decided seeing these two bands on tour together would be a great time. It’s really laid back, horn heavy song that doesn’t do much for your dancing feet but appeals to your lay back and relax side.

“Highly Unlikely” then comes in as a complete 180 which picks it back up to the bright 2-tone sounds from earlier. This song is definitely one of my favorites on this album and I really wish they had a few more with this type of feel. The one thing I dislike about this song is it really makes me want to hear more from them but it’s the end of the album.

Overall, I think Unlikely Alibi is on a great path to bringing together some past sounds with some fresh new ideas and grooves. The blends between reggae, 2-tone, rock, third wave, and trad comes together in such a way it almost seems to form its own ska genre. The best I can relate this album to is Big D’s Fluent In Stroll, they really seem to be bringing something new to the stage and it’s good, very good.

As always, check out their MySpace and listen to some samples then if you like them, help support them.

Track List:

1. Dancin’ On Coals
2. Pretend
3. Between Us
4. Do It All Over
5. We Can’t
6. In Your Eyes
7. What I Want
8. Everything My Way
9. Say It Again
10. Walk Out
11. Colder
12. Highly Unlikely

Ukulele Ska Covers

One of  our awesome Checkered Socks readers and one of my awesome new friends (@cupcakes on twitter if you’re on it) posted a link to a pretty nifty cover of the Aquabats “Lovers Of Loving Love” being played on the ukulele and I thought it was pretty awesome so I wanted to share it with you too. I also happened to find the same guy covering Catch 22’s “Kristina She Don’t Know I Exist” on ukulele as well. Check em out!

Aquabats – “Lovers Of Loving Love”

Catch 22 – “Kristina She Don’t Know I Exist”