"In Defense Of Ska" By Aaron Carnes (BOOK REVIEW)

Sometimes, something only catches your eye because it’s got a strong enough relationship to what amounts to a long-running inside joke between you and your high school friends.

This was one of those times.

In Defense of Ska first hit my radar as a podcast. Then I realized it was a book. Then I realized the guy at the center of it, Aaron Carnes, was a hell of a good music journalist all-around, but with deep side interest that very few publications wanted to pro-actively fund more work on.

If you don’t preserve the stories, time forgets.

I think about this a lot. What Charnas and Questlove are doing for Dilla’s legacy. What The Blues Brothers movie meant for a whole class of artists and musicians, including the “second careers” it launched. The residual memories of the movements surrounding the headlines of the movements. The stuff my text threads with friends reveal about us, after asking each other “what streaming platform are you on again” of course, when we share the soundtracks to our stories, and experiencing the joy of constantly asking, “Remember THIS?”

Ska music, specifically its brief moment in the great mid-90s goofy-slacker sun (re: on MTV, in movies, and therefore in the pop-culture zeitgeist), was almost cool for moment. Then it became a joke. Then it became an, “Oh, you’re into…THAT” thing until it was mostly forgotten. Or attempted to be forgotten. And, why?

I still know people who are embarrassed to admit they’d been in ska bands. Or had fun at ska shows. Or still walk their dog with the bounce of that ska-cover of “Come On Eileen” propelling six legs mutually forward. I’ve been that person too. I’ve gotten over it, and will gladly out myself or others in the photos I’ve somehow managed to not lose.

And that’s all fine. When people dump on ska, it’s the kind of casual dismissal that makes no sense under scrutiny anyway. It was soulful dance music in Jamaica before reggae, it was anti-racist subversion when Britain was breaking in a new era of conservativism, it’s kind of just always been there in the background as a sub-genre, sub-scene, and sub-community.

So why does the world need Aaron Carnes to come to ska’s rescue and defend it publicly?

Because if he doesn’t tell these stories, people will forget them. And if people forget them, then others won’t know how incredibly inspiring even the least cool sub-genre, sub-scene, or sub-community of temporal choice can be.

My theory, of why ska got perceived as not cool, is that anybody could do it. You know the whole Beatles and then punk rock theories, of how those musical revolutions were rooted in demonstrating how anybody really could do it? It’s like that.

The every-manning of guitars and drums and basses is one thing. But when you let the marching band dorks in too, when you say you don’t have to be Charlie Parker good, and there’s a bridge between your out-of-tune alto sax and you getting to be a pseudo rock star on a stage, even for a moment, there’s just no cool-scarcity anymore. When the least cool kid can be cool, you ruin the coolness. It’s the star-bellied sneetches all over again. Normie just isn’t luxury.

But don’t take it from me. Take it from Jeff Rosenstock in the forward (highly edited by me to highlight this point),

Carnes made outsider art with his friends too. Flat Planet isn’t a band most of us have ever heard of. But they went out on tour in the 90s to have some fun and learn a few lessons. One of my favorites, is about the time they ended up the sole ska band in a mixed up synth-pop festival. As Carnes tells it (with me butchering [and commenting] again),

When Aaron Carnes came on Just Press Record to talk about ska with behavioral psychologist Dr. Daniel Crosby, I asked Aaron to tell the synth-pop story so Daniel could respond to it. Daniel explained the concept of social proof (other people take queues from our actions and reactions, because we humans don’t like to act alone, which explains both the lack of dancing AND the merch purchasing).

But beyond social proof, I love the lesson in how these micro-communities can mix IF somebody is willing to go out and evangelize for them. Not to be creepy or make money (the goal can’t just be to sell the merch to a new crowd without any meaning behind it), but how else are people supposed to learn new things?

It can’t just be from mindlessly streaming anything and everything we have access to.

It can be from collaborative experiences.

Mixing scenes in the name of fun—the world needs more of this.

Carnes, for this second edition, went out searching the world for more examples, which brings me to my favorite one of all. I almost have to steal half a chapter, but it’s worth it (my emphasis added),

Defend the full-hearted sub-genres. Join one. Make some noise in one. If you were in one previously, tell the old stories. If you never were, your people are out there, and they’re easier to find than ever.

In Defense of Ska gets' an 11/10 from me, and not just because of my personal experiences, I just f****** love Aaron Carnes book.

Ska now more than ever.

Subcultures now more than ever.

Positive energy (and FUN) now more than ever.

ps. I did a video version of this review too, check it out:"