I prefer ska that's not self aware as ska. In other words, ska made to be ska sound generally sucks. I haven't been drinking enough today. Merry Christmas!

I haven't been drinking enough either. I made a really strong "egg" nog (some vegan concoction my mom came up with) and it kinda floored me because it had little calories, stayed up until 5AM watching Die Hard 2 and Kingsmen. Trying to nurse my way into social world ATM.

I'm not a huge fan, but I do notice elements of ska in some bands like Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire, to name just a few, but they're not "ska", just "indie" which means absolutely nothing these days anyway. I was asking a while back about any 4th wave ska but maybe musical genres don't really need labels these days.

The first (second?) album I ever bought was a ska album, but I can't say I've ever had more than a passing interest in the genre, and certainly couldn't give you any good bands, beyond the obvious ones which I'm sure you've already heard.

However, I will say that it's rather unkind of Mr Propaghandi to say such things about ska! Youtube says that this was recorded in 1996, the height of the ska craze, so I am guessing that maybe the punk rockers attending this show were feeling a little jealous of their happier, gainfully-employed cousins.

Yeah they were on Fat Wreck, which is a label best known for the poppier "Warped Tour" side of punk, and had a lot of 3rd wave ska on there, so they were friends with a lot of ska bands, but this was just a one-off novelty song written as a joke, making fun of the punks that dismiss a genre based on a label. But it became their most popular song, so they'd reluctantly play it the way a one hit wonder has to play 8675309 three times in a set.

Actually a better example is Capn Jazz, who did a really sloppy cover of "take on me." As far as early emo went they were probably the most influential but everybody just wanted to hear that A ha cover.

All the drugs in the worlds

Were Propagandhi straightedge, or just vegan?

As far as I remember, just drunk vegan anarchists. But I don't know for sure if they ever drank or did drugs since I never saw them. I guess I just assume that everybody in Canada puts LaBatt in their Wheaties in the morning.

Oh. Shows how much I know about them! Propagandhi was a bit before my time, and I never really got that into punk as a teenager, let alone (what was by then) Old Man punk.

Yeah I got really into the song "Letter of Resignation" by the weaker thans back in high school. Some older girl gave it to me on a mixtape before she left for college. Didn't realize until later that the two bands were connected, since musically they were polar opposites. I was never much of a punk musically but enjoyed going to punk shows, since it was more fun to crash into people at a Meltbanana show than it was to stand around hipsters at a pavement show who acted like they didn't even want to be there. But I'd probably rather listen to pavement on my own than Meltbanana.

Yeah, ska's basically just jazz without all the bullshit - it's jazz as jazz should have been, dumb and fun and happy.