The
Slackers: The Question (Hellcat Records)
You can keep all those hyperactive Mighty, Mighty Bosstones rip-offs
peppering the indie ska scene, because these guys are the real deal. No
grinding punk, no blasting guitars with just the slightest hint of
bluebeat, no thrashing mosh-pit posing, the Slackers with their three piece
horn section, unpretentious vocals, and multi-part harmonies take you
straight back to legends like the Skatellites and the sounds which emanated
from Jamaicaís legendary Studio 1 in the 60ís. And do it in style.
Thereís simply not a phony note on this album. With 19 cuts and almost 70
minutes of music, The Question is the answer for all you need for a night
of pure, unadulterated melodic reggae/ska. It positively throbs with the heart,
vision, and essence of the purveyors of the genre from decades ago.
The Atlanta Press, 1/21/99
If you think authentic two-tone style ska/reggae went out with the death
of the original English Beat and the Specials, have I got an album for you.
These bi-racial seven piece NYC skankers have been burning up stages for
nine years, and even though this is only their third album, it overflows
with the soul and traditional sound of the best Jamaican and British ska,
while still pushing the envelope into new areas. The occasional sitar and
mambo tempos only add to the fun.
-Hal Horowitz
The
Slackers: The Question (Hellcat) The Slackers aren't merely channeling ska bands of yore, however. Victor Ruggiero's
rugged vocals have more in common with Dicky Barrett's than they do with any
graduates of Treasure Isle or Studio One, and songs like the exuberant "Motor
City" and the quirky, oddball "Mummy" nod to styles beyond ska; calypso and
the sounds of Harlem and New Orleans receive their due as well. Still, the
Slackers nail the playful, uplifting spirit that's marked ska since its inception.
If that's The Question, my answer is "yes."
Denver Westword, 12/23/98
Many of the newer ska bands ignore the elegant horn lines, shuffling
backbeats and rich sound found in the genre's Jamaican roots--but there are
exceptions. Like Hepcat, New York's Slackers have not lost touch with the
music's past. The songs that make up The Question display a studied
authenticity: "No More Crying" includes an old-school saxophone solo, the
title track is distinguished by a wholehearted attempt at classic harmony
singing, and "Feed My Girl" makes a reference to "sufferation." It's no
surprise, then, that the album is dedicated to Tommy McCook, founder of the
Skatalites.
-Joshua Green
The
Slackers: The Question, Hellcat Records Singer\keyboardist Victor Ruggierio is the major force (his "Have The Time,"
"Yes It's True" and "The Question" itself all have hit potential), but the
band's songwriting talents are spread around. Trombonist Glen Pine's "Mountainside"
is an engaging calypso, and drummer Luis Zuluaga's "Do You Know," with its
infectious horn riff, syncopation and lift, may just be the best of the bunch.
The deeper you go into [The Question]'s generous 19-track playlist, the higher
The Slackers fly.
The Santa Fe Reporter, 11/4/98
File [The Question] under the If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em heading. The
Slackers blend 2-tone ska, kinky reggae, jump swing and a bit of r 'n b into a
chunky mulligan stew, then dollop heavenly doo-wop harmonies on top to temper
the taste. The third release in as many years from this steelysharp Lower
East Side octet overflows with concise cuts and immense chops.
-David Prince
INsite Atlanta, Late 1997
As the Slackers move into 1998, it appears they've got a good bead on their
sound too. Red Light is as daring and original as any ska album since the
Specials
debuted almost 20 years ago. Ruggiero's formula gives all the songs a
classic, rootsy
feel, while still managing to incorporate elements of R&B, soul, Phil
Spector-style
balladry, early rock, blues, punk, salsa, and even folk. More than that,
the album explores
layers of emotion that critics had always decreed ska unable of expressing.
"Ska is not just happy clown music," Ruggiero says without any of the
bitterness the line may imply. "It's a serious genre. [We] try to get
different moods
across because a lot of ska music--stuff we were exposed to--was all happy
and jumpy."
Red Light, to certain extent, with it's wild mood swings from dark,
disturbing
rumblers like "Soldier," to light-hearted salsa-flavored jump like, "Fried
Chicken/Mary
Mary," is the sound of Ruggiero and the rest of the band recognizing that
ska was running
from its rebel roots.
"You listen to [Tommy McCookís classic] 'Confuscious,' --that's not
a happy
song. Or Joe Higgs' 'There's A Reward For Me,' that tune is like, 'I just
busted out of jail/ No, Iím not gonna fail/ Iím not gonna give up." It's
serious music. Lee
Perry music is not happy. It's spooky, it's scary."
The Slackers originally formed back in 1991 as a five-piece who
played a more
punk and pop flavored ska as they toured the New York City circuit. In
1994, the band
added Jeremy Mushlin, who had played with Boston's Allstonians, and sax-man
David
Hillyard, who had done time with West Coast traditionalists Hepcat and along
with Ruggiero is also a full-time member of several other outfits including The
Stubborn All-Stars , and their sound began to coalesce into a more
traditional style. By the time they released their first album, Better
Late Than Never, on Moon
Records, their rootsy sound had really begun to shape.
The new album finds them, working for Rancid frontman Tim
Armstrong's new
ska-based Epitaph imprint, Hellcat Records. Much like Rancid themselves,
Ruggiero
arrived at ska via the familiar hardcore/punk highway.
"I used to be very into hardcore and punk. There was always older reggae
that were punk-rock favorites like that "Police and Thieves" song. Everybody
knew the Clash version. They used to have these matinees at CB's [the famed
CBGB's in NY]. I used togo to the hardcore ones but we'd hear about ska--the
other kind of skinhead music. [Aftera while] I got sick of going to punk shows
because I used to get into fights. And then we went ot see this ska music
once. We got into this palce and there were all these funny folks wearing
suits. It looked like secret agent music. And I was like, 'this is cool--it's
groovy, it's got theis crazy vibe to it.' I thought I was going to get beat
up because there were all these skinheads and I think I still had a mohawk
back then. And I was like, 'oh,I'm gonna get my ass kicked,' but it was nice."
"We always try to play old music properly," Slackers' lead singer, keyboardist
and main songwriter Vic Ruggiero says as he tries to explain the timeless
beauty of the
New York band's new album , Red Light. "We try to learn how to play it
properly and
then fromthere it's easy once you've got the sounds together. The Stones,
they wanted
to play blues, so they didn't just start out playing 'the Stones' blues. They
started by playing everybody else's blues and really getting that right, so
by the time the got
into the 70s, they had their sound."
-David Peisner
The
Beat Goes On
The Scofflaws are a New York-based ska band that was around long before the
style crossed into the mainstream, and they're still around now that ska's
moment in the headlines has passed.
Of course, ska's been around since the early '60s. Born in Jamaica, it
mixed the bouncy rhythms of traditional Jamaican folk music with the
instrumentation and structure of American R&B. It flourished for a few
years on the island but diminished in the late '60s and '70s as the new
styles it spawned -- rock steady and reggae -- gained popularity. In the
late '70s and early '80s, U.K. bands like the Specials and the English Beat
revived ska and combined it with punk and pop to form a style known as
2-Tone. By the mid-'80s, though, the music only survived on the most
underground of levels.
The ska underground took hold in the U.S. around 1983, when New York's
Toasters formed and the Toasters' British-born leader, Robert "Bucket"
Hingley, formed his ska-only label, Moon Records. Though the Scofflaws
threw their hats into the ring around 1986, Tampa-expatriate O'Sullivan
joined the fold in 1989, when the band released its self-titled Moon
Records debut.
Over the next decade, as underground scenes popped up in most major cities,
ska's popularity grew slowly. But in 1995, when bands like Rancid and the
Mighty Mighty Bosstones began gaining mainstream media attention, it seemed
like U.S. ska had appeared out of nowhere. Record labels rushed to find
bands with horn sections, then rushed to get them into the studio. A second
ska revival was in full swing.
As expected, it didn't last. Most of the bands to gain popularity played
only a bastardized version of ska, and now, a few years later, the same
magazines that had championed ska now declare it dead and buried. But
O'Sullivan sees the upside to ska's shrinking popularity.
"Now that ska's no longer the big thing, you're seeing a lot of people
drop-out, business-wise. So a lot of the temporaries and transients are
going to go their way and move on to some other kind of thing. Maybe
they'll do swing or maybe the next fad will be Czechoslovakian folk music,
but we'll have more visible spots for really good bands to have some
spotlight time."
O'Sullivan clearly hopes his Scofflaws will benefit from some spotlight
time. Over the course of four albums, including 1998's Record of
Convictions, the Scofflaws have dabbled in every sort of ska -- from the
classic sounds of '60s pioneers like the Skatalites and the Maytals, to the
poppy bounce of British 2-Tone acts like Madness and Bad Manners, to the
more hard-edged punk and funk hybrids which rose to prominence with bands
like Fishbone and the Bosstones. None of it has turned the Scofflaws into
international superstars, but with many ska bands dropping out of sight,
O'Sullivan figures it can only help the band.
"You won't have three ska shows a week, each with four ska bands, and
ska-this and ska-that, ska-'til-you-throw-up," he says. "Now if a band
plays ska they're going to have to rely on whether they're a good band, as
opposed to whether they're a ska band."
Vic Ruggiero, lead singer and keyboardist for another New York-based ska
outfit, the Slackers, offers another voice for ska continuity. "Everyone's
like, 'The ska scene's dead,'" Ruggiero says in a thick Brooklyn accent.
"We're like, 'It's cool. It got a little jump start and [now] it will
remain underground for the next 20 years, until it gets another chance at
complete exploitation.'"
The Slackers sprung up around 1990 with a 2-Tone sound that could be still
be heard six years later when they finally got around to recording their
aptly-titled Moon Records debut, Better Late Than Never. By the release of
their astounding 1997 album Red Light, though, much about the band had
changed. Now recording for Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong's Hellcat label,
the Slackers added a horn section that helps point their sound back toward
its Jamaican roots.
But it was more than just a re-investment in ska's past that made Red Light
stand-out. In a genre often viewed as emotionally limited, the Slackers
proved otherwise with a dark, moody record pulsing with the eclectic sounds
of New York.
"Ska is not just happy, clown music," Ruggiero contends. "It's a serious
genre. We take this music very seriously. It's not like we go in with the
idea that we want to be a gothic-ska band -- the Smiths of the ska world --
but we write some sad songs, man. There's a lot of frustration. Everybody's
going through a lot of weird times -- America is, the world is. If we made
a clown record, it wouldn't really be appropriate."
The mood lightened somewhat for the Slackers' latest offering, The
Question. With more of the band members contributing their own writing, the
album is a more eclectic, spirited affair. It still leans heavily on
traditional ska, though; in fact, the record is dedicated to two of the
genre's forefathers, Skatalites' saxophonists Tommy McCook and Roland
Alphonso, who both died last year.
"Those guys did not keep themselves separate from the current scene,"
Ruggiero says earnestly. "And the rest of the Skatalites are still touring.
They're 60-year old guys and they're in a van like we are. It's not an easy
life, man. Those guys are doing it for the right reasons. They play on
other people's records; they're friends with them. They're very much in
contact with the music."
And for both the Slackers and the Scofflaws -- not to mention the dozens of
other ska bands who still tour 200 days a year -- that's the point. They
don't expect fame or fortune, they just appreciate the opportunity to keep
playing and reminding people ska didn't begin with No Doubt nor end with
Sugar Ray.
"The ska beat has been going for 30 years plus," Ruggiero says. "We're not
in it to become big rock stars. We're just happy to live the life and play
the music. And it's even more poignant with the Skatalites dying off, because
I would hate for one of these other bands to be the only thing people ever
learned about ska. If Roland Alphonso's legacy is a guy in a clown suit, what
is it worth?"
The Scofflaws and the Slackers look beyond ska's third wave
Creative Loafing Atlanta
The ScofflawsSka's dead. Open any major music magazine's "Year In Review"
issue and you'll likely find an obituary for the '90s fad that was ska. It
arrived, it dropped bands like No Doubt, Reel Big Fish and the Mighty
Mighty Bosstones, and now -- as quickly as it came -- it's gone.
But not everyone agrees. "Ska is not dead," pipes up a dissenting voice --
Scofflaws lead singer/trombonist Buford O'Sullivan -- with a laugh. "It's
been around and it's had a sort of bloom and now other music tends to take
over as far as the 'next- big-thing' is concerned. It's going back to core
bands and a core scene. "
-David Peisner