Toasters
Shoot the Moon Get Out: What brought you to the UK from New York?
Robert Hingley: " I was working for an outfit called Forbidden Planet
who were in the business of comics and collectible toys, that kind of thing.
I was working for them in London for a couple of years and then they sent
me to New York to fire everybody and hire new staff. It was ostensibly to
be six months, but I've been there for 18 years."
GO: So that was at the height of the second wave of ska with The
Specials and English Beat, right?
RH: "It was 1980, just after ska had peaked in the UK, but it had
made no splash over here."
GO: How difficult was it to put the Toasters together, given that
ska really hadn't made much of an impact in America?
RH: "It was pretty hard. The hardest thing was to find people who
I could get not to play on beat. I had to get some musicians and retrain them,
like, "We're not going to play two and four, we're going to play one and three.'
Just getting that across at the beginning was tough. Then, having put the
band together, getting shows and recognition at all from the business was
even harder."
GO: With you guys on the East Coast in the early 80's and the Untouchables
and Fishbone on the West Coast, it seems like, at least at that time, the
coasts had a little bit of ska going on.
RH: " The coasts are kind of the ports of entry for music and the
more cosmopolitan cities in the U.S. tend to be on the periphery of it. It's
kind of the reverse of throwing a stone in a pool - here stuff starts on the
edge and gravitates towards the center as opposed to the other way around.
It took the longest time to get to the heartland, but now even places like
St. Louis and Phoenix have thriving ska scenes, so I guess something has been
done right."
GO: Tell me about starting Moon Ska Records and what that's meant
to ska music in the United States.
RH: "That was primarily because we got laughed out of every A&R office
in New York with our first demo. Even though it was produced by Joe Jackson,
it couldn't seem to raise an eyebrow. The thing that satisfies me now is that
I still have my job and probably none of those people do."
GO: How much do you have to do with Moon Ska these days?
RH: "Quite a lot. I have a lot of people running it for me whilst
we're away, but most of the kind of top executive decisions come back to me.
The thing we've always tried to do is not put out records because we think
they are going to make money, but put out records by bands we like and bands
that have contributed towards the scene. You're not going to really see us
jumping on the bandwagon and putting out ska-pop and ska-punk stuff. Moon
Ska has more of a view to more traditional types of music."
GO: Do you think the more traditional ska with outlast these permutations?
RH: "Traditional ska has never been a flavor of the week."
GO: Being a label head and also a performer, where do you see ska
going in the next millennium?
RH: "It's hard to say. It's a very confusing time at the moment.
A lot of the popularity fad is starting to dwindle in favor of swing or whatever
the new flavor of the week is. I think there's a lot of bands who are going
to get shaken out. I don't think the ska scene can really support the plethora
of bands - and bands that really aren't that good, to be frank. I think it's
a process of natural selection, the good bands will survive and the bad ones
won't. And hopefully mine will survive!"
Ska traditionalists play the Heat in Temple
East Valley Tribune, (Mesa, AZ) 11/5/98
Formed in 182, The Toasters can lay claim
to being one of the first, if not the first, ska bands in the United States.
While most of today's crop of Johnny-come-lately ska bandwagon jumpers were
still in grammar school, Englishman Rob "Bucket" Hingley - known to most as
"Buck" - was organizing the group in New York City to play the music he fell
in love with in his homeland. And he does much more than front the octet - Hingley
founded Moon Ska Records in 1983 to release records by his own and like-minded
bands and has been running the independent label ever since.
-Thomas Bond
Checkered Future
"I think the same type of people that are telling me ska is dead never knew it was alive in the first place," says Hingley in a phone interview from his office in New Jersey.
Hingley has a lot to do with why ska has stayed alive in the United States throughout the years. As singer and guitarist of The Toasters, he is a member of one of America's first and longest running ska bands. And as the founder of Moon Ska Records, he is the head of the country's biggest ska label, which has released more than 100 records by national and international acts.
Hingley started Moon Ska because The Toasters couldn't get signed, even with the legendary Joe Jackson ("Stepping Out") producing the band's demo. Ironically, the same labels that shunned Hingley, and ska in general, in the early 80's now race to sign as many ska acts as possible, placing them in direct competition with Moon Ska.
In response Hingley created the "Independents' Day" tour, which kicked off on Oct. 22 in Boston. "The idea is basically just to remind people that ska doesn't belong to the major labels," Hingley says. "It's indie bands that did all the work, and it's gonna be indie bands here after the major labels have moved on to something else."
There are some benefits from the mainstream popularity of ska. After hearing such bands as Reel Big Fish, Sublime, and Mighty Mighty Bosstones, some fans who can't get enough of ska's choppy guitar riffs and melodic horns are seeking out Moon Ska releases and records by pioneers such as Laurel Aitken and Desmond Dekker.
"Once people discover ska, it tends to stick with them," Hingley says. "As independents, we're going to have a chance to get better organized and better publicized, even if it might only be through trickle-down or fallout association with such great ska bands as No Doubt or Sugar Ray."
The Toasters have at least one thing in common with those bands-they've been on MTV. Videos for "Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down," "I Wasn't Going To Call You Anyway" and "Two Tone Army" have appeared on 120 Minutes and on MTV's sister station, M2.
"The only access a lot of kids have to music at all is MTV," Hingley says. "They're too young to go to the shows, and it's not as if they can hear us on the radio. MTV is really the only way a lot of kids find out about music, so I'd rather they played decent music than crap."
Although The Toasters' appearances on MTV may offend some purists, Hingley says that making videos is another way to promote independence.
"The standard of ska is being set by people misrepresenting it. It's time to stand up and take our music back. It's all in keeping with the theory of this tour. Let's keep ska music for people who care about it."
More people care about ska than ever, including youngsters who weren't yet born when The Toasters released their first single, "Beat Up," in 1983. "I don't know if the kids are getting younger or we're getting older," he says. "The whole idea is you don't have be any age to listen to ska music."
Young people are more than spectators in the ska scene. Sa bands are popping up everywhere, including Kansas City's own The Gadjits. The Toasters played with The Gadjits on the recent Ska Against Racism tour.
"Most of the bands are all kids who want to play ska-core and ska-punk, which is fine," Hingley says. "We have a wide range of bands with us on this tour. Slow Gherkin is not really ska-punk, but more 80's and hard than us. Edna's Goldfish is 90's New York stuff and The Skoidats are ska/oi on the Rancid tip. We wanted to represent a cross section of bands as a way of advertising that there are tons and tons of great bands to go and see, and you don't have to be led around by corporate labels."
Corporate labels lurk in unexpected places, such as the Vans Warped Tour, which featured ska legends The Specials as a headlining act this year.
"It's primarily a pay-to-play scenario, which we're not really interested in doing," Hingley says. "I think labels pay a lot of money to get their bands on there as a showcase. A lot of labels represent themselves as having street credibility and being independent, but they're really not."
Even without the Warped Tour, The Toasters have played their share of festivals, including the Bazzar Festival in Germany (attendance 40,000) and the Lowlands Festival in Holland (about 50,000). In fact, The Toasters have played just about everywhere under almost any imaginable condition during a career that has seen them log more than a million miles worldwide.
It's quite a contrast between playing in front of thousands of fans in a muddy field overseas and playing in front of a few hundred fans in a club in Lawrence, but Hingley says it's equally enjoyable to play in front of any crowd that appreciates real ska.
"Lawrence is the Athens (GA) of Kansas, if you like," Hingley says. "There's a lot of people there who were hip to what we were doing before a lot of other people in the country, so Lawrence has always been a good town for us."
Mixed in with these knowing fans will be a new generation of rude boys and girls seeing The Toasters for the first time and taking to heart Hingley's message of independence. That, he says, is why ska will survive and thrive in the future.
"Ska music has found a way to reinvent itself and keep it fresh and alive," Hingley says. "The fact that it can appeal to younger audiences and still maintain its integrity as a traditional musical form that's been around for 40 years says something about the vitality of the music."
Pitch Weekly, (Kansas City, MO) 11/4/98
Rob "Bucket" Hingley hears the whispers. One pessimist after another is forecasting the demise of something he holds dear. But Hingley remains unfazed by these predictions, mostly because he doubts the credentials of the so-called experts that are making them.
-Andrew Miller
Toasters
of the Town Thus runs the garbled ska gospel according to many of the new fans attracted
by the genre's most recent boom -- and you can hardly blame them for their
lack of knowledge about ska's background, since most of them are only twelve.
But even the youngest of these boosters would benefit from knowing about the
Toasters, the still-spry grandfathers of American ska. The band's current
members -- guitarist/vocalist Robert "Bucket" Hingley, trumpeter Brian Sledge,
vocalist Jack Ruby Jr., bassist Matt Malles, drummer Johnnathan McCain, trombonist
Rick Faulkner, saxophonist Fred Reiter and keyboardist Dave Waldo -- have
been giving the kiddies something to skank about for fifteen years, and they
give no indication that they'll be cutting down their 200-shows-a-year touring
schedule anytime soon. Nonetheless, Hingley, the group's co-founder, wouldn't
mind if listeners dug a little deeper into ska's roots.
"People tend to emphasize the party aspect of ska, not the political aspect,"
he says. "They forget that the music arose out of the Trench Town ghetto when
Jamaica got rid of 200 years of English colonial rule. Now it's associated
with white frat boys."
"Bob Marley started out playing ska," adds trumpeter Sledge. "Reggae music
is just ska music played much slower. The beats, guitar licks and rhythms
behind it are generally the same." Indeed, the rudiments of ska link the music's
three distinct periods: the first wave, which came to life in Jamaica during
the late Fifties; the second wave, spurred by late-Seventies English combos
that revived ska under the two-tone banner; and today's third wave, a movement
broad enough to encompass the punky sound of Rancid and the swing-ska flavor
associated with the Dance Hall Crashers. Hingley doesn't turn up his nose
at the latest generation to discover ska, in part because he, too, came to
the music long after its birth. His conversion experience occurred in 1980,
shortly after he moved from England to New York, where he managed Forbidden
Planet, a comic-book/sci-fi store. "I went to see the English Beat in the
Roseland Ballroom, and only 150 people were there," he remembers. "But for
me, it was like the scene in The Blues Brothers where they get hit by the
bolt of lightning."
Before long, Hingley had decided that his particular "mission from God"
required him to introduce the United States to ska. To that end, he created
the Toasters in 1983, and when he discovered that no domestic record labels
were interested in signing his band, he started Moon Ska Records, the first
U.S. label to exclusively feature ska outfits. The imprint didn't entirely
shield the Toasters from financial troubles: Over the years, the players have
weathered threats of bankruptcy and collected more than their share of battle
stories. ("Once, we had a bus break down at Checkpoint Charlie," Hingley says,
"and we had to get out and push it with all the Germans pointing their guns
at us.") But they've recently seen their profiles rise above the cult level.
For instance, their latest album, 1997's Don't Let the Bastards Grind You
Down, cracked the MTV lineup, the CMJ Top 25 radio list and the Billboard
reggae chart.
These accomplishments attracted the attention of numerous record-industry
heavyweights, but the Toasters had no trouble rejecting their entreaties;
Hingley says they "never wanted to lose control of things and give the baby
over to less-caring foster parents." He adds, "We were in a sort of anomalous
position. We have done quite well for ourselves, but if we went to a major
label, we'd have to run five times as fast."
Besides, Sledge notes, the band is doing just fine on its own. "When I started
out with the Toasters seven years ago, we were playing to crowds of three
or four hundred people," he says. "Now it's for three or four thousand people.
The people at the shows used to be between 18 and 24 years old, and the majority
of them were rude boys, mod boys and mod girls dressed in black suits, white
shirts and black ties. But once ska started entering into MTV and started
filtering into other forms, like skacore, ska punk, and ska jazz, other kids
who might not have bothered to listen to it started to check it out. Now the
majority of kids at our shows are between 12 and 18 years old and are dressed
in skateboard gear with the flared bell-bottom jeans and the wallet chains."
The musicians have no problem relating to such throngs. In fact, they instruct
security guards at concerts to step aside in order to allow a constant stream
of attendees to dance with them in front of the footlights. Although their
laissez-faire attitude has resulted in a few dental emergencies due to collisions
with over-zealous skankers, they wouldn't have it any other way. "Ska is inclusionary
-- not a musical form like classic rock, where you have something like a sheet
of glass between you and the audience," Hingley explains. "Brecht talked of
this sort of alienation: the audience watching a spectacle and not participating
in it. So we're the anti-Brechts, I suppose."
Given Hingley's familiarity with Brecht, a Marxist theorist and playwright
known for his collaborations with composer Kurt Weill, it's no surprise that
he wishes third-wavers would dip more frequently into the political side of
ska. He acknowledges, though, that "living in the United States in 1998 under
favorable economic conditions is not the same as living in England in the
late Seventies, with the racism of Margaret Thatcher and the National Front.
Those highly politicized English kids are not the same audience as modern
American kids." Even so, he was proud to participate in the Ska Against Racism
tour earlier this year. "We were trying to put a little politics back into
the music," he says. "Our message was well-received by the kids -- and, of
course, the media completely ignored it."
The Toasters are too modest to take credit for influencing ska's belated
success in America. "I'm satisfied with what I've accomplished," Hingley grants.
"But what I'm not satisfied with is the way ska music has developed today
-- like a Frankenstein monster, with people jumping on the bandwagon and calling
themselves ska. I'm not naming names, but some bands call themselves ska when
they really aren't ska. But bands like Reel Big Fish and No Doubt have really
worked hard to be where they are. The fact that I'm thankful for the way they
have introduced ska-influenced music to a wide range of people is more material
than whether I agree with or like their music or not."
Likewise, Sledge says he manifests no bitterness toward ska-bands-come-lately
that have experienced a greater degree of commercial success than the Toasters
have. "More power to them. I don't knock people for the type of music they
play. From my point of view, I love what I do. I mean, everyone likes to get
paid, and I'd love to write some music and have it make a million dollars
so I could buy a nice big house and a fancy car. But for me, I just enjoy
the music and being up on stage. To have someone you've never met before say,
'Man, you're the best horn player I've ever heard' -- it makes you feel good.
It's a special kind of power." Although Hingley has benefited from America's
infatuation with all things ska, he won't be sad to see it lessen. "Now that
people like us, who've supported ska from the start, have had a chance to
organize ourselves and get some capital behind our labels, I'm looking forward
to when this whole ska craze dies down," he says. "And I think there are two
reasons why ska didn't go as big as it should have, even though it showed
signs of it when it took on the forms of skacore and ska punk. It wasn't introduced
enough into other styles of music; all it really reached is the MTV skating
crowd. Secondly, not enough people know about its roots. That's very important
for helping to keep a music alive.
"A lot of young kids today will hear ska music, but it won't be what they
hear on MTV," he continues. "They'll know skacore, ska punk and maybe a little
two-tone, but it will be something new to them that they won't understand
-- and because they don't have information about its history, they won't appreciate
it. That's why you won't get the same crowd for the Skatalites as for the
Toasters. If you don't take the time to find out where a type of music is
from, you won't be able to find out where it's going. You won't be able to
follow its trail. My message to the kids who are listening to ska music today
is to take the time to learn about its musical roots. You don't have to win
a Nobel prize in the history of it, but check out some of the older stuff
in the same
Denver Westword, 10/29/98
In the beginning, there was No Doubt.
Or maybe it was Sublime. And didn't I hear something about the Mighty Mighty
Bosstones putting out an album before 1997's Let's Face It?
-Jenny Shank
And
Now, a Toast to Ska! After ska's birth out of American R&B via Jamaica in the '60s and its revival
on 2-Tone Records in the late '70s, the genre entered its third wave in the
early '80s. That reawakening has been largely credited to the Toasters. The
seminal New York band from the Lower East Side was created by Rob "Bucket"
Hingley, a British expatriate who left the United Kingdom during the height
of the 2-Tone Movement to find the United States practically bankrupt of the
sound. He took it upon himself to make things right, and the crusade began.
He recruited several coworkers from Forbidden Planet-the sci-fi/comic book
retailer responsible for his relocation-and cast himself as songwriter, guitarist
and lead vocalist. There have been a few lineup changes along the way, but
through it all Bucket has continued to be the alpha wolf of the ska community.
And his contributions aren't limited to his own music: In addition to the
Toasters, he founded Moon Ska Records, America's premiere all-ska label. Moon
Ska's responsible for spreading the sounds of New York acts like Mephiskapheles,
Skavoovie & the Epitones, the Scofflaws and Skinnerbox across the nation and
debuting out-of-town talents like the Dance Hall Crashers, Hepcat and the
Pietasters.
Sixteen years after Bucket's journey began, ska has found its way into Billboard's
top ten, movie soundtracks-even television commercials. The version that you're
most often hearing in the mass media, however, has been sanitized for your
protection and often retains little of the innovation and vibrancy of its
precursors.
Fortunately, those precursors are still around. Last year the Toasters released
their seventh full-length release, Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down;
the album has managed to achieve success without compromising the sound. It
doesn't take the form of punk-ska, swing-ska, Latin-ska or any of the other
hybrids that have emerged from the latest renaissance-this is straight ska,
pure and simple, and it amply demonstrates that the rude track Bucket and
company have been crankin' out for a decade and a half are just as relevant
now as they were at the beginning.
And they're lots of fun to dance to. As much fun as ska can be blasting
out of your home speakers, nothing can compare to the energy of a real live
show, and the Toasters have had 2,500 chances to perfect theirs. It shows:
You'd be hard-pressed to find an evening of any kind of music that gives you
as much bang for your buck. Bucket and his band may have single-handedly revitalized
ska, but he's not ready to sit back and rest yet. And with him at the helm,
no one else can either.
America's original third-wave skankers are finally
getting the mass recognition they deserve
Pittsburgh Newsweekly, 10/21/98
Look, ska is not new. It's new to American
radio stations-that's all. Music fans around the world laugh at us stupid Yankees
when magazines like Spin cite the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big
Fish as "pioneers" of the sound. Those bands present newfangled versions of
a form that's been around since long before they were naught but devilish gleams
in their daddies' eyes. Sure, some people might reverentially whisper "ska"
and "Bosstones" in the same breath-but Toasters fans know better. After all,
if it weren't for the Toasters, chances are none of those other bands would
be around today.
-Lisa Brennan