Duff Review: The Bakesys "Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

I'd been holding off on reviewing The Bakesys' terrific Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of (CD/digital, Do the Dog Music, 2021) as I thought its physical vinyl release on Jump Up Records would be soon forthcoming. However, since that label seems to have taken a bit of a detour as of late to capitalize on the 2021 resurgence of ska-punk, it feels like a disservice to the band to wait any longer. 

Like their single "Leaving the American Sector" (about the Cold War-era Berlin Wall, which I reviewed earlier this year), the songs on The Bakesys' Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of are concerned with significant figures and events from 1960s world history, while employing a late 1980s UK traditional ska sound crossed with electro/dance beats and toasting/rapping that was practiced by Maroon Town, Potato 5 (on True Fact), House of Rhythm, and others (it was a cousin to the brief 1989 ska-acid fad--see Longsy D et al--but better, with the exception of Buster Bloodvessel's killer mix of "This is Ska").

Most of Sentences I'd Like to Hear the End Of's uniformly excellent tracks judiciously incorporate offbeat found sound clips from contemporary '60s TV/radio news reports that hint at the event/figure being referenced without being obviously direct--and work exceptionally well (though some of their added spoken word/rapping bits play better than others).

The title track is about the model/showgirl Christine Keeler, who was sexually involved with both a married British cabinet member and a Soviet naval attaché, which, when came to light, became tabloid fodder and sparked all sorts of embarrassing national security concerns (The Skatalites, of course, recorded an instrumental named after her, and Keeler also was the subject of the 1989 movie Scandal, whose 1960s ska soundtrack was selected by The Trojans' Gaz Mayall). "638 Ways They Tried" comments on the number of times the CIA attempted to assassinate Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro; and the Clash-referencing "Atomic Invasion" ("When Ivan meets GI Joe/Well, we all know how this is going to go/The talking stops and the missiles flow...Well, if the blast don't kill ya/Then the fallout's gonna get ya") conveys the almost universal Cold War dread of nuclear war, which, of course, came very close to happening in '61 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The horror show of both JFK and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations are captured in the tense and mournful "We Don't Need Another Oswald," where we hear snippets of Bobby's last speech and then the immediate, awful aftermath of his murder. We hear people urging others to secure the gun and to keep people away from Sirhan Sirhan; they don't want him killed by vigilantes before he is brought to trial, as in the case of JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who was killed by Jack Ruby.

The three dubs--"Go Dub Go," "Bernauer Strasse Dub," and "Desolation Dub" (a version of "Get Your Moon Boots On")--are exceptionally good. Buzz Aldrin, the second human to step foot on the Moon, described the moonscape as "magnificent desolation." One of the major--and ironic--discoveries of the Apollo Moon program was the realization of how precious our own life-sustaining planet is (William Shatner said of his suborbital experience that after leaving Earth's blue atmosphere, the black of space was like "death"). Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders, who took the famous "Earthrise" photo remarked, "We set out to explore the Moon and instead discovered the Earth."

I wonder if The Bakesys will take on the '70s next--there's lots of good material (Watergate, Vietnam War, Iranian Hostages, Jonestown, Camp David Accords, Three Mile Island, Reagan and Thatcher, and so much more!)...

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: The Bakesys "You Are Leaving The American Sector" b/w "Bernauer Straße Dub"

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

My wife and I just started watching the TV series The Americans, which is about two deeply embedded Russian agents who live in the suburbs of Washington, DC (next to an FBI counter-intelligence agent) and are raising their American-born kids (who have no idea of their parents' true identity) while they spy on the Reagan Administration during the Cold War 1980s. In a funny coincidence, the incredible new single from The Bakesys "You Are Leaving The American Sector" b/w "Bernauer Straße Dub" (Digital, Do the Dog Music, 2021) is about this very same era--and the Berlin Wall in particular. "You Are Leaving The American Sector" is, appropriately enough, a crisp, tightly-wound late-'80s-sounding instrumental track that bends trad ska with modern production techniques, and might remind the listener of something off Maroon Town's High and Dry or Potato 5's True Fact albums. The cut also includes all sorts of clips of interviews of people reacting to the Wall going up in 1961 (and the subsequent attempts of East Germans to escape to the West); one man in the street wonders, "What have we got that they are so afraid of?" Its terrific version, "Bernauer Straße Dub," refers to the street in Berlin where the Wall went up and the East German authorities bricked up all the windows of the apartments that faced the West so their citizens couldn't jump to freedom. Both tracks capture the tension and apocalyptic paranoia of that time, which, in some ways, has never dissipated. On a related note, the late video and multimedia artist Dieter Froese--a wonderful family friend who digitally edited the Super-8 footage I shot for The Toasters' "2 Tone Army" music video at his Dekart Video production house in NYC's Chinatown--had helped a good number of East Berliners escape to the West via a tunnel under the Berlin Wall before he came to the US in 1964.

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: Various Artists: "Do the Dog Ska-A-Go-Go, Volume 3"

Do the Dog Music
Digital
2021

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Since Kevin Flowerdew's essential Do the Dog Skazine is so thorough in its coverage of the global ska scene--far beyond what I'm able to digest and review each year for The Duff Guide to Ska--it only follows that I've only heard around half of the bands/songs on his fantastic new compilation Do the Dog Ska-A-Go-Go, Volume 3. This compilation features an extremely generous 47 tracks (!) of ska varying in style from traditional to 2 Tone to ska-punk from acts all over the world (some of them singing in languages other than English). Come for some of the better-known bands on Do the Dog Ska-A-Go-Go, Volume 3 like The Planet Smashers, Maroon Town, Cartoon Violence, The Bionic Rats, The Bruce Lee Band, Erin Bardwell, Crazy Baldhead, King Kong 4, The Co-operators & Friends, The Pomps, Detroit Riddim Crew, Catbite, The Skapones, Zen Baseballbat, Barbicide, The Abruptors,  Stop the Presses, The Players Band, Bad Operation, Some Ska Band, The Simmertones, Flowerdew's own Bakesys, and you'll walk away with many new faves, including acts like T-Killas, The Kubricks, RudeSix, GoGo 13, Los Fastidios & Elisa Dixan, and more. All participating acts contributed their music to help Kevin keep on publishing future issues of Do the Dog Skazine, which--in old school zine fashion--is only available in its print version from the man himself. 

Duff Guide to Ska Bullet Points: The Bakesys, Eric Blowtorch and the Bodyguards, The Man on the Bridge (AKA Dave Clifton)

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

• The Bakesys' awesome "Rainy Day Dub" is being offered as a free download in advance of their forthcoming More Bakesys full-length vinyl album (which was previously issued as a CD EP--my review of it is here). This track is the dub version of their haunting "Anything and Everything" ("...is falling down"), which sounds like More Specials-era Specials produced by Prince Fatty or Mungo's Hi-Fi, and is about the devastating impact of mass unemployment paired government cutbacks to public services. It was originally written in response to Teresa May's austerity measures, but it's equally relevant in this Covid-19 lockdown era. 

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   Eric Blowtorch and the Bodyguards' excellent new 2 Tone-ish ska single "Mercy" (digital, self-released, 2020) is a plea for the salvation of humanity, a mantra for our thoroughly horrific times, particularly in these fragmented United States of ours: "Mercy in destabilizer stormtroop’s face/Mercy, mercy when your blood boils over/Mercy to the driver in the bulldozer." It's a mournful track, like something off the Ghost Town EP, but interspersed with joyous and hopeful funk-soul breaks in the choruses. And it's protest music that's not about casting blame, but searching for something that can heal what's broken inside of us, so we won't be at each other's throats, and might even be able to begin to start caring for one other again. (If you like this cut, also be sure to check out my review of Eric Blowtorch's 12" single from a few years ago: Horace Andy backed by Welders "Straight To Hell" and Big Youth backed by Welders "Pair of Dice" b/w Horace Andy v. Big Youth "Asylum Seekers" and Eric Blowtorch "Christmas in Ladbroke Grove.")
  

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   The Man on the Bridge is guitarist, singer, and songwriter Dave Clifton of the '80s UK ska act The Hotknives, who's been a member of the stellar Erin Bardwell Collective as of late. This six-track EP Million Miles Away (CD/digital, Pop-A-Top Records, 2020) is a collection of new studio recordings engineered by Erin Bardwell, who gives Clifton's terrific mood and memory evoking (rather than storytelling) songs a touch of his "dream-ska" sound (Bardwell plays keys and sings, too). Hotknives fans will hone in on "Don't Blame Me," a great Marley-ish reggae track known as "Dave's Song" that was in that band's live set in the '80s but never recorded in the studio, and the heartbreaking she's-leaving-me "Believe It" (from their 1990 debut album on Unicorn Records, The Way Things Are) with Pat Powell of the Melbourne Ska Orchestra on guest vocals. "Looking Over the Land" is a rather upbeat Madness-like cut (music hall piano, sax courtesy of Paul Mumford from Too Many Crooks and The Hotknives) with lyrics by Bardwell about repeatedly encountering a seemingly lost older man all around Swindon who was apparently suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's ("I tried to talk, he walked away/Where did he used to live/That man on the bridge"). "Just Dreaming" is a fantastic rootsy dub cut featuring an ethereal flute line that soars over the rhythm track (bass by Pete Fitzsimmons, drums by Pete O'Driscoll). "Never Say Never" is a lovely, hopeful pop-reggae song about letting go of what might or might not be someday, and trying to be happy in the now ("Stumble across the front room floor/To the window on the other side/I'm looking down the garden path/That's my heart hanging on the line/Please don't give me up/(No no no)/Let's just live it up/(Yeah yeah yeah)...Let's treasure this time we got together"). The title track--my favorite on the EP--is not a Plimsouls cover, but rather a brilliant Celtic-tinged ska song about being a certain (middle) age in life and longing for what you can never have again ("I remember those nights at the fairground/'Double Barrel' playin' on the sound system/This big wheel keeps turning 'round/Switch back screams the smell of candyfloss/Somebody calls out your name/You look around, but its from above/Now the O'Jays are singing 'Love Train'/You know your life will never be the same"). This is highly recommended--don't miss it!

Duff Guide to Ska Bullet Points: The Bakesys, No Sports

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

• The Bakesys are back with a new song that was recorded during the sessions for their great More Bakeseys album (for a refresher, here's my review of it from back in 2017). In case there's any question about who "Rich Boy Rude Boy" (digital, Do the Dog Music, 2020) is really about, there's a snippet from a Congressional hearing featuring Donald Trump's former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen--Question: "Did the president or his company ever inflate his assets or revenue?" Michael Cohen: "Yes." Like its related cuts on More Bakesys, "Rich Boy Rude Boy" mines the latter day Specials sound (found on More Specials and the Ghost Town EP), and is explicitly left-wing protest music--with a socialist message at the end--calling out the despicable, if not outright evil, things many of the rich do to attain and maintain their wealth. Despite its somewhat dour tone, it's an immensely winning, well-done reggae track. And did I mention it's free?

• Back in the day, if you were lucky to be following the extraordinary late '80s/early '90s UK/European ska scene--most of which was captured for posterity via a string of amazing releases on Unicorn Records (their owner had an impeccable taste in bands, but--fatal flaw here--failed to pay them their royalties!)--you undoubtably loved Germany's No Sports. Massively influenced by The Specials and Selecter, No Sports revved up the beat and supercharged their 2 Tone sound on their stellar 1989 debut album King Ska (recently reissued by Black Butcher Classics/Mad Butcher Records and available in the US via Jump Up)--one of the best records of that era--adding a bit of lyrical (and vocal) zaniness to very relatable, everyday songs about work, rest, and play (I'll write this album up at some point in the near future). No Sports' 1990 follow-up was their stunning Stay Rude, Stay Rebel EP. The fantastic anti-racist/anti-fascist title cut was particularly meaningful at a time in Germany soon after reunification (the Berlin Wall fell in '89), when newly-found patriotism for a unified Germany gave far-right hate groups the cover to actively recruit new legions of goons, and led to attacks on Germans of color and non-white immigrants. (No Sports' peers The Frits' 1991 album Little Idiots is practically a concept album about this era that both mourns for a Germany filled with so much hate and pushes fiercely back against it, with songs like "Searching for Another Place in Town," "The Most I Hate is You," "Little Idiots," and "Bonehead.") No Sports' "Stay Rude, Stay Rebel" is an immensely catchy track that, like other powerful 2 Tone songs written in response to dark times, effortlessly moves both body and mind: "Stay rude against the fascist regimes/Stay rebel against politicians' dreams/Stay rude and fight back against injustice/Stay rebel against racial prejudice." And the chorus--in a very RAR move--is aimed squarely at on-the-fence skinheads: "Stay rebel--stay S.H.A.R.P. [Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice]" (a spoken word bit adds: "Skinheads remember your roots/Think with your brain and not with your fucking boots"). The other great cuts rounding out the EP are the jaunty "Tour de France" (an original, not a Kraftwerk cover) sung in French; the demented "Love Song"; and the magnificent Madness-y pop-ska epic "Girl (Tango)" ("She was not very pretty/She had no class or style/She was just a girl/But she had that love of I"). This reissue of Stay Rude, Stay Rebel is a 7" picture sleeve single (as opposed to the original's 12") and brought to us by Black Butcher Classics/Mad Butcher Records (and also available in the US via Jump Up); props to whomever redesigned the background on the paper label from the original blue unicorn silhouette to the cartoon butcher. (Related reading: I wrote about many of Unicorn's releases for a 1998 issue of The People's Ska Annual.)

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: Zen Baseballbat "You Won't Get Paid" EP, plus "Place Like This" single!

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Zen Baseballbat You Won't Get Paid (CD EP/digital, self-released, 2020); "Place Like This" (digital single, self-released, 2020): I completely missed out on Zen Baseballbat's activities in the early 2000s (when they released two albums on Moon Ska World), but am grateful to have been turned onto this fantastic band now, thanks to the intervention of Kevin Flowerdew of Do the Dog Skazine/The Bakesys. Zen Baseballbat's new EP You Won't Get Paid is an incredibly appealing mash-up of modern ska/reggae plus synth-pop, New Wave, and krautrock married to explicitly left-wing lyrics about living in an era where there's no bottom to the depths of shamelessness, self-dealing, lawlessness, and cruelty that those in power will sink to.

The ironically bright title track condemns an increasingly rapacious economic system that offers fewer and fewer crumbs to the people doing the actual grunt work (all while those at the top funnel cash to politicians who do all they can to slash the social safety net and deregulate business): "I've been shoveling shit for far too long/My body aches, but my head is strong/I haven't got a pot to piss in/Yet, you want me for next to nothing/You won't get paid/Billinger, billinger, billinger" (roughly translated from German as "cheaper"). In the grayer "Reasons for Living," the band posits that, despite its trappings as a liberal democracy, England has become a surveillance state that the Stasi could only dream of, with the government's ability to easily monitor its citizens via hacked public and private security cameras, cell phones, smart speakers, email, texts, social media (this last one, our own fault, really), etc.--the song is sung from the perspective of imagined officers at the Home Office: "We have reasons to believe that.../You have been living six months behind sound proof privets/Treading on grapes, but the wine still tastes of feet/You were knee deep in chocolate decisions/A sweetened informer dropped you in it/We know who you are/We know where you’ve been/It’s colder in St Helens than Cold War Berlin" (St. Helens is a town located between Liverpool and Manchester and near Zen Baseballbat's home base in Widnes, Warrington).

"There's Going to Be Trouble" is a grand reggae track that employs a spoken 2017 quote from socialist filmmaker Ken Loach regarding Tory austerity-imposed cuts to unemployment benefits in the guise of welfare-to-work requirements intentionally designed so that many people couldn't meet them: "Sanctions are a cruel and vindictive way of treating vulnerable people. This is an extraordinarily cruel thing. They're driven to food banks. When you stop people's money, you force them into the direst poverty--they have nothing. Punishing the poorest and blaming them. Now, don't you think that's absolutely disgusting?" The title of this song is its chorus, sung over and over, as both warning (there's going to be unrest when desperate people have absolutely nothing left to lose) and an appeal of sorts (it's in the rich and powerful's best interest to maintain a livable bottom rung to capitalism, so as to keep society from devolving into widespread chaos and violence, which wouldn't exactly be good for the financial markets). While it's almost too on the mark to be satire, "A Backstage Pass to The Stanley" (which sounds like it could be a The The circa Mind Bomb track) offers brutal commentary on our sick society's never-sated desire for real and staged Hunger Games-like acts of violence, freakishness, and self-humiliation as entertainment: "Ladies and gentlemen/Put your hand grenades together and give a warmonger's welcome for tonight's doomed fancy fella/Testing intestines, one-two, one-two/Take a big deep breath/I’ll bicycle kick myself to death/Vomit a Sinatra, a Nat King saliva/Return to sender/The awfully wedded karaoke machine/When there’s a hole in the chest/Expect nothing less/Than a man with a gun and a grudge in suburbia." All the bread and circuses helps keep us from noticing what's going on behind the scenes--and to us. (Also, there's a hidden, bonus track on the CD--a mildly ska-ified cover of Camper Van Beethoven's jangly 1985 left-of-the-dial hit "Take the Skinheads Bowling," which seems appropriate, as it's a nonsensical song that's perfect for a time when nothing in the world makes sense.)

The digital single "Place Like This" is electro-spaghetti Western-reggae (think Kraftwerk, Big Audio Dynamite's "E=MC²," and maybe a bit of Yazoo) that the band has dedicated to, "the one too many, midweek disco dancers, desperate for a shag and falling asleep on the bog in a niteclub at 4am...an anthem for the knackered." More than one listener of a certain age will relate to lyrics like this: "Biology laid bare/Bodily functions everywhere/Why to we always end up in a place like this?/Dressed head to toe, an anniversary/Is everybody here in the mood, but me?" In their comments about this song, Zen Baseballbat adds (figuratively, but also a bit literally), "celebrate the shit, it's all we have left." And the band's happy to provide this brilliant and spot-on soundtrack for the occasion.

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Duff Review: "Memoirs of a Ska Librarian: The History of Rude Skazine"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

From our vantage point in time, it's kind of quaint to imagine/remember a time before the internet and social media, when information about non-mainstream bands was sometimes nearly impossible to come by. But, thanks to the late '70s punk DIY ethos that helped spawn zine culture (see Punk, Sniffin' Glue, Jamming, etc.), fans of underground sounds and scenes from the mid-'70s on strived to remedy that dilemma by creating their own means of disseminating band news, interviews, and reviews, filling a void that the establishment music press likely didn't know existed (or didn't deem profitable enough to cover or care about).

For the late '80s/early '90s ska scene, skazines were crucial lifelines to what was going on outside one's own limited sphere of experience and knowledge. Apart from a printed catalogue from an indie label, a flyer for a show on a telephone pole or in a record store window, or second-hand info via a ska-obsessed friend, there was virtually no other source of ska info than a zine (I first became involved in the ska scene by writing reviews for the Bakersfield, CA-based skazine Roughneck Business back in 1990). Since the mid-to-late '80s British ska scene (The Loafers, Potato 5, Laurel Aitken, Deltones, Trojans, Maroon Town, Hotknives, Riffs, Capone and the Bullets, King Hammond, Bad Manners, etc.) had a big jump on its American counterpart (which didn't really get its act together nationally until 1993-1994; earlier in the 1980s, ska flourished in a few US cities, but these scenes were largely parochial and isolated), the UK skazines cropped up a bit earlier. In addition to George Marshall's fantastic, but much shorter-lived, Zoot!, the other absolutely essential UK skazine of this period was Kevin Flowerdew's Rude. While most skazines reported on a local or regional scene, Rude endeavored to cover it all--and was by far the greatest source of international ska news, bar none.

Originally written on a typewriter, then cut and pasted, and xeroxed, each issue of Rude offered dozens upon dozens of short paragraphs conveying the latest news relating to ska bands' tours and goings on, and/or brief reviews of new releases. It was a wealth of precious ska info contained on two (or more) folded and stapled A4 sheets of paper that tipped you off to your next favorite band or album (from the next town over or the other side of the world) that you never knew existed.

Kevin Flowerdew's Memoirs of a Ska Librarian: The History of Rude Skazine (5 zines printed on glossy paper, Do The Dog Music, 2019) celebrates the best of Rude, which was published between 1989 and 1996 (when Flowerdew changed the name of the zine to Do The Dog, to match the ska label that he had launched). Memoirs focuses on Flowerdew's intro to ska (via 2 Tone, of course), the origins and history of Rude, as well as his front row experience witnessing the rise of The Loafers (his brother Sean's first band--he'd later be in Special Beat and Pama International, and created the London International Ska Festival in 1988, which continues to this day). Flowerdew wasn't just documenting and promoting the scene, he was urged to form his own group by the "Godfather of Ska" himself, Laurel Aitken (his sage advice: "If you love ska, you should start your own band")--and quickly followed Aitken's directive by founding Bakesys Midday Joggers (later shortened to The Bakesys), whose history and exploits are also recounted here. Memoirs of a Ska Librarian is accompanied by four special issues of Rude--each covering two-year periods from 1989-1990, 1991-1992, 1993-1994, and 1995-1996--and reprinting the best bits from those respective years. In particular, it's fascinating to watch the American ska scene explode as you turn these pages.

Rude had an astonishingly broad reach and was incredibly influential--so much so, that back when I was doing promotions for Moon Ska Records, Rude was always amongst the first batch of promo copies of a new release that I'd mail out (in the early years, these were cassettes!). At a time when people either had to (proactively) mail-order an album or head out to their local record shop to buy it, Rude's review was vital to getting the word out to ska fans (who would hopefully support our bands with their hard-earned cash!). What was particularly impressive was how Flowerdew gave everyone a fair shake--if a band took the time to send him a letter or package, he'd write about them in the next issue. It was a very democratic approach; new bands on the block received the same coverage as established ones and made Rude's scope all the more comprehensive. And that's what makes the librarian comparison in the title so apt--with Rude, Flowerdew was cataloging that era of ska like no one else on the planet.

Whether you lived through this time as a ska fan or missed out on it due to the timing of your birth or other circumstances, you'll find Memoirs of a Ska Librarian and the special editions of Rude a truly great read that will likely spur you to dig out albums from this period to play or track down copies of records you definitely now need on Discogs. But they also help document this pre-digital era in ska, so much of which only remains in fans' memories, record collections, and in shoeboxes in closets--and remind one of how the 1990s ska scene would have been significantly diminished/hampered had this amazing skazine not existed.

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The Duff Guide to Ska Year in Ska Reviews 2017, Part 2!

From The Duff Guide to Ska patch collection (click on image to enlarge).

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

The Applecores The Applecores EP (Five-track digital EP, self released, 2017): This female-fronted reggae-rock-pop NYC outfit (think Sublime crossed with No Doubt) delivers some fine originals on their debut--the break-up cut "Holding Hands" is particularly affecting--plus they do a great cover of Drake's "One Dance."

The Bakesys "Golden Brown Slices of Toast" (free digital single, Do the Dog Music, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

The Bakesys More Bakesys (CD EP, Do the Dog Music, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

The Bakesys Studio Selections 1991-1995 (CD, Do the Dog Music, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Beat Brigade Tomorrow's News (Three-track digital EP, Buddahbug Records, 2017): OG NYC ska kings (and contemporaries of The Toasters) Beat Brigade keep the aggressive and gritty '80s Big Apple ska sound alive on this really fantastic new EP. The protagonist in the dangerous, film-noir-ish ska-jazz cut "You Charming Thing" ("Every day is Christmas/Every night is New Year's eve...you tease me until I come undone") knows he's on the road to perdition, but can't resist her. "Bomb Squad" is from the (cynical) POV of someone on that detail ("You're gonna have to hose my bloody guts away!") and appropriates the great riff from Devo's "It's Not Right." The roots reggae rebel track "Battle Cry" ("This is not a warning/This is not a test/Armageddon's coming...") has one seriously good groove in its call for solidarity in the face of injustice ("No matter where you're from/No matter where you stand/Together we are strong/Together we are one"). Much more of this please.

Ken Boothe, Dillinger, Leroy Smart, Delroy Wilson White Man in Hammersmith Palais EP (limited edition RSD 7" vinyl four-track EP with mini-poster, Greensleeves Records, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

The Brooklyn Attractors Xmas in Babylon, Volume II (red or green vinyl PS single, Jump Up Records, 2017): This single by this NYC area supergroup features top-notch rocksteady arrangements of two Christmas classics (a spirited cover of "Up on the Rooftop" and a melancholy version of "Jolly Old St. Nick" retitled "Ras Nick"). Pure class, this one. Play it to impress the relatives when they visit.

Johnny Clarke "Highest Region" b/w Flying Vipers "Highest Version" (green 7" vinyl single, Jump Up Records, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Dub Natty Sessions and Dennis Bovell featuring Matic Horns and Mad Professor DNS and Friends (CD/digital download, available through Bovell's Old School Records, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Flying Vipers The Copper Tape (cassette/digital, Music A. D. D.,  2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Hopeton Lewis "There She Goes" b/w Vin Gordon and The Supersonics"Reggay Trombone" (heavyweight 7" vinyl single, Trojan Records, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Full Experiences Disco Devil (red 12" vinyl, Trojan/Get On Down, 2017 Black Friday Record Store re-issue; originally released in 1977 on the Upsetter label): For whatever odd reason (legal matters with Marley's estate?), this re-issue jettisons the awesome Bob Marley and Wong Chu "Keep On Moving" b side for the 7" mix of "Disco Devil" (which is, of course, a version of Max Romeo's phenomenal "Chase the Devil" from War Ina Babylon). Nonetheless, this is still a gift for Perry fans--original copies of Disco Devil go for $350 and more, while the 2003 Trojan reissue fetches around $50 and up. (If you're in the NYC area, as of this posting, Rock and Soul still has copies in stock.)

Lee "Scratch" Perry and Subatomic Sound System Super Ape Returns to Conquer (CD/LP/digital, Subatomic Sound, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

Mungo's Hi Fi featuring Johnny Clarke "Rain Keeps Falling" b/w "Spring Shower Dub" (7" vinyl single, Scotch Bonnet Records, 2017): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

The New Limits "Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday" (digital single, self-released, 2017): Considering the hellish year we've been through in the USA and the ongoing BS about the ginned-up, so-called "War on Christmas," it helps to shore up your faith in humanity to know that The New Limits chose a holiday classic to cover specifically for its message of love, companionship, and inclusiveness (since no specific holiday/religion is referred to in the lyrics, anyone from any religion--even atheists--can relate to it). Stax artist William Bell's wonderful "Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday" is given a terrific rocksteady treatment by The New Limits here. Maybe this version can find its way to wax some day? 

The Skatalites Foundation Ska (CD/2xLP, Studio One, 2017 reissue; originally released in 1997 on Heartbeat Records): Read The Duff Guide to Ska review here.

The Toasters Skaboom! (blue heavyweight vinyl/cassette, Jump Up Records/Megalith Records, 2016 reissue; originally released in 1987 in the USA on Moving Target/Celluloid and in a slightly altered form in the UK on Unicorn as Pool Shark): Read The Duff Guide to Ska appreciation here.

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Read The Duff Guide to Ska Year in Ska Reviews 2017, Part 1!

Read The Duff Guide to Ska Year in Ska Reviews 2017, Part 3!

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The Bakesys Release Free "Golden Brown Slices of Toast" Single!

Do The Dog Music
2017

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Following hot on the heels of their excellent new More Bakesys EP (which we've just reviewed), The Bakesys have released a great free digital single, "Golden Brown Slices of Toast" b/w "The Modern Office." Using found bits of audio from 1950s and '60s TV shows and commercials (apparently an obsession of their bass player Stef White) layered over two jaunty ska keyboard instrumentals, they've created sly commentaries on imagined but never really realized "Jetsons"- like idealized futures when "thinking" domestic machines would free housewives from housework ("Golden Brown Slices of Toast") and automated workplaces ("The Modern Office") would allow middle-management men to achieve maximum efficiency with minimal effort ("Very nice. No distractions. Just me and the work."). Good stuff here!

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Duff Review: The Bakesys "More Bakesys"

Do the Dog Music
2017
CD EP

(Review by Steve Shafer)

The battered emergency call box on this EP's cover (999 in the UK = 911 in the USA) and reference to The Specials' mournful, end-of-days, furious-at-Thatcher album in its title (and font) should quickly clue the more perceptive ska fan to what they're in for thematically with The Bakesys' More Bakesys--protest music for the age of austerity, Brexit, and Theresa May. And what fantastic music it is!

Drawing musical inspiration from the stripped-down, minor key, and keyboard-focused ska of The Specials' Ghost Town EP, as well as the output of The Specials' musical descendants The Dead 60s, The Bakesys' have created a powerful set of songs that provide sharp social commentary on life during economic wartime. "Anything and Everything," "If You Ain't Got It (You'll Never Get It)," and "No Time Counting Sheep" address communities being devastated through mass unemployment and government cutbacks to public services ("Nothing left standing in this forgotten town/The shops are closed/They've all gone away/Nothing to spend around here anyway"), extreme economic inequality ("The river's too deep/The mount is too high/The valley's too wide/So don't even try"--we're way past "Enjoy Yourself" these days), and the soul-crushing grind of what work there is to be had--that never lets you get ahead ("I get up before I go to sleep/Bills to pay and appointments to keep"). Other aspects of life aren't much better. The deceptively bright "Your 10FT Smile" is about lying lovers and politicians, while "When the Zombies Come" urges the listener to forego the pork rinds and get into shape so they'll be physically able to evade the undead hordes when they come (and slyly quotes The Toasters' "Run, Rudy, Run" in the chorus!). The British landscape may be grim at the moment, but the Bakesys' music never is.

More of this, please.

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For more on The Bakesys, see The Duff Guide to Ska review of their recent compilation, Studio Selections 1991-1995.

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Duff Guide to Ska Fast Takes: The Bakesys "Studio Selections 1991-1995," Flying Vipers "The Copper Tape," The Skatalites "Foundation Ska"

(Reviews by Steve Shafer)

The Bakesys Studio Selections 1991-1995 (CD, Do The Dog Music, 2017): Even though I was pretty well plugged into the international ska scene in the early 1990s (largely thanks to The Bakesys' keyboardist Kevin Flowerdew, who produced the wonderfully comprehensive Rude Skazine, which morphed into the current Do The Dog Skazine), I somehow missed the thread with The Bakesys--which I'm all the lesser for, since they recorded some truly excellent modern UK ska (a frenetic 2 Tone-power pop blend influenced by The Specials and The Jam, amongst others, and specifically made for maximum dancing), as captured on Studio Selections 1991-1995 (all of which holds up very well 25 or so years later). This release contains their debut album (key cuts: "Looking for Love," "Confused,""Days Gone By," "Life So Dub," and the int'l ska comp favorite "Animated Violence"), plus six sweet rare/unreleased songs/versions (highlights: "Sunnyside Up," "Looking for Version," "Without Warning," and "Days Gone Pop"). Don't be a dope like I was and miss out on The Bakesys' music this time 'round.

Flying Vipers The Copper Tape (cassette/digital download, Music A. D. D., 2017): This is the second release from Boston's mighty Flying Vipers, which is comprised of members of Destroy Babylon and Pressure Cooker, who specialize in '70s-sounding instrumental roots reggae and dub recorded on analog equipment that reminds this reviewer most strongly of Dennis Bovell's output (check out The Duff Guide to Ska's review of The Vipers' debut, The Green Tape). The Vipers create incredible, mesmerizing dub tracks that never quite deconstruct things to the point where the tune is entirely lost--melody is everything here (like on all Bovell productions). I love this whole tape (eight cuts on the cassette, seven on the download), but standout tracks for me include the sublimely ethereal "Smoke and Dagger" (paging Jackie Mittoo!), the Western reggae-ish "Heady Topper Headon" (of course, named after The Clash's phenomenal drummer), and the mysterious Lee Perry-like "Return of the Living Zero" (which rely on organ, melodica, and clavinet respectively to carry each song's tune). You may think me bold, but the Flying Vipers' Copper Tape is most likely the best new dub release you'll hear all year.

The Skatalites Foundation Ska (CD/LP, Studio One, 2017 reissue): This fantastic compilation of Skatalites tracks produced by Coxsone Dodd was originally released by Heartbeat Records in 1997, but has been out of print for some years now--so, this is a very welcome reissue (grab the heavyweight double LP while you can!). While it shouldn't be considered a definitive collection of their work (the in-demand and extraordinarily prolific Skatalites also recorded for Prince Buster, Vincent Chin, King Edwards, Duke Reid, Leslie Kong, Sonia Pottinger, and Justin Yap), Foundation Ska is essential for all fans of '60s ska and captures many of the group's greatest cuts, including "Ska La Parisienne," "Ball of Fire," "Dick Tracy," "Cleopatra," "Beardsman Ska," "Addis Ababa," "Nimble Foot Ska," "Killer Diller," and The Beatles' cover "I Should Have Known Better" AKA "Independence Day." (For what it's worth, I believe the best Skatalites comp--though again, not definitive--is the spectacular 1984 Top Deck release Scattered Lights, licensed by Alligator Records in the US, which helped introduce the band to a whole new generation of American ska fans and musicians in the mid-1980s!)

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Ska Essentials: Do the Dog Skazine

There are some terrific things in our lives that have just always been there--so much so that we just take them for granted. Do the Dog Skazine is one of the ska essentials that fans and bands should recognize and appreciate now and then for its very significant role in spreading the gospel of ska and helping to keep the scene informed and connected (there used to be hundreds of skazines back in the 90s--where'd they all go?!). Kevin Flowerdew (The Bakesys, Do the Dog Music) has been publishing the invaluable Do the Dog Skazine since 1989 (the zine was originally called Rude, but was re-branded in 1996 when Kevin launched his great ska label--and a portion of the publication is devoted to bands on Do the Dog Music). It never fails to provide an amazing overview of happenings on the global ska scene.

The latest issue contains news about Jimmy The Squirrel, Robb Blake, Liam O'Kane, Smoke Like A Fish, Splitters, Drewvis, Resolution 242, Captain Black No Stars, Cartoon Violence, Tin Roots, Dirty Revolution, The Skints, Pama International, Babyhead, The Sidewalk Doctors, Copasetics, Scubaroots, Cabstars, Aggressors BC, Sonic Boom Six, The Evidents, Faintest Idea, The Kirkz, The Breadchasers, Sam Wilson, Erin Bardewell Collective, Scrumptious Biscuit, The Usual Players, Spicy Roots, Sally Brown, 65 Mines Street, B Soul Allstars, The Offenders, Mobster, The Oldians, Open Season, Victor Rice, The Pum Pum Allstars, Reel Big Fish, The Beatdown, The Hangers, King Django, The Bullets, Moon Invaders, Caroloregians, The Israelites, Bim Skala Bim, The Slackers, Black Square, Dan Potthast, Dan P & The Bricks, and the Mad Caddies!

There is no electronic version of Do the Dog--it's print only. Here's how to subscribe:

For a four issue subscription to the zine send a cheque for £5.00 (made payable to Do The Dog Music) along with your name & postal address to: Do The Dog Music, 65 Blackdown Way, Thatcham, Berkshire, RG19 3FY.

You can also pay online by Paypal. Just send £5.00 via Paypal to dothedogmusic@yahoo.co.uk and include your name, postal address and "Zine Subscription" in the notes section.

It's also nice to see that Kevin and I share the same taste in ska music--it seems that he particularly likes the new releases from The Beatdown, The Bullets, and the King Django Quintet, which The Duff Guide to Ska gave rave reviews...

New Do the Dog Skazine !

The latest issue of the Do The Dog Skazine arrived in the mail yesterday (with the great Rasta4Eyes on the cover--read a review of their split CD with Captain Black No Stars here). As always, Kevin Flowerdew's long-running, subscription-only, printed (!) zine is jammed with essential information on the UK and international ska scenes (including bands on his excellent Do the Dog Music label) that you will not find anywhere else. Kevin has been printing this zine for something like two decades now--god, am I that old to know this?--and it is a must read for any self-respecting ska fan (subscribe now!).

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In a related note, The Duff Guide to Ska will soon be reviewing new Do the Dog Music releases from Resolution 242, Rebelation, and a live Bakesys album mercifully rescued from the vaults. In short, they are all very good! Stay tuned...