POLL: Which left a bigger shit-stain on the '90s? Swing or Ska

a lot of the 90s ska bands got sucked into the 311 vortex, ditch all ska elements for that revved up, glossy mall rock.

Ska is one of the worst genre ever imo

― Zeno

Mercifully I kept my distance from both during the '90s, but I wonder, which revival was more successful in terms of helping people get into original ska or swing? I agree with the comments above that '90s "swing" was more like jump blues, so I don't know if it turned a lot of people on to (say) Ellington.

had a high school friend that was really really into 1st-2nd wave ska in the early 90's, i think it was all he listened to at one point, and he sniffed at the later stuff. he mustve hipped me to hepcat, pretty sure he 'approved'. so I already had a little persective and took the 90's stuff in song by song (most of it was bad yes). i wasn't opposed in principle to the swing stuff (meant less 'grunge' for one thing) but i didn't end up liking much beyond squirrel nut zippers, they laid it on thick but there's some good songs and production there

I think the real answer to this question is post-grunge though. I mean, that one still dominates alt-rock radio through its influence.

^^^This. I saw and enjoyed a good number of the bands in the 90s being bitched about above (learning swing dance certainly helped.) If you offered me three tickets today -- Squirrel Nut Zippers, Slackers, Staind -- I know which one I'd refuse, or which one would make me hit my car radio button.

One of the worst things about the Swing revival was that it crushed the much more fun Lounge revival off the dancefloor. The lounge scene had a large range of great music, both old (Sinatra/Herb Alpert/Sergio Mendez etc) and new (Fantastic Plastic Machine/Pizzicato 5/Bertrand Burgalat/Tipsy/Arling & Cameron etc), and lots of other stuff too - even Stereolab could get played. I can remember having a few drink-soaked rave-ups in the name of lounge - great nights of dancing, comedy, spoken word, and a fair amount of weird experimental stuff. When the swing nazis showed up, all that eclecticism disappeared almost overnight, the music got really boring and conservative and it was all over. That was my experience with it anyway. It may have been different in other cities.

i think a major thing that distinguished the squirrel nut zippers -- who were never exactly "swing" anyway -- was katharine whalen. there weren't a lot of women in that whole neo-swing thing. i have one of her solo albums, more traditional lounge-jazz stuff, she's not bad.

yeah that's fair, they rode the wave somewhat but would have been doing what they were doing anyway

SNZ really predated the revival and were only associated with it out of writer laziness.

That's really true of Cherry Poppin' Daddies, too -- although most of their other influences (Oingo Boingo-ish smartass new wave, white boy funk) aren't generally critically accepted either.

well alot of these bands predated the revivals but to leave out bands like them and say, bosstones for ska doesn't leave much of a revival to talk about. i guess you gotta question which bands individually contributed to the stain ('put their two shits in') and go from there

every generation has its "we should dress up and wear suits" movement, doesn't it? seemed like the clothes mattered a lot.

So far none of the bands mentioned have a ska pun in their name which to my mind disqualifies them from being a proper 3rd? wave ska band. (were madness and specials 2nd wave or 1st wave?)

Mephiskapheles was the band name that finally sent me over the fucking edge.

Is some of the hate for swing coming from it being popular with the wrong kind of white people?

What kind?

Mephiskapheles was one of the best groups though! xxp

That's like saying radon is one of the best carcinogens.

I don't remember the swing revival making much impact over here besides 'Zoot Suit Riot' and some people in my sixth form who'd seen Swingers going on about how great Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were. Ska-punk was a big thing with the punk kids though - I mean I liked the Voodoo Glow Skulls album I taped off someone but I knew people who were really into, say, Skankin' Pickle and Mustard Plug... I liked Rancid at the time too but as people have said, they only had a handful of ska songs anyway (I guess they got lumped in 'cos one of them was 'Timebomb' which was their big rock club hit). So yeah, ska was worse.

Omar - that MMBT show was AT Ithaca College in some sort of gymnasium. I did see a bunch of stuff at The Haunt.

How '90s ska punk began (I saw it happen)

4 friends: "Hey, we're gonna start a rock band."
2 other friends: "We want to be in your band too, but all we have and know how to play are this trumpet and trombone from school."
4 friends: "Fine, we'll just call ourselves ska."

― Johnny Fever, Sunday, February 21, 2010 5:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Ha! I witnessed this as well. Both of these things sort of neatly intersected during my freshman year of college & I would say a good 75% or so of my ex-band geek friends ended up in ska and/or swing bands (mostly ska tbh). So ska takes this easily for innumerable shitty fucking ska punk bands I had to sit through & in fact even pay money to see in the interest of having a social life. The worst was when this shit college ska punk also included slap *funk* bass. Ugh.

I had some greaser-punk friends in Detroit who hated the swing revivalists with violent rage for infringing on their pompadour/Cadillac/combat boots thing. Such a meta-clusterfuck of "authenticity" that was lol.

The only two bands from either thing I would return to these days are Rancid & The Squirrel Nut Zippers. I like No Doubt OK too, but not from their ska days. Fuck all the rest of it imo.

I agree about post-grunge, but I really don't hate Nirvana (just want to put that somewhere).

Did they do this kind of thing at ska shows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTg5V2oA_hY

OK thing #518 that I probably should not admit on the internet:

I attended a few sessions of a swing-dancing club my freshman year in an attempt to do what the guys above are doing

One of the worst things about the Swing revival was that it crushed the much more fun Lounge revival off the dancefloor.

That last Combustible Edison album (The Impossible World) is pretty terrific - too bad only 12 people bought it.

Also as mentioned up-thread post-grunge is a much greater blob of suck in the 90s than either swing or ska. Being in a ska band is the greatest thing ever when you're 18 and at least with swing you had pretty good chance of going to a party and drinking something better than cheap convenience store beer.

Best commentary on 90s swing comes from the "Life In The Past Lane" episode of Daria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn0EOgCPqRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aZOTX1UIWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_VG7A1LGSo

post-grunge is a much greater blob of suck in the 90s than either swing or ska

I figured that was just a given. Anyway, if I'd included post-grunge in this poll, it would've won overwhelmingly.

To emend what I wrote upthread, there was a notable exception to the litany of crap ska bands in mid-Michigan at the time: Mustard Plug, who had been around since the late-80s or so, I believe, were super-tight did a kind of Specials via Op Ivy thing.

I'd also give a pass to Royal Crown Revue if only because the Youth Brigade guys wanted to play some music that their parents would like too.

The swing stuff barely scratched the surface, so I am going to say that the ska stuff tried too hard and ended up blowing more in the long run.

What about Bop (Harvey) ?

http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/obamas_embarrassing_ska

Swing, so completely.

At least the 90s ska bands had a sort of lineage…one that went from Skatalites, Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, and Desmond Dekker to the UK mods, who were simultaneously being influenced by Punk and created 2-Tone—where bands like The Specials and the Beat gained popularity, and in turn found fans in the US. Bands like The Toasters have been doing their thing since the early 80s, and might have even been considered 2-tone themselves, if not for other US acts like Fishbone, who folded in their metal and funk influences, and by around '87-'88, there were bands like OPIV, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and the Bosstones who were liking where the music was going and made their hardcore punk w/ ska rhythms and other signifiers. From there, it kind of went all over the place…from a bunch of OC "mallpunks w/ horns" like Reel Big Fish and Jeffrey's Fanclub, to the neo-trad stuff of Hepcat, SeeSpot, Chris Murray, and The Slackers.

As for Oingo Boingo, there is a connection: while they had some elements of the ska rhythm in a few of their songs, their bassist John Avila produced many late-90s ska LPs.

My own preferences tended towards the Neo-trad groups, if only for the emphasis on rhythm and the great vocal harmonies.

going to go out on a big old contrarian/challops limb here and say that as shitty as a lot of this stuff was, i'll take it over the fucking maudlin interchangeable other rock options available at the time. i had a lot of drunk fun at crappy ska shows at the time, and danced with a lot of good looking ladies at swing crap as well. better than getting stuck at a better than ezra show, because as stupid as the ska revival was and as shitty as most of the neo-swing was, at least it was fun.

also, the drummer from royal crown review was a badass gene crupa channeling motherfucker, and anything that gets peeps to listen to louis prima and keely smith is ok by me.

Was the 90s swing revival purely an American thing? Because I can't remember anything like that happening in here, in fact I only learned there had been such a revival when I was reading ILX in the 00s. (Whereas 3rd generation ska had much bigger impact here, and is still going on.) Back in the day I thought that band in the school dance scene in Clueless was just a curiosity, I didn't realize it was part of some swing revival.

(American) ska has a pretty respectful history, though. Certainly not in the mallpunk-with-horns movement, but the whole scooter/skinny tie sort of scene is kind of enjoyable. Before it went mainstream ('80s - 1994), it was a really impressive underground scene that encapsulated a LOT of musical diversity and a ridiculously strong indie DIY culture. There were strong regional scenes all over the country with their own distinct sound and aesthetic. Provided, only about half of it was *good*, but it's all nonetheless fascinating. In the aftermath of Green Day, the media focused only on the shitty pop-punk hybrids like Reel Big Fish, which forever ruined the scene as thousands of bland ska-punk clones flooded the market and continue to spawn despite our best efforts. At least there was *some* tolerability...Less Than Jake were decent lyricists, if nothing else.

Neo-swing, on the other hand, was rooted entirely in nostalgic kitsch. There was no diversity, it was all novelty. Unlike ska, which took an older form of music and updated it with a modern sensibility, neo-swing was just a pointless rehash that added a gimmicky retro angle. Just about every band sounded the same and they were all devoid of lyrical substance, instead preferring to do straight covers of big band songs. Brian Setzer is the worst: he's just a phony retro-whore who's successful simply because he's pandering to the public's inexplicable love of nostalgia. And that's all the swing revival was.

Now, I hate neo-swing, but I'll rep for the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Prior to "Zoot Suit Riot", they were a really decent punk-funk-jazz-psychedelic band that were sort of like Oingo Boingo and the Butthole Surfers meets Funkadelic and Duke Ellington. It's a love-it-or-hate-it deal, but I like it. They converted a ride-on lawnmower into a giant drivable dildo that shot fake cum out of the tip, so that's okay with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb6fOIMSwBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNORXC60_4
They tried latching onto the ska scene in the mid-90s, but after that failed, they jumped onto swing as it was becoming popular, put on suits, released a swing album and that's when they took off. Yeah, they sold out HARD: all the swing stuff they did at that time is painfully trite. If there's anything redeemable about it, it's that they were the only swing band that swore, and they were the only ones who didn't do the whole "retro" schtick. They wrote songs about child abuse, social alienation, alcoholism and suicide, and they did very few covers, one of which was an Operation Ivy song. I think they also did a Suicidal Tendencies cover, as well. As a swing band, that's a move that sorta takes balls, even if the outcome is most likely awful.

I voted "swing", because it was awful from the get-go in concept alone. Ska's been getting progressively worse, but there are at least a few bands that make it bearable, like The Slackers.

guys get ready cuz ska is back
http://www.sublimewithrome.com/

uh... great I guess? I'm totally fine with Sublime ruining their legacy.

Can't find that Gap ad w/ Louis Prima's song on youtube :-(

The Götterdämmerung of 90s swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzFkZb4OlDM

this thread is tldr for me right now but i voted swing. either way, i'm so fucking glad i didn't live in southern california in the nineties.

It...was a time.

I guess I can stomach bad swing because they are generally better players. I just have no use for ska on pretty much any level. At least not after about 1987. Maybe there's some good No Doubt that I'm missing.

As for the Daddies, they were around doing their own thing for at least 8 years before they had a fluke of a hit. Of course they ran with it.

Ska was fun, even though not by any means as good as the original British ska-punk movement in the late 70s/early 80s. Swing was also not the worst of 90s music, unless you mean New Jack Swing, which was indeed horrible (as in, almost as horrible as the hip-hop that influenced it)

Has anyone heard this band 23 skadoo? Do they combine ska and swing -- skwang?

I can't stop laughing at that.

I'm not joking. I was googling to see if someone had actually taken this name and someone did.

I've stopped laughing.

http://www.cinemotions.net/data/films/0181/42/1/affiche_Swing_Kids_1992_1.jpg

Ha! I completely forgot about that movie.