There’s a great new article in Jamaica’s The Gleaner about the Skatalites, the original ska band.
They are certainly our biggest influence. We do a lot of their tunes, many of us have a similar background in jazz and, just as they did, like to take tunes from other kinds of music and give them a ska beat.
Your can read it here – and it also has this great photo.
the Skatalites
Thanks to Rich for including Tainted Love from our cd in his online Scooter Forum Radio show last night.
You can still listen to it here. Ir you can download a podcast from iTunes.
There are a lot of other fab tunes too for your enjoyment.
When Frank is not playing guitar with the Skamonics he runs his own amplifier business, both repairing and manufacturing his own line of amps.
They are terrific.
And it’s not just us who say so. His Sir Charles 15 amp has had a fantastic review in Guitar and Bass Magazine – and earned a very coveted highly recommended in their 2011 review of the year.
Here’s our version of 99 Red Balloons in one of our series of dodgy live recordings.
There’s the usual warning. There’s a single recorder at the side of the stage – and it’s consequently rather unbalanced, a strange mix of direct and sound via the PA, and comes complete with audience noise.
We enjoyed ourselves at our gig at Brixton’s Ritzy last night. And we did debut a Jessie J song, doing Price Tag somewhere in a cross between ska and reggae, with our horn section sight reading the arrangement.
This is what we played:
| Chinatown |
| Guns Of Navarone |
| Latin Goes Ska |
| Mood For Love |
| You’re Wondering Now |
| Eastern Standard Time |
| Alley Cat Ska |
| Man In The Street |
| Can’t Get You Out of My Head |
| Enola Gay |
| Price Tag |
| Second Set |
| James Bond |
| Dr Who |
| Skaravan |
| Tiptoe |
| 99 Red Balloons |
| Tainted Love |
| Rudy A Message To You |
| My Boy Lollipop |
| Monkey Man |
| Last Song |
| Night Boat To Cairo |
| Encore |
| Gangsters |
We didn’t take any pictures as it was all a bit of a rush, but we did record some of the second set (before our batteries ran out), so there may be another entry in our dodgy live recording series.
That however won’t be the fault of the Ritzy’s sound system as we had some of the best live sound we’ve ever had, thanks to Roger their sound engineer. (hope we’ve remembered the name right!)
In this extraordinary clip Bob Hope shows us how not to dance the ska with a band that doesn’t quite get the rhythm. (They think it’s latin.)
Here’s a fab 60s documentary about how to dance the ska. We will be testing you at our next gig.
Don’t forget we are playing on Sunday, February 12th, Upstairs at the Ritzy, in Brixton.
Here’s a link to the Ritzy website.
And, of course, there’s a Facebook event here.
The headline says it all.
We have a new gig upstairs at the Ritzy on Sunday February 12th.
Here’s a link to the Facebook event, so you can invite your friends.
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