Ska

Okay so here are my comments on ska. I am sorry if I seem nitpicky, or overly critical. I guess I am just tired of being disappointed by presentations that I know a bit about. I am no ska expert, but if I didn't have a sense of what ska was going into the presentation, I think I wouldn't understand it better after. It cold be because I am a history major, but I find my bearings in a little background. Where did ska come from? From listening to the presentation it is as though ska has always been in the air and it took a group in Florida to harness the energy and bring it to the masses. I don't want to tear this apart. I like the focus on the individual bands, I just would have thought that the Specials, English Beat, the Toasters, Operation Ivy and Madness might have been mentioned. I also think that Jamaica should have played more of a role and been mentioned earlier, but at least it got mentioned. England was completely left out of the presentation. England where the Jamaican-English population of Notting hill meshed with the punks of Kings Road. Less than Jake may have combined ska and punk in '92 (Op Ivy did it in the US in the '80s) but the Clash did it 15 years earlier(the song "white riot" is the Clash speaking out against the Notting Hill Jamaican Market Riot in the 70s). Another thing that irked me was the treatment of fashion. The Bosstones didn't create the fashion. And from talking to Ska friends, two tone isn't just a fashion, it’s a lifestyle that has more to do than just your suit. Anyway I just saw the fashion segment as an opportunity again to talk about the roots of ska and possibly mention the teddys in England in the '70s. Although the treatment of each ska group was competent, I just thought that the project was constructed on shaky foundations.