ska

Record #970: Mustard Plug – Evildoers Beware! (1997)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For the better part of the last decade, I have been the frontman for a ska punk band called Dad Jokes. But that whole time, I’ve been harboring a dirty secret.

I actually never really got that into ska.

My “ska phase” as a teen consisted of a couple Five Iron Frenzy CDs, the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, and the necessary singles from Mighty Mighty Bosstones, No Doubt, and the O.C. Supertones, and basically nothing outside of that. I’ve been trying to fix that since playing in a ska band, but that section of my collection is exceptionally slow-growing.

That said, when the opportunity comes to close that gap a little, I jump at it. Like this copy of Mustard Plug’s seminal Evildoers Beware! which I found at a vendor tent at Furnace Fest ’21 (I told you my backlog was ridiculous) and bought it without a thought.

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Record #798: Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you would have asked me ten years ago which band’s new album I’d be most excited for in 2021, it would have taken me hundreds of guesses to finally land on Five Iron Frenzy. After all, I first discovered them in 7th grade, and I’d hope to have grown out of goofy ska songs and Pants Operas in the space of twenty-one years.

However, I realize now that all of their wry, irreverent humor was a sort of Trojan horse, through which they smuggled cutting criticisms of the Church’s hypocrisy toward racism, police brutality, and greed into youth group kids’ Discmans.

While these messages have always been hiding amid the upstrokes, horn lines, and bad puns, Until This Shakes Apart pulls off all pretense, abandoning their wooden horse in favor of a full-on frontal assault.

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Record #634: The Dingees – The Crucial Conspiracy (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer between eighth grade and freshman year of high school, I gained possession of a Tooth & Nail compilation entitled Songs From the Penalty Box, Vol 4. That CD was my introduction to a number of bands that would change my life, such as Squad Five-O, Blenderhead, Craig’s Brother, Calibretto 13, and The Juliana Theory.

But nestled at the very end of the compilation was a track called “Spraypaint (We Won’t Carry Over),” a riotous blend of garage rock, punk, and ska that entranced me. And for the last several years, I have been trying unsuccessfully to track down a vinyl copy, without success.

Then last week, a record store on the East Coast discovered a box of copies that they just forgot to open. And so, I have finally added this masterpiece to my collection.

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Record #459: Five Iron Frenzy – Quantity is Job 1 (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

quantity is job 1

The year is 2000. I’m a nerdy kid who’s been transitioning from listening to nothing but Weird Al to getting into harder stuff like punk and hardcore.

As much as I loved heavier stuff like Zao and Project 86 (Drawing Black Lines is still an incredible album, fight me), there wasn’t really an output for my wacky sense of humor.

Then, on a youth trip to Washington DC, I discovered ska.

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