Escapin' by Skankin'
By Jennifer Magid
Campus Press Staff Writer
One requirement if you want to safely pass an evening with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones: wear a supportive bra. Guaranteed - you'll be spending the whole night bouncing up and down.
Guys and girls alike spent the evening testing out the spring factor in their sneakers at Denver's Mammoth Events Center Saturday night as they "skanked" (a term used for dancing to ska music) the night away to the sounds of an all-Boston area ska-band lineup, with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones as the feature act.
Bim Skala Bim, The Amazing Royal Crowns and Drop Kick Murphys warmed up a crowd that overflowed from the wide open dancing space in front of the stage onto the street in front of the theater.
The look of the audience proved that even in a place like Denver, eclectic style can still run rampant. Hardcore ska followers dressed in skinny ties, suspenders and white dress shirts danced next to high school girls who looked as if they might have known of the band only from its appearance in the movie "Clueless."
When the Mighty Mighty Bosstones finally did appear, they revved up the crowd's already overwhelming energy with tunes mainly from their latest CD, Let's Face It.
The album features dancy ska sounds that could be said to go back to the band's less "hard core" phase.
Joe Gittleman, bass player for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, said Let's Face It sounds similar to their second album, "More Noise and Other Disturbances."
"Both of them are uplifting in the same way, Gittleman said."I would call our third and fourth albums (Don't Know How to Party and Question the Answers) pretty experimental."
Gittleman said that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones never really plan the sound of each album. In fact, he says they never even planned to be a "ska-core" band at all.
"When we started the band there was never a discussion about what kind of band we were going to be," he said. "I imagine with a lot of bands, it starts with a discussion. It wasn't until years after the band had been together until someone finally even cared enough to write about it in local rag papers in Boston that we were even really aware of what it was we were trying to do."
Those who follow ska (as well as those who know it only through the radiowaves) might be aware that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones have been called "sellouts" because of their rising commercial success.
Gittleman comments that "there's always somebody who's cooler than you or has been down longer than you have and a lot of the people who want to call us sellouts now had never even heard of the band until four years ago - I challenge anyone to find a band who genuinely gives a fuck as much as we do."
He says that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones' social conscience was partly influenced by the ska band The Specials.
"We're a culturally and ethnically diverse band, and we wear that on our sleeve," Gittleman said. "Our messages may be simplistic, but there's only room for one Bosstones," he said.
But one thing that the band members used to wear on their sleeve was plaid.
"In the very beginning, we were high school kids and we were not nearly as good as our musical peers in the Boston scene," Gittleman said, "It was to make it more of a novelty, more of a distraction from the music."
But then it started to mean more.
"People started to come to our shows dressed that way," he said. "Then plaid to us meant that we consider our music to be fairly plaid - all kinds of stuff mixed together, but you can only do the same thing for so long," Gittleman said.
So where is the inspiration for those contagious melodies coming from?
"I think that Dicky is a pretty thoughtful person," Gittleman said of vocalist Dicky Barrett. "He sees something that he considers wrong and touches on it. I guess you'd call it social politics."
During last Saturday night's show, Barrett interrupted the swaying skankers and asked the audience to stop by the anti- racism action table and say hi. The table was hard to miss - it was set up right next to the $25 dollar T-shirts.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones also make it very clear that they are not interested in pulling star trips. Backstage at a meet-and-greet event for media members, Barrett was bothered that the event took place during the other bands' acts, and promptly left in the middle of the appearance to support the other bands.
Gittleman has little sympathy for bands that make it sound like their job is a struggle.
"I've about this much patience for listening to bands complain about how allegedly hard it is to tour," he said.
"You could add up all the things which you have to do in a given day, which involves ... an interview, a 15-minute sound check and playing for an hour, and none of it will ever equal the hassles of working, like a real job. There are people who shovel shit, literally and get paid less money than we do. We are very realistic about how fortunate we are to be doing this. You'd have to be fucking psychotic to not want to be in a band, travel around, play your music, meet people, play exciting shows, you know, free beer - touring's hard for people who shouldn't even be doing it anymore ... (those people) need to stop, get a real job and remind themselves about how easy it is to be in a band and tour."
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are looking forward to continuing their tour with a gig in Australia. Other upcoming appearances will include playing "Saturday Night Live," as well as working on their next video for the song "Royal Oil."
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