Still more into the Two-Tone stuff - did you ever see the video for ‘What I like most about you is your girlfriend’? Unbelievable! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi_uV6ojDSs
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Saw the title, thought I should comment, “Operation Ivy” and low and behold what I was confronted with after I clicked.
Love you all.
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it was a shame to watch that scene get so reviled in the 1990s. it seemed to rival disco for how much the general public claimed to hate it (though more of a thing to make fun of than be angry about). but, man, was that a time… you could go out and see some high school kids’ new band open up a show for The Skatalites, the old Jamaicans who kicked the whole thing off, in the first place. I mean, in '98 or so, i remember seeing Justin Hinds, The Skatalites and Laurel Aitken, within a few months… along side so many great, newer bands like the Pietasters, The Toasters, The Slackers, The Allstonians, The Pilfers, The Scofflaws, Hepcat, The Stubborn Allstars… we didn’t know how good we had it.
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it makes sense. i mean, virtually any band on the punk/“new wave” side of things from the UK grew up listening to reggae… and that sensibility crept into what people here in the US were doing. the Jamiacan influence is so obvious listening to Bauhaus, for instance. i knew a number of folks who jokingly referred to themselves as “skoths.” some friends and i got so into it we formed our own ska band… and we still listened to Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim in the car on the way to the gigs 
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I had some good nights out at some hardcore techno/gabber clubs in Edinburgh, where there were goths, punks, metalheads and charvas defying stereotypes and having a good time with each other on the dancefloor.
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Hey, The Specials came back. What more do you want?!
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OMG - Feeesh Booooone!!!
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Russian and Ska Punk go well together
This. This is very true. Berlin had lots of Russian ska punk bands coming through in the late 90s when I was there a lot. Excellent time.
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They grew up listening to ska and reggae, because the first wave of ska predates reggae. Early Bob Marley is all ska, really. And they both grew out of the Jamaican Sound System scene that also influenced the early hip hop scene in the Bronx (DJ Kool Herc was Jamaican). They hung out in West Caribbean clubs, too, that were popular in working class neighborhoods! The skinhead movement, which was the first youth culture to really embrace ska/reggae were deeply influenced by West Caribbean culture, because they hung out with their west Caribbean neighbors…
I’d never thought about Bauhaus, but you’re absolutely spot on there.
So was it a skoth band, that played gothy ska music… cause that needs to be a distinct genre now!
That’s another stop on my time travel list… coming to hang out with you in Edinburgh to go clubbing!
Seems to me that’s not surprising, the overlap? I think that when a scene is still young and the attached social identity isn’t well formed, it pulls in all kinds of people prior to there being some sort of… not really purging, but hardening on subcultural lines? Another historian who writes on punk noted that to be the case with the rise of hardcore punk as the predominantly accepted form of punk as a social space, which helps explain the violence at some punk shows, it’s an attempt to keep “poseurs” out and to harden the scene into a particular form with a specific genre. I have no idea if something similar happened with techno at all. I suspect not, but I’ve not really read enough history on that genre to know. I should correct that!
Was that your experience, or did it remain pretty open and accepting of those kinds of social difference?
Sorry… just turned on the historian hat, didn’t I?
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Welcome aboard, Comrade, and thank you for your service. The Ska must flow.
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well, we did cover “In Between Days” by The Cure… and used to jokingly play a version of “Temple of Love” by Sisters of Mercy, at practice… but otherwise, not really. in retrospect, it really was a missed opportunity!
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there was a “acid ska” house/ska crossover thing from the late 80s… which really sounds like something out of a Gibson novel…
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