I don't know how we will remember 2016 in the future...was it a good year?...was it a bad year? I had a lot of really bad things happen in 2016 but I also had a lot of really good things happen.
I don't know
how we will remember it, but we definitely will remember 2016.
The underground music scene in general was amazing but the worldwide ska scene was better than I've seen it in all the years of doing this blog.
I'll start with the older bands who have made an impact on the year:
I really like the Norwegian band
The Monroes who released
Sunday People in 1983 and were obviously inspired by Madness. They are not really a ska band but they did a lot of ska-influenced music in their early days (early-eighties). In 2016 they released a CD of their live performance from London from 1984. The sound quality isn't great but the performance is.
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I have featured the U.K. band the
Skanxters previously and I lamented that I had their rare cassettes "
Spark in the Dark" and "
Knights on the Run" but I could not find a copy of their only CD release "
Call it a Crime". Thankfully for all of us, bandleader Erin Bardwell has released all three releases for purchase on Bandcamp.
You can buy all three rare recordings for the price of one marked-down modern pop CD
HERE.
(Incidentally, Erin Bardwell has a new release slated for 2017!)
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One of the earliest posts I have ever done on this blog was for the British/California band
The Hoovers. They released one album in the eighties called "
Skin and Blisters" but, seriously, one of my favorite ska records ever released is their EP from 1981 called "
Smut and Class".
In 2016 they released a new album called
Moonstomper that diverged so much from their original sound that I can't say I really care for it much but, then, they released a collection of five songs that they recorded in 1981 that were never previously released. It's one of my favorite releases of 2016:
The Hoovers - The Lost Tapes:
$5 for 5 songs. Buy it.
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Do you remember when you bought the CD "
Skankin' 'Round the World volume 3" and you recognized all of the featured bands except for the one called
M.S.Q.? Well I did and I did extensive research to find out who they were and what else they released but that went nowhere. I drew the conclusion that they were a live band that didn't record much in the studio - like the French band
Verska Vis.
I was happy to find that they are still performing and have actually recorded music in the studio in 2016. I have included their newest song "
The Blame Game" - released in 2016 in this download.
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I have posted some of the
Suicide Machines' earlier releases on this blog but in 2016 the band made those releases available for download so I will not be re-upping any of the links. You can buy all of their early stuff in this one download
HERE.
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The Chicago band
Rude Guest released 4 cassettes in the 80s with 4 songs on each release. These tapes are nearly impossible to find but, luckily for us, the band worked with Jump Up Records to release all 16 songs that they released on one cassette called
Rude Guest: Lost Chicago Ska 1982-1993.
I bought this tape as well as the
Crombies cassette that was released in 2016 from Jump Up Records but they were lost in the mail. I wanted to do a review on both of them but the postal service didn't want me to (here's the tracking number
9500111247136350071619 ). Jump Up records did their part but the USPS failed me. "Lost" Chicago ska indeed.
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As you know Madness put out a great album this year and I was going to include a song on this download but I removed it to make room for an up-and-coming band instead. It's Madness. You'll own it some day anyway. The Beat - The English Beat - the Rankin' Roger version of the band put out the album "Bounce" and, just like the Madness song, I didn't include it because you will have it some day anyway regardless of my input.
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If you ask me what the greatest album of the year 2016 I will have to say "
Peg and the Rejected - 4th Wave". I know Marco made the same comment a few weeks back and I disagreed with him but now I agree. This is not to say that any song on this album was my favorite song of the year but it was the album with the most consistently good songs throughout.
I did not include any of their music on this download because you will be buying this release anyway. It would just be redundant.
(Speaking of Marco...another old thing that came back in 2016 was
Marco on the Bass
that was dormant for a couple years is now being refreshed with new
posts. Marco's current band Rude Boy George released a fantastic EP this
year which includes one of my favorite songs of the year - a cover of
Howard Jones' "
Things Can Only Get Better")
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My favorite song of the year is The Beat From Palookaville's "It's You Voodoo Working". This one is on the download.
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Here are my top 50 songs from 2016:
Part 1
1 Skasouls - Disco Ska Bar
2 Transmitters - Jumpstart
3
Susan Cadogan - Take Me Back
4
Bazzookas - Torn
5
Cherry Reds - What Did You Say?
6
Barefoot Sojourns - Daydreamer
7
Zipheads - Earwig in My Brain
8
E.J. Moran - Dancin' to the Radio
9
Silencerz - Having a Laugh
10 1Eye - Mr. Baliff
11
D M Street - Lifeline
12 Begona Bang-Matu - My Mate
13 Dropsetters - Wanted
14
The Fuss - Trouble (To Trouble)
15
El Grande - Bygones
16
Defekters - Come Around
17
Screw Ups - Oh No
18 The Beat From Palookaville - It's You Voodoo Working
19
MSQ - The Blame Game
20
Rude Boy George - Things Can Only Get Better
21 Ska 'N' Ska - A Team
22
Yellow Umbrella - Two Lovers
23 Oldians - Same Old Song
24
Freecoasters - I Don't Even Know
25
AKC (Andy Keys Clark) - Wake Me Up When the Puppets are Gone
Part 2
1
Sea Bass Kid - Skaturday Night
2
Sentries - Funeral (of the Horseman)
3
Analog Bombs - Chinese Lucky Number
4 Culture Shock - Doesn't Work for Me
5 Soundabout - Dubbele Tong
The Soundabout's second EP
Nooit Genoeg is streaming
HERE and they have a
Facebook page.
6
Bartenders - Dead Man's Zone
7
The Big Ska Band - Big Mouth
8
Sean Arawjo - Games People Play
9
Urang Matang - Big Bobby's Back
10 Flowerdews - Fish Face
11
Big Fat Panda - Nobody There
12 Junior Bill - Respectable Man
13
Chancers - Without You
14 Mean Threes - Frying Pan
15 Defuser - Sitcom
16
Downtown Fiasco - What I'm Fighting For
17 Lynval Golding and Contra Coup - The Same
18
Jackie Mendez - Thought You Should Know
19 Heavy City - I'll be Around
20
Rude Guest - Spooked
21
Boss Riot - Hearts and Hands
22
Ricky Cool & the In Crowd - My Kind of Party
23
The Bionic Rats - New Day Rudie
24 Jam Iconz - Hurts so Much
25 Spawn - Stench of Misfortune
DOWNLOAD PART 1
DOWNLOAD PART 2
