The First Guest Article: Slifer!
I met Michael Slifer when we were both SUNY freshmen. I went to Farmingdale and he went to Albany. He is now an awesome tv weatherman in West Virginia, following up his love of the Front Bottoms (who I called country when he showed me them years ago) and a great friend that I sadly scarcely see. I remember doin fake tre bombs (false Steeze 360 flips in size 13 Lakais landed with only one of those thirteens on the board) and pretending to shit on him because he had “typical vans” on. Jokes on me though because all I wear are one of my bakers dozen amount of em. Rockin all black ones rn for my boys Devin, Kamil, and Miles. That’s just the type of stuff we can laugh about today and god I miss this kid. Let’s hang out! When I told him that I made this “website” he was excited.
We have had our musical bouts, I’m sure. If it’s not catch 22, mighty mighty bosstones, streetlight manifesto, and kill Lincoln, I don’t listen to ska. SHOUTOUT TO THA CREW STACKED LIKE PANCAKES! I know I was big into the tongue-in-cheek jabs about it not being cool to play ska music (get it), but he’s the man! He’s a good Connecticut man and enjoy his passage:
My First Album Introduced Me To Ska
Let me take you back to the summer of 2000…Britney Spears was blaring from cars being driven by 16-year-olds who had just gotten their licenses. You couldn’t flip through the radio without running into ‘N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. MTV was done with “Sell Out” by Reel Big Fish and had moved on to “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem.
There I was, sitting in my dad’s early 90’s Honda Accord, listening to a radio station on the drive to grandma’s house. I finally heard the song that would become my favorite… “All Star” by Smash Mouth. I was HOOKED. Lucky for me, this song was still getting incredible amounts of airplay. No matter where we were going, I had my parents switch through stations until we could find that song.
My birthday is at the end of August, so I decided to play this out like any normal kid would...I just HAD to have the CD and played the classic birthday card. My parents supported my new-found interest and tried to nurture it as soon as possible, since we still had two long months before MY big day.
Quick backstory: my mom loved (and still loves) tag sales. Okay, back to the original story now.
One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting out on our porch. I liked to hang out on the porch; it was MY spot. I could do as I pleased with little-to-no interruption. My mom had just returned from a tag sale adventure and had stumbled upon some pretty cool stuff. Thing one was a tape player/CD player/radio/phonograph combination. Thing two was a tape entitled “Fush Yu Mang” by Smash Mouth.
I was PUMPED. This was a tape from SMASH MOUTH! This is the band that I have fallen in love with because of one song! After a few minutes of excitement, it was time to beg my dad to get the speakers set up so I could have my first jam session. He obliged, especially because he knew it would keep me occupied for a while.
I put the tape in and let it go. Track 1: “Flo.” I was a little upset. This wasn’t the Smash Mouth I knew. Where was “All Star” and why does the singer sound a little different?
Track 2: “Beer Goggles.” I had no idea what the premise of the song was, but I sure did like the “ooh”s at the beginning. It reminded me of that 50s music my grandpa liked so much.
Track 3: “Walkin’ on the Sun”. Hey, I’d heard this one before. Nice, some familiarity. It came on the radio sometimes in place of All Star. Still a good song, but not my favorite.
I’m not sure exactly how the rest all played out, but my entire life changed when Track 10 came on…
I was floored. Why are there horns in this song? I knew of jazz, but this didn’t sound like jazz. It was fast and fun. I loved it. Remember “All Star” being my favorite song? Well, guess what just became a distant memory.
The guitar was fun, it has decent lyrics, and it had HORNS. A full blown horn section in the song! I was enthralled. I wanted more.
I remember asking my mom for years after how I could find more music like this. I wasn’t exactly the most social kid in school and this was way before the days of a quick Spotify search for similar songs.
Fast forward about 7 years. My Fush Yu Mang tape (and CD, for that matter), had been confiscated due to cursing. I was pretty good at not repeating the words, but my younger brother was a fan of words that started with “F”. I was bummed, but I had just recently acquired a new toy: the iPod shuffle. It was 512 mb of pure bliss. My music can come with me now! Also, iTunes was now a thing, so I could buy any songs I wanted (and didn’t run the risk of killing a computer because of LimeWire).
The first thing I did was search up “All Star”. Sure, it wasn’t my favorite, but I still liked it. It downloads with a genre tag of “ska” into my iTunes library. I knew rock, hip hop, punk, oldies, and tons of other genres. What is this ska nonsense? So, I did what most middle schoolers do...ask mom.
She pointed out that it was a genre of music that had some popularity in the late 90s. We had recently heard Santeria by Sublime on the radio, and she told me that song could be considered ska. I later learned that this might be a bit of a stretch, but whatever...close enough.
Fast forward to my junior year of high school. This was the summer that I first had my license. I was now the cool kid, driving around in our 2001 Subaru Outback with the windows down and the system up. I listened to our alternative rock station because “main-stream music is just crap”. (Nowadays, the songs on the radio all, all drive me crazy).
The radio DJ announces that the next song is for ska fans. Oh, hey, a word I encountered years ago in life is being used by a person on the radio! The intro starts with some guitar, and then come the horns. The HORNS.
I was listening to “The Impression That I Get” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones for the first time ever. Two things from my childhood...horns and fun guitar plus the word ska slammed together in my head. I was so taken aback that I pulled into a random driveway and just listened.
The first thing I did when I got home was look up that song. This was it; my new favorite song! I was scrolling through related videos on YouTube and came across a song called “She Has A Girlfriend Now” by Reel Big Fish. Remember how I said I just had a new favorite song? Well, this one took over.
After listening on repeat about 20 times, I decided to scroll through the related videos again. One of the last videos on the list was “Disconnect the Dots” by Smash Mouth. Ironic, since I had just connected the dots. It all made sense! The type of music that I wanted to hear was ska music and it was popular about two years before I started to care about music on the radio.
After some extensive research, I had finally found what I was looking for after 13 whole years. I loved ska. That’s all I wanted to listen to all the time. It was perfect, since my path in high school started with popularity and ended with me being the weird kid. Why not fulfill the stereotype senior year and listen to these bands that no one had heard of? Who was this kid who wore skinny jeans and skate shoes but never had stepped on a skateboard? What are these weird band shirts? Definitely not hanging out with him on the weekends…
I mean, most kids thought it was lame, but yelling out lyrics at a Big D and the Kids Table concert still sounds like a great time to me.
So yea, there you have it. A ska-obsessed kid in a time when Drake was all the rage. I knew what I liked when I was five, and it didn’t change when I was 18. Even now, at the ripe old age of 23, I still love it and listen often. I think I’ll give “Fush Yu Mang” a spin today, just for old time’s sake.
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