New old music

I had to run some errands this afternoon. While I was out in the car, the usual station I listen to (Sirius Pops) started playing something I didn't like as well (Franck, maybe?) so I started mashing buttons to see what other pre-sets I had put in when I first bought the car but hadn't revisited.

I stopped on the channel called "First Wave.*" A channel devoted to New Wave music! So I drove around and listened to it for a while...INXS, the Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Adam Ant (dang, it's been years since I even THOUGHT about Adam Ant).

You've heard of the song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Well, this was "Sounds Like High School" for me. Now, granted - I wasn't really into New Wave when I was in high school; I was much more of a classical nerd or else I was listening to doo-wop. (One of the ways in which I was perhaps a bit tiresome in high school was my fondness for and promotion of out-of-fashion music styles). But New Wave was kind of there, and I heard it as part of the background sounds of my teen years...so a lot of those songs take me back.

(*We will not quibble with etymology and the fact that some of the music played on this channel was in the second or third wave of its popularity in the 80s)

But then they played a band I don't think I've ever heard, in the ska genre - which I know was popular, but I don't think it attained the same popularity, at least where I lived, that the synth-pop of the 80s did. (The Specials: "A Message to You, Rudy" - itself a cover of another artist's version, I guess).

I kind of liked it. There's a slight ridiculousness to ska, a feeling that it doesn't take itself totally seriously (For one thing, the outfits: the weird little porkpie hats, the exaggeratedly narrow ties and pointy-toed shoes. I don't know why, but I tend to respect a pop artist more if he puts some effort into dressing distinctively).

(Actually, a lot of the New Wave stuff, listened to with 40-something-year-old ears, does come off as slightly ridiculous...something that seemed to think itself more deep and more meaningful** than it actually was. I mentioned this several years back with Thomas Dolby...)

(**Of course, it's also entirely possible that they were all laughing up their sleeves at us teenagers. I wonder, was New Wave the proto-emo movement?)

But here it is: A Message to You, Rudy. Stop being a fool, Rudy. Think about your future, man. Stop causing problems. Seriously.

(Actually, Rudy = rudeboy, which is (I guess) Jamaican slang for a juvenile delinquent. So it's not a guy specifically named Rudy.)



I never really thought about what kind of music I'd play loudly in my car with the windows down if I were the kind of person to decide that the rest of the world needed to hear what kind of music I was listening to - I always figured it would be something classical, or perhaps British folksongs a la  the Vaughn Williams interpretations. But now I think, maybe ska would be the way to go.

(And yes, I'm aware of the fact that apparently one of the earlier iterations of ska was popular with skinheads. Very heavy sigh there; some people have to ruin it for the rest of us. What I looked up on The Specials though did point out that they were specifically anti-racist in some of their comments...probably because of the whole skinhead thing.)