SKARLATINES: YOUNG VIGOUROUS SKA

Young and vigorous yet plenty of jammin’ and skankin’ and with a well developed musical experience this new Spanish band was born. Please give your fair round of applauses for the Skarlatines.

Formed in the year of 1995 in the outskirts of the Spanish capital, Madrid, these new youngsters came together to elaborate a very energetic and powerful Old School Roots Ska. Developing sonorities directly from Jamaica’s utmost core Ska, the Skarlatines has gained a wide popularity for their freshness and composure. That helped the kids to bring together their first, and yet only, album called Instrumental 90%, which was released in 1998.

This album brought the attention of several well placed Ska personalities internationally, including the Godfather of Ska, Mister Laurel Aitken. Laurel has embraced the new born band in his final project, the album En Español. Skarlatines has recorded the album with Laurel and even served as his opening act in a tour around the world.

Shortly after the great loss of the Godfather in 2004 the band dismembered but only to regain their strength and energy. They are coming back for a real Skankin’ mesh. Planning to release their second album, Vuelo 22, the band promises a wide range of musical arrangements mixing songs from jazz, blues, latin, soul and may more.

We can only expect a great deal of entertainment from this special band.

Please visit the bads website: http://www.myspace.com/skarlatines

SOBER LIVING FOR THE REVOLUTION

Whereas the Punk culture is a free and libertine lifestyle it is very often associated with violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and rightfully so. The issue with anarchism social attitude is the tendency to elevate the behavior to extremes states of mind liberation that often deteriorate ones capacity to properly function.

Of course the problem can be tackled in many different manners, but in a very determined way one man has developed for himself a set of principles that are well structured for the matter, hence the wide popularity of such living style. Ian MacKaye, Minor Threat front man, created what is now called the Straight Edge movement.  It started with just s song where MacKaye described his personal view of the life he saw, but eventually it became more than just a mere song and grew to be one of the largest underground movements from Washington DC to the rest of the world.

In an attempt to bring to the ground the violence attitudes related to drug abuse, he has established to himself a free intoxication life where all drugs, such as alcohol marijuana or even tobacco, are banned in the sake of personal evolution. In a pursuit for intoxication free lifestyle, Straight Edge challenges people to take a wide look at the real threats in life and become aware that what is silently can be harmful.

Just recently a book has been published describing the social, cultural and musical interaction of the Straight Edge movement (or sXe). It is called Sober Living For The Revolution: Hardocre Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics. In a well arranged book, Gabriel Kuhn, an American anarchist activist, has presented the wide spread of such a lifestyle into all kinds of different people, from homosexuals to women and from colored people to religious ones, all engaged in a challenge for political conscious with sXe principles.

Even though it is not strictly related to Ska culture, the straight edge movement being such a liberated and yet conscious movement, it is worth mentioning.