Investing in a Genre

Profile Records in New York has become one of the biggest American record labels to make an investment in New York ska. Its rock division, Another Planet, recently signed the Stubborn All-Stars, a rotating New York supergroup with an old-time sound featuring members of the Slackers, the Toasters, the Insteps and Skinnerbox, along with the tenor saxophonist from the original Skatalites. The label has also signed the Insteps, and is courting one of the New York ska scene's brightest hopes, Mephiskapheles.

"Ska is probably the biggest underground network going right now,"said Fred Feldman, the general manager of Another Planet records. "Moon Records has a 15,000-name direct-marketing list, and the Toasters are selling at least 25,000 to 30,000 records now, most of it through nontraditional retail outlets. I think the bigger labels are still waiting to see what happens with this Rancid song and to see how Green Day does with the ska band it signed to its 510 label, the Dancehall Crashers. If any of it becomes huge, then you'll see a feeding frenzy."

Many bands, however, remain skeptical. For a long time, some musical pundits have written off ska as creatively defunct without ever having listened to the stylistic extremes of the music, which range from the swing- and be-bop-influenced instrumentals of the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble to the industrial electronic ska of World Service. As Mr. Baker said, "One of the strengths of ska is that the foundation is so simple but so effective that it can endure a lot of changes but still maintain a relationship to the original style."

Nonetheless, Mikal Reich of Mephiskapheles added: "Ska is almost the marketing kiss of death. We've been talking to record labels, and they're always telling us they don't know how to market ska; they don't know who to sell it to. I used to think people in the record industry were barracudas and would jump on anything. Here you've got Rancid with a ska single in MTV's 'Buzz Bin,' and I still have to spell ska to people over the phone."

Steve Shafer, who is in charge of promotion at Moon, speculates that one reason for ska's obscurity is that it is stereotyped as a revival. "What happened with ska was that the Two-Tone revival was labeled as a rehash of the Jamaican sound, and critics couldn't see it as a re-examination and reinvention of that kind of music," he said. "There was punk and anger and frustration in it. And now it's still growing and going off in different directions: ska punk, ska-core, rootsy stuff that sounds like it came out of the 60's. We have our 'Spawn of Skarmageddon' compilation coming out, and there are 43 bands on it from all over the U.S., and none of them sound the same."

Beyond the Clubs

Ska is not just a club event in Manhattan anymore. In February, Moon Records opened a store in the East Village selling records, T-shirts and books. It also serves as a general clearinghouse for information on concerts and on ska lore, usually courtesy of a counterman, Noah Wildman, who is working on a book on ska.