The RadioActivist

It’s been almost six years since the Aquabats released an LP. SIX YEARS. Sure, they've been busy with their award-winning Nick Jr. television show, Yo Gabba Gabba!, producing The Aquabats Super Show! and touring the world several times over, but what kind of an excuse is that? Buncha slackers if you ask me. In a December 2010 interview with the OC Weekly, MC Bat Commander Christian Jacobs said Hi-Five Soup! would be “definitely a departure... I guess what we came up with is more Yo Gabba Gabba!-meets-the-Aquabats.” Expounding in AMP Magazine, he claimed, “I think this new record has more stuff like that on it, silly kid stuff, which is fun. It’s less trying to appeal to a little bit older crowd and just trying to appeal to the Halloween costume crowd.” Given that the Aquabats have never exactly been pandering to the inner grown-up in all of us, that should tell you how kid-friendly this album is. It’s got a gang chorus of what sounds like children and/or Brobee’s posse along with a...

In the second installment of the Ska Is Dead 7-inch club, Grand Rapids, Mich., veterans Mustard Plug combine with Montreal, Quebec’s the Beatdown for a split effort of Northern ska exposure. Mustard Plug has put out consistently good albums since 1997’s Evildoers Beware and only been on hiatus once since their formal formation in 1991. As a matter of personal preference, it’s always seemed like many of their major-scale songs are instant classics (“Yesterday”, “Go!”, “Beer”, “You”, “Box”, etc.), while their minor-scale offerings (“Never Be”, “Not Again”, “Mendoza”, etc.) are less infectious. Their offering here is kind of in between. “Aye Aye Aye” is, in some ways, a typical third-wave ska song, with fast, flickering upstrokes, intermittent horn blasts and walking bass. There’s no distortion overkill though, and the quality dual horn soloing helps stretch out the structurally standard song. If you generally like Mustard Plug, you’ll probably like this song. The Beatdown contributes a n...

Clues: They were a ska-punk band that found success without the help of mainstream radio, major labels or MTV airplay. Their varied songs tackled such controversial subjects as police brutality, homophobia, corporate hegemony and female empowerment. No, not Choking Victim, Against All Authority or Operation Ivy. Bonus clue: They played their songs for the glory of Jesus Christ. For nine years, Denver, Colorado’s Five Iron Frenzy walked a fuzzy line between a hard-working, heavy touring ska-punk band and a successful Christian mainstay. This DVD chronicles their journey from pre-inception to post-breakup in its three hours and 15 minutes of footage, photos, interviews and more. Yes, I did say three hours and 15 minutes. And that doesn't include the bonus disc. This exhaustive documentary was assembled entirely by frontman Reese Roper and lies somewhere between overkill and ultimate archive for the FIF superfan. I personally thought there was a little too much coverage of their early...

The grinding cacophony of crust punk and playful upstrokes of ska have rarely joined hands, and even more rarely done so with any semblance of style or skill. Despite their squatting lifestyle and poor hygiene, the crack rock steady of Choking Victim and Leftover Crack generally gets shut out of the elitist crust punk scene while the Subhumans and Citizen Fish are really more anarcho bands with some ska tendencies. So for all intents and purposes, Mouth Sewn Shut marched into a new territory of checkered dumpster divers and nihilistic rude boys with their debut Pandemic = Solution. If the title of the delightfully fatalistic Doomed Future Today isn't any indication of what to expect on this record, song titles like “When Is it Going to End,” “World War 3” and “I Hate It” should leave no doubt. Featuring half of Toxic Narcotic (including vocalist Bill Damon), Mouth Sewn Shut play a combination of about one-third faithful crust punk, another third grimy, distorted reggae, and the las...

Minnesota isn't generally considered a hotbed of ska music by any means. Sure, we have one of the world’s foremost pop-punk scenes alongside Gainesville and Chicago, an illustrious history of hardcore, and one of the best crust communities this side of the West Coast, but there have been few acts to emerge from what is actually a fairly vibrant ska scene in the nation’s icebox. This compilation seeks to change that, or at the very least shed some light on what’s going on ska-wise in the Gopher state. The compilation covers a spectrum of styles and takes on the traditional ska sound, ska-punk varieties, and those that fall elsewhere but still managed to find their way into the mix. Only about half the acts utilize a horn section on their contributions, though those without don’t necessarily sound lacking in any way. Hardcore Crayons and Moving to Pluto both eschew brass but work in incredibly catchy melodies in emo-targeted songs (“Not Another Emo Song” and “Emoshay,” respectively)....

Classics of love make a dark day light If you don’t believe the words then just look into their eyes" - Common Rider, 1999 Like a crystal-clear prophecy, self-fulfilled by a resolute thrust of momentum and passion, Jesse Michaels has returned to making music. After five years without a band, Classics of Love has found the former Operation Ivy, Common Rider and Big Rig frontman joining the entire cast of Hard Girls to rip forth a new set of urgently delivered punk, nascent and sprightly, but with 20 years of substantive seasoning underpinning its foundation. As each project Michaels has unveiled throughout the years has sounded considerably different than what preceded it, it should come as no surprise that Classics of Love is no “part two” of any earlier bands. Sure, there are elements of past work in the sound of the present -- the burning exigency of “Don’t Stand Down” smacks slightly of Big Rig while “Slow Car Crash” invokes memories of This is Unity Music outtakes -- but t...