The Planet Smashers crown themselves the party kings
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG I'm sitting here nursing a hand cramp from making little tally marks on a sheet of paper. You see, I figured I'd try to get an exact count of how many times the word "party" was uttered during the course of my hour-long interview with Montreal's own preeminent pop-ska posse the Planet Smashers. Now my thumb joint's swelling.
Kings? Pretenders to the throne, perhaps--the one you kneel in front of, not the one you sit on. But the Smashers can claim, quite unequivocally, to be the kings of Canadian ska (although Stomp labelmates the Kingpins might disagree). Delusions of aristocratic standing aside, it's been a good year for the band. Their best, in fact. Ever-larger crowds, escalating record sales, increasingly swank hotel rooms, a TV jingle stint and now a brand new album. The title? Life of the Party, of course. "We've always been the party band, whether we liked it or not," says front-smasher Matt Collyer, "so we thought we'd go for the 'smashed' side on this record. It's definitely got a party atmosphere to it, but there's different things on there too, like some dub, some reggae, a rap by Revolution from Shades of Culture, and a couple of 'we won't sell out' songs--even though we probably have." "We sold out by writing the 'we won't sell out' songs," interjects Cooper. "But that's all rock talk, man. We play ska."
Third wave surfers It's funny to think that a scant half decade ago, the words "we play ska" were something of a novelty. The skinny ties and pork pie hats, the checkers and Docs and miniskirts, the whole kit-and-ska-boodle had all but disappeared since its heyday in the early '80s.
"And we were so poor," notes Cooper, "we couldn't even pay attention." After a moment of confused silence, Collyer crossly spits, "Did you think of that just now?" The band released a crappy little indie disc, eponymously titled and so poorly done that one could hear the traffic outside the apartment in which it was recorded. Regardless, the record had a certain charm, a certain innocent naïveté and, given the relative dearth of ska bands at the time, plenty of room to make a splash. The ripples spread. "The real big change was after the release of All-Skanadian 2, in the fall of '96. CISM started laying the hell out of it, and it got into the French scene. That's when things started kicking. Then the Kingpins' second album came out and things blew up, at least in Montreal." No, things blew up everywhere. No Doubt got huge, Fred Perry became marketable again, the majors caught the bug and fed the sudden ska glut. As fast as the third wave rose, it came crashing back in on itself. The less committed bailed for the even-more-briefly-lived swing thing, or worse yet ska-funk-metal-hop. The tone with which detractors sneered shifted from resentment at ska's huge pull to something resembling pity.
Ska-rena rockers One need not pity the Smashers, though. The numbers say it all. On their Sno-Jam jaunt, about a month ago, they played for more people than over the course of their entire career to that point. It turns out that the echoes of the ska explosion had still not carried to some locales. "Every night we'd play in a town, like Regina," says Collyer, "where we've never done all that well. There'd be 600 kids there, and 10 of them up front going, 'Yeah! We know what's going on!' Then slooowly the rest start going, 'Okay, this isn't hardcore but it's kinda fun.' Then by the end of the set they're... uh, moshing and beating each other up, and tearing up the merch table." The crowning achievement, though, was a stadium-sized gig out B.C. ways, a mere two weeks ago. "It was UBC's end-of-school party. And it was a party! I've never seen so many well-dressed young women in nice dresses and high heels passed out on the ground with puke around their heads. It was a beautiful thing! There were kids running around going, 'I've never been this drunk before!' Bang! They run right into a pole! "We played with 54-40--a band I saw 11 years ago and thought they were washed up then--Econoline Crush, Pure, the Odds. It was the Odds' last show. We were the only indie band, the only ska band, the only out-of-town band, and the best thing is we got flown in, too. "At one point mid-set, I go, 'This one goes out to all the people at the back!' You know, all 14,000 people who weren't in front of the stage. I didn't think anyone would notice, and I couldn't believe how many people went, 'Woooo!' I didn't think anybody was paying attention!" People were, people are, and the party's really just getting started. Having leapfrogged the ska glut to establish a niche as a Canadian pop act to watch out for, the Smashers now recognize their status as role models for impressionable youth. "Promoters give us free cases of beer," says Cooper, "and it would be a shame to waste good beer and not finish them. We were raised with good family values, see? 'Finish your plate, there, sonny boy. Kids are going sober in Ethiopia.' So we can't allow a beer to go unopened."
The Planet Smashers launch Life of the Party at Le Spectrum on Saturday, May 1, 8pm, $13+taxes. General Rudie, Gangster Politics and France's Skarface open
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"It's just a matter of filling a glass with beer and putting it to your mouth repeatedly over the course of the night," explains bassist Dave Cooper. "That's pretty much how we became the kings of the party."
"We used to play out of town," reminisces Collyer, "and the only thing that would get kids out was the word 'ska' on the posters. Maybe two or three would know us, the rest were just there based on word of mouth."