by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

If ska is dead, nobody told the capacity crowds at le Swimming the last two Thursdays. The local ska all-stars reconvened their January sessions, with minimal hype but to wild success. That set the tone for the forthcoming trio of Thursday nights celebrating Stomp’s eighth anniversary and the release of the rather unexpected All-Skanadian Club Vol. 4. Unexpected, even by the Stompsters themselves.

“Honestly, we thought it was done,” says Stomp chief Matt Collyer. “We wanted it to be done.” Collyer’s the frontman of the Planet Smashers, the only band to appear on all four All-Skanadian comps - the first of which introduced the local ska label eight years ago.

“We still had boxes of the first three,” adds Stomp “enforcer” Mike McGee, “then Skip Vitalic from Toronto, from skapages.com and CIUT radio - the longest running ska radio show in Canada - came to us and proposed that he’d compile it, he’d hook it all up.”

“Honestly, it’s the best one yet,” continues Collyer. “And I don’t know two-thirds - okay, maybe half - of the bands on the record, and I feel like a total loser for it. I’m supposed to know ska!”

The disc features a wider variety of Canuck ska than ever before, because Canuck ska is, believe it or not, wider than before. “I thought it would make it through and not die like it did in America. I thought it was just okay, but apparently it’s a little better than okay. For the first one, we got 16 submissions and put on 16 tracks. Second one, we got 18 submissions, the third, 20. For this one, Skip got 70 submissions! There are more ska bands out there than ever!

“Dig the new breed, man!”

As for the Swimming series, here’s the skinny. “The first Thursday is Bedouin Soundclash with Trip the Off, so it’s a really heavy reggae night. The next week is jazzy trad ska with General Rudie, and the week after that is the label party, launching the record, with Skip coming up from Toronto to DJ and Mitch Girio playing.” The Smashers, meanwhile, pile into punk palace l’X for two nights in February.

Last men skanking

These past eight years have seen Stomp through all manner of ups and downs, ins and outs. Ska’s third wave rose and fell, sub-labels came and went (the Tyrant mod/garage imprint has crept back to crypt what crapped it out, while the new Mayday hosts the “drinking-class” street-punk sound), and Stomp took its place under the umbrella of the Union Group, shaking hands with the skatepunk scene.

“Honestly,” says the excessively honest Collyer, “I don’t know if Stomp could have survived on its own without the addition of the punk rock thing. Now we’re in a sort of golden era, at the point where the U.S. labels like Moon have folded, making us a leader in ska music. The Canadian ska thing is fantastic, but we’re not going to leave it at that. We want to get the marquee U.S. ska bands that are left.”

That means they have their eyes on the likes of the Slackers and even old-timers the Skatalites. Meanwhile, the Union has syndicated two major movers in the U.K.’s Snuff and the heralded Down by Law, giving the whole operation some muscle to throw around.

That’s a sweet reversal of the previous pattern, frustratingly familiar to indie labels. “Our record label is basically designed to make major labels rich. Example number one, A Simple Plan, formerly Reset. Number two, Flashlight Brown is signed to Hollywood-Universal, and most of their new songs are old songs already on our records.” Number three would be the Stills, formerly the Undercovers, currently opening for Interpol and the Strokes and talking seven-digit turkey with Capitol and Vice/Warner.

“It’s our own stupid fault,” whines Collyer. “If I had a gun right now, I’d shoot myself.” :

Bedouin Soundclash and Trip the Off
at le Swimming tonight, Thursday, Jan. 23, 9pm, $5

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