I do not know where to start with this review because Aaron Carnes’s In Defense of Ska leaves almost no stone unturned. Throughout the book’s four hundred forty pages, Carnes relates his love for ska with research, personal stories, and opinions on a genre that has hardly had a moment to breathe since its first chords were upstroked. I went in thinking this would just be the ska version of American Hardcore but left with something much better.
In Defense of Ska does have some similarities to Steven Blush’s book, with tons of interviews with people in the scene regaling us with stories of the ups and downs of the genre throughout the years.
However, it also has a breakdown of the waves of ska, including Carnes’s solid theory on ska’s third wave. There is a lot of information on many bands that haven’t really had their histories printed outside of magazine or podcast interviews. Bands like the Voodoo Glow Skulls, Skankin’ Pickle, and the Suicide Machines get some love in the telling of their history, tour stories, and the writing of some of our favorite songs, but are introduced to more obscure ska bands like the Crazy 8’s, Heavy Manners, and Gangster Fun. If you are a music nerd like me, this gives you some new old bands to check out. Some of these bands have multiple chapters but are split up with other chapters in between. I was always wondering what else there was to know about ska, but there was always more info in this book.
Aaron Carnes also relays personal stories about the time he spent in the band Flat Planet. Along with the ’90s ska scene he was a part of in Northern California, including stories about how bands would book tours and Mike Park starting Asian Man Records. Chapters dedicated to the Two Tone film Dance Craze and MTV’s Skaturday, hosted by Carson Daly, show the yin and yang of trying to document a genre of music at times when it is running hot.
If this review feels like I’ve missed any of your favorite bands, it’s probably because I have. The amount of information covered in this book is massive. Adult me was psyched to read this, but high school me would have died for this book. I was stupidly picky about ska bands, but this tome covered all the bands I liked growing up, along with making me reconsider bands I may have turned my nose up at previously. Most of these assumptions were based on where a band was from and their name—stupid things like that—but this book praises the things that make ska great while celebrating each of the bands’ uniqueness. “Ska is the flour. You can make whatever you want of this stuff.”
For those who don’t know, Aaron Carnes hosts a spin-off podcast of In Defense of Ska, which carries on the spirit of the first edition of the book originally published in 2021. Since then, he has kept interviewing anyone and everyone in or around the ska scene and releases the episodes weekly. It’s clear that Carnes has the skill and love to write about ska. This new edition has 30,000 additional words and new sections on the ska scenes in Los Angeles, New York, and the effects of Hurricane Katrina starting a scene in New Orleans, making In Defense of Ska a mountain of a book, but getting to the peak was worth the journey. If you missed the first edition, like I did, do yourself a favor and pick up this new one. In Defense of Ska: Ska More Now Than Ever Edition is available from Clash Books. Please, click here to purchase.