Saturday, August 12, 2017

The Rebel Black Dot Song o' the Day: SKAugust


Count von Count & The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Zig Zag Dance" from Sesame Street: Elmopalooza! (The Last Angry Rude Boy)

Skammentary: We here at the R.B.D.S.O.T.D. have already weighed in with the opinion that for all the Bosstones' ironclad ska bona fides, "Zig Zag Dance" is more of a swing revival song that a ska song. Yet, "Zig Zag Dance" fits in perfectly with SKAugust's purpose of looking back on the score of years since the Summer of Ska. Such was the pop-cultural penetration of ska in those halycon years, alongside the swing revival, that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones—never the hardest of the hardcore, but not exactly a show to which I'd take my nieces & nephews, as I would to The Aquabats! or "Weird Al" Yankovic—appeared in a television special celebrating Sesame Street's thirtieth anniversary, & the subsequent album, recording a song with Count von Count. Ska was mainstream for a brief, shining moment—deeply, if ephemerally entrenched in the late '90s Zeitgeist.

No comments: