Bonus! Song o' the Day: SKAugust

King Apparatus, "Hold Me Down" from Marbles (The Last Angry Rude Boy)

Skammentary: As the turn of the millennium loomed, Mike Park's Asian Man Records began to introduce my ears to ska beyond the five or six "popular" ska-punk bands I really, really liked. At that time, I had yet little idea of ska's Jamaican origins & knew next to nothing about the mysterious "2-Tone," but while the popular culture stressed about Y2K my ska horizons were ever broadening.

"You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down.
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down.

"Well you tried, but you won't be satisfied
Until you hold me down.
You can hold but not control me, girl,
You can't hold me down.
Come on, try and try, but you're gonna find
You can't hold me down,
Because better than you have tried and failed
To hold me down, I'm leaving town, and—

"You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down.
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down.

"No lock and key can work on me,
I will be free,
My heart is wild, it was not styled
For captivity,
So I stayed a spell, I thought time would tell
Me friend from foe,
But I won't stick around and be held down,
Let me go! Don't you know that—

"You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down.
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me,
You can't hold me down…"

Marbles was released in 1993 & King Apparatus broke up in 1994, well before the Summer of Ska. My introduction to them in roughly the year 2000 & this remembrance of them in 2017 is proof that they were right: Good music can't be held down.

A note to Miss Mozart: This R.B.D.S.O.T.D. isn't in any way directed against you, though ye be fairly warned that "Hold Me Down" has ever spoken & still speaks to my wild heart.