![]() ![]() On the band’s second album, Redlight, The Slackers’ brand of ska successfully incorporated Latin, boogaloo, Calypso, and dub, and the album even concluded with a tender, acoustic love song. ![]() It’s gruff, smoke-stained, and, when you add in his thick Brooklyn accent (“they” is “dey”, “this” is “dis”, and so on), it makes for an irresistible combo. Besides being a much more versatile songwriter than others in the genre, Ruggiero is also blessed with one of the coolest voices around, regardless of genre. Originally an eight-piece, the Brooklyn band brought more to the table than most other ska acts, and most of the credit for that can be given to Vic Ruggiero, the band’s primary singer and songwriter. These included Hepcat, Skinnerbox, the Stubborn All-Stars, and, the best of them all, The Slackers. But the boom even reached the ska underground, and bands that adhered more to the rocksteady influences of ska’s first wave saw increased popularity. The success of Sublime and No Doubt led to the success of bands like Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger, and Less Than Jake, who admittedly were playing music that was more or less horn-infused punk and didn’t really resemble anything Prince Buster or The Skatalites ever recorded. So there was a void to fill, and for a few glorious months (at least to the manufacturers of black-and-white-checkered apparel), American kids were skanking. The electronica takeover also failed to materialize, although the most surprising aspect of this was that some people were actually surprised when that turned out to be the case. Half of modern rock stations were littered with the likes of Third Eye Blind, Dishwalla, and Fuel, while the other half were beginning to embrace the very unfortunate, Limp Bizkit-led aggro-rock revolution. By 1997, the post-Nirvana alternative explosion was whimpering to a close. Given the circumstances at the time, though, you can almost comprehend it. One of the more curious musical developments of the previous decade was the American public’s brief dalliance with ska in the late ’90s. ![]()
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