Keeping the Roots Alive

For perspective on the boom in ska-influenced music--where it came from, and what might become of it--think of it as the story of the blues, written in miniature.

The blues grew out of the rural South of the 1920s and ‘30s, where it was invented and nourished by a poor, black underclass. For ska, change the place and time to Trenchtown, the ghetto district of Kingston, Jamaica, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Chapter Two for the blues, spearheaded by such stars as Muddy Waters and B.B. King, raised the volume and brought the music to urban centers. Electric blues reached a large audience in the ‘40s and ‘50s, but not a mass, mainstream one. Few white folks were paying attention.

In ska’s second phase, the music got louder and changed its venue as a corps of English bands bolstered the original, quick-stepping, scratchy Jamaican rhythms with punk-inspired aggressiveness. The Specials, the English Beat, Madness and the Selecter were huge in their homeland and in Europe. But their 2-Tone sound, named for the racially integrated bands’ conjoining of musical styles and skin colors, was only popular from 1979-83. And 2-Tone flopped in the United States, the most important market.

Forty years after issuing from its Mississippi Delta cradle, the blues crossed an ocean and landed in the hands of avid young acolytes such as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds, who were inspired by the music’s rural originators and urban innovators.

The ska invasion of ’97 has rung up some impressive sales numbers, according to SoundScan: 6.8 million copies sold for No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom”; more than 500,000 for “Let’s Face It,” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones; and more than 200,000 for Reel Big Fish’s CD, “Turn the Radio Off.”

Like the British invaders, these young American inheritors of a roots-music form have added the pop embellishments needed for mass success. And like the Stones, Animals and Yardbirds, they have made a point of praising honored forebears.

Lynval Golding, the founding guitarist of the Specials, the band that launched England’s 2-Tone movement, is gratified.

“When bands like No Doubt do an interview, they always say where their influences come from,” Golding said in a recent interview. “People reading it will know [about ska’s sources], and if they’re really into the music, they will do their research and find the stuff from ’79.”

The questions now facing ska:

* Will the new hit bands maintain their success?

* Will their precursors benefit substantially?

* Will ska, like the blues, remain an enduring musical force after faddish or star-driven periods of success run their course?

The second question most concerns the Specials on their current U.S. tour, which stops tonight at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. The band is seeking a new record deal and hoping to capture a chunk of the mass audience now attuned to ska.

The Specials regrouped in 1994 after a 13-year lapse; the current lineup includes four of the seven original members, but the band must overcome the absence of two key performers: Keyboard player Jerry Dammers was one of 2-Tone’s most accomplished songwriters, and Terry Hall was the foremost singer in the Specials’ vocal blend.

“This tour is quite a make-or-break time for the band,” said the Specials’ original bassist, Horace Panter, 43. He and Golding, 44, both regard the band’s 1996 comeback album, “Today’s Specials,” as a mistaken attempt to emphasize synthesizers and reggae rhythms--reggae being the slower, more trenchant or, alternately, more laid-back form that evolved out of the light, peppy ska style. The Virgin Records release has sold 35,000 copies. U.S. fans have much preferred the band’s original sound, buying 147,000 copies of the 1991 compilation, “The Singles Collection.”

“This time, we got the first and second Specials albums out again and said, ‘Look guys, this is our meal ticket, this is our raison d’etre, this is what we ought to be doing,’ ” Panter said. “We wrote a lot of [new] songs that sound like the Specials and don’t have a lot to do with computers.”

With few exceptions, the new, hit-level ska bands offer lightweight, good-time music. The Specials hope to reintroduce the social conscience that was a staple of 2-Tone. The English ska bands had a knack for songs that appealed simultaneously to the feet and the mind.

Said Panter, who lives in Coventry, England: “I’m sort of concerned that the Third Wave of ska in America is turning into revenge-of-the-nerds music: ‘Hey, we drink lots of beer and play stupid music and have lots of fun and fall over.’ The fun element was a given with the Specials. But we were kind of angry young men, and now we’re angry middle-aged men. Injustice is timeless.”

The conventional wisdom about the commercial rise of today’s ska-pop hybrid is that, by 1996, masses of young music fans had absorbed enough heaviness and angst in the grungy, alienated, alternative-rock ‘90s. They were ready for the exuberant experience that ska, with its signature rhythmic bounce and bright horn arrangements, was well-positioned to provide.

“I guess kids just decided to smile and dance and go out and enjoy themselves,” said Charlie Dahan, who has supervised a series of recent ska releases on Shanachie Records, a roots-oriented independent label.

“If [a ska song] has a serious message, it’s done in a way that’s fun and entertaining.”

Ska has good prospects for remaining in pop’s mix, even if the newly minted hit-makers turn out to lack staying power on the charts. The ska scene isn’t top-heavy; No Doubt and the Bosstones both rose after years of woodshedding in a ska underground that remains well-stocked with veteran bands that enjoy cult followings.

Among the signs of health on ska’s grass-roots are solid growth by independent labels.

* Shanachie’s Dahan said that most of the label’s ska releases have sold more than 10,000 copies, a benchmark of indie-label success.

* Robert “Bucket” Hingley, one of the key figures in transplanting ska from England to the United States, says that his New York City-based label, Moon Ska, is peaking after 14 years devoted to releases by Third Wave ska bands. Hingley, a U.K. native, has led his band, the Toasters, since 1981; along with the L.A. bands Fishbone and the Untouchables, the Toasters are credited with fostering ska music in the United States after the attempted British 2-Tone invasion fizzled.

Moon Ska’s roster has grown to more than 30 bands, and Hingley says that sales of albums by such top acts as the Toasters, Let’s Go Bowling, the Scofflaws and Mephiskapheles have approached or passed the 40,000 mark.

* Expect the band Save Ferris to get lots of No Doubt comparisons--it is also Orange County-based and boasts a female lead singer. Its first album is due on Epic on Sept. 9.

* The leading independent punk label, L.A.-based Epitaph Records, has spun off a new subsidiary, Hellcat Records, devoted largely to Third Wave ska music. Cris “The Wix” Qualiana, who is running Hellcat’s day-to-day affairs, sees no reason for concern that the emergence of new ska labels and the expansion of old ones might lead to lowered standards of quality--something that quickly robbed pop-punk of its freshness after its commercial explosion in 1994.

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “We came into this with the idea of [signing] one or two bands, and now we have six or seven. There’s definitely enough [good] music.”

Naturally, some old-line supporters of ska are nervous about what mainstream success could do to the music. Shanachie’s Dahan says that’s borne out by the beating No Doubt takes on ska bulletin boards on the Internet, as purists and cultists feel threatened by mass acceptance and stylistic change.

Moon Ska’s Hingley doesn’t have any qualms that success might spoil ska music.

“I don’t think commercialization of the genre is as much a danger as purists might think,” Hingley said. “If it hasn’t been destroyed and eaten up by the big, bad music business previously, I don’t see why it should now. The fact there is 40 years behind it will protect it from superficial trimming.”

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BE THERE

The Specials play tonight at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. With Hepcat. 7:30 p.m. $21. (213) 650-1451.