Ska Show in San Francisco Friday 2/18

Hey, there's a scooter on this poster!

Ska Show tomorrow at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco with GOGO13, seen in Scoot! Magazine. One of the band members illustrated the cover of Scoot! issue # 56 (Scooter Art issue).
Doors open at 8pm.

English Beat Turns 30- Goes on Tour

The English Beat are on tour again to celebrate their 30th anniversary. You may recall that Scoot! has interviewed Dave Wakeling twice in the past 11 years, most recently in 2007.

According to a news item on Pollstar, the band kicked off a tour in Cocoa Beach, FL. Are they coming to your town? Check out the Pollstar schedule here.

Pepsi Commercial with Fishbone

Blink and you might miss it, but Fishbone makes a quick appearance in the new "My Generation" commercial from Pepsi Cola. The commercial (embedded below) is a stylized trip through history with Pepsi, culminating with a crowd getting down-- Angelo's unmistakable visage closing it out.

According to FishboneLive.org, "Pepsi has managed to bring back the largest OG reunion on stage with besides Angelo and Wood, Dirty Walt and a totally unexpected Christopher Dowd!"

Glad to know that Fishbone still has some cachet!

So long, Alton Ellis...

Alton Ellis, King of Rocksteady, has died at the age of 70. The story as run in the UK' Guardian:

By David Katz, The Guardian,
Tuesday October 14 2008

Hailed as the king of rock steady, Alton Ellis, who has died aged 70 of cancer, was the first singer to popularise the style that formed the bridge between ska and reggae, and one of Jamaica's best-loved vocalists. Blessed with a distinctive voice whose emotive tones were particularly expressive, he was a constant presence in the island's charts for much of the 1960s and early 1970s. Although he never reached the pop charts in Britain, he maintained a strong fanbase here, not only among the Jamaican immigrant community that thronged to his concerts, but also among the wider population of British reggae fans, many of whom were drawn to his music following the "two tone" ska revival of the 1980s.

Born in downtown Kingston in 1940, he was raised in the heart of Trench Town, the west Kingston ghetto district that would later be home to Bob Marley and the Wailers and countless other Jamaican vocalists. At Boys' Town school, Ellis excelled at sports and music, and often broke into the school in the evening to teach himself to play the piano, sometimes spending entire nights at the instrument.

Many of his peers were reaching the stage through the weekly talent contests held by the journalist Vere Johns, but Ellis was too frightened by the competition to appear on his own, so in 1959 he formed a duo with a friend called Eddie Perkins. While Ellis worked by day on a construction site in Stony Hill, the duo made their first recording, a slow love ballad called Muriel. Produced by Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd, founder of Studio One, the song was an immediate success that topped the Jamaican charts.

After recording a couple of follow-ups for Coxsone and My Love Divine for Vincent "Randy" Chin, the duo was forced to disband when Perkins travelled to the US, where he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Ellis worked as a printer for the next year and a half, forming a short-lived new duo with John Holt, cutting Rum Bumpers in 1965. He then continued recording for Coxsone, notably duetting with his younger sister, Hortense.

Moving to the Treasure Isle stable of Coxsone's arch-rival, Duke Reid, Ellis then assembled a backing harmony group called the Flames, scoring one of the biggest hits of 1966 with Dance Crasher, a song decrying the "rude boys" who were wreaking havoc in Jamaica's dance halls. Soon after, still backed by the Flames, Ellis cut Girl I've Got a Date, named by many as the first rock steady recording, and later Rock Steady, the first to refer to the genre by name. Other notable tunes cut for Reid in this period included an original called Breaking Up and brilliant cover versions of Johnnie Taylor's Ain't That Loving You, Chuck Jackson's Willow Tree and the Delfonics' La La (Means I Love You), all of which are confirmed classics frequently covered by others in the decades that followed.

In 1967, Coxsone poached Ellis back from Reid, sending him to the UK to tour with Ken Boothe and the Soul Vendors. Further gems followed, such as A Fool, one of many songs inspired by the tempestuous relationship with his first wife, Pearl, as well as the album Sings Rock and Soul.

After spending several months in the US, Ellis then moved to Canada, where he was largely based for the next three years, working the nightclub circuit as a soul singer. Back in Jamaica in 1970, he scored big with his rendition of You've Made Me So Very Happy, made famous by Blood Sweat and Tears, as featured on the Coxsone-produced 1970 album Sunday Coming, and the following year, the spiritually eloquent and politically relevant Deliver Us, recorded for Lloyd "Matador" Daley; Big Bad Boy, another anti-rude boy song recorded for the producer Keith Hudson (and apparently inspired by him), was another big hit.

In 1973, Ellis moved to the UK, where he continued to record, issuing the excellent self-produced Still in Love in 1977. Although based in the UK since then, he made notable recordings in Jamaica for Sonia Pottinger during the late 1970s and the album Many Moods of Alton Ellis, released by Earl Morgan of the Heptones in 1980. Sporadic recordings continued for UK-based concerns such as Fashion Records and Jamaican producers such as King Jammy, while the series of annual Rock Steady Revues he presented in London were always eagerly anticipated, as were his live appearances in general. In recent years, despite health concerns, Ellis headlined several festivals in the US and Europe.

In 1994, Ellis received the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government in recognition of his vital contribution to the island's popular culture, and he is to be given a state funeral. He is survived by numerous children from different relationships and many grandchildren.

• Alton Nehemiah Ellis, singer, songwriter, producer and concert promoter, born September 1 1938; died October 11 2008

Listen to a podcast at Heartbeat Records featuring, Feeling Inside. And another featuring I'm still in Love with You.

GoGo13 Scooter shirt

Parker Jacobs who was a past designer for Paul Frank Industries, works on the current show Yo Gabba Gabba and is part of the ska band GoGo13 sent me a link to a cool shirt they have on the band's merch site. The caption reads "save gas" but it should also say "be cool" as everyone at your next scooter rally will want to know where you got the shirt.

Incidentally, GoGo13 is the band that did the uber-cool ska song "pick it up" for an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba where ska is used to teach kids to clean their room:

PICK IT UP


A great way to start my morning, "pick it up, pick it up, pick it up..." I've got a terrible cold, so seeing this video "picks up" my spirits!

Anyone seen "This is England"?

I heard about this 2006 British film a few months ago, but haven't seem it, yet. I'll add it to my Netflix queue. Anyone seen it & want to comment on it? Are there any scooters in it? The soundtrack has some good songs and it received several favorable reviews.
From the IFC website:

It's 1983 and school is out. Twelve-year-old Shaun is a lonely boy growing up in a grim coastal town in northern England, whose father died fighting in the Falklands War. Over the course of the summer holiday he befriends a group of local skinheads. With his pent-up rage and frustration, Shaun finds exactly what he needs in the gang-mischief, mayhem and brotherhood. He also meets the volatile and boorish Combo, an older skinhead who sees himself in Shaun. Adopting Shaun as his protege, Combo leads the gang down a hate spewing path that culminates in an irreversible act of violence.

Should be an interesting film to watch, although I wonder if it will reinforce the mistaken American idea that all skinheads are Nazis or National Front types.

This is England official website

Lemme know what you thought of it!

Pick it Up

Thanks to my favorite scooter spotters, the Rix family, that sent me this link to a spot from the super-cool kids show Yo! Gabba Gabba! This show has been all th rage as of late, and I can see why it is a hit with both kids and parents. Check out this fun ska song that urges kids to "pick it up!"

You Gabba Gabba video. Spot the scooter for extra points...

Remembering 80s scootering scene...

Scoot! is currently working on an 80s issue. We'd like to pay tribute to the 80's (and perhaps EARLY 90s) scooter scene in the US. Things have changed in the past 2 decades, and we'd like to remember the scrubby days of 'zines, photocopied flyers, silkscreen patches, bomber jackets and ironingboard backrests.

If you were a scooterist in the "old days" we'd love to talk to you. We're looking for contributions in the following areas:

1) Photos: Show Us Your Scoots! If you bought a P200 news from the dealer, let's see your proud photos! Were you a mod with an asymmetrical haircut and a scooter with dozen mirrors and a raccoon tail aerial? Were you a scooter boy with a cut-down, a patch-coated jacket and straight-edge tattoo? Send us some of your choicest photos that exemplify the scene. We are looking to run an expanded and 80s-centric Show Us Your Scoots section.

2) Reader's Rides: Do you have a bike currently that is in an 80s style? We want bikes with those rare accessories, funky chrome or definitive 80s mod, scooterboy, skinhead or punk style. They don't have to have perfect paint, but they do have to typify the 80s style. If you've got a good collection of photos of a bike you had in the 80s (even if you don't still own it) we're interested in featuring it. The trick is, e need several photos of the bike at different angles, so you had to pretty type-A about documenting it. If you've got photos like that, we want to talk to you.

3)Rally History: There were some great, infamous rallies in the past. Were you involved in planning them? D you have memorabilia from them such as patches, shirts, flyers etc? Let's create a historical documentation of those old rallies.

4) 80s style: What made the 80s scooter scene? Was it the clothes, the custom bikes, the music, the culture? If you've got some suggestions on what we should cover, we are open to your input. Here's some suggestions to get your mental gears going:
**What accessories, treatments and styles exemplify an 80s scooter? What accessories or treatments were all the rage? Was it checkered tape, chrome, mud flaps, a certain brand of seat, a special aftermarket pipe?
**What were the fashions of the time? Name some key pieces to a scooterist's wardrobe.
**What bands courted the scooter scene? We know how a Bad Manners show could rustle up a parking lot full of scoots, but what other bands has a scooterist following?
**Who were the leading scooterists of the time? Who made the scene what it was? Who was printing 'zines, organized rallies, made parts, ran scooter shops?

Many scooterists miss the good old days, so let's put our heads together and create an issue that stirs up memories, calls attention to where we came from, and perhaps inspires a revival.

send your ideas to aprilATscootquarterly.DOTCOM or email us a brief reply to this post and we'll get back to you.

Happy Scooting!
-april

Favorite Internet Radio Station

Lots of my time is spent in a dark room in front of a computer working on Scoot! content. It's made much better by Internet radio, my favorite station: KinkFM out of the Netherlands. Damned if I can understand about 5% of what they are saying (they pepper their speech with English terms now & again), but they play some excellent music. Luckily, can get a great connection via iTunes. Kink has exposed me to some great, diverse music like Pete Philly and Perquisite, Electrelane, Vive la Fete and many more bands that I have had a hard time finding in the states. Often, I hear of bands on Kink way before they make it to the US and most of them will never make it to the boring and unimaginative US broadcast radio.

This afternoon, as I was finishing up some articles, I was listening to DJ Dr. Ska who was playing some great classic and contemporary ska as well as some vintage soul. I was so enthralled, I had to send him a congratulatory email. Not 5 minutes later, he gave me a shout out! I may have never made it to the Holland, but some late night Netherlanders have heard my name!
Give them a listen!