Reel Big Fish are Sexy Chicken Fingers
Written by Chelsea Miya
Photos by Kieran Meyn
Date: January 16, 2008
While other ska bands went electronic or pop (we all know what happened to Gwen Stefani), they stuck to their roots. And their latest packed show in Toronto, fresh off the Warped Tour, is living proof that being yourself pays.

Band member Scott Klopfenstein lambasts critics who thought ska would never survive the twenty first century.

“Since 2000 we’ve been hearing ska’s on the decline! Ska’s dead!” said Klopfenstein, gesturing emphatically, his eyes alive with passion behind thick Woody Allen glasses. “But we’re talking about a form of music that’s way older than the people listening to it. Music is invented from the soul. It touches the soul. As of yet, science has not been able to locate that soul, so why do we have the fucking audacity to believe that we have the power to destroy music.”

Along with No Doubt and Sublime, Reel Big Fish was one of the biggest ska punk bands of the nineties, riding the crest of the third wave American ska movement. The genre itself was born in the streets of Kingston, Jamaica almost three decades earlier. Against the back drop of riots and civil rights protests, Caribbean ska was a rare symbol of unity between blacks and whites. Scholarships had opened the door for blacks to go to university and they brought their music with them. For the first time, lower class blacks and middle class whites were playing in the same bands as equals, stomping their feet to the same beat. And it was called ska.

A new, punk-infused version exploded in English in the seventies and burst into the mainstream America in the nineties.

But in the millennium, the ska wave finally broke and died, taking many of the best bands with it.

Eight years later. Reel Big Fish are one of the last ones standing.

But the crowds are still on their feet. Ask any one of the fans in this packed stadium if ska is dead. Looking around, many of them are new converts. Young teens skanking in slow war dance circles in between sets.

“Ska will do what ska does,” said Klopfenstein. “It’s always going to touch somebody.”

As far as the band is concerned, “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to go to sleep and wake up as you.”

But it hasn’t always been easy. Something that Klopfenstein says is reflected on their albums Cheer Up! and We’re Not Happy ‘Til You’re Not Happy.

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