Word: ska
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...most, the essence of "ska music" is energy: an upbeat, catchy rhythm, that provides the infective inspiration to dance. If the style of music has one fault, it is that it can be easily taken over by its energy, focusing on bouncing rhythms at the expense of meaning and lyrical expression. Easy listening ska therefore seems a contradiction in terms, sapping the music of its most important quality, its energy. However, this contradiction could provide an opportunity to challenge the accepted form of ska music, injecting it with a new meaning and lyrical relevancy...
Floyd Lloyd, a Jamaican singer working with several different bands, has tried to create just that: ska for the subdued. This is an interesting proposition, but one which, unfortunately, requires more talent to be implemented successfully than the singer/writer is able to demonstrate. His new CD, Tear It Up: The Ska Album, consists of a collection of tunes that, for the most part, try to be to ska what soft rock is to rock and roll. But while the album offers a few songs with fair instrumentals, the CD does not succeed, lapsing into tedious and uninteresting music backing repetitive...
Only two of the songs on the album, "Big City" and "Tear it Up," come close to expressing the energy characteristic of ska. Though somewhat subdued by comparison to the work of other bands, the tunes have, at least, enough of a bouncy quality to make them passably diverting in spite of their incredibly repetitive lyrics. Take these two songs, reduce their lengths by a third, add some meaningful lyrics, and "Big City" and "Tear it Up" will be lively enough to be worth listening to. But then, the songs will also be closer to the mainstream of ska than...
...though "Big City" and "Tear it Up" approach pass ability, it would be inaccurate to say that Floyd Lloyd's strength lies in "traditional" ska. The album's two other attempts at this more lively variety of music, "Ska Party" and "Mr. Yo Yo," are incredibly tired, depressingly sucking the bounce out of a bouncy kind of song. The music drags and the lyrics are unimpressive. "Ska Party," for example, uses such convincing arguments as "You're on the guest list;/ You won't have to pay," to persuade listeners to "come to the party tonight." Very uninspiring...
Iovine often sees hits where others see only whiffs. In early 1991 he heard a tape by a scuffling California punk-ska band called No Doubt. The band had been struggling since the late 1980s with little to show for it. Iovine recognized that No Doubt's alternative pop sound offered a fresh twist on rock, and that singer Gwen Stefani had star power. "All the pieces fit together, even if the music wasn't that far advanced," he says. "We felt they could be big, with a little work and grooming." Iovine and Interscope president Tom Whalley sharpened...