Word: ska
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...just in time. Straight-ahead rock is a bit exhausted right now. Instead, rockers who draw from R. and B., hip-hop and/or ska are hot--the funky rock band 311, the pop-ska band No Doubt, the ska-punk band Sublime. "Some of the stuff that's big for us lately seems less rock and has more of a beat influence," says Lisa Worden, music director for kroq, an alternative-rock station in Los Angeles. "Beck stays away from the typical rock sound." Odelay isn't a flawless album--Beck isn't as soulful as some...
...Sublime Sublime (Gasoline Alley/MCA). A good-hearted street riot of punk rock, avant-garde hip-hop and ska (a faster, jerkier reggae precursor), Sublime's music is hard to categorize and harder still to resist. The band is already defunct (the lead singer and songwriter, the puckishly gifted Brad Nowell, died of a heroin overdose in May), but no rock album this year sounds more alive...
...worth remembering too that the music business is cyclic. Every few years critics proclaim that rock is dead, and then a band like Nirvana--or the Sex Pistols before them--comes around and changes everything. Now the hunt is definitely on for the next Next Big Thing. Ska is a candidate, with groups like No Doubt racking up sales. Trip-hop is another contender, with performers such as Tricky and Portishead. There are also electronic-dance-music forms like Jungle. "We see 1997 as a time of exploration in the music biz," says MTV's Schuon. Explains Lisa Cortes, former...
...personal infighting. The recent dispute between council President Robert M. Hyman '98 and his campus-happy archrival Rudd W. Coffey '97 was an unnecessary and immature display of contention. Hyman has charged Coffey with a $1,000 loss connected with a band signing: In an attempt to sign the ska band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Coffey retained the services of an agent whom he foolishly agreed to pay $1,000 whether or not the band agreed to play. Coffey reacted to the charge by blaming the council screw-up--unfairly, it seems--on an Institute of Politics staffer. Coffey shouldn...
There are also acts with more and less experience worth watching out for this fall. In terms of freshmen, there's the ska band the Blue Beats, whose Dance with Me (October) will be released on tiny Moon Records, and vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, whose Dreamland (Oct. 1) is an enchanting mix of jazz, country and blues. As for returning upperclassmen, saxman Joshua Redman's Freedom in the Groove (Sept. 24) is wonderfully listenable, and the reformed New Edition's Home Again (Sept. 10) no doubt aims to recreate the R.-and-B. group's old chart appeal...