True to their anthem, Reel Big Fish have yet to "Sell Out." At least until now. Their latest record is supposedly taking a stab at some of the bubble gum pop kind of radio friendly kiddie music that often defines the term sell-out. Still unfinished, who knows what course the album will take.
Regardless of its outcome, it remains that Reel Big Fish have continued to loyally tour as a punk/ska, sometimes cover band, receiving little recognition in the U.S. since their 1997 radio hit "Sell Out"made the band almost famous.
New drummer Carlos de la Garza, known by some as the eight wonder of the world and by many not at all says that before finishing up their album, Reel Big Fish may change their mind about its content as they continue to tour with fellow punk/ska devotees Goldfinger, Homegrown and Zebrahead, stopping by the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on Friday night for the Crouching Fish Hidden Finger tour.
Plenty of emails and a trip across the Canadian border brought Carlos to Street to answer a few of those burning questions everyone wants answered, or if not everyone, the few among us who went to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones play Fling in '99.
The new album, due out within the year still has a lot of tweaking before it will be ready for release. The band's confusion about its direction is obvious from Carlos blanket answers to questions about production and his aimless thoughts on its finality. "Well we've been working on it for a long long time now. We've been working since January of last year in the rehearsal studio. Its kind of in a limbo state and yeah we don't really know what is going on right now."
The album forgotten, according to Carlos ska is still going strong--kind of. The band had a huge response in Canada and has sold out plenty of shows this past year. "The tour doing really well demonstrates that ska is still a viable commodity in terms of sales and people being interested in it, it hasn't dropped completely off the face of the earth."
Not completely, and though it seems ska music may be taking a brief respite, at least from mainstream airplay, the bands that brought about its third wave comeback in the early nineties are still going strong on the underground scene. Even today, the ska sound, or what it has become, remains the anthem of self-proclaimed punks and freaks nationwide.
Originating in the early sixties, the first wave of ska music met at the intersection of big city dance halls and nascent reggae. Surfacing for its second wave in England in the late seventies with groups like The Specials created a following of loyal ska fans known to themselves and whomever path they crossed as the "rude boys." Characterized by their two tone suits shaved heads and passionate dedication to the uncool, this sub culture has remained loyalists to the second wave and all that is uncool.Ska didn't find its niche again until the early nineties, when it really came out of the underground and onto the radio in full force with groups
like the Bosstones, Dance Hall Crashers, Reel Big Fish, Sublime and Goldfinger.
Somehow Reel Big Fish was just uncool enough to remain unscathed by the criticism the loyalists inflicted upon much of the third wave, bands like Sublime and the Bosstones. This is a band that has seen their glory days come and go and then somehow ended up in the movie BASEketball, which they say "wasn't quite as glamorous as everyone thinks," Although,"they had a lot of hot chicks on the set so that was a cool thing. I mean that's always a cool thing."Ska music has been buried three times and resurrected itself when the times and the scene called for the revival. Who knows if it'll come back into the mainstream, and frankly who cares. To quote Carlos, "Hell, if I could predict the trends of music I'd be a millionaire. Also it doesn't really matter. We are still doing really well, actually, we are doing better than we have ever done so it just goes to show the music can't be as dead as people think"
