A curious fad happened in the Christian Rock scene in the mid to late nineties. A genre of music that saw little success in the secular world seemed (to me anyways) to dominate Christian Rock for a couple years. The genre is Ska. Ska is upbeat punkish music with a horn section. The way I see it there were 3 prominent Ska bands: Five Iron Frenzy, The OC Supertones, and The Insyderz.
Five Iron Frenzy or FIF was always the best. Their music stands the test of time more so than their contemporaries. The song that introduced me to them was Suckerpunch. FIF had the funniest lyrics and as I've mentioned before they brought my wife and me together.
The OC Supertones seemed to be more appealing to the masses. I'm not sure if they were more successful financially than FIF and The Insyderz but they always came across that way. The song that exemplifies them has to be Supertones Strike Back, a fun self-referential song. A girl at bible camp once comforted me in an e-mail after I told her that my great-grandma died by quoting the chorus to this song. It went something like this:
Me: Hey thanks for giving me your e-mail! Camp was fun but it was kinda bittersweet seeing as how my 79 year old great-grandmother died while I was at camp :(
Her: Camp was AWESOME! Don't worry about your Grandma just remember what the OC Supertones say "We want this whole band to be a big love letter
so we play the SKA and it makes you feel better
God's got love for us, so we got love for you"
Needless to say I didn't email her back, as desperate as I was.
The Insyderz didn't have as much "regular" songs that I liked. They were much better at turning modern praise and worship songs into Ska songs like they did on the 2 Skalleluia albums. I loved their version of the Keith Green Classic O Lord You're Beautiful.
I'll cover each one of those bands in detail over the next few days and finish off the series with a look at the far inferior secular Ska and the Christian swing movement that seemed to be an offshoot from the far better Ska genre. Stay tuned!
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