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Suits and Boots: A Guide to Ska Style With New England summer winding down and cooler weather approaching, it’ll be time for all the rude boys to get their suits out of the closet and get set to look sharp at a show. Wait. What’s that you say? Rude boys? No, no. I don’t mind. I always relish the chance to nerd out about ska. In the 1960s, rude boys were either glorified or vilified in the poorer sections of Kingston, Jamaica. They were discontented youth, violent and prone to crime, and many ska and rocksteady artists of the time had songs about them. Tunes such as Dandy Livingstone’s “A Message to You, Rudi,” Alton Ellis’s “Dance Crasher,” and many more featured rude boy culture. Rude boys favored sharp suits, skinny ties and pork pie or Trilby hats. Think Dan Akroyd and John Belushi as The Blues Brothers, and you won’t be far off. In the late ’70s, the style was revived along with ska music by the 2 Tone Label and its associated bands: The Specials, Madness and The Selecter. The 2 Tone logo featured a cartoon drawing of a cool looking dude in a sharp suit and skinny tie nicknamed “Walt Jabsco.” The artist based the drawing off a slick looking Peter Tosh from one of the earlier Wailers records and thus the rude boy was reborn, not as a violent gangster, but as a fashion archetype and a label to describe fans of ska music. This era also saw the birth of the skinhead and the working class style of flight jackets, Fred Perry polo shirts and jeans held up by braces, rolled up to show off a neat pair of Doc Martens boots. Coming from hard-working families in the UK, skinheads started off as hard-drinking, hard-dancing youth who favored ska, reggae and punk — a far cry from the racist image portrayed today. There were also female counterparts to both. There were the rude girls with their pressed skirts, loafers, tights and bob haircuts, and skinhead girls who dressed mostly the same as the boys. This was also where ska picked up its black and white checkered motif. Originally a design symbolic of racial unity, it has since come to just mean ska in America. As ska continued into the ’80s and started to trickle over to America, so too did the styles. Here you have the great melting pot in effect as the rudies and skins were joined on the dance floors by punks and dreadlocked Rastas. The music, as well as the styles, became more mixed with various branches sprouting off the ska family tree. Nowadays the styles at shows can get pretty eclectic, but you’ll still find your adherents to the rude boy faith. In fact, get those suits pressed and boots shined and head to the Parlor Bar in Newport on Friday, September 11 as The Copacetics and The Hempsteadys dish out the ska! Just don’t be no dance crasher… Alt-Nation: An Interview with Peter Wolf and Fall Shows My earliest memories of listening to radio involve getting down to The J. Geils Band when they started to have a string of huge radio hits with the likes of “Freeze Frame,” “Centerfold,” and “Just Can’t Wait.” This was the tail end of the band’s career as soon as they hit the big time, it was over. Singer Peter Wolf left to go solo. Wolf would have a couple hits like “Lights Out” and “Come as You Are.” More than the hits, Wolf has built up a catalogue 30 years in the making of some really fantastic music. Growing up, there would be that one Saturday night of year where Wolf returned to where he started, on the airwaves of WBCN. He’d play all these obscure records that I had never heard of and spin tales of hanging with musicians like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters that in my teenage mind were some legendary figures from another dimension. I had heard of them and these stories about them but didn’t really know much about them at the time. These experiences later would prod me to dig deeper in the band’s rich history. The J. Geils Band remain one of my all-time favorites for classic American R&B-infused blues rock ‘n’ roll. With The J. Geils Band coming to town, it seemed like a good time to talk to singer Peter Wolf about the band and his solo career. Marc Clarkin: Does it take a while when the band gets back together to recapture the magic? Peter Wolf: Well yeah, we work hard on it. It’s not unlike actors getting together putting on a classic play. The lines might be there, but you want to make sure it lives and breathes and has the same intensity you are known for. We always try to keep the bar high and keep the energy where it needs to be. It is always an interesting get-together, kicking up the songs that we’ve been known for. MC: When it comes to constructing the set lists, obviously there are the hits that everyone expects. Do you have any deep cuts or tracks you are partial to planned this time around? PW: Yeah, we had about four or five in the set that were kind of obscure album tracks that we liked. This time there will be several of them. It changes. Of course people expect certain songs that you made popular, but that is true of many bands that have been around a long time like Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles or the Rolling Stones. People want to hear the songs you made popular. MC: Although The J. Geils only had their commercial success toward the end of their career, you guys were playing arenas for years prior to that. Do you think that things are different today as far as a band being able to reach the level of selling out arenas without a hit record? PW: We played arenas quite a bit, but I would say it wasn’t till the MTV era came along and embraced the band that we had our largest popularity. Also it coincided with a label change that had a great belief in the band that combined with MTV gave us new possibilities that we didn’t have before. There are a lot of bands playing arenas today that people say wow, where did they come from? I’ve never even heard of them. There is a whole new audience through multimedia and the internet that communicate to a whole new fan base that are having great success that might not be played on the traditional radio in the way that the Stones or Geils or Aerosmith, bands of that order achieved their acclaim shall we say. MC: You got your start in the music business as a deejay for WBCN in Boston. How did that come together? PW: The fellow who put the station together was kind of an eccentric character. He used to go out drinking and when the bars closed, he’d come to my place and pass out on my couch. Then one day he asked me if I wanted to invest in this radio station. I couldn’t even pay my rent, never mind invest in a radio station. “Well,” he said, “you’ve got all these records around the house. Why don’t you at least help me out and come up and deejay?” So I ended up doing that for a couple of years. Every night I had the Wolfa Goofa Mama Toofa that went from midnight till 6 in the morning. I really enjoyed it. I had guests like Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, Van Morrison, Carla Thomas, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and all sorts of different people. It was an amazing time to be on radio because it was one of the only music shows on at night on the FM dial that was playing that kind of stuff. So a lot of guests who were in town would drop by after their shows to promote that they were in town. MC: I know you’re working on a new record. It’s been five years since your last solo record, the excellent Midnight Souvenirs, was released, how is the new record coming along? PW: It is finished and should be out in February or March. We’ll be touring with the Midnight Travelers. which I’m very excited about. I enjoy doing the Geils stuff because it enables me to revisit a body of work that I helped create and was part of my life for so long. The solo stuff is very important and meaningful because it gives me the ability to keep rolling on. MC: Midnight Souvenirs had a lot of guests on for duets; do you have any on the new record? PW: It was a thrill to work with Merle Haggard who I always admired. He’s an icon. He’s right up there and it was a labor of love. On the album before that (Sleepless) it was great to work with Mick Jagger and another song with Keith Richards who are old friends. I had been planning to do a duet with a singer and songwriter that I had always loved and admired, Bobby Womack. There was a song I wrote with Don Covay who was a good friend of Bobby’s. Just as I got done finishing the song that Bobby was going to sing on, the fellow that was producing the record said you won’t believe it.

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