Tone and Wave: 90s

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Sunday, December 28, 2025

Skaboodah And The Skalaktites - The Sound of Stink (1995)

I bought the CD from eBay many years ago. The seller said it was ska. The band is called "SKA"boodah and the "SKA"laktites. They have a horn section.

You, the ska fan who comes to this ska blog, can decide.

Too "funk" for my taste. I don't hate it, but I certainly don't like it.

1 The Hills of Rural New Jersey

2 Can You Picture That?

3 Troubadours of Foam

4 Hunt the Wumpus

5 Rat the Wet Screwdriver

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Sunday, August 24, 2025

Ivy League - The Price is Wrong (1998)

I never did find myself a copy of this but, thankfully, somebody shared it with me. I don't remember who it was but I thank you for sharing!

1 Easy as 1

2 Receding Hairline

3 The Price is Right

4 Silly Temptations

5 More Than Meets the Eye

6 Take a Look at Your Showcase

7 Dirty Me

8 Staring into Darkness

9 Have Your Pets Spayed and Neutered

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Scatterbrains - Do Best! (2000)

I made THIS POST in February 2023 for the band Scatterbrains from Switzerland and I mentioned that they had an EP that I do not have.

I have it now and this is that EP.

Sadly, there's no ska on it. Ska influence, but not real ska.

Oh well. If you have the other two albums you will want this to complete the collection.

1 I Can't Get No Sleep

2 Walking in the Sunshine

3 Jerk

4 Pretty Baby

5 Without You

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Saturday, May 31, 2025

Go Bananas

This was a ska band from Bavaria, Germany. Very little is known about them and the only reason I know they were from Bavaria is thanks to Burn Heart from In Search of the Ska.

This image has nothing to do with the band itself, just a sticker I found on eBay.

There are four tracks I'm assuming I must have gotten from MySpace many years ago but I don't remember exactly. Sadly the quality sucks but that's all I got. Here they are in incredible 52 kbps.

1 Gobwithchilli

2 Right Now Finish

3 Silency

4 Your Town

Monday, March 3, 2025

This band was from Chicago. They started out in 1995 as a ska band but by the time they recorded their second album they had abandoned ska completely. I included the second album because I have it and also so you can hear it before you decide to waste your money on it.

With all due respect, I know the giant wave of 3rd wave ska was basically over by 2002 and these guys wanted to distance themselves from ska. So why did they go in the direction of white-boy funk which was already a dead scene in 1992? Did their audience encourage this? If they had stayed true to ska they'd all be millionaires living in mansions right now but they chose a different path. Shameful.

(Long-time Tone and Wave patrons should know that I abhor white-funk. That's because I came from a time before the internet where the only way to buy music was from local record shops which had basically the same stock month after month, or the big retailers who labelled anything with horns as "ska". I wasted so much money on white-funk music before The Wherehouse allowed returns. God I hate white-funk.)

The Jesters - ...Which is Nice (1998)

1 Bored

2 Road Trip

3 Waiting for Another

4 Evolution

5 Zombie Skank

6 The Funky Buddha

7 Hasselhoff

8 What's Real

9 Humpty Dance

10 Bananas in the Mist

11 Alone

12 Welcome to Clown School

13 Funky Chair

14 Skank to This

15 untitled

16 Closure

17 untitled

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The Jesters - Everybody Loves a Chimp (2002)

1 J. Load

2 Nippeaux

3 Harvey

4 Shame on Me

5 Tragic Sad Mistake

6 The Cell

7 One of a Kind

8 Pähn Støør Høør

9 Null Set

10 Then You Walked in

11 Shoulda Got 2

12 Dirty Muthascratcher

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Backdoor Stomp - Steps in the Alley (1999)

Backdoor Stomp was a ska band from Brisbane Australia that was formed in 1998 by Tom McKenzie who was the sax player for The Funaddicts.

There are ten songs on this CD and eight are covers with only two being original songs by the band but those originals are well worth the price of the CD. "What's Goin' On" is a cover of the Funaddicts song which Tom McKenzie wrote so it is a cover but it isn't. And they do a Puzzles cover which I think they did a great job on.

1 Steps in the Alley

2 Inspector Martens

3 Trouble

4 Breakin' Up

5 What's Goin' On?

6 Hey Yo!

7 Tequila

8 Lorainne

9 Just a Feeling

10 Nite Klub

Friday, December 29, 2023

The Sprawl - Ska Mitzvah, Heat Miser, Sea Weed (1992)

This was one of those white-funk / reggae bands from the early 90s. They were from Texas and they released 4 albums - "King of Parking", "Deflorist", "The Man with the Yellow Hat", and "America is Dying of Wetnurse". All 4 albums can be found HERE.

1 Ska Mitzvah

2 Heat Miser

3 No Coloreds in Funland 'cause Whitey's on the Moonwalk

4 Blue Green Slime

5 Heat Mixer

6 Sea Weed

DOWNLOAD fromMEGA

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Sunday, December 10, 2023

Retracide

Ska-punk from my hometown of San Bernardino, California.

Retracide - Watch Your Back (1997)

1 Fake

2 Star 69

3 Two Year Lease

4 Whores Exist

5 Connect the Heads

6 Lost all Doubt

7 Mr. Negative (version 2)

8 No Name

9 Sik Bum Hair

10 Pit in the Ghetto

11 Won't Work

12 Life Sucks

13 Falling Down

14 Raver B. S.

Retracide - Modification (1998)

1 Uncommon Sense

2 Giving In

3 Rock Star

4 Rule the World

5 Naive

6 Bloodstains

7 Worm

8 Goodnight

These guys used to promote their band by putting ads in Billboard Magazine. I remember the ads from back in the day.

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Saturday, November 18, 2023

25 Liars - Blind 7" (1997)

Punk-ska from New Jersey.

1 Blind

2 Burning Sound

3 Keep Your Head Up

4 Something Better Happen

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Sunday, November 12, 2023

Brazzaville [Sweden]

Introducing Brazzaville (1996)

1 Kaiser Man

2 Shut Up Train (Shut Up)

3 Battery Thinkers

4 Candlelight Dinner

5 Rock Me Baby

Brazzaville - The Girl is Allright (1998)

1 Flick It

2 Do U Like It?

3 MoonBoot Baby

4 Baby (You Got Me Down)

5 Great Women

6 FireGirl

7 Boom Boom

8 Be Whippy

9 Electricity

10 Goodbye Girl

11 Grindboy

12 Doin' it Again

Brazzaville started out as an alternative rock band called Tongue Gongue who recorded three demo tapes. The first two tapes were alternative music. The third one was ska. Then Tongue Gongue changed their name to Brazzaville and became a full-time ska band.

I included Tongue Gongue's third demo in this download. You can find their first two demo tapes on THIS YOUTUBE PAGE.

Tongue Gongue- Tongue (1995 demo tape)

1 Shut Up Train (Shut Up)

2 Great Women

3 Hej (I Love You, Let´s Go Stealin´)

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Sunday, October 29, 2023

7 Cents - 3 Songs (2001)

This was a demo CD from this band from Maine.

1 Easy to Please

2 Fashion Police

3 Working Week

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Friday, September 22, 2023

Do you know who this is? - a ska mystery [UPDATE - October 15, 2023]

I have about ten ska demo tapes without any covers or labels or any kind of markings at all. I don't know who the band is, what year the tape is from, or even where the band is from.

Earlier today I listened to some of these tapes and this one here stood out.

Every song is great. The voice sounds a little familiar but I can't place it exactly. This is 90s style 2-Tone inspired ska with female vocals played very fast. The last song is the A-Team theme song so that should give us a starting point but I have Googled this (or "done my research" as some might say) but I can't find anything about this tape.

There are four tracks of female-fronted ska from either the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s and they could be from any country. All lyrics are in English if that helps

1 - ?

2 - ?

3 - ?

4 - ? (The A-Team Theme Song)

UPDATE - I found an old folder with this tape that I had ripped previously and I have titles. I have searched these online to no avail. Do any of these titles sound familiar? Especially that first one? You would think that title would stand out.

1 Britishlessness

2 Er Uit

3 Mr. P.C.

4 A-Team

I thought her accent sounded Dutch and the title "Er Uit - "Get Out!" "Get outta here with that shit" -or- "Go on with your bad self" is a Dutch expression.

When I first said her voice sounded familiar I was thinking of Rebelation but now I'm reconsidering.

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Saturday, July 29, 2023

One Dollar Smoothie - Walking Away (1999)

Perfect third wave ska sounds from this band from Indiana.

(Perdue Uni? I think so but I'm not sure.)

1 Rubber

2 Non Sequitor

3 She's Not Happy

4 Black and White

5 Why

6 Smithereen

7 Wake Up!

8 Gimme a Slab

9 Singing in the Night

10 Typical Town

11 It's Over

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Monkey Business - Mistakes 7" (1991)

A - Mistakes

B - Keep on Walking

* - Opportunities

I posted this single in the early days of Tone and Wave but this is a new rip that sounds way better than the old one and I included another song that wasn't in the old post.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Los Dingos - 737 Destino Estambul (2002)

Female fronted third-wave rocksteady from Spain. Most songs are sung in English.

1 Being a Hero

2 Un Camino

3 Sweet Home Reggae

4 Atlantis

5 One Feeling

Monday, February 13, 2023

MU330 - Salamander Stew (1991)

I have never been able to find a copy of this tape so I do not have a rip to share.

In the past few weeks this was posted by two different sources.

There is a new YouTube channel called Ska Tapes which has also posted the complete Aquabats - Revenge of the Midget Punchers tape.

And Dennis Castro from the Ska in St. Louis Facebook page has posted a download link including images of the tape and inlay. (Posted January 29th).

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Stuck in a Groove - Beats in Your Mouth (1999)

For fans of Sublime. There were a lot of copy-cat Sublime bands around this time but this Arizona band had more of their own sound compared to a lot of other bands from this era. So many of those bands sounded like they only listen to Sublime. This band sounds like they actually listen to reggae music and take their inspiration from other sources.

1 People are You Ready?

2 Reggae Fire

3 Slow Ragga-Muffin

4 Yuma

5 Por la Raza

6 Mystic Biscuit

7 Fishtank

8 Stuck in a Groove

9 What it Takes

10 Waves

11 Don't Ya Know

12 People are You Ready? (remix)

13 I Feel Like Funkin' it Up

Swim Herschel Swim - I Wish I Had a Ray Gun (1991)

I have previously posted Swim Herschel Swim's CD which included some songs from this tape but not all of them.

I do not have a copy of this tape so these files have been respectfully stolen from THIS SOUNDCLOUD CHANNEL which posted great sounding versions of all songs on the tape.

I'm posting this for two reasons. First, people are still requesting this from me so I'm guessing it isn't coming up in their Google searches. And second, the track listing on Discogs is incorrect.

Jon Armstrong - the keyboard player for Swim Herschel Swim - does a blog where he posted remastered versions of nine of these ten tracks for free download and the way he numbered the tracks matches the track list on Discogs.

The way they are listed here is how they are listed on the tape.

1 Baby Babaar

2 Clueless

3 Ring O'Fire

4 Fuz

5 Kick Me (No Words)

6 Chickenfingalickin'

7 Mahi Mahi

8 Chevy Bossa Nova

9 R-Bug (Racism Bad, Unity Good)

10 Suzy-Q

Monday, January 16, 2023

Jerry Lives Twice - Living it Up (1999)

Rare California third-wave ska punk.

1 Someday

2 Super Jock

3 She Sucks

4 Better Days

5 New Girlfriend

6 I'm OK, You're OK

7 I Jave No Friends

8 Bus Trip to L.A.

9 Hide and Go Seek

10 Up All Night