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Just as I'm really starting to enjoy Moby, it was time to head over
to the Main Stage and one of the bands I was really looking forward
to seeing - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. The self-professed
inventors of "ska-core," the Bosstones were vying for the
title of "best-dressed" band at Jamboree 97. If image is
everything, this band has a head start on the rest of them, and are
really starting to get the recognition they deserve for the ska
explosion that has been hitting the airwaves.
I'm just in time, the show is starting, and this great mix of
music with a ska sound but a hard-core center has got the crowd
assembled in the lawn moshing and surfing, but Dicky Barrett, lead
singer of the Bosstones, isn't a happy man. While the lawn folks are
up-and-moving, the pavilion folks seemed ready for a nap rather than
a ska band. Dicky wouldn't stand for this, nope, not at all, and he
was off the stage and into the pavilion area. This should have been
a sure-fire way to get the crowd going, but no, sit there they did.
Seeming a little more upset, Dicky finds an empty seat, sits down,
and chastises the crowd telling them that "If you're gonna just
sit there, then I'm gonna just sit here too." And damn it, I
think he was ready to do the Mighty Mighty Bosstones set from that
seat, but the crowd started to stand, Nate
Albert started wailing on guitar, and how could you just sit there
when Ben Carr is dancing all over the stage (Carr has, what I think,
could be one of the coolest jobs in the world. No instrument, listed
in their press release as "Bosstone," he bounces all over
the stage getting the crowd totally into the music that doesn't
really need much help getting into.)
Finally it was party time, dancin' and singin', the crowd was
awakened, I'm having a blast, and I'm listening closer and closer to
the Bosstones and notice a difference between them and their cohorts
that are proliferating the airwaves - not to put down the other
radio-friendly ska bands, but The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are just
super talented. With a mix of fantastic guitar jams by Albert, a
super-tight horn section, and Dicky working a crowd like there is no
tomorrow, it's good to hear talent in such fun music.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones is high up there on my list of
highlights of Jamboree 97, and it's TWO MIGHTY MIGHTY THUMBS UP for
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
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