Blue Ska Ahead

Rancid, a pop-punk band with ska leanings, made a splash on MTV and the charts last year with the hit album And Out Come the Wolves, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a "ska-core" outfit, opened the Lollapalooza main stage last year, paying public tribute to the Toasters on several occasions.

"Those bands are right on the cusp of the hard-core movement and they're incorporating ska music into what they do, but I think it's a stretch of the imagination to call either Rancid or the Bosstones a ska band," says Hingley. "They're basically hard-core bands with a ska influence, but there's a lot of pure ska bands out there in a well-organized noncommercial movement."

Ironically, as the ska scene in America has flowered, the one in England has dried to a husk. The main problem, Hingley says, is a lack of the label support for ska that originally gave the music its commercial kick start in England.

Hingley started his own label, Moon Records, in 1984 to press and issue early Toasters recordings. "We kept the label mostly for ourselves for several years, then really started putting our shoulder into it in 1990, when we realized that ska was taking off and no other labels were on top of the situation," says Hingley.

Moon is now America's premier ska indie, with a roster of 30-plus bands that includes such notables as the Scofflaws, Let's Go Bowling, and Spring Heeled Jack. Moon was also the home of the Dance Hall Crashers, one of the best-known ska bands in the country, until the Crashers jumped ship to a division of MCA Records two years ago, sparking a war of words between the band and its former label that carries on to this day.

"It was not a very pleasant transition," says Hingley. "It's amazing and quite sad what happens to some people when they see money. We could have held out for more money, but we basically just gave [the Crashers] their last record for Moon and told them to go away."

Hingley's street cred in the ska scene was cemented by his decision last year to walk away from a deal with Mercury Records because the major label wouldn't let him keep using the independent distributors who had supported his efforts for more than a decade.

"We have to keep the ska scene tight as it gets bigger," says Hingley. "It's really the last form of alternative music that hasn't been exploited by the majors, so we can't go stabbing one another in the back.

"As it stands, ska is growing, but it's still underground and unspoiled, and I hope it stays that way even as it breaks. Because while this is fun music that's good to dance to, it has a serious side. It has roots and culture. This is not some bullshit pop music that people are being hyped to buy. It's the real stuff."

The Toasters are scheduled to perform on Tuesday, May 21, at Electric Ballroom in Tempe, with Spring Heeled Jack, and Kongo Shock. Showtime is 8 p.m. (all ages).