September 29, 2021

Welcome to #SkaFest5000

Dear Margaret (a message to you?): We know it’s been a long time since you left Ska Land, so we’ve put together a comprehensive guide for what you, a 49-year-old woman in the throes of her third consecutive midlife crisis, can expect at our festival, if you decide to come. A lot has changed since you left, and we want you to be prepared, especially since you will not have a merch table to hide behind. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your potential stay at #SkaFest5000 more enjoyable.

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You will buy tickets

It will start with a photo of cupcakes. A photo from the same festival, 5 or 6 years ago. You will stare at that photo for a long time. Someone, most likely a woman, ¹ took the time to make hundreds of cupcakes and write band names on the frosting. She could have simply written “EST,” but she made the effort to write “Eastern Standard Time,” when she surely had a hundred last-minute fires to put out. If those cupcakes could talk, they’d say, “This festival is an act of love, created by and for ska people.” Her care and attention to detail suggest the entire festival is amazing.

You resolve to go, someday. That someday will come in 2019, after you have buried your mother and your dog, when you will have more freedom to travel and revisit your past. You will buy a weekend pass as soon as tickets become available.

You will not want to go

A pandemic will hit, and the festival will be postponed. Twice. By the time the event rolls around, you will have spent the better part of 18 months in your apartment, alone, or taking care of your post-stroke grandmother. You will no longer remember how to interact with people socially face-to-face, not that you were much good at it before Covid. Despite having been vaccinated, you will be reluctant to go; sitting in a quiet room with a book will sound like a much better way to spend a weekend. You will realize this is exactly why you should go — because if you don’t, you risk crawling even further up your own ass and becoming permanently antisocial and numb.

You will be 99.9% anonymous

Aside from a handful of old-timers and band members, you will know almost no one, and almost no one will know you. It will have been more than 20 years since you left this scene behind and headed west, so you will not have a VIP all-access pass for the backstage area with the familiar faces and the real bathrooms. Not to mention how different you look now: Older, heavier, hair mostly grey, no longer dressing the part. You will be mostly invisible, and that will make you feel safe. You will not be able to articulate why that is important.

On that remaining .1%

Once the welcome committee inspects your ID and vaccination card, takes your temperature, and puts on your wristband, it will be less than two minutes before you see your former/first boyfriend, the person who got you into this music 31 years ago, the person who has miraculously built an entire life and career from making and selling ska records, the person whose daughter is now the same age as you were when you met her father. And yet: It will not be awkward at all! You will be genuinely happy to see each other. At some point (Redacted), someone who knew you both back then, will approach the two of you, all smiles. You will pause your conversation and look at him expectantly, like “Yes, can we help you?” and he will back away awkwardly, saying “I’ll let you two have a minute,” as if it’s still the early ’90s and he just interrupted a relationship squabble. You will start to feel bad until you remember the time (Redacted) made a drunken pass at you.

A few minutes later you will bump into two old friends from Michigan. They will be your anchors for the weekend. Not because you are particularly close now, but because of what you shared 30 years ago in that insular Midwest scene, back when a kind of magic happened at damn near every show at Metro, Club Soda, Shank Hall, St. Andrew’s, and countless other clubs whose names you’ve long since forgotten. You will be grateful for their smiles, their familiar and comfortable presence, and how you can pick up with them right where you left off — with no judgment.

The sky will open, briefly, and the rain will send everyone running for cover. You will see someone in the water tent who looks very much like a friend you made on the ’90s ska listserv before meeting him in real life. You will wait until you hear him say the name of his city before you’re sure it’s him. There will be recognition and hugs and remember-when chitchat. He will mention (Redacted), someone you haven’t thought about in ages. His voice will fade into background noise as a memory surfaces: It’s 2 a.m. in upstate NY, and the band is giving (Redacted) a ride somewhere after the show. He’s sitting next to you in the van, holding your hand, quietly and sweetly. You don’t care if the band can see, because that kind of immediate connection with a guy you met on the road is so rare and special.

You will wonder what happened to him. And you.

It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon

This part is critically important: You are no longer 19. You will not have the stamina for almost 40 bands in 3 days. You will need to plan your time. That means skipping the headliners and other bands you’ve seen hundreds of times before (with a few important exceptions). There will be a livestream, which you will pay to download the following week, so you can see the bands you missed. Your hotel will have a fitness center. You will need to go hard on that elliptical each morning to prepare yourself for the day to come. Your calves will scream for a week afterwards, but whatever.

No matter how hard you try, you will look like shit. The livestream will confirm this! Try not to beat yourself up about it. Lots of people will have put on pandemic weight, and no one’s hair looks good in 90-degree heat and 90% humidity.

Everything is different now

If this festival is at all representative of today’s American ska scene, you will be struck by how much things have changed. For one, there is apparently no longer a dress code. Anything goes, and everyone is accepted. Even and especially the guy in the backwards, hooded, full-body, black-and-white-checkerboard onesie. He will be having so much fun, and it will be contagious! Also, the Bim Skala Bim bass player will not be wearing his Batman t-shirt. You will wonder if anyone else remembers that shirt.

The fans will be much older, although it’s possible that “the kids” will be in school and/or can’t afford to come to this event. Either way, you will be surprised at the amount of grey hair in the crowd. Speaking of hair: The number of men with full beards, both on stage and off, will have increased exponentially.

There is a moment in Eastern Standard Time’s cover of “Perhaps,” right before the bridge, when most of the band used to scream in unison, “TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE.” They don’t do that anymore. But you will still say it, quietly, to yourself. And wish like hell that your friend E., who used to play in EST and another band performing at this thing, was there with you.

Remember all those show-ending fights in the ’90s? The brawls that cleared out entire venues in Chicago/DC/Baltimore/New York? A thing of the past, thank fucking god. Thirty years ago, people in the audience were hurling “D” batteries at Coolie Ranx on stage. Now they treat Coolie, a featured performer as well as the festival MC, like a hero returning from war. #progress #elevation

And still the same

When the bands play “your” songs, you will still dance like no one is watching. You will remember most of the lyrics and sing along, or at least mouth the words. As trite as it sounds, the music will still make you feel alive in a way nothing else does. And you will still feel the same emptiness when it’s over. But it will only last for a week this time.

There will be bruises

Festival attendees will not be violent, but some will be… exuberant. A knucklehead will confuse happy jazzy Eastern Standard Time with aggro-spastic Voodoo Glow Skulls, try to start a circle pit behind you, and send you flying into the metal barricades. You will somehow break your fall with both sides of your right knee, but he will be long gone by the time you get up, ready for confrontation. You will need to remind yourself that these people have been starved for live music for more than a year and are so fucking psyched to dance/mosh/skank, that they almost can’t help themselves. Yours will be minor collateral damage, but you will not be able to watch that mortifying part of the livestream without holding the covers over your face.

And hormones

Most of the musicians you used to have crushes on will not seem all that cute anymore. But some of the others will suddenly look… really good? You will have some questions, including but not limited to:

• Wait, what? What number beer am I holding?

• Exactly when and how the hell did (Redacted) become so attractive? Why was I not copied on that email??

• Is this heat stroke?

• Did I just walk through a cloud of Axe body spray or is the wind blowing stage testosterone directly into my face?

• Have I become a walking menopause cliché?

You will be glad for sunglasses with extra dark lenses so no one can see you staring.

And awesome surprises

You will have forgotten all about Ska-Boom’s 1990 record, “More Tea Vicar,” until you hear one of the bands covering it. You will remember how downright giddy that record made you feel. Hearing the song played live (for the first time ever) will make you smile so hard your cheeks will hurt. Later you will go down a YouTube rabbit hole looking for the original (and fail). But you will learn that the song is about farting. That’s what the trombone honks are supposed to convey!

This is going to sound nuts, but: Bim Skala Bim will perform with Gangster Fun’s singer because Dan is sick. Before you can joke to your Michigan friends about shouting a request for Gangster Fun’s “Mario’s Hideout,” they will play that song, and you will be so happy. Their setlist will also include “Brown Paper Bag,” but they will run out of time. Stick around for Jay Navarro’s new band. He will bring John back up to do “I’d Buy a Gun.”

Hygiene

We shouldn’t have to tell you this, but just in case: Bring some Lysol wipes, because you won’t realize until it’s too late that the “shelf” you put your water bottle on inside the port-a-potty is, in fact, a urinal.

Don’t get all emo about it

Resist the urge to overthink and/or romanticize your past; you were a hot depressed mess back then, remember? Enjoy yourself, GTFO, and get on with your life. We’ll see you again next year.