Rocker (feedbot)
Platinum Member
Imagine the taste of a Slush Puppy when you’re a kid whose mum doesn’t let them have sugar, or the sensation of a teenager who’s just worked out that they can just about have that house party and clean up before their family get home. A Saturday spent at the skate park with your mates and that one guy who’s had puberty a bit early picks up a four pack of Smirnoff Ice in plastic bottles to share. That’s the feeling of listening to Reel Big Fish’s ‘Turn The Radio Off’ for the first time in 1996; so vivid and so alive, yet so specific to a time and place. Along with Less Than Jake’s ‘Losing Streak’, it was one of the albums that made the world seem more Technicolor – like we were Dorothy and we’d just crashed into the land of Oz.
Let’s not think about Reel Big Fish as they are now; Aaron Barrett and a rotating cast of pals covering Phil Collins and self-releasing, when they haven’t loaned their brass section to Ice Nine Kills that is. Let’s remember them in the nineties, when they popped up in the movie ‘Baseketball’, with perfect hair and hyperactive dance moves, in that brief, golden few years when ska and ska-punk ruled the charts. It was the era when I, as a teenager, dated the male equivalent of a punk Manic Pixie Dream Girl. We listened to Flogging Molly in his parents’ garden, debated which was the best Bad Religion song endlessly, and wondered if we could write Matt Freeman a letter to ask if he could teach us the bassline to ‘Maxwell Murder’. While that relationship hit the dust when I went to university (and refused to give up bacon sandwiches for him), ‘Turn The Radio Off’ will always hold that kind of idyllic, bright energy of a time when life was more straightforward and skanking at the Cartoon in Croydon at the All-Ages night was the solution to all your problems.
Part of what makes ‘Turn The Radio Off’ so great is that if it came out now, it’d be slated. Putting a huge banger next to three minutes of noodling around, next to a song which feels weirdly personal about getting dumped, next to a mini Rock Opera (or should that be ska opera?), should be the recipe for a shiny brass disaster. But that’s the point; this is the sound of freedom, of a band throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. ’S.R.’ got reworked into a multi-genre medley at live shows, and ‘Sell Out’ has officially acquired Ska Icon status. The song that’s stuck around the most, however, and assumed the two-tone mantle of the song that represents Reel Big Fish, has to be ‘Beer’. It feels like the sequel to The Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem’; our jaded protagonist has given up on the girl he’s been making dessert for and has decided to find the solution to his crush at the bottom of a pint glass. From the taut, dark intro through to the self-destructive, stripped back bridge and the disturbingly upbeat ‘woo-hoo-hoo’, this is the blueprint for the sugar-coated misery which is the trademark of this era of Ska-punk. The worst part is how relatable it is. Sometimes, to paraphrase ‘How I Met Your Mother’, you just need to be a ‘Woo Girl’, and this song captures that rollercoaster of needing to party out your self-loathing for just a few minutes. ‘Sell Out’ does this too, and it does it so incredibly well. As if someone’s only two paths in life were working fast food or signing a major label deal…but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it would have felt in that moment to someone considering making a life changing career decision, and these very specific young adult experiences are what Reel Big Fish bring to life musically.
Ska-Punk historians will probably agree that 2002’s ‘Cheer Up!’ is a far better album, spawning the very petty ‘Ban The Tube Top’ and arguably a better loser anthem in the form of ‘Where Have You Been?’, but that came when as one last magnificent Ska swan song, just as the boom was finishing. ‘Turn The Radio Off’ was still experimental, and feels like a band grappling with suddenly being flavour of the moment. Each song is an individual, and there’s no reliance on eighties covers to jazz up their set. We feel like Reel Big Fish are our sarcastic, sometimes inappropriate, but charismatic friends by the end of ‘Turn The Radio Off’… maybe friends we’ve lost touch with, or friends we should call more often, but friends all the same, who were there with us in our formative years and still have a whole lot to offer.
KATE ALLVEY
Let’s not think about Reel Big Fish as they are now; Aaron Barrett and a rotating cast of pals covering Phil Collins and self-releasing, when they haven’t loaned their brass section to Ice Nine Kills that is. Let’s remember them in the nineties, when they popped up in the movie ‘Baseketball’, with perfect hair and hyperactive dance moves, in that brief, golden few years when ska and ska-punk ruled the charts. It was the era when I, as a teenager, dated the male equivalent of a punk Manic Pixie Dream Girl. We listened to Flogging Molly in his parents’ garden, debated which was the best Bad Religion song endlessly, and wondered if we could write Matt Freeman a letter to ask if he could teach us the bassline to ‘Maxwell Murder’. While that relationship hit the dust when I went to university (and refused to give up bacon sandwiches for him), ‘Turn The Radio Off’ will always hold that kind of idyllic, bright energy of a time when life was more straightforward and skanking at the Cartoon in Croydon at the All-Ages night was the solution to all your problems.
Part of what makes ‘Turn The Radio Off’ so great is that if it came out now, it’d be slated. Putting a huge banger next to three minutes of noodling around, next to a song which feels weirdly personal about getting dumped, next to a mini Rock Opera (or should that be ska opera?), should be the recipe for a shiny brass disaster. But that’s the point; this is the sound of freedom, of a band throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. ’S.R.’ got reworked into a multi-genre medley at live shows, and ‘Sell Out’ has officially acquired Ska Icon status. The song that’s stuck around the most, however, and assumed the two-tone mantle of the song that represents Reel Big Fish, has to be ‘Beer’. It feels like the sequel to The Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem’; our jaded protagonist has given up on the girl he’s been making dessert for and has decided to find the solution to his crush at the bottom of a pint glass. From the taut, dark intro through to the self-destructive, stripped back bridge and the disturbingly upbeat ‘woo-hoo-hoo’, this is the blueprint for the sugar-coated misery which is the trademark of this era of Ska-punk. The worst part is how relatable it is. Sometimes, to paraphrase ‘How I Met Your Mother’, you just need to be a ‘Woo Girl’, and this song captures that rollercoaster of needing to party out your self-loathing for just a few minutes. ‘Sell Out’ does this too, and it does it so incredibly well. As if someone’s only two paths in life were working fast food or signing a major label deal…but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it would have felt in that moment to someone considering making a life changing career decision, and these very specific young adult experiences are what Reel Big Fish bring to life musically.
Ska-Punk historians will probably agree that 2002’s ‘Cheer Up!’ is a far better album, spawning the very petty ‘Ban The Tube Top’ and arguably a better loser anthem in the form of ‘Where Have You Been?’, but that came when as one last magnificent Ska swan song, just as the boom was finishing. ‘Turn The Radio Off’ was still experimental, and feels like a band grappling with suddenly being flavour of the moment. Each song is an individual, and there’s no reliance on eighties covers to jazz up their set. We feel like Reel Big Fish are our sarcastic, sometimes inappropriate, but charismatic friends by the end of ‘Turn The Radio Off’… maybe friends we’ve lost touch with, or friends we should call more often, but friends all the same, who were there with us in our formative years and still have a whole lot to offer.
KATE ALLVEY