Our friends from Indiana, reggae-soul group Green Room Rockers, need your help!  As you may know, Super Bowl XLVI will be played in Indianapolis, IN on Sunday, February 5th and Rolling Stone magazine is putting on a contest to help a local band open up the Volkswagen Rock N’ Roll Tailgate Party for headliners Jane’s Addiction and The Roots.  As with most online contests, you have a limited time to vote.  Voting begins today and ends on Sunday, January 29th.  You can vote once per day.  To vote for GRR, click on the link below and click the vote button.  When it asks you to login, just connect with Facebook.

As a bonus, you can stream the band’s latest recording, a reggae version of Bob Dylan’s “Wagon Wheel.”  Also, if the band wins, frontman Mark Cooper promised to talk trash about the Patriots during the entire set!

To vote for Green Room Rockers, click HERE

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Friend of MNSKA and bassist for Brooklyn rocksteady band The Forthrights, Sammy Kay has started an Official Tour Blog over at Musical Occupation.  The Forthrights will be embarking on the Ska Is Dead: Young Guns Tour with We Are The Union, Stuck Lucky, Brunt Of It, and Green Room Rockers.  After that, the band will be heading West with Maddie Ruthless on the Rocksteady Ruined My Life Tour, which will be hitting Minneapolis on Thursday, May 26th at The Terminal Bar, featuring MNSKA bands The Dropsteppers and The Prizefighters.  Read through Sammy’s first blog entry and find a free download from Babylon Party Machine (aka Matt Wixson) who is mashing up The Forthrights’ latest EP Camp Birdman with the sounds of Motown.

You can follow The Forthrights tour blog HERE

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Last Saturday, we here at MNSKA had big ol’ party at The Red Sea in Minneapolis, MN.  4 incredible bands came rocked a large crowd into a fever on one of the coldest nights of the winter.  Here’s a video of Green Room Rockers closing down the night with a steamy cover of Etta James’ song “I’d Rather Go Blind.”  Big thanks to the bands for making the long drive, for the fans for representing the scene, and for anyone that helped make the show a success.

You can check out the video on YouTube HERE

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The small but dedicated Twin Cities ska community will be out in full force Saturday at the Red Sea for an all-ages show. Indiana’s Green Room Rockers headline with support from Ohio’s Pinstripes. Both acts recently teamed up for the split release “Midwest Soundclash.” Local bands the Dropsteppers and Secondhand Ska Kings are also on the bill.

A reminder that doors are at 5pm with music starting at 6pm for the show.  We may be a small, dedicated community, but I have good reason to believe that it will grow significantly in 2011.

You can read the entire article in the Pioneer Press HERE

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The first big MNSKA show of the year is happening THIS SATURDAY at The Red Sea (316 Cedar Ave S.) in Minneapolis!  It marks the triumphant return of Green Room Rockers, the first MN show by The Pinstripes, and will feature 2 outstanding MNSKA bands The Dropsteppers and Secondhand Ska Kings.

Here are the details:

• Doors open at 5pm
• Secondhand Ska Kings: 6:00 – 6:45
• The Dropsteppers: 7:00 – 7:45
• The Pinstripes: 8:00 – 8:45
• Green Room Rockers: 9:00 – 10:00

Host of the Flyover Ska Show and contributor to MNSKA.com, Courtney Klos, will be the MC for the night.  There will also be door prizes!  Everybody loves those!  Also, if you have until Thursday to win a pair of tickets to the show.  Just email mnskanews@gmail.com with ‘GRR and Pinstripes’ in the subject line!

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In lieu of the upcoming concert featuring the Green Room Rockers, DJ Reverend Evan took the time to review their self-titled CD for MNSKA.  Evan was the DJ of the long-running Rude Radio show, but has since passed the torch to a new DJ.  The Green Room Rockers show is happening on Saturday, January 22nd at The Red Sea in Minneapolis and will be featuring The Pinstripes, The Dropsteppers and Secondhand Ska Kings, to which you can win a pair of tickets.

You can check out the review after the jump.

Modern ska music has undergone a curious evolution in the decade or so since the crash of the so-called “Third Wave”. Even more curiously, this shift mimics the evolution of ska music in general, and it has everything to do with Motown. Back in the mid 60’s, the Jamaican ska scene, influenced by the popular American R&B and soul music being imported and broadcast throughout the island, was slowing down, becoming less focused on horn accompaniment and more reliant on bass lines and crooning front men. This shift eventually birthed rocksteady and exploded the careers of legends like Ken Boothe, Desmond Dekker, Bob and Marcia and others. And while this new American “rocksteadification” has much less to do with an unseasonably hot summer and more to do with the shifting tastes of the survivors of the Third Wave and the young upstarts who grew up listening to them, it is amazing to see not only the growing influence of artists like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye in ska and reggae music, but how that influence has fostered burgeoning talents from unexpected locations like Lafayette, Indiana’s Green Room Rockers.

In their self-titled sophomore album, GRR has cemented itself as a leading force in Midwestern ska with a potent mix of clever songwriting, party-worthy melodies and a vocalist who would be seemingly equally comfortable in a giant-lapelled suit on Soul Train and a t-shirt and suspenders at The Triple Rock. If nothing else, this album helps differentiate GRR as a great band in their own right, rather than the talented kid brothers of bands like Deal’s Gone Bad or the Slackers. Lead singer Mark Cooper is the Bobby Womack to DGB’s Sam Cooke, a grittier voice bearing more resemblance to a midwestern Jesse Hernandez then a Ken Boothe or Alex Desert. In fact, the overall tone of the album in many ways captures and defines Indiana ska in the same way that Go Jimmy Go represents the island jauntiness of Hawai’i or the Slackers’ “rocksteady as sung by the cast of Newsies” defines New York City. “Indiana Ska” is similar to the Chicago sound, but sootier, less inner city and more failing suburb, but with all the romance and good-times-having that all great working class music has.

This “Working Man’s Reggae” ethic comes out especially in the more socially conscious tracks like “Betterway”, detailing the plight of the victims of the credit crunch (and opening with an organ part plucked right out of Ike and Tina-era soul) and the sing-along ready “Broke” which not only has a crowd-riling chorus but also one of the most solidly “Third-Wave Traditional” horn parts on the album. Album standout “Basement Song” needs to be the anthem of every ska scene not in New York or LA. Every single line should resonate with anyone who’s biggest ska show of the year had crowds in the dozens. Seriously, I’m tempted to start an underground club with “”In these bars and basements/ more than mildew grows” carved above the door. Like any good party needs good guests, several heavyweights make an appearance on the disc as well. Dave Hillyard of The Slackers and probably 20% of all ska bands formed after 1988 lends a hand on the rootsy dub track Exit 178 (in addition to producing the album) and DGB’s Todd Hembrooke and JC Brooks of JC Brooks and The Uptown Sound guest on a cover of the Sam Cooke tune Bring It On Home. There’s even a few good panty-droppers like “Seal The Deal” and “You And I” thrown in for good measure.

Green Room Rockers represents one of the first real examples of a new (post 2000) ska group showing the chops not only to be stand out musicians, but to be capital I important to the national scene. In terms of historical significance, this could be on par with Reel Big Fish’s Turn The Radio Off, The Slackers’ The Question, or MU330’s Chumps On Parade as something that everyone interested in ska music should have, if only as a cultural artifact and as a bellwether for the next few years. In Green Room Rockers’s case, it also helps that this is one of those albums that won’t leave your rotation for a good few months.

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If you’re in the Minneapolis area, be sure to check out our first live event at The Red Sea, featuring performances by Green Room Rockers, The Pinstripes, The Dropsteppers and Secondhand Ska Kings.  Head to mnska.com for more information.

The fine folks at Copycats Media have a deal for you, the loyal listener.  Mention the Flyover Ska Show and they’ll add 100 FREE 11X17 full color posters to your order.

The Flyover Ska Show is now available on Stitcher, the free podcast radio app for all your better smartphones. It even has shows with no talking.

This show is brought to you in part by MNSKA.com, Minnesota’s Ska Community and the Fancy Pants Gangsters podcast network.  Become a fan of the show on Facebook, follow Courtney on Twitter, or email him at FOSS@fancypantsgangsters.com.

You can download this episode HERE or subscribe to the show on iTunes.

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More ska and reggae sound coming from Cincinnati’s The Pinstripes!   The band has posted another sample of a song off their upcoming album, which was mixed and mastered by Anthony Abbinanti (The Drastics).  Here’s a sample of their song “(Might Be Her) Fool”:

Be sure to catch The Pinstripes when they roll through Minneapolis on January 22nd at The Red Sea with Green Room Rockers, The Dropsteppers, and Secondhand Ska Kings.  You can RSVP the show by going to the Facebook event and even win a pair of tickets to the show!

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Green Room Rockers have posted a video from their massive show in Chicago last month at The Metro.  The guys absolutely killed it!  This video is of them playing a cover of Sam Cooke‘s “Bring It On Home” with guest vocalists Todd Hembrook (Deal’s Gone Bad) and JC Brooks (The Uptown Sound).

The band will be bringing this massive sound to Minneapolis on Saturday January 22nd at The Red Sea with special guests The Pinstripes, The Dropsteppers, and Secondhand Ska Kings.

You can check out the video on YouTube HERE

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Cincinnati’s up-and-coming ska and reggae group The Pinstripes have a new album on the way and boy are they excited to share it with you!  The album is called Out Of Many (UPDATE: I’ve been informed it is still untitled) and has been mixed and mastered by Anthony Abbinanti (The Drastics).  The Pinstripes have begun posting samples of the tracks off the new record, beginning with the sample of “Alright Baby.”



Be sure to catch The Pinstripes when they roll through Minneapolis on January 22nd at The Red Sea with Green Room Rockers, The Dropsteppers, and Secondhand Ska Kings.  You can check out the Facebook event and even win a pair of tickets to the show!

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