This is in repsonse to all the letters I have been getting attacking me.

Today(02/22/98) was a day like every other. I got up had breakfast, took a bath, and then I checked my email. I came upon the following email which was like many I received after Feb 97( the month the song "Sell-Out started going on the airwaves and about a year after i put up my first rbf site). I like email..and I love responding to email..and I apologize to anyone who I never replied to becuase my computer was broken for a year. With-out any further ado though here is that email i recieved:
From:Punkygurl@yahoo.com
To:Tim@bbs.galilei.com
Date: Feb 21,1998
Subject: you suck
god yer such a fuckin loser, your another trendy ass wanna be who
learned about ska through the radio. why dont you listen to some real
fuckin ska? oh wait you probably dont know what real ska is. fuckin
faggot.
That was profound. Now right now I could just attack her right now but instead of doing that I'm going to just disprove her beliefs and just editorialize a little bit(If you dont like sarcasim you better go back to the main page ).
The first thing is that I dont suck. I just dont like the taste of a pacifier in my mouth, it just tastes wierd to me, sorry. I'm not a loser at all. I'm more of an asshole. Want to know if you are an asshole well heres the simple test. Read this story to find out it you are an asshole like me:

A man is in a hospital waiting room. His wife is in labor with their fifth kid. All the couples previous kids have had some major problem. The M.D comes into the waiting room. He says to the man. "Sir would you still love your kid if it didn't have any arms?" The man says "Uh, yes doctor". The Doctor says to the man "Sir would you still love your kid if it didn't have any legs?". The mans says "Yes, oh my god yes doctor, let me see my baby!!!". So the doctor takes the man to the nursery and he lifts the blanket uncovering the newborn and....It's just a giant EYE. The man screams "oh my good, my baby!". The doctors puts his arm around the saddend man and says "It's worse..He's Blind".


Now if you laughed out loud, then like myself you are an asshole.
Ok now I wasnt exactly sure how I was going to go about talking about the " , your another trendy ass wanna be who learned about ska through the radio." part. I wasnt sure if I was going to split my destruction of that theory in two parts or just take it on whole. I still don't know so we'll see how it goes. Hmm trendy...I dont consider myself all that trendy, Oh wait I wear work boots..yeah cool trendy Doc Martens that I got at my local mall store no wait a second these aren't Docs', these are Rugged Outbacks, and you know come to think about it that wasnt the mall it was Pay-less Shoe Source. Well at least I got my baseball cap with my brim bent because I want to be "trendy" wait this isnt a baseball cap..it's a leather beret...Damn basicly you get my point about that. ( I apologize to any trendy people I offened with my steroyotypes). I didnt know I learned about ska through the radio. I just always assumed it went like this:

A little over 9 years ago I (I was about 11) went to a VFW hall and saw a band play. That band was called "The Urge". Now I know what you are thinking. I've seen the Urge before you trendy(not trendy or loser... asshole remember?) and they arent ska, they are funk/metal like Fishbone. Well I got news for you along time ago The Urge was a four piece ska/punk band, and like Fishbone they later changed their style as they got older. Steve Ewing(who at the time was a lot fatter than he is now) sang, Pat Malecek Played guitar, Karl Grable played bass. Jeff Herchel banged on the drums. These guys werent good by any means, but I still liked them. I liked their energy and enthusiam. After they played I talked to one of their friends and I asked them. What exactly was the music that they played because it sounded different than most music I have heard. He said it was ska..of course I was like whats ska? I mean you have to ask if you dont know something that you find interest in. So he told me about some shows and stuff I went to see the Urge play a few more shows( about 50 or so my last Urge show was in 1996 when i decided that they werent a band that I liked anymore.) from the Urge I learned about other local ska bands alot have come and gone over the last 9 years like Mu330, Isaac Green and the Skalars(now "The Skalars" ,not to be confused with " The Skolars" now known as "Telgraph" ), The Secret Cajan band, The Hubcaps, Grahm (Later known as "The Clevers") a whole lot of other bands but I dont have enough space to go on about that. My point is that I didnt learn about ska through the radio, the only ska music program in St Louis( Ska's the Limit) didnt even come on the air until 2 years after I saw my first ska show.So another one of Punky Gurl's theories have been proven wrong .


" why dont you listen to some real fuckin ska?" You mean I havent been listening to real ska? Ok everybody I am selling all my cd's, vinyls, and tapes..I have been decieved. I thought the 187 different music titles I have been buying over the last 9 years were real ska..ok I'll sell my Mu330 "Salamander Stew" cassette for 5 dollars and I'll sell my Isaac Green and the Not Real Skalars "Strike Out Summer 7"" for 4 dollars and I'll give away my Laurel Aitken and Specials cd's for 7 dollars apiece. I will give away my "Mashin' Up the Nation" 12" vinyl to the first person who can find me some "Real SKA"( note..sale prices and free vinyl offer void in the Milky Way galaxy, sorry earthllings)

"oh wait you probably dont know what real ska is." Well yeah i just admitted that I am still waiting for the aliens to tell me and I'll give them the first pressing of "Mashin' Up the Nation", but while I'm waiting for them I'll check out the ska F.A.Q. Wait a second please. I just discovered something on the Ska FAQ. The exact location of what i found is located at The beginning. I dont want you to go there yet so I'll put it here for you:

Ska is dance music, first and foremost. Ska was a Jamaican dance music that swept out of Jamaica in the early 1960s to shake the butts of working- and middle-class Jamaicans before going on, via the West Indian immigrant connection, to the UK, and then on to the world. In the UK, ska was also known as blue beat music. Rocksteady, and later, reggae sprang from the loins of ska in the late 1960s. Mid-1970s and 1980s/1990s revivals of this popular dance form have kept this music alive and fun through the present. The ska beat on drums and bass, rhythm guitar, lots of horns and maybe a Farfisa or Hammond organ --- that's the ska sound..
.Ska was not recently invented by ska-influenced bands like No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish(They didn't???) or any other 90's band. Ska is a forty-year-old music form now in a fresh, vigorous 3rd Wave. Ska is rich in history, broad in scope and guaranteed to make you shake your groove thang...


So I found out for myself what ska is I'm sorry to all those aliens that sent me their emails but I already know now.But I guess that means I guess I can still sell the aliens my other c.d's that I thoguht were ska....ok Valdor*1 gets my Toasters and Pietasters cds and Namk$ gets the other 20 non real ska cds I thought were real ska cd's.
Well I'm glad I proved Punky Gurl wrong..no wait there is still something I haven't addressed with her letter yet the " fuckin faggot." part.. Well the only things I can say about that is my girlfriend Karen( a female human) is probably going to be very unhappy now. And as Jerry and George said "not that there's anything wrong with that"
Basicly the point of that incredibly long rant (with all respect to Dennis Miller) Is that just becasue some one likes Rbf, or MM Bosstones, Dance Hall Crashers, or heaven forbid even No Doubt, that doesnt make them Trendy. My question? for Punky Gurl and Two Tone Jason (one of the many torns in my sides on the whole ska email thing)and the people in the past and future who send emails like the one above is: Do you have something personal against the bands? Which is cool. If you don't like a band, but why would you go through the hassle of going to your search engine and looking up bands you dont like and harrassing the webmaster who provides a free service and put in a lot of work to do so? Another question is if it was the other way around would you guys have sent these types of emails?(i.e replace The Suicide Machines & LTJ with Link80, Or replace. Rbf with Mu330 or Save Ferris with The Skalars) I honestly think you would. So please do me and the other mainstream ska webmasters a favor. If you are going to write about your hatred for a band fine..but please try to do it in a professional manner. Calling some one "trendy, loser, or pouser" isnt going to get you any respect or even prove your point. So please leave out any personal attacks ok? Granted if you call them an asshole you might just get a hug.
*Disclaimer*. The above mention column does not reflect the views of any other mainstream-ska band fan website, but it should and it probably does.
(03/08/98)I have recieved alot of letters about the above column, you can read some of them by clicking here

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