THE SKOLARS/TELEGRAPH

[Download "American Way" from Quit Your Band] EXPIRED

In keeping with the trend of posting music from my past, I decided a little Ska was in order. Yea fuck you, I liked Ska. Big deal, what 14 year old wouldn't? There still remains a side of me that cannot resist fast upbeat guitars closely followed by someone yelling "pick it up, pick it up". Seriously though, for me Ska was more than just goofy suits and horns. It was mainly about the unity, and how close those old ska bands brought people in my area together. At the end of the '90s not a single weekend passed without at least 50 different ska bands playing somewhere in Flint or Detroit.

In '98 The Skolars were at the top of Metro Detroit's booming Ska scene. They played anywhere and everywhere at anytime. People loved them and word started to spread. In order to avoid legal trouble with about a million other bands, The Skolars became Telegraph. For the next few years Telegraph continued to play shows and even signed a deal with Jump Up! Records. As the decade faded away, so did Ska. Coincidentally, Telegraph struggled to mantain their following. A bold choice was then made by the band, they just weren't going to play ska music anymore. The group ditched all their old material, changed their named to The Telegraph and started fresh. The end result was the heavily hyped album, Switched On. Switched On was a bland and seemingly careless combination of poprock and horns. The album ultimately flopped and the band called it quits. American Way is off their sophmore effort, Quit Your Band. This is undeniably one of the greatest examples of North America's 3rd wave ska movement.

-Miike