Ska is one of those perennial bubbling-under-the-surface music genres. "Ska is dead" has the same valence (none) as "punk is dead"; it's never been true, it will never be true. Ska, like punk, is not dead, it's lying in ambush, and will strike when you least expect.

Ska is on an upswing right now, and tedious people have been calling for a "fourth wave" for a few years. Meanwhile, diehards like We Are The Union, and Reel Big Fish, and even (until Terry died in 2022) The Specials carried on skanking like they always did, Jer of Skatune Network dragged ska into the future by the hair, and a whole raft of new bands (none of whom I know much about, but check out literally everyone on Bad Time Records) cropped up without much caring what Billboard thought about it.

But let's jump back a minute and look at one of those diehard third-wave bands that're still out there doing it: Catch 22, and their first album, "Keasbey Nights".

The Orb have always been hard to pin down. Sure, you can read up about them on Wikipedia, and you'll learn all sorts of terribly interesting facts about The KLF, Public Image Ltd, Killing Joke, Paul Oakenfold and just about every other electronic or post-punk act you might care to name other than The Orb. They're hard to pin down, so it's easier for the free encyclopedia that anyone can put slurs on (and all of their sources) to talk about everything that has gone on around The Orb rather than the group itself. And that's fine.

American liberals and fascists have largely the same opinions on gun control, they only differ on whether you should have to have a badge to commit lynchings. On one hand, the fash demonstrably think that gun rights are reserved for white men or they wouldn't be the first to support pigs murdering Black people for simply possessing a gun (or something the hog thinks is a gun). On the other, liberals heartily endorse proliferation of gun violence against almost everyone as long as said violence is committed by state agents.

This is quite possibly the single most important punk compilation ever released. Fat Mike somehow got 101 bands, many (most?) of whom were not signed to Fat Wreck Chords, to contribute songs that were 30 seconds or less to this and so it's this perfect time capsule of punk in 1999. Everything is here, you have giants of the era like Blink-182, The Offspring and Green Day, all at their most actually punk, you've got bands like Black Flag (who were sadly already on their way into right-wing irrelevance) and The Descendents that were monsters long before Fat Mike ever got started, you've got a no-star lineup of bands that should have been bigger than they were, and every damn thing in between. You even have Terrorgruppe and Wizo representing German punk in the best way possible and Spazz shit-talking half the other bands on the album! What more could you want?

Less, uh, unfortunate songs like No Fun At All's Get A Grip, that's what we could want. It's uh... well, I'm glad we don't have people using "fag" as a generic insult so much these days. That's a good thing. Maybe we could also not have White Flag pushing their dumb fashy bullshit too, I'd be down with that. Still, in the balance: An absolutely essential beast of a compilation. Not bad for something that everyone thought was a joke at the time.

Goth is dead. That's okay, because it's been dead since about ten minutes after it was invented and none of us care too much. As long as I can cadge a Djarum and a glass of absinthe or a snakebite, the world is gonna keep turning. But goth, being (suitably enough) undead for much longer than the five months or so in 1982 it was was ever really alive in the first place, has strayed far, far from its roots, especially musically.

As truly classic goth music goes, there are giants of the... genre? Style tribe (ugh)? Subculture? Bands even the straights know about. Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure.

And, of course, there's The Sisters of Mercy.

It is always infuriating when social critiques get twisted into "and that's why everybody [implicitly: EXCEPT ME AND PEOPLE IN WHATEVER COHORT IS CONVENIENT] is stupid and lazy today". No, it's not capitalism, see, it's because of the People You Don't Like.

"Nobody wants to work!" You bought a home and car on a minimum wage job, everyone works easily just as hard as you did for a lot less. "People today have no attention spans!" Movies have gotten interminably long and people will regularly chill and watch four hour video essays or 8 straight hours of a new Netflix series at a shot, sounds like a skill issue. "These lazy workers are the reason cars suck now and Boeing planes fall out of the sky!" When was the last time you reported a safety or quality issue to your boss or in fact made a meaningful decision about your work at all, my good fucking dude?