Example research essay topic: Count Basie Bob Marley - 1,580 words

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For my week posing as professor for music history 10, I would like to discuss the meaning of and history leading up to the mid 90 s ska selection by Less Than Jake: Sugar in Your Gas Tank. Sugar in Your Gas Tank was released on Less Than Jakes 1996 album on Capitol records: Losing Streak. Although they had actually had many previous releases on independent labels, this was Less than Jakes first major label record. Previously only having an underground Indy following, being picked up by a major label and getting radio play made their audience grow exponentially. They have since released another album on Capitol which has also had a fair amount of success. I would like to make the claim that Less than Jake is a hybrid of many different genres of music.

There are many different influences (which I will go into in more detail later) on Less than Jake, but I think the most significant worlds which seem to have come together are the Irie and the angry: Reggae / original ska and Punk. Both of these two genres were created by alienated / disgruntled youth cultures. They each had their own methods of voicing their social unrest, and their own ways of dealing with it. The energy of these two types could not be farther apart from one another, however, they manage to fuse together quite nicely in the mid to late 90 s form of ska.

When the Irie and the angry come together, we get a playful yet aggressive musical category: ska. Although I will not spend that much time analyzing them, in the songs lie clues into some of these feelings of social problems. It seems that I'd more content with it all, If I had it in me to stop my random thoughts, I could deal with this nonstop spinning world. If only I could say that everything's ok frustration, hell, who needs it anyway. be the most closed minded that I could get This song seems to recognize that there are many problems that make life difficult to deal with.

He says that the world would be easier to accept if he was stupid and didnt think. He seems to be saying that life is messed up, and the easiest way to deal with it is to ignore it. Why not just sit back and smoke cigarettes, and coast through life without frustration? It would be easier, but people who are smart and aware are not able to do so.

They seem to say I wish I could just say screw it. This is exactly what many youth opt for actually. Within this attitude are two different approaches; to say screw it and be happy in your own way (the irie), or to say screw it and be pissed off at everything (the angry). I think that these two approaches are somewhat voiced through Reggae / old Ska and Punk. The musical features of Sugar in Your Gas Tank which best display the bands attitude and the roots of the genre are: tempo, guitar stroke, brass horns, and the drastic difference in mood between the verse and the chorus. Sugar in Your Gas Tank, along with every other Less Than Jake song, is set at an extremely fast tempo.

The drums pound out a fast beat that gets the crowd hyped up. The manner in which the guitar is played is crucial in defining the music as ska. Throughout the verse lyrics of sugar in your gas tank the guitar is played on the off beat with an upstroke motion, highlighting the higher note strings of the instrument. This manner of playing on the upbeat makes the music seem just that: upbeat.

This technique is exactly the same as that used by every Reggae artist, only much faster. The presence of the horns is also a critical aspect of ska. They also serve to make the music more upbeat and danceable. What really drew me to this song is the direct contrast between the verse and the chorus. The verse basically has the guitar playing the upbeat rhythm while the bass plays the more highlighted melody, interspersed with horns.

This part sounds very playful and fun. However, when the chorus comes in the guitar volume is jacked way up, the distortion is thrown in and power chords are played while the horns blast out and the vocals become more intense. The mood immediately becomes much more aggressive. Of course when the next verse begins, it goes right back to the upbeat, and so on. The mixture of these two moods and styles in the same song interested me, and I set out to map out a reason for it. When I started this project, my intentions were to prove that ska was created in the 90 s, and was a hybrid of Reggae and Punk, with swing revival influences shown in the horn section.

After research I was quite surprised to find that things were not at all as they seemed. As it turns out, ska preceded all of these! It helped to create these categories, and was then rediscovered and changed into something entirely new due to the genres that it had created. I broke down the modern ska lineage of Less Than Jake into three categories: Punk, the British two tone movement, and swing revival. Roughly ten years before Less Than Jake a band called Operation Ivy hit the scene. They came out in about 1987 as a very rough young band, and turned out to be one of the most influential bands on modern ska.

They are the perfect link to two of the three branches. First, the punk branch. Punk has two major sections as well; the U. S. , and the British invasion. In the U. S.

bands like Fear, Black Flag (77), X (77), and even back to the Stooges were very important in the 70 s and 80 s in building the American punk scene. These lead to more modern bands like Rancid (three of whos members actually used to be in Operation Ivy! ), whove had a more recent impact on Less Than Jake. Occurring a little earlier than this was the British invasion in the 70 s. The most important influence being the Sex pistols (76). Leading up to this hardcore, screw everything band were names like The Talking Heads (75), The Ramones (74), and earlier with?

and the Mysterians 96 tears, or Count Fives Psychotic Reaction. These two separate scenes were building at about the same time. The other extremely important link that is building in this very same era is the British two tone movement. This, as it turns out, is pretty much an early form of ska without the modern hardcore edge that the punk scene has given it. Bands like Madness (77) and The Specials (77) have had a direct impact on all modern ska bands.

Since the two tone and the British invasion were occurring almost simultaneously in history, its really not at all surprising that we now have songs like Sugar in My Gas Tank which practically alternate between the two styles. The really surprising link comes in when you look to Jamaica in the early 1960 s. This is actually where ska was created! A band called the Skatalites came out in 1963 who practically invented ska. The Skatalites were the first to use the upbeat and horns (just quite a bit slower), and a very young Bob Marley with his Wailers were right there too! It seems that before Marley become famous for Reggae (not coined until 1968) he was recording quick, upbeat ska songs.

So, Reggae did not help create ska; but rather, ska directly created Reggae. (Others like Jimmy Cliff and Toot and the Metals were also involved, leading later to Steel Pulse and others). The only other link to add is the Swing Revival chain. My original explanation for this was the presence of horns. However, the horns turned out to come from early ska. Regardless, modern swing revival bands and modern ska overlap in some areas, so the link is worth tracing. Bands such as the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies and The Brian Setzer Orchestra (94) use their horn section similarly to some ska bands.

Theirs however are usually much more elaborate. The Brian Setzer Orchestra has influences from two different directions; rockabilly and big band / swing . His earlier band The Stray Cats came out of Britain in 1979 with a heavy rockabilly flavor. This was later changed into more of the big band style, which can be traced back to such greats as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. The horn section in all of these is crucial, and lends the music to a better mood and puts a tap in the listeners foot. Although Less Than Jake may just be a bunch of punk kids acting silly and having a good time on stage, there is a long history of events which led up to their genre of music.

I found that a modern band like Less than Jake actually does have some important distant relatives like Count Basie, The Skatalites, Bob Marley, and the stooges who made it possible for Less Than Jake to do what they do. So what does happen when the irie meet up with the angry? Apparently they recreate their own distant relative of the upbeat ska. Bibliography:

Research essay sample on Count Basie Bob Marley