Ska'd For Life

Tonight we're at Falmouth Football Club waiting for local Ska legends Ska'd for Life to play their long-awaited comeback gig. It's a decent-sized venue and sold out quick sharp, so we feel lucky to have been invited to cover this tonight.

The band, fronted by original member and principal songwriter Lee Fitzgerald, was a leading force in the British Ska movement in the 1990s. Having toured with Ska royalty such as The Beat, Bad Manners, Desmond Dekker and The Specials, these guys chalked up hundreds of gigs across the UK and Europe at their peak, but dissolved almost two decades ago. In the meantime, Lee formed The Mighty Offbeats, and a few of their tunes will be heard here tonight, too.

It's a charity gig tonight, "Ska Bash For Sash", part of a schedule of events for much loved charity "Sasha Would Have Loved It", and everybody is here for the right reasons, support a good cause and enjoy some original Ska tunes. You're not gonna hear any Madness or Specials covers tonight, these guys are not a covers band, they are Ska'd for life.

They start off with Skamageddon, and a good choice, judging by the already packed dancefloor. Who knew there were so many pristinely turned out skinheads in Cornwall?! 

We have a big sound, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, sax, trumpet, and Steve's drums holding it all together, for this tightly rehearsed outfit whose main objective tonight is that everyone here has fun. The place is full of heat, ska heads and reasonably priced beer, what could possibly go wrong? (perhaps ask the guy in the Bad Manners T-Shirt......)

It's refreshing to come along to a Ska gig and not have the same old tunes churned out, and in the same way as I don't want to hear every rock band I go and see bang out a cover of Back In Black, it's not necessarily de-regueur for every Ska gig to include A Night Boat to Cairo in their set.

It's the first time I've seen these guys, and I'm impressed. The tunes here are first-rate, original, extremely catchy, and often with a touch of humour. "This is a purely innocent song about Bingo, it's called 69" and the song that a few days later is still ringing around my head, Fat Pants ( A Mighty Offbeats song, see youtube!) is a great example of this, I'd reel off some of the lyrics here but I don't want to get hunted down by the PC brigade....

Hearing a whole set of songs you've never heard before can sometimes be hard work, but Ska'd for Life seem to have the knack of delivering track after track filled with so many hooks you feel like you know them by the time they've finished. Don't Go Away and the brilliant Last Word (great guitar solo) being great examples of this.

As a front man, Lee is superb, he's got a great voice for Ska, commands the crowd with cheeky in-between song banter and bounces around the stage like a teenager, not easy for a set lasting almost 30 songs!

They play a few Mighty Offbeats songs in a row, Peace Love and Unity off their last album was a debut live performance. Lee dedicates Smile to his lovely wife, Lorna, who was in the thick of it on the dancefloor all night, then follows it up with Beer Belly. There's a few of them in here tonight!

Teacher is one of the last songs played, quite fittingly as Lee tells us it was the last song written by the band. Following this, we get self-titled Ska'd For Life, which was the first song they ever wrote, and what a banger it is, one of the strongest of a superb set and has the whole crowd bouncing, Lee getting various audience members to join in by shouting "Ska Ska Ska" into the mic.

The crowd has been up for this from the off tonight, and so has the band; nobody is going through the motions here, and it has been one big party atmosphere all night. Sasha would have loved it!

If you're in the South West and like a bit of Ska action, keep your eye out for these guys playing near you.

Setlist
Skamagedon
26" Screen
Bringing it Back
Private Investigations
Fat Pants
Don't Go Away
Last Word
Cruel to be Kind
69
You've Changed
Doing Alright
Studio One
Rudie
Dark Cloud
Pick it Up
Streetlife
Do The Ska
My Old Man
Driving Me Mad
Peace Love & Unity
Smile
Beer Belly
WLN
Teacher
Ska'd For Life

Encore
Strangers on a Train
East Side Beat
Whitewash