Bosstones Still Got The Ska In Them

06/12/2000 10:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(6/12/00, 10 a.m. ET) - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones can be found performing in Berlin, Germany, tonight (June 12) in support of their latest album, Pay Attention. But soon enough, the eight-member band will descend upon Fresno, California, where they will play the Warped Tour 2000 along with Green Day, Papa Roach, and others.

While the band scored a hit on pop radio in recent years with the tune, "The Impression That I Get," Bosstones' frontman Dicky Barrett tells LAUNCH that the fans can still find that band's core sound -- ska -- alive and well in their notoriously spirited live gigs. "We're as influenced by ska now as we were when we started," he says. "When we started it was very unpopular to be in a ska band. No one even knew what the word was. Then came, you know, when Planet Ska and Planet Punk aligned in 1997 and tons of bands came out of the woodwork, and everybody was asking me, 'So, how does it feel to be part of the big trend?' And those are the same people, by the way, that are asking me, 'How does it feel now that ska is dead?' I mean, I didn't pay attention to it then, I don't pay attention to it now, we've been the Bosstones for so long, that's what we've been trying to be, that's what we want to be."

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

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