Buck-O-Nine
Sustain
Asian Man Records
There’s a video by Reel Big Fish that shows a group of musicians signing on to work for a record label. They all wear identical prison jump suits, each stenciled “Punk”, or “Ska”, or “Metal”. The implication is pop bands are interchangeable, and must fit into specific categories to get signed. I can’t help feeling this is one of those hapless groups. Buck-O-Nine plays a straight ahead ’90s ska sound with a distressing similarity to more than a few discs in my collection. The Toasters, The Porkers, and Reel Big Fish come to mind, but there was boom in white ska in the late ’90s and the style is strict enough to prevent much experimentation.
Still, if you need a generic ska disc, you could do worse than Buck-O-Nine. They’ve been around since ‘91, sound clean as a shiny black suit, and have songs that mix tempo, topic, and mood. Just look for the pork pie hat in the record store.
Asian Man Records: http://www.asianmanrecords.com
