Ska Boom - An American Ska & Reggae Podcast
Ska Boom - An American Ska & Reggae Podcast is hosted by Marc Wasserman, author of Soul Salvation: A Gen-X Love Letter To The English Beat and Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History published by DiWulf Publishing.
Wasserman helped to found Bigger Thomas -- the first ska band from New Jersey -- in 1988 and had a front row seat to watch the growth of American ska. Ska Boom is the audio companion to his books.
The podcast explores the impact of ska and reggae on popular music and features interviews with key ska and reggae musicians, audio documentaries about the history of ska and reggae and special episodes based on news and developments in the world of ska.
Ska Boom - An American Ska & Reggae Podcast
Soul Salvation - A Gen X Love Letter To The English Beat: Go Feet
Welcome back to the Ska Boom podcast! This season is called Soul Salvation and its the companion to my new book “Soul Salvation – A Gen X Love Letter To The English Beat."
Through the book and this podcast I’m telling the story of the Special Beat Service album which embodies both the brilliance and the bittersweet end of the English Beat whose songs served as a soundtrack for thousands of Gen Xers like me.
The book and this podcast is my tribute to the band’s final, triumphant act – which initially was largely overlooked – and how their music and the love of a young woman changed me forever.
This week I’m changing gears to focus on how the band signed with Arista Records and how they were able to create their own boutique label Go Feet Records which released their albums and singles as well as those of several artists they signed directly to the label.
Much of the detail from the behind-the-scenes machinations of how the band ended up signing and creating Go Feet comes from Malu Halasa’s band bio book “The Beat: Twist & Crawl” that was published in 1981.
My new book Soul Salvation : A Gen X Love Letter To The English Beat is now available from DiWulf.com and from Amazon globally.
The music clips included in this podcast fall under the “Fair Use Doctrine” as defined by Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The law allows for use of music clips for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.