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In Defense of Ska: Expanded 2nd Edition
One of Pitchfork’s 11 Best Music Books of 2021
Recommended book in Rolling Stones June 2021 Issue
With an additional 30,000 words of compelling stories, research, and analysis, music journalist and In Defense of Ska podcast creator/host Aaron Carnes presents the case that ska never died, by jumping headfirst into ska’s “lost years,” i.e., the period after the ’90s third-wave ska boom.
New topics covered include LA’s ongoing vibrant traditional ska scene and how young Latinos are keeping the ska torch aflame, how the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inadvertently kicked off a thriving scene focused on keeping community alive in New Orleans, a deep review of Christian ska group Five Iron Frenzy, who broke a Kickstarter record in the ’10s while making progressive activists out of their fan base, a close inspection of a hipster rocksteady scene in Brooklyn that grew so popular it nearly kicked off a nationwide revival, and more secret ska past revelations with none other than Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump—who has a story that, up until recently, was carefully guarded.
Plus, the book re-explores several bands featured in the first edition, revealing new layers and more details about all the bands fans love, like Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Operation Ivy, the Slackers, Hepcat, Mephiskapheles, and Reel Big Fish. With 30,000 additional words, this is the complete ska package.
Recommended book in Rolling Stones June 2021 Issue
With an additional 30,000 words of compelling stories, research, and analysis, music journalist and In Defense of Ska podcast creator/host Aaron Carnes presents the case that ska never died, by jumping headfirst into ska’s “lost years,” i.e., the period after the ’90s third-wave ska boom.
New topics covered include LA’s ongoing vibrant traditional ska scene and how young Latinos are keeping the ska torch aflame, how the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inadvertently kicked off a thriving scene focused on keeping community alive in New Orleans, a deep review of Christian ska group Five Iron Frenzy, who broke a Kickstarter record in the ’10s while making progressive activists out of their fan base, a close inspection of a hipster rocksteady scene in Brooklyn that grew so popular it nearly kicked off a nationwide revival, and more secret ska past revelations with none other than Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump—who has a story that, up until recently, was carefully guarded.
Plus, the book re-explores several bands featured in the first edition, revealing new layers and more details about all the bands fans love, like Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Operation Ivy, the Slackers, Hepcat, Mephiskapheles, and Reel Big Fish. With 30,000 additional words, this is the complete ska package.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
468 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 12, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 25, 2024
This is the definitive book on ska because I am mentioned in it by name
August 6, 2026
Love the player (the music), hate the game (the unending band names that are puns on the word ska)
November 29, 2024
In his book In Defense of Ska, Author Aaron Carnes brings ska out of the shadows to show readers that the genre is much more than a horn-filled, late-1990s fad. Part history, part journalism, and part memoir, the book’s newest edition contains even more stories from those who played and loved ska in the ’90s and beyond. Carnes gives ska musicians and fans a chance to embrace their “checkered pasts” and relive a scene filled with inclusion and joy. (Read the rest of my review at Louder Than War: https://louderthanwar.com/in-defense-...)
January 1, 2025
Let's Face It, nobody who dislikes ska is going to read this book and suddenly like it. It almost seems like the author realized this partway through and shifted from "defending" ska to storytelling its rise and fall and random anecdotes about bands he knew and liked. The structure is all over the place. There were errors and typos, and sometimes characters would be introduced by last name only, like "Ebel decided to..." where if you didn't know he meant Brandon Ebel, the founder of Tooth & Nail records, you'd have no idea what he was talking about.
That being said, I loved it and read the whole thing in a week. The additional sections in the expanded addition were the best, and I'd like to see a sequel that does a deeper dive into some of the larger bands that were mysteriously absent from the book.
I also enjoyed learning more about first wave, 2-tone, and the deep anti-racism that ska wouldn't exist without. This book as motivied me to check out a lot of the earlier bands that I didn't like when I was growing up because they weren't punk enough for me, and also diving into what some of the newer bands are doing outside of the ones I already follow.
That being said, I loved it and read the whole thing in a week. The additional sections in the expanded addition were the best, and I'd like to see a sequel that does a deeper dive into some of the larger bands that were mysteriously absent from the book.
I also enjoyed learning more about first wave, 2-tone, and the deep anti-racism that ska wouldn't exist without. This book as motivied me to check out a lot of the earlier bands that I didn't like when I was growing up because they weren't punk enough for me, and also diving into what some of the newer bands are doing outside of the ones I already follow.
December 31, 2025
This was a really long book, and I didn’t always love the organization of it. I am somebody who simply likes ska and wanted to know more, and I think that there was way more than I needed. I’d recommend this book to people who are already serious ska fans, not beginners. I appreciated some of the history and the origin stories and tales about the bands I actually knew, and I’m always interested in how cultures embrace or reject new music, reported in hindsight. I enjoyed listening to many of the songs and bands Carnnes mentioned along the way. I would’ve preferred maybe a 100 page book a bit more!
December 24, 2024
Exactly what you'd want it to be. A love letter to Ska music with some good first hand stories of being in a ska band peppered in. Slight ding for some disorganized prose, but it was a fun upbeat journey to be on... definitely learned a bunch of new bands and some fun tales of bands I love.
December 11, 2025
Partially a trip down memory lane, partially a history lesson, and partially introducing an old ska fan to new (or new to me) artists. Carnes love letter to Ska music is a fun read for fans of ska and an informative read for those who may look down on the genre.
June 1, 2026
Comprehensive and detailed accounts of several ska bands. Not bad. This was my first audio book and It is actually my least favorite type of "book" type. But content wise I enjoyed hearing about my favorite type of music.
May 30, 2025
loved it, definitely gave me a bunch of extra bands to look up! would love to see something similar done for the UK ska scene by someone as passionate as Mr Carnes!
January 24, 2025
3.5 Stars
Picked up this book because I really enjoy ska, especially third-wave stuff. My dad introduced me to the genre pretty young with tracks from Madness and The English Beat (he was a big new-waver), as well as stuff from the Bosstones and Buck-O-Nine. But growing up in the suburbs of LA, it came back over and over again. I remember driving down PCH blasting Less Than Jake's The Science of Selling Yourself Short, and having my middle-school friend Jennifer'shot older sister in art school tell me I looked really ska in my checkerboard tie when picking her up to go to a church-sponsored dance (swoon). I went to Ska-lloween concerts, and became an official Aquanaut at my first Aquabats concert (a traumatizing experience for my wife). So, like, I wasn't in the scene but I wasn't not in the scene...
That being said, I know the history here. I know the basics of the waves, how Caribbean immigrants influenced British punks in the 70s, how ska is not fast reggae but instead that reggae is slow ska (a gross simplification, I'm sure). But anyway, I think I was expecting a deeper dive into that way of looking at things, and instead I think this book ended up as a weird amalgamation of thought-dumps on different aspects of the genre and the scene. Honestly, in a lot of ways, it reads like a deeply fragmented memoir where the author has to keep explaining the context of it all. And then repeats it in the next chapter with different names and places.
Look, I enjoyed probably the first half of this book. There were some really interesting dives into the DIY scene, which was entirely foreign to me. I'm obsessed with the whole idea of the Build Your Own Life zines that Kamala Parks wrote for Maximum Rocknroll back in the 90s, and keep trying to figure out how to duplicate that for movements that matter to me. I loved the discussion on Fishbone and their work in anti-racist spaces, as well as the general ska against racism two-tone ethos. And I loved hearing about the Latin ska scene and how it's become more of a movement worldwide than it even was in the US. But overall, I just kind of got tired reading this one. Oh, and I had the newest edition that has an additional 75 pages as an epilogue that just recounts more hyperlocal ska scenes.
Oh, also, I found it very strange that they couldn't decide if ska should be silly or not. On the one hand, the author would talk about how fantastic it was that Skankin' Pickle and We Are The Union (his own band) would write silly songs about pizza or pickles or whatever, but then included a whole chapter about how ska is Serious Business™️. The Aquabats themselves get a single mention in the book, and it's so offhand. And look, maybe I'm just peeved that my favorite bands didn't get their day in the sun, but I know other people have issues with inclusion here too. Save Ferris's lead, Monique Powell, has publicly become pretty angry about being relegated to, "That band that sung ska Come On Eileen and also sung once with the Bosstones", when Save Ferris was pretty influential in the scene.
I just think in the end, this book either set an impossible task or claimed to be more than it was. It's expansive in its quest to define the ska scene, but also seems to gatekeep pretty heavily at the same time. I don't know that there's a way to satisfy those of us religious hopefuls who await thesecond third fourth coming of ska.
Picked up this book because I really enjoy ska, especially third-wave stuff. My dad introduced me to the genre pretty young with tracks from Madness and The English Beat (he was a big new-waver), as well as stuff from the Bosstones and Buck-O-Nine. But growing up in the suburbs of LA, it came back over and over again. I remember driving down PCH blasting Less Than Jake's The Science of Selling Yourself Short, and having my middle-school friend Jennifer's
That being said, I know the history here. I know the basics of the waves, how Caribbean immigrants influenced British punks in the 70s, how ska is not fast reggae but instead that reggae is slow ska (a gross simplification, I'm sure). But anyway, I think I was expecting a deeper dive into that way of looking at things, and instead I think this book ended up as a weird amalgamation of thought-dumps on different aspects of the genre and the scene. Honestly, in a lot of ways, it reads like a deeply fragmented memoir where the author has to keep explaining the context of it all. And then repeats it in the next chapter with different names and places.
Look, I enjoyed probably the first half of this book. There were some really interesting dives into the DIY scene, which was entirely foreign to me. I'm obsessed with the whole idea of the Build Your Own Life zines that Kamala Parks wrote for Maximum Rocknroll back in the 90s, and keep trying to figure out how to duplicate that for movements that matter to me. I loved the discussion on Fishbone and their work in anti-racist spaces, as well as the general ska against racism two-tone ethos. And I loved hearing about the Latin ska scene and how it's become more of a movement worldwide than it even was in the US. But overall, I just kind of got tired reading this one. Oh, and I had the newest edition that has an additional 75 pages as an epilogue that just recounts more hyperlocal ska scenes.
Oh, also, I found it very strange that they couldn't decide if ska should be silly or not. On the one hand, the author would talk about how fantastic it was that Skankin' Pickle and We Are The Union (his own band) would write silly songs about pizza or pickles or whatever, but then included a whole chapter about how ska is Serious Business™️. The Aquabats themselves get a single mention in the book, and it's so offhand. And look, maybe I'm just peeved that my favorite bands didn't get their day in the sun, but I know other people have issues with inclusion here too. Save Ferris's lead, Monique Powell, has publicly become pretty angry about being relegated to, "That band that sung ska Come On Eileen and also sung once with the Bosstones", when Save Ferris was pretty influential in the scene.
I just think in the end, this book either set an impossible task or claimed to be more than it was. It's expansive in its quest to define the ska scene, but also seems to gatekeep pretty heavily at the same time. I don't know that there's a way to satisfy those of us religious hopefuls who await the
January 31, 2025
Sure the book is not chronological; but why does it have to be? I loved the book! So many great artists to listen to while you read the stories. I would say it is a definite read for any ska-enthusiast.
January 24, 2026
He tells you from the start that this is not a complete history of ska, and it isn't. But it's very very close. What begins as a defense of ska ends up being more of a love letter to the genre, with a particular affection for 3rd wave. Highly recommend for any ska fan.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews