SONG OF THE DAY: "What If" by Rx Bandits

Now that I'm living in a big city, I have a real commute for the first time in my life. That means I have 45 minutes at least twice a day where I have nothing to do. I find reading on the train too difficult, especially when you're standing with approximately zero feet of personal space. There is also an automated voice interrupting your thoughts every 30 seconds to tell you where you are and where you're going, even though those things are very easy to determine just by looking out the window. Doing nothing is incredibly boring and invites strange people to talk to you, so my solution thus far has been to listen to my iPod.

Because I refuse to adapt to modern technology, I still use my 30 GB iPod Video that I purchased in 2006. Yes, it still works, and yes, the battery lasts for about two hours as long as I don't change the song or volume too often and I keep it pressed against my skin for warmth, which requires me to tuck it into my waistband like some weirdo. I didn't use my iPod much in college, which means most of the music on there is what I listened to in high school. This very long story about nothing has led to me telling you that lately, I've been listening to a lot of the music I listened to in high school and didn't listen to for years.

One of those bands that will permanently exist in my high school years is Rx Bandits. Even though they consistently released albums through 2009, each successive album got weirder, more experimental, and, ultimately, less fun and less listenable. So I mainly listened to their 1999 album Halfway Between Here and There, along with occasional listens to 2001's Progress, which was the album upon which they began systematically removing their ska sound and influence in favor of a weird prog-rock, psychedelic, jam band-ish sound that I never got into. While their albums following Progress contain undeniably better music from a purely artistic perspective, Halfway is where it's at when it comes to creating exciting, upbeat music that doesn't bore you with its extended intros and obnoxious distortion.

In relation to most ska/punk, Halfway was a unique record. The horns didn't blast out obnoxious lines in a formulaic order (before each verse and during the chorus, with maybe a horn bridge thrown in there) like every other ska/punk band was doing. Instead, the compositions were well thought-out and the horns were utilized in a very specific, intentional manner. The guitars didn't just play fast ska chords in fast ska rhythms during the verses and fast power chords during the chorus. The bass didn't just do an uninspired impression of a reggae bassline at a faster tempo. The drummer didn't just pretend he was in a punk band, regardless of what everyone around him was doing.

Instead, the band recognized that they had different influences outside of ska, and they embraced this side of their musical interests. The band was very talented and created some very inspired music in the midst of a very uninspired genre. I'm not surprised they ended up abandoning the sound altogether, because it was actually a very gradual, logical progression from one album to the next. And besides, what's a band worth if they don't evolve and challenge themselves? Rx Bandits did that, and I respect them for it. However, I always preferred and missed the sound they had on Halfway. Check out the opening track from that album for a taste of what more ska/punk bands should have been doing back in the day!