Name that Ska Tune
Matt Thomes, friend of the Ska Geek Podcast, recently contacted me in search of a song. Here is the story of his quest to find this song:
Here is the breakdown.
My buddy and I first watched 411vm Issue #1 when we were 14yrs old. We are both now in our late 30's. It was the first skate video we both watched. This is the video that got me into skateboarding. We watched the video so many times I surprised we didn't wear out the tape.
I was really into punk and ska music but one song always stood out. It was the song from the Brooklyn Banks competition of the video. We both loved the song and immediately tried to find it. About two weeks later I told him I found the song. I recently bought Sublimes 40oz to Freedom. For some reason I though the song was Date Rape from the album, it was not.
I looked for the song off and on for a while and really started to dig back into it in 2005. I saw the credits online which I came to find out later were listed wrong. They had it listed as Funky Beatniks- Morning Void. If you think finding this song was difficult, try finding anything from The Funky Beatniks. I searched again for about a year and still came up with nothing.
Cut to 2018
I texted my buddy and told him I was going to find the song. He thought it was impossible, but said good luck. I thought the first step would be to start posting on Reddit and other message boards. I posted on every sub-reddit, music category, Facebook, YouTube, etc thinking someone has to know. Got a ton of good suggestions and found a ton a great bands, but couldn't find the song. This is when my obsession really grew. It's weird, I just couldn't let something go that I have been digging into for such a long time. I had to find the song.
Next I re-watched the video. I tried the obvious, Shazam, SoundCloud, etc., even knowing this would be a waste of time. I also slowed down the video to .75 speed to pick out some of the lyrics. I thought I heard the lyric "Drowning in a Sea Abyss". I did a google search on that as well with no results. I watched the credits again and started reaching out to the individuals listed on Instagram and Facebook. I reached out to founders of 411vm, art directors, music coordinators, music talent they thanked on the tape, but still had no answer. One of the founders of 411vm got back to me and mentioned he had his laptop stolen in 99' so his documentation was missing. The other founder searched but couldn't find anything.
It was time for Plan-B
Being a musician since the age of 9, I recorded the song myself. Drums, bass, and guitar. I'm not a horn player, so these were programmed on Garage Band. I thought maybe the audio was so bad that if I got a good recording, Shazam might be able to pick it up. No luck.
Next it was Plan-C
I reached out to everyone on Reddit etc again with the hopes someone might stumble across it. No luck. I started to take the suggested bands and reach out to the lead singers personally on Instagram and Facebook hoping the would know the band/song. None of this helped either. Probably the best thing about this search, is that everyone in the punk/ska/skate community were super helpful and really down to earth people. Even the people at the top of the bands/companies were really great to work with.
Plan-C was a bust, so I went to Plan-D
I started doing my search on Discogs. Checked out every ska album, comp,