Today I started my day by jamming to the Poppy Punk and Ska playlist I put together. We're having unseasonably warm 70 degree weather in Chicago right now, and it was the most perfect soundtrack for a warm and sunny Friday morning.

My favorite ska band is Catch 22. Their album Keasbey Nights is an absolute masterpiece. Not only is it perfect from beginning to end, it's seriously such a masterpiece that their founder Tomas Kalnoky re-recorded it with his new band Streetlight Manifesto 8 years after it first came out. There's truly no mood like that of dancing singing along with the title track on a sunny day.

I really miss how prevalent ska was in 90s teen movies. Clueless featured The Mighty Mighty Bosstones as a band playing at a warehouse party hosted by Cher's step-brother Josh's friends. They played "Where'd You Go" and "Someday I Suppose" while Cher and her friends danced around.

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Still from the film with the band playing on stage

I also cannot forget about the absolute greatest ska feature in a 1990s film. Anybody remember the Nickelodeon show All That? How about their skit about a very clueless and clumsy fast food worker named Ed, played by Kel Mitchell? For those who don't recall, it evolved into a feature film called Good Burger, and led to a Ed-inspired theme song by Less Than Jake called "We're All Dudes."

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Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?

Can we please go back to that? It's not like ska disappeared; this playlist of 1,997 (at the time of writing this) ska songs released in 2020 is well demonstrative of that. Bring it allllllll back.