Episode Transcript
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Welcome to Witchpolice Radio. Regular listeners to this show will be aware that sort of the main focus of Witchpolice Radio has always been talking about the music scene here in Winnipeg and in Manitoba. And then I like to say Manitoba-adjacent.
And a lot of the time I try to shoehorn guests into that description, even if they don't necessarily fit it. And I think that this guest on this episode is a good example. We're going to get into sort of who you are and what you do in a second. But I think this is maybe one of the biggest stretches I've had as far as trying to force it into the theme. But as we'll talk about, we do have a little bit of a connection that I think might work.
So to start this off, the best way to do this is if you want to introduce yourself and give a bit of background about what it is you do.
AARON CARNES: My name is Aaron Carnes.
I've been a music journalist for, I don't know, 15 plus years. I wrote a book in 2021 called In Defense of Ska, and I started a podcast in 2021 called In Defense of Ska.
And then, you know, on October 29 this year, I am releasing an expanded second edition of In Defense of Ska, and the podcast continues.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Awesome. And the podcast is great. I mean, I've definitely, I probably don't need to explain this to people who know me or know the show, but I was in a ska band in the late nineties, kind of when it was having its last very large eruption of popularity. I guess I've always been a fan of the genre.
I talk about it fairly regularly. And so I think that when I heard the started listening to your podcast, it was great because it gave me a lot of insight into artists that either I still listened to or I had listened to once upon a time and reacquainted me with them.
Obviously, in order to do this book, you've been, I'm assuming, fairly heavily immersed in ska, sort of, you know, eating, sleeping, breathing, the genre. But I guess to start this off, I feel, and I think this comes through in the book as well, that ska has unfortunately got this negative reputation now years after its last big public mainstream push.
So what is your sort of take on the way that ska is perceived? And I'm assuming that's sort of part of the impetus for writing this book in the first place.
AARON CARNES: Well, I think ska's perceived like.
Like a guilty pleasure, maybe like just kind of a, you know, something...something with little value to it, something that was goofy.
And I don't know if it's the same in Canada, but in the US it's a very strong narrative. And I know in some other countries it's not really the same narrative. And I think that the thing that we're left with, I think the thing that we're dealing with is that the legacy is pretty strong. And it, like, it really impacts people's ability to... how they digest ska music of the past and if they allow new bands to really gain traction.
Like, I think you're, you're seeing...you are seeing some increase in interest in ska and new ska bands, but if you look at other genres, like emo or hardcore pop punk.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah.
AARON CARNES: Like you're seeing, I feel like you're seeing bigger resurgences and a greater allowance for them to be recontextualized for the moment right now.
And I feel like ska's, it's better now than it was five, six, seven years ago. But I just still feel like it's a barely weighted down by all of this, like, baggage.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, I think you're right. I think that it seems to a lot of people to be so permanently associated with the time and place, which is funny because that time and place is one of many times and places that ska has had over its like really lengthy history, but people tend to really drill down on that late nineties sort of, you know, punk with horns sort of vibe, which obviously is not indicative of the genre as a whole, but that's probably when they heard it when they were, you know, in high school, in their early twenties, whatever, and that was that sort of being grained in their mind as what the genre is.
And I think you're right about hardcore and emo. I mean, I have a teenage kid in high school and some of her friends are into emo and there's no there's no shame about that. Whereas a few years back, it seemed almost like emo was a swear word, and. But now it's accepted again. And, ska, I think you're right. Even here as well, it still has that stigma, which is weird.
So why ska, for you? I mean, I know. I know, you know from your book and from your podcast that you've, you were in a ska band. You've done this same thing as a lot of us have done, but you sort of stuck with it.
Like, a lot of people haven't as far as following these bands and then sticking with the genre and still being immersed in it, where a lot of people from that era dropped off. I mean, like I said, I was in a band. We did a reunion on my podcast a few years back. I think I'm the only one who still listens to ska out of the dozen people who are in the band. And I think that's fairly typical of a lot of people that were sort of involved 20, 25 years ago.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, I think for me, as a teenager, early twenties, ska was probably the kind of music that was most meaningful to me.
So in terms of my initial sort of interest in the music is very important to me. But why I, like, sort of pursue this sort of mission now, I don't think it's like, because I love ska so much, I must do it. I think it's more my journalism brain sees this sort of lack, sees this sort of, like, you know, why. Why aren't people caring about this? Or why aren't people, like, some of it's like, why don't people, like, take these bands seriously? Like, why don't they ask them real questions and give them long, in-depth interviews and look at their history with a sense of importance.
A lot of people that are in ska bands even now who were in ska bands are getting interviewed now outside of the sort of ska bubble. It's like, what's ska? Explain ska. It's almost like they can't just exist as a band within the context of their own legacy or have people who even understand the subculture that they come from talk about it within that framework.
So I guess I'm drawn to that. I'm drawn to being able to dig into that and sort of provide that.
AARON CARNES: And so how long did this book take to write? Because, I mean, I know you have the second edition coming out, which is even more content, and obviously doing the podcast, you're constantly doing interviews with these bands and artists and people involved in the scene.
So I imagine you can probably continue adding to the book sort of forever, but the initial book itself, how much work was that to put together all the interviews and research and everything else?
AARON CARNES: Well, I would say it took me seven years, but it wasn't really seven years of consistent hard work. It was like a good... the first five years were me doing other stuff and kind of doing interviews and working on the book when I had time as a secondary project.
But the last couple of years, I kind of reorganized my life and really put the book first and everything else second. So I did a huge chunk of it in the end. Those two years, the second edition, I did a good amount of work in about a year's time. But I also, like, a lot of the work was done through the podcast. I took interviews I did with the podcast, and I was... it's research.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Sure.
AARON CARNES: I interviewed these people. So I went ahead and included that as research for the book. For the second edition. Yeah.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: And that's endless. You could do many more editions with it because your show is... how many episodes are you in at this point?
AARON CARNES: We are around 189. 190 at the time of this recording.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah. So I'm sure there's plenty more to dig in there and just to kind of tie this to the local thing. I mean, I guess we previously existed not in the same interview, but on the same episode of another podcast that Greg Soden, who has guest hosted a few of my shows as well. The Unscripted Moments podcast about Propagandhi, talking about the whole 'Ska Sucks' phenomenon. And, you know, Winnipeg band Propagandhi and Winnipeg band, Whole Lotta Milka.
And that whole thing, which is cool, that. That weird little blip that seems so hyper local to me, and I think to a lot of people here, that it had any kind of impact. The fact that anyone knows what Ska Sucks is outside of Winnipeg is bizarre to me. But obviously, clearly it was a huge thing, right? That song. I mean, Propagandhi got so huge on the one record, and that song went everywhere.
But just in listening to your show, I mean, people should listen to that episode if they want to hear the conversation about that song. But I was listening to your episode with Matt from the Planet Smashers, and I listened to your episode a while back with Bedouin Soundclash.
And it's very interesting to hear you reacting to sort of what the Canadian ska scene was like from an outsider's perspective, because things like that Bedouin Soundclash single, which was ubiquitous here, you couldn't avoid it. And this is like, I guess, in the early two thousands, and it didn't really make an impact in the States.
And I think it's. It almost seems like the ska scene internationally seemed so small and tight knit, but it really wasn't. I mean, there was all these sort of different scenes happening in different places that had similarities, but I mean, some of the South American scenes and stuff, too, that I've learned about from your show and your book and other places. It's weird. It all kind of existed in tandem with each other, but there's definitely differences.
AARON CARNES: I learned fairly recently when we had Frank Turner on the show that the Bedouin Soundclash single when the night fills my song was also very huge in England.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Oh, really?
AARON CARNES: Yeah. He made it sound like it was pretty similarly huge in England as it was in Canada.
So that was kind of interesting to hear because it played on the radio there and it made its way into various commercials as well, which I think was kind of the story with that song in Canada.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, it was a Zellers commercial.
AARON CARNES: So that combined with it being a radio hit, sort of made it this. And then also, I think being on some kids shows too, sort of made it this, like, thing that everyone knew but then, when Soundclash tour, the US, they're like an opening band for ska bands, or they are, they were on Warped Tour, you know, they're...
From what I'm told, maybe it was from you, I'm not sure. It was. Somebody was like, they toured with ska bands in the US, but in Canada they like, tour with indie rock bands, so they're more seen as an indie rock band.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: And I actually saw them in 2005 in Minneapolis at the Warped Tour there, which is the closest one to us here in Winnipeg. And they were on a tiny little side stage, and this was at the time when that album was out, that single was out. They were massive here. I'd seen them play to a packed house a few months earlier, and then there they are in this little side stage, and no one knows who they are, you know, just a few hours down the highway, really. I mean, just across the border. It's crazy.
So I guess, how do you sort of contextualize all these different ska scenes when you're putting something together like this book? I mean, the podcast is different because you can pick and choose different parts, but it's so much wider than it actually seems like it was at the time. Right? There's so many different facets to this. So how did you decide what to focus on and what to keep, what to cut as far as this larger story of existence?
AARON CARNES: Well, the focus of my book was to argue that ska has been dismissed and deserves to be reevaluated. So from my point of view, what I was speaking about, it kind of really revolves around mid to late nineties US ska bands. So I'm kind of using that as like a base point. Like, this is the kind of music that has sort of impacted the view of people in the US largely and their take on ska.
And so I kind of focused on it from that point of view. And I also tried to highlight a lot of bands that were around at the same time, but were not mainstream, because I felt like a lot of those bands sort of were counter to the mainstream's narrative of ska.
Like, sure, you had these bands like Hepcat or MU330, they were bands that were known by people who took an interest in ska. But if for the people who sort of learned about ska through the radio or MTV, they might have not known about these bands. And so their view of ska being like Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris Goldfinger.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Like the Bosstones, that's about it. Yeah, yeah.
AARON CARNES: Had they gotten deeper in, they would have saw that ska was a little bit more diverse than maybe their impression was just from that sort of, like, mainstream portrayal of it.
So I wanted to show... I didn't actually do a super deep dive into the actual mainstream phenomenon of ska. I devote a little bit. I devote some time to that, but I'm trying to show that this time period, what leads up to that time period, what happens after that time period was a much bigger thing than how it was portrayed. I think that was a lot of the point I was trying to make.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: So, yeah, I mean, you do a chapter on Reel Big Fish and you focus on some of these bands, but, yeah, definitely there's more of the underground, sort of within the sky community itself. That is the focus of the book.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, because I was trying to say ska didn't, like, just jump on MTV out of nowhere in 1996. It was. There was all kinds of context and that sort of DIY scene, those hundreds of bands continued, continued on during that.
There was a whole scene happening at the same time, and the scene happened after that, too. So it really kind of, like, challenges, I think, a lot of people's point of view of what the ska scene was or what the ska movement was.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think that people almost saw it as being similar to the swing revival, which was really, really short lived and had only a handful of bands that, you know, compared to the ska scene, at least, that were actively doing it. And it was just this blip on a pants commercial or something. And it ended a few months later.
But I think people confuse the two because they just remember The Impression That I Get or something or a Save Ferris song and that's it. And that's all they would take away from it. But I think those bands that you mentioned, like Hepcat, for example, and Mu330, a band like Fishbone, all of these ones that sort of weren't playing that sort of. I guess the term is the mozzarella stick ska. They're the ones that I feel have lasted the best.
I mean, I can put on a Hepcat record today and enjoy it as much as I did in 1997. And that's not necessarily true for some of the more punk with horns, I guess, for lack of a better term. Bands that I loved at the time. Some of those have not aged well. But I think that the ones that have been more sort of with the culture and less of a bandwagon sort of vibe are the ones that have stuck around still.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, no, for sure.
And I think it's like a lot of the stuff that was mainstream. I think that it was ska that was mixed with pop punk specifically, which I think was like, what was the most commercially viable version of it. And a lot of that had to do with pop punk going mainstream a year or two earlier.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: So it really kind of. All those bands like that. Yeah, sure.
AARON CARNES: Yeah. So it gave some context. So, you know, the difference between Green Day and offspring and Goldfinger. Not as huge. Not a huge leap. It's, you know, very within the same ballpark.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Right.
AARON CARNES: So not everyone likes pop punk. I mean, it's just, you know, I think, like, people see ska as this sort of like, sub genre of pop punk. And I. It's not. But I understand why they think that if you're seeing Green Day breaks, Offspring breaks, Rancid breaks, they have a ska song, you know, Reel Big Fish and all these bands. So it seems like it's a version of pop punk, definitely.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: And it was marketed like that. I mean, especially here. There was this compilation called Ska Trax that came out in. Must have been '97 or something, '96-97 that everyone here had here. It was one of those, like, cheap compilations that everyone I knew had it. And it had a lot of bands that are still good. A lot of the pop punk type stuff. And then there was just some straight up, you know, Blink 182 song on there. No ska whatsoever.
But they just, you know, Universal or whoever was making it, this is how they're gonna market it. Kids who like, you know, they heard dammit on the radio, now they want to go buy this and maybe they'll like this weird thing with horns. Right. It was. It definitely. Yeah. The way it was marketed was this is the same thing. It's just maybe good different instruments.
AARON CARNES: So I think that's. That's a lot of, like the. A lot of the legacy. The problem in the legacy too. It's like ska is its own genre.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah.
AARON CARNES: And I have total respect for ska-punk and hardcore, you know, ska core I have. These are sub genres. I see them more subgenres of ska. I mean, some people lean more punk than they do ska, but yeah, ska has its own genre and has its own history. And yes. Yeah, it's interwoven with punk. I mean, two tone ska punk was an influence for sure.
It was ska and rocksteady and reggae mixed with sort of punk rock and sort of post punk stuff happening. So punk was in the stew from a pretty early point in ska history. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you need punk to play ska. You don't. There's plenty of, you know, the Slackers, they don't really have any punk in their music. Even if they have like a sense of, you know, like, if they like to think of themselves as kind of punky dudes, you know.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: They don't have punk sonically, no. Attitude wise, sure, but sonically not at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point. And they were sort of lumped in with that whole scene as well because of the Hellcat Records connection. And they were on all these, again with the compilations.
That's how I heard Hepcat and the Slackers and all these bands first, you know, being in Canada and not. I don't think they were touring up here very often at that point at least. And that's that first, given the boot compilation, I heard Hepcat, early Slackers, I heard Dave Hillyard's, the solo thing, all those bands. And then I still listen to most of them sort of today, but it was definitely sold on a punk compilation.
I was going to ask you though, I know you had that in depth chat with Matt from the Planet Smashers and you covered a lot of sort of the history of Canadian ska and Stomp Records.
And it was very interesting as someone who was tangentially involved in the sense that I was going to ska shows here in Winnipeg. And I was playing in a shitty ska band at the time. We opened for the Planet Smashers a couple of times, stuff like that. I mean, I wasn't really part of their whole thing at all, but it was cool to listen to that and then sort of fill in some gaps of stuff that I was curious about.
But what was your... did you have any concept of Canada ska scene at the time? Like, were the Planet Smashers on your radar? Sort of at their peak?
AARON CARNES: So, yeah, I was going to. I was going to tell you. I was going to give you a little Canadian ska history from the US perspective.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Sure. I'd love to hear that.
AARON CARNES: King Apparatus definitely was known down here. Cause I think they had to deal with Moon for distribution, so they weren't as big as they were up there.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: They're huge here.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, that one record with their biggest songs that was distributed down here for Moon. So I definitely had that record.
They didn't tour too much down here because they broke up once. They were really starting to make some movement.
Planet Smashers are probably the most known Canadian ska band in the US. I mean, that's because they toured so much down.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, they did.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, yeah, they did the Ska's Dead tour. They did all kinds of touring, especially, like, in the 2000s, actually, so...
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: So post... kind of post the third wave boom.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, yeah, no, they really, like, they. I think he talked about that in my episode. They really made a movement for a good chunk of the 2000s to, like, get into the US market
Now, Bedouin, they've toured, actually quite a bit in the US, but they haven't cracked the US in any kind of commercial way.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah.
AARON CARNES: Now, once you get beyond those three bands, it's super obscure.
Yeah, I can't really think of. Oh, I guess what's his face. The Flatliners started as a ska punk band.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: I mean, yeah, their first record.
AARON CARNES: That band's totally known down here. I don't know how many US Flatliners fans are aware of their early ska punk record, though, because that was kind of like...
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, that's the main one. I know them is from that. I actually listened to that record and then I heard the next one and it wasn't ska. I was like, I'm not into this so much. But, yeah, I can see that for sure. It's interesting.
AARON CARNES: They got signed to Fat Wreck Chords after that record, right? Yeah.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: It's funny because Stomp Records, like, to me as a teenager, sort of, you know, in the nineties, listening to this stuff and being really into it, they seemed like such an important label to the point where I figured everyone must have known these bands.
Everyone must know who Whole Lotta Milka is. Even though I'm seeing them, you know, like once a week at the Albert or something in Winnipeg, and there's a handful of people there. It seemed like it was such a bigger deal. And they were on these compilations that were going across the country. And it's interesting to sort of listen to your stuff with Matt and some of the other episodes and realize that this wasn't outside of the little bubble of Canadian ska bubble. This wasn't really a thing at all.
AARON CARNES: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think, like, there wasn't a ton of bands out, you know? Okay. So in general, when it comes to music, it is difficult for non us bands to crack the US, for sure. It's just a thing, a cross genre.
US audiences are very picky about non US bands. And there's all kinds of logistical issues. I know, like, to tour here is very challenging. There's, like, expensive immigration.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Definitely.
AARON CARNES: It's not immigration. It's whatever it's called.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Getting across the border is. Yeah, yeah.
AARON CARNES: And it's expensive. It's very expensive. So it is difficult for bands to crack the US. And, you know, we kind of think. We kind of think of ourselves as, like, the center of the universe when it comes to entertainment.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Not without good cause, too. I mean, like, you have so many more people than we do, right? You have ten times the population, and that means at least ten times the band. So I get it. I get it for sure. And half the stuff I was listening to that they got me into ska was. Yeah, it was Whole Lotta Milka and JFK & the Conspirators and all these local bands. And the Planet Smashers, but it was also, you know, so the other bands we mentioned was Fishbone It was Hepcat. It was the Slackers. So it makes sense. It seeps into here and we can't stop it. American influence, we can't prevent it from crossing the border.
AARON CARNES: I don't know what it was like for you, for Canada, but two tone ska was really an obscure thing. In the eighties, two tone ska was very popular in England, but it was really obscure. It was very underground here. Did not really crack much, much of any cultural interest.
Madness had literally one single here in the US.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Was that Our House? Our House, which is not ska at all.
AARON CARNES: No, it's not ska. Yeah, it's weird because we talked to Suggs, and he's just like, kind of... he doesn't understand at all why that one song in particular cracked our charts. Because that, you know, in. In England, they had like, yeah, they. 20, 30. It's ridiculous.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Well, it's funny, too, because I like the reason I got into ska in the first place, I think, is... yeah, it's partially because of some of the punk bands, like Rancid, having ska songs in their albums. But before that, my dad's from England. He brought a bunch of records to Canada with him. Among those records were the Specials, were Madness. A lot of these bands that. I mean, even the Clash and stuff, that were when I was a kid listening to. And I loved the One Step Beyond album as a kid.
And then when I realized as a teenager, wait, this is the same music that I'm listening to now from all these punk bands. The connection was made, but I don't think I had any concept of whether this was popular or not. It was popular in my house.
That was sort of the only thing I knew. I'm not even sure what the reception was to those two tone bands here in Canada.
I imagine it was probably pretty similar to the States with. I know Our House still gets played on the radio here, and I don't think I've heard a madness song, aside from on, like a campus radio ska show ever on the radio. So, yeah, I think it's the same kind of vibe.
AARON CARNES: Yeah.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah. It's weird. It's really weird to like, I guess maybe... what do you think is the future of this? Because I know there's all these new bands, and some of them I like, some of them I don't, and that's not really the point here.
Some of them, I really don't like, some of them, I understand the appeal, some of them. But it's different, right? It's not the same ska that I grew up listening to or playing or any of that. And I like that. I like that it's changed. I like that it's evolved. But do you see this becoming any bigger than it is now? Is there enough momentum? There doesn't seem to be here the way there was 25, 30 years ago, but it looks like in the States there's a lot more bands that are starting up, getting some attention. There's some kind of tours happening with a lot of bands.
Do you foresee any kind of increased attention being given to ska? Or will it stay this underground thing that has its fans, but doesn't necessarily go above that?
AARON CARNES: It's really hard to tell. I mean, there was a lot of excitement for the Bad Time Records bands a couple years ago, and they did the New Tone documentary. This is Newtone. There was so much excitement for that tour. I thought the documentary came out good, but I was watching, I watched that documentary, and I kind of feel like we're already kind of in this new place where it's like, what's next?
And it feels like something. There could be a curveball that comes out and totally elevates ska even more. Yeah, one of the. One of those bands could release, like, a new record that is totally an innovative record and blows everyone's mind, or it could fizzle out. I mean, it's really hard to tell. I feel like, you know, I kind of feel like anything's possible. I think that, you know, from.
From my point of view, the way I look at it, I think the more. The more that the legacy itself is getting repaired, the more opportunity there is for just a. Somebody to make a record and is to be received well. And it to not be so, like, this hyper fixation on the fact that it's ska, good or bad, which I feel like is just not really necessary. We don't have to be just like, hyper focused on the fact that it's ska, which seems to kind of go with the territory it does actually, those.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Old stomp records, like in the nineties, they all said 'File Under SKA' on the back of the cd.
Definitely, you know, the bands were definitely putting that on themselves. That sort of pushed the fact that they were ska bands. I think that having that label attached to it is going to unfortunately push some people away because they have this preconceived notion. And hopefully some band will come along that incorporates gone to their sound and just without saying the three letter word.
AARON CARNES: And I, I think what would be really interesting is if...and I think this is totally possible, and I think if it did happen, I don't even know if we'd be able to predict who would do it.
But I think it's entirely possible that, like, some pop artists will start incorporating ska just because, like, you know, pop producers are constantly trying to find things to make their songs sound interesting and different.
And if you distill ska down to more of its essence, like, you remove it from the sort of the nineties sound, from its more punk oriented sound. It's dance music, it's pop music. It's catchy music. Yeah. Like, if you really. If you really lean in those directions. It could make good pop, good pop songs. And, like, an artist doesn't. The artist doesn't even have to, like, know anything about ska, really.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: They probably wouldn't at that point. The producer would sort of deliver it to them and say, hey, this is the... This is the new beat.
AARON CARNES: I mean, they'll just. They'll just hear dance music.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah.
AARON CARNES: And, you know, that could. That could have an effect, too, you know, for sure.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully that does happen. That would be a good way to sort of, you know, subtly sneak it back into the. Into the conversation.
AARON CARNES: I would actually very much like ska to be reintroduced into a more substantial way as dance music. Yeah, I mean, I'm down with all the bands playing, like, heavy ska. That's cool. I like it. I just don't think reintroducing ska in a significant way as a subgenre of punk is really the way to go. But I think, like, if ska's, like, done, like, this is dance music, this is soulful music. This is, you know, like, if it's a Latin artist doing a little bit more of a Latin version or if it's electronic music, like, that's a way where I think it'll really be, like, distinguished and separate from the nineties and this, like, all the jokes, the mozzarella sticks, the whole nine. Like, it'll be a totally new and different thing.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Yeah, for sure. I think that could work. So if people are hearing about you for the first time in the show, they maybe they don't know the book exists, and this is hopefully introducing them to the podcast and the book. Where do they find your stuff? I know the second edition is yet to come out. The best way to sort of keep up with what you're up to. Book, podcasts, anything else?
AARON CARNES: Well, the podcast is just available wherever you get your podcasts, and we release episodes every Wednesday.
You can follow me on social media. It's In Defense of Ska on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And if you'd like to, you can pre order the book now. It's on bookshop.org or I think, Amazon. Clash Books. You can get it directly from a publisher. You can just go and pre order it, and you'll just get the book on the day it's released. And pre orders, by the way, pre orders are very good for authors because first week sales are extremely important for how the algorithms treat our book going forward, and all pre orders are treated like first week sales.
WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Good to know. So, yeah, pre order the book, if you're curious to hear more about this. I mean, people should definitely go back through the archives, your podcast, too, because some of the people you've interviewed are even some of the ones that I wasn't necessarily a fan of initially going and listening to sort of what they have to say about this, this whole genre and everything connected to it. It's fascinating. So, yeah, definitely check out the book. It's a cool read. The podcast is great, and I'm glad we could do this.
AARON CARNES: All right, thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
