Codename : Rocky - Infinity (2002)It's amazing that in this journey through the last 10 years of albums, I have very few ska bands on the list. The short version is that many of my favorite ska records came out before 2000, which disqualifies a good chunk of some seriously influential music. This is sad for a few reasons, namely because what ska meant to me in high school. It wasn't even as much about the music but about the community I found in other ska fans in Arizona. I was able to branch out from simply the kids at my school (approx 3 1/2 of them that liked my music) and meet people in any situation. It was a community of good people who just loved music and spending time together, constantly trying to reimagine what a "scene" was and how best to utilize it. Despite Arizona bands gaining more national attention, it has yet to mi mick the unity encouraged by the AZska scene.
Codename : Rocky was the first band I ever saw in The Nile basement, so that in and of itself holds a place in my heart. I had gotten really into their first album, No Time to Waste through my brother who bought the record after I believe we saw them open for Five Iron Frenzy (?) We had just gotten Infinity a few weeks back and between trading back and forth with my bro and the lack of portability in music back then, I felt like I really only had a few times to sit with the album, certainly not enough for the unadulterated rocking I wanted to do that night.
The show started and there were a few opening acts, DESA and The Forces of Evil (f/Aaron Barrett from Reel Big Fish ; the ska nerds were in full force that night) Codename:Rocky was technically the headliner and as I recall had a pretty good crowd. This was one of those really awesome show moments where you realize just how much you love a band and their albums. They started by playing several songs off Infinity and I found myself getting worked up with each song that I suddenly knew by heart. I distinctly recall rocking with few inhibitions during "My Heart in Hand" and "Surrounded", dancing with my fellow AZSka friends and not caring what people were thinking. I can't remember the last time that happened for me at a show.
All in all, I appreciated Codename:Rocky in the ska genre because it was much darker, much smarter and much less campy than a lot of the stuff I had been listening to. They seemed to clean themselves up from the last record, not finding an excuse in the carefree nature of ska music, instead creating a solid and rocking record. It was much more Less than Jake and Catch 22 than The Aquabats or Reel Big Fish. Ska always teetered the line between brilliant and cheesy, which I'm afraid polarized a lot of fans and kept it from keeping the momentum of the '96 ska revival. However in 2002 it was fully alive and bursting at the seams in that basement.
Bringing up this album was partly an excuse to bring up the old ska scene, but also because to this day where I have a hard time revisiting my ska records, this one seems to maintain seamlessly within my iPod shuffle, proving that maybe someday it can make a comeback again.
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