Giant Steps Reunion! Ska Lives! Maybe…
So last month, this band called Giant Steps had some kind of reunion going on. I was a dummy and didn’t go. But The band played on anyway and Tom Siegel, trumpet player, sent me a link to some videos of the event. I didn’t wanna kill their bandwidth, so I’m putting up the clips on my own site.
Giant Steps was a local (Albuquerque) ska band that was pretty popular during the “third wave” of ska. I’d pin that era somewhere around 1996 to uh, 2000 or so. At least, that’s when the third wave was most popular. As far as I know, Reel Big Fish is still doing their thing.
Anyway, Giant Steps was fairly well known to me, because two of my high school teachers were in it! My high school band teacher, Paul Blakey, played baritone sax, and Mr. Siegel, I mean… Tom played trumpet. How cool is that? I actually didn’t end up going to many of their gigs, but I did hear them live a few times.
One thing that Tom told me is that you can now buy Giant Step’s CDs on iTunes! How cool is that? I’d still rather have the hard copy though, for nostalgia purposes and whatnot.
Ooh. Also, I remember hearing that “Feel the Thunder” was written about Paul Blakey’s snoring. I’m not if this is true, but why would anyone lie about that?
On to the videos:
Boom Ska:
Came:
Mr. Smooth:
Double Time Skank:
Miles:
Sharp Funky Mama:
Puto Deus Fio:
Soul Rebel:
Boneman:
Feel The Thunder:
One Day Soon:
Back Out:
Brown Eyed Girl:
If you like these Giant Steps videos, please support them (even though they’ve retired) by buying their cds. Maybe if you buy enough, the fourth wave of ska will come!