Geeky SKAturday: A Kick in the Bits have an anthem for 2025 (and...every year before it, I suppose...)

It is Geeky SKAturday!  Welcome!

Today's song comes from the Leicester, UK, band A Kick in the Bits, who released the EP Don't Break It last month.  This MIGHT be their first album (I'm not sure), but either way it has become an early contender for favorite ska-ish record of the year here at Monstrous Matters.  (So, y'know, me.)

The album is eight tracks and about a half an hour, and the tune that really caught my attention upon first listen is this one, "No Surrender."  It's really more punk-reggae than ska (a lot of their songs wouldn't sound out of place on a Clash album), and it could truly be an anthem for 2025 America:

You can find A Kick in the Bits on Bandcamp, Facebook, and maybe live near you.  They are definitely worth a listen!

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Now, I'll get down to the really good stuff...connecting this to an RPG campaign in which ska bands are time-traveling protectors of multiversal order.  The key to today's song: Politics.  Ska has always been a genre expressing cultural awareness.  You can listen to songs coming out of Jamaica in the '60s and hear both the optimism that accompanied independence from Great Britain AND both adoration and warnings directed toward the original Rude Boys who often found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

In the late '70s, when ska was revived in the UK alongside the punk movement, its political nature was sealed.  It won't all be serious music -- and some of the greats, like Bad Manners, had little serious about them at all -- but the political undercurrent solidified by the 2 Tone scene has had a lasting impression on the music.

And there are going to be folks who disagree with this (I believe them to be wrong), but I'd also argue that the political leanings of ska have almost universally been to the left.  Some of the easiest evidence?  Well, here's the (English) Beat performing in 1982:

I realized that I wasn't sure if that specific tendency was found in A Kick to the Bits' songs...maybe they're more just general, "the system sucks, we have to fight back to make things better"...?  (Which is already pretty broadly left wing, btw.)  But then I realized they have a song called "Tory Bastards"... ;)

So with that said, I am not going to shy away from having the shenanigans of the Agents of SKA tip into political territory.  Well...okay, I might shy away a little.  I'm not looking to make a political game/setting here.  But the main beliefs expressed within the genre are sentiments I can usually get behind, and they may just show up in the game.

In my next post (hopefully before next weekend!), I think I'll actually start detailing our first agent, Japanese trumpeter Haruto Suzuki.  He is thus far faceless, but some small pieces of his life are starting to emerge.  I have a feeling we'll see that he's a bit political himself...