Batman knows better

Batman's ultimate authority is so overwhelming that no one would have a doubt about his word of truth. A friend of mine gave me the empty template pic of that old Batman comic and I played around a bit abusing Batman's persuasive power. Unfortunately there's nothing you couldn't add to the speech bubble, the words could even be turned around! Aware of that fatal flaw I've let my senses pan my mind and that was what - how surprisingly - came to me first: SKA BIKE

If you like them, use them.

Western Standard Time - A Big Band Tribute to the Skatalites

"West Coast All-Star Ska Big Band paying tribute to early 1960's Jamaican Ska originators, The Skatalites. Pooling from the best-of-the-best Ska musicians from the last 20 years, Western Standard Time is a groundbreaking project commemorating 50 years of musical heritage. With the shear size of the group, the power and harmonic depth will be revolutionary but at the same time the music and feel will be grounded in its original roots."

Not sure why I missed this in the past few months and I'm also surprised about the few clicks, WST are recieving for their videos. May the CD sales be more successfull. I wish they'd come to Germany one day but Big Bands rarely go on tour so I'm enjoying the videos instead. China Clipper is my favourite, which is indeed a brilliant interpretation with refined arragement, inspired performance, outstanding trumpet and saxophone solo, and a riddim you can't avoid to let it catch you. The crowd at the show is witness, their dancing is testimony and their enthusiasm evidence for the liveliness of SKA.

Coconut Rock

Wasting My Time On You - feat. Gina Saputo

China Clipper Live (official video)

Punk Bike Video - Brat Farrar - It's On Me

Great punk song in Wipers style by Brat Farrar from Melbourne, featuring apes, bikes and crashes. No blood though. The ape masks are so cool and some say one of them looks like Tom Waits.

Brat Farrar - It's On Me

SKA Cruisers - Vol. 3

Biketones. It’s Madness in the streets!

Corner of 9th and Harrison, somewhere in America, discovered at the Idle Bicycles blog

Ska Bike Videos - Pt. 2: Son of Blob

Son of Blob was a dutch Ska band active in the 1990s. They wrote this song called "Rode Fiets" (Red Bicycles) and made a video of this song in 1998. There's not much more to find about them, but the song is quite catchy. There's one or two other songs around in the web and maybe there's some releases worth buying. Check it out.

West Indian Weed Woman

Very rudy-mental version of Bill Roger's outstanding calypso song about a weed woman in Trinidad. The first recording was made in New York, dated in November 1934 and Rogers was accompanied by Felix's Krazy Kats Orchestra with Gregory Felix on clarinet. Bill Rogers was born in Georgetown, Guyana and took Bill Rogers as his stage name during a long lasting singing career. West Indian Weed Woman is his best known calypso, or better "shanto", a calypso song related to Jamaican mento. This widely known piece has inspired many other calypsonians to make imitations of this rapid-fire catalogueing of caribbean herbs. My version is just an aficionados attempt to spread the words of this beautiful jewel of early caribbean music. Hope you enjoy.

Blue Beat Bikes - Pt. 2

This time we're having a look at both the live equipment and preferred means of transportation of a dedicated bassplayer in the genre we all love so much. Guido mostly plays an Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay bass guitar since he bought it in 1989. All studio recordings were done with the StingRay except for "Skanimali" (Back to Skatalonia / Pork Pie / 2004) which was played by Tschinge on a double bass. On the great Australian Tour in 2001 he bought a handcrafted Sonet bass guitar which he uses at rehearsals. The amp is some 1980s Peavey top and cabinet with 2x15" Electro-Voice loudspeakers. By the way, would you guess that Guido actually is one of the two remaining pioneer members of Bluekilla. Probably he is even the one who gave the band its name. I'm saying probably because no one could ever remember for sure. Guido played bass on 98% of all studio recordings and missed only 4 or 5 out of approx. 500-550 gigs, which makes it a total appearance quota of 99,7%. Only Fiebig, our drummer can beat him with a quota of 1 single gig missed, but Fiebig doesn't ride bikes. He passed his driving license test ages ago and later on never drove a car and always used public transport, so Fiebig will get no more attention in this series. Let's turn back to Guido:

Guido from Bluekilla - live @ Muffathalle, Munich

Well, Guido's passion for 2-Tone is as deep as his enthusiasm for the two-wheelers. His Ska/Rocksteady/Reggae vinyl collection is enormous and, I must admit sadly, beats my pants off. His bike pool is twice as big as mine, consisting of a Cyclocross-Bike and a MTB. The KTM touring bike doesn't count. Since it was hit by a car the KTM is out of use.

Now here we see the Cannondale CAADX, a bike for fast riding and extended cruising range. Guido has owned it since 2012. The former owner was Cpt. Soulas,  Bluekilla's lead vocalist from the years 1989 - 1992. A detailed description of Cpt. Soulas' bike fleet will be presented within this series of Blue Beat Bikes.

Cannondale CAADX

Gossamer Crankset

Cannondale Stem & Handlebar

Cross Tires for expanded road access

Now here we see something special: A bavarian built Heavy Tools MTB with the laconic stem, exclusively developed by HT for the HT bikes. This bike never brakes.

Heavy Tools MTB Stem

Heavy Tools