Big D and the Kid’s Table
Fluent in Stroll (SideOneDummy)
by Scott Hefflon
Big D and the Kid’s Table has always been a party band, not a strict ska band, and thank God for that. If ya want ska, there’s about three decades of the stuff, and a handfulla the real pioneers (who set the rules, without knowing it) prior to that. So, that said, Big D are a genre-jumpin’ band with horns and hop, but it’s all for the good of the party music. There are slow spots, like any party, with a little lounge-lizard piano tinkle and trumpet, but most is finger-snapping butt-wiggle so the girls can dance the night away with their hands in the air like they just don’t care. As a long-time fan of The Special and Fishbone (who both had boring songs and depressing side-projects. Hey Terry: You got to enjoy yourself first, so what was up with the mostly-dreary Fun Boy Three stuff?), Fluent in Stroll keeps the attention by adding a female chorus like Leonard Cohen did. And The Commitments movie. With a lil lesson learned from Riot Grrl yelp. But keeping that lesson tempered with “let’s try to hit the right notes, huh grrls?”
There are a few song here I’d throw into my Ska Party Oompa-Oompa playlist in iTunes, and they’d be in the company of The Greats, so that’s the best compliment I can give.
Big D is 14 years into the life – no posers, no weekend warriors here – with six full-lengths and a few EPs and such scattered about, and as long as they don’t stoop to having Suicide Girls pretend they can dance in one of their videos, they should do fine. Dwarves still smoke them for genre-transcending wonders, while still swinging their dicks for the underage girls and keeping the paces breakneck enough for true punks to break a sweat to in the pit, but if a shithead like me has to namedrop the Dwarves to find a band that kicks your ass, that means you party hard, dig?
(www.sideonedummyrecords.com)