Michael Giberson
From the musical section of the “who’da thunk it” department comes this little footnote (from a law journal article [PDF] on the uses of popular music in legal writing), attached to a remark that Justice Samuel Alito “once attended a ska music festival”:
[15] Becker & Russakoff, supra note 13, available at 2006 WLNR 475058. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, ska is “Popular music originating in Jamaica in the 1960s, having elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, and calypso and marked by a fast tempo and a strongly accented offbeat.??? Ska enjoyed a renaissance in the U.K. during the late 1970s and early 1980s. For a representative sample, see THE SPECIALS, A Message To You Rudy, on SPECIALS (Two-Tone Records 1979); THE ENGLISH BEAT, Mirror In The Bathroom, on I JUST CAN’T STOP IT (Go Feet/London 1980); MADNESS, One Step Beyond, on ONE STEP BEYOND (Stiff 1979).
The “Becker and Russakoff” citation is to a Washington Post profile of Alito “In His Wife’s Words.”
Just last Friday night I caught the original ska band, the Skatalites, at the State Theater. (Well, only about 2/7ths of the original band, but what do you expect for a group that first organized 40 years ago.) I didn’t notice any Supreme Court Justices in the house, but maybe quietly in the back…?