Mr. Smarty Pants – Skank You Very Much

Mr. Smarty Pants
Skank You Very Much
1997 Thin Safety Pin Records
Turlock, California, USA

Bruce Freeby – Vocals
Josh Jeter – Guitar, alto sax, BGVs
Jason Johanson – Guitar, sousaphone, BGVs
Jason “Elvis” Ellis – Bass, tenor sax, BGVs
Matt McFarlane – Trumpet
C.J. Park – Bass
Bergann Montes – Trombone
Tim Hawkinson – Drums, BGVs, laughing

1. Ego Trip
2. Living Dead
3. One Eyed Sailor Man
4. Lime Green Nail Polish

So, yes this is ska. It even starts off a bit swing-ish even, but it then gets into more typical ska territory. Except that it seems at times that they only have one horn player that tries to fill in songs with one instrument. But on other songs they have multiple horns – including a tuba maybe? You can see by the list about that they had a lot of players – it just sounds like they didn’t always use them to fill out the sound. One year later, a different-ish version of “One Eyed Sailor Man” appeared on an HM magazine sampler, and then it appeared again on their 1999 full-length Smartworld (along with all of the songs on this demo as well).