I have been going to ska shows on a regular basis ever since I was about 13 years old. It started with local bands from my high school playing small fundraising shows around town. Although in retrospect the music was mediocre and most of the kids at the shows were early incarnations of today’s hipsters, I was hooked. There was nothing more fun than joining the five-to-ten person circle pit and skanking to The Ransom playing “Three Day Weekend,” their equivalent to Catch 22’s “Keasbey Nights.”

I had never been to a ska show before this one, save for local high school groups with even sillier names than the ones on tap for Friday night’s show. So my four-step initiation to the genre (Skasome Society through Big D himself) was sure to be enlightening. To preface, I had known what ska was – what it came from and what it sounded like, even the basic character of a ska show – but it is impossible to understand, from recordings and descriptions, the nature of a ska crowd in full skank.