In Defense of Ska Ep 141: Western Standard Time Orchestra (Eitan Avineri & Jesse Wagner)

In Defense of Ska

In 2011, long time Southern California ska trumpet player Eitan Avineri had an idea. He wanted to blend traditional Jamaican ska with big band jazz. He assembled a crew of all the best players in LA's traditional ska scene, as well as some of his jazz friends, and re-arranged his favorite Skatalites tunes in a big band style. He called the project Western Standard Time Orchestra. And their first album was called Big Band Tribute To The Skatalites (Vol 1)

Though Eitan would later discover that he wasn't the first person to form a ska orchestra, Western Standard Time Orchestra would be a particularly vibrant band, steeped in ska and jazz in equal measures. Now over a decade into the band's existence, they have a brand new Christmas record that releases on November 3rd. To talk about it, we bring on Eitan and Aggrolites' vocalist Jesse Wagner, who sings lead vocals on the record.

We discuss, at length, LA's trad ska scene and its various players that helped give birth to this cool project. And we talk about how WST tour, record and function as a massive 15-30 piece band. We also talk about the various LA trad ska bands that built the foundation the group grew from: Jump With Joey, Mobtown, Yeska, Hepcat, The Allentons, Kingston 10, See Spot, Ocean 11, Rhythm Function and others.

We also talk about the role of Steady Beat Records and Chris Murray's Bluebeat Lounge. Also, skinhead fights, Christmas music, how Jesse can croon so well without making it sound cheesy, and we learn that Gogol Bordello has been using LA trad ska drummers in the group for the past decade!

Plus we discover that Jesse Wagner used to be a child/teenage actor!

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If you like our theme song, go download the EP Lives by Slow Gherkin. They wrote the opening and closing songs for our podcast. You can get both tunes from their Lives EP. Also, check out Dan P and the Bricks two LPs. They provided the mid-roll ad transition music.

Support the In Defense host Aaron Carnes by purchasing a copy of his book, In Defense of Ska. The 2nd, expanded edition of In Defense of Ska will release in Oct 2024.

Co-host Adam Davis has a band called Omnigone. Their latest record, Against The Rest released on March 31, 2023.

The In Defense of Ska editor Chris Reeves runs a record label called Ska Punk International. They have new releases coming out all the time.

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