I’d be lying if I told you that I owned a bunch of Aggrolites albums. Actually, I’d be lying if I told you that I owned even one Aggrolites album. Nevertheless, I heard of these guys while attending the 2008 WARPED Tour as a distinguished guest of The Lordz of Brooklyn. People kept telling us that we needed to check them out, but alas, they played at the same exact time as Against Me! (Side note: If you think the WARPED Tour is a laughable concept, then you have never stood on stage during an Against Me set, or spent a day running around the Nassau Coliseum Parking Lot while Pennywise rocked in the foreground.)
At some point, I will get around to buying a bunch of their albums, but in the mean time, I did spend $0.99 on “Dirty Reggae” and it did not disappoint. At a time when Sublime and No Doubt seemed to have effectively watered-down the old school ska sound, thus spawning a host of bad imitators, The Aggrolites go right to the source and rock some intense 1968-style reggae that hits hard and is so damn authentic that it puts the Slackers and Hepcat to shame. (The Insteps, it should be noted, pulled from this same old school time and place, but modernized their sound in a way that made it fresh and important for 1996. Damn, we’re getting old.)
Back to The Aggrolites. If you like Toots and The Maytals or any old style reggae from the late 60 / early 70s, please buy this song and get on with it. If Oasis stole “Wonderwall” from The Beatles’ back catalogue, then The Aggrolites stole this from Toots, and it’s all good.
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