5 Questions with Rags #81 - Stop The Presses (Ali & Danny)
I'm gonna start this thing off with a personal confession – for a guy who works for an internationally known ska festival, I don't really listen to that much ska when left to my own devices. But at some point in the fall of 2022 whilst scrolling Twitter, a lot of people I really like were talking about this album called Got It by Stop the Presses. I'd never heard the band before, but I was really drawn to the colourful pineapple on the cover and wanted to try to find something new and pleasing to bring back to my ska festival family, so I fired up the streaming and put it on. From the first notes of the opening track “Make the Best of It” I was in. Then “Fat Cats” came on and I knew this album was going to be part of my regular rotation. Got It is a ska album seemingly made for me, a SKAptic – immaculately balancing ska, reggae and rocksteady, full of great hooks and really fantastic, crisp production. Danny graciously explained part of the process behind the album before I ambushed he and Ali with the 5 Questions. “Got It was kind of a return to us writing in the room as a band a little bit more. The past album, it was our proverbial “bedroom album”. in our living room, just Ali and I writing, cavemanning our way to demoing things, trying things out over and over again, getting better through the writing. And then this album [Got It] we were able to bring much simpler demo ideas to Jack and Steve, our rhythm section, and were able to write a lot more on purpose in front of each other, which gives you that dynamic, that extra layer – you put the physical work into it and the music kind of shows that.”
The album became a personal audio touchstone, propelling me through the intense winter and spring work of festival organizing with its infectious energy and big doses of fun. I made it my mission to get Stop the Presses on the lineup for the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest 2023, but it turned out to be a pretty easy mission because they were as excited to come up as we were all to have them. I was lucky enough to not only get the whole band up to the Canadian west coast for an unreal set on the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest main stage, but to rope Danny and Ali into a rousing instalment of 5 Questions with Rags. Which also apparently features a whole extra bonus question because the conversation was so good and easy that I lost the question count.
(Note - I actually did this interview right before last years Ska & Reggae Fest, but through the combination of work with the Ska & Reggae Society/Festival, mental health struggles and living through the grind of life in 2023, this stayed in the vaults until now.)
(Note #2 - Before we get actually started, wanna leave a big shout-out the good homie, and a monster of a photographer, Zenon Kai for all the dope shots of Stop The Presses - taken at Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest.)
Stop The Presses. A really fucking good band. Photo by Zenon Kai Imaging.
1. What’s the first album you remember buying with your own money?
Ali – It was two. I was in third grade. I bought Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Both of those records bring back to a time in my life.
Danny – Mine are only slightly more embarrassing. The first Spice Girls record and Metallica Re:Load. That was the record. I was like 11 or 12, I was at a Sam Goody – the music store that actually had contemporary CDs, tapes and records – Wow! We just listened to Jagged Little Pill less than a month ago together. I’ve listened to at least half of that Spice Girls record in the last six months. I still go for earlier Metallica on the regular, Kill ‘Em All through like, the Black Album, but my brother already had those records already so I’m gonna get Re:Load ‘cause that’s MY record. There’s good stuff on there.
2. If you were responsible for just one household chore for the rest of your life, which chore would you pick?
Ali – Might not be my favourite, but the one I do the best – cleaning the floors. Only because no one else is going to clean it the way that I’m gonna clean it – which is the right way to clean. Mopping and vacuuming the floors.
Danny – Cleaning the bathroom. If I could just clean the bathroom. I love cleaning a bathroom, there’s something so pleasing about it.
Ali – EWWW!
Danny – Not a public bathroom! My bathroom. You can go to town on your bathroom. I have severe OCD with completing tasks, so if I do something I do the crap out of it. Cleaning the whole house is very daunting so I won’t do it. Or folding laundry, it feels like it’s so much of my life. But it’s finite in the bathroom “It’s this amount of space. I can learn every corner. I can turn this thing over.”
Ripping guitar or scrubbing a bathroom, Danny is a man of style. Photo by Zenon Kai Imaging.
3. If you could spend the day with anyone living or dead, who would it be and what would you do?
Ali – For me, it’s definitely my aunt Vicki. She passed away from breast cancer when I was 25 and I miss her so dearly. If she was here I would go and get tea – I don’t even like tea! I hate tea. But my entire life we would always get tea together. 100%. I wish she would come back and I could tell her about getting married and all of this stuff that’s happened in my life.
Danny – Wow. That was beautiful. Mine is easy – I would hang out with John Lennon. I would love to see a day in the life *haha* of middle-Beatles period, ’67 ’68, John Lennon. We’d do whatever he was going to that day already.
4. When’s the last time you did something for the first time?
Danny – Today. I took three trains through Austria from Vienna to Paris then flew to JFK today. That was a lot of travel. I love traveling by train. I did Amtrack a lot here when I was a kid. I moved out very young to Orlando and it was the easiest, cheapest way to get from Miami to Orlando. Train travel is so fucking romantic. Trains are so wonderfully romantic – especially in Europe.
Ali – I don’t wanna pick the same, because yours was traveling to Europe – but I guess I have to say traveling to Europe for the first time. That was November for me. I played with Rip Girl Revue in London and at Specialized Fest in Dorsett, England. We also played with Stop the Presses. We also went to Paris on a proper trip. That was a big deal because I didn’t know if I’d ever do that in my life.
5. What is the best memory you have of a teacher or mentor growing up?
Danny: Our best memory of a teacher or mentor is probably the same person. Hands down it has to be our producer, from Miami – Ferny. Just to call him our producer is unfair, he is so much more than that. He is a local guitar hero and then some, in South Florida. He's just one of the best human beings we've ever met – very patient. Very kind. Very intelligent. Incredible musician. Owned the recording studio where we grew up in, called the Shack North Recording & Rehearsal studios. It's where we recorded our first two records, where we learned to play to a click. Even learned things about ourselves and the world through this guy. A truly excellent mentor.
Aly: A great mentor. A great person, and a family member to Danny and I. Just such a beacon of light, just a wonderful human that helped shaped us into the people and musicians we are today. A good soul.
6. Have you ever seen or felt a ghost or otherworldly presence?
Danny: Yes. Definitely.
This is what we wanna hear!
Danny: There's definitely weird shit that you can't describe as anything. I've definitely felt, like, things move or unexplained warmth. All of the things that say – it's just been “Yep. Yep. Yep.”
Is there a place or time that stands out you?
Ali: What about the Stanley?
Danny: Oh my god. We went to the Stanley Hotel where Stephen King started writing The Shining. Great backstory. F.O. Stanley, a guy who owned this turn-of-the-century toy company, built a hotel out there to help people overcome tuberculosis because it's a higher elevation and out of the smoggy air of the city. But by proxy, a lot of people wouldn't make it and a lot of people died there while getting treatment.
Ali: It's a very eery place.
7. The guest question for this round comes from the powerful KANDLE... What's your most embarrassing stage moment?
Ali: We had a recent one...the “Dead Man” one where we forgot the lyrics...
Danny: Oh yeah! That's not even in the top 10!
Ali: But it was so funny and just happened. I died laughing. Danny sang the wrong lyric and then I corrected but then I sang the next part on the next one and he corrected it. I wasn't even singing I was just laughing. I don't know if it's really that embarrassing – I don't feel too much embarrassment on stage.
Danny: We all kind of have a vibe about it, like, “Ehhhhh shit happens. How embarrassing can any of this shit be?”
Hey look, it’s your boy. trying desperately to be as cool as Stop the Presses . Photo by Zenon Kai Imaging.