60 Songs That Explain the '90s' Rob Harvilla on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' "The Impression That I Get"

Welcome to season 5 of In Defense of Ska. To kick things off, we are in full nostalgia mode for the 90s. Music critic Rob Harvilla knows this and he knows a lot about ’90s music. So he’s the perfect person to host a podcast about the music of the ’90s. That podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s, was a hit. In fact, he ended up doing 120 songs for the series. But, in those 120 songs, not one was a proper ’90s ska song. So, now that Rob has moved on to explaining the 2000s, we thought we should bring him on In Defense of Ska and do the ’90s ska episode he should have always done. 

There’s only one obvious choice for the ’90s defining ska song: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get.” It was the only song in the ’90s to hit #1 on the Billboard chart, and it was everywhere for a little while. People unconnected to ska that grew up in this era know this song. Rob agreed and officially deemed “The Impression That I Get” as the 121st song that explains the ’90s. 

This episode is a deep dive into this song, ska in the ’90s generally, and we also learn about Rob’s history playing bass in the ska band, Skantily Plaid. 

If you’d like to support us and listen to early access, ad-free episodes with bonus content, check out our Patreon! 

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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