In Defense of Ska Ep 50: Pabst Blue Ribbon (Ska Beer?)

If you’ve found yourself on Twitter during the pandemic, you might have noticed Pabst Blue Ribbon tweeting about everything from pro-wrestling to milk to ska. And these ska tweets haven’t been generic mainstream 90s ska memes. No, Pabst has expressed their undying affection for Asian Man Records, MU330, and has even released several “Rat Jamz” mixes that include new ska bands like Catbite, Kill Lincoln, We Are The Union, Grey Matter, Bad Operation, and Omnigone. 

But who is Pabst? We did some deep digging and found out that the Pabst social media manager is Corey Smale. And get this…Corey played in a Missouri ska band in the late 90s/early 2000s. Obviously, we needed to bring him on the podcast and tell us his entire ska story. 

But first, the three of us determined which beverage is the most ska. Was it Pabst, Arizona, Surge, or Ska Brewing? Listen and find out! Plus Corey tells us that the Rat Jamz were curated by Get Tuff, who you might have seen do guest vocals on Skatune Network’s cover of Britney Spears “Toxic.” We also discuss Eve 6, Corey’s band opening for MU330, and we make a deal for Pabst to sponsor a Catbite cartoon! We even suggest the plot for episode 1 be a dramatic retelling of their heroic journey to rescue Mannequin Pussy’s stolen van. Hopefully Pabst makes this happen! 

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.