Mad Caddies – Consentual Selections

The more I listen to music, the less I understand the practicality of Greatest Hits album – especially considering the prominence of the internet in today’s music industry. Fundamentally, it’s a nice concept. Collect all of the band’s best songs and throw them on one album together to play at anytime and maybe throw in a few unreleased songs as an added bonus too. It’s a nice concept but only really useful for people who are trying to get into a band in the first place – if you’re already a fan, chances are you already have every song on the list and with an iPod you can make your own greatest hits play list. Then, there’s also the internet now which means that when someone wants to hear a band for the first time and get a feel of what they sound like they can either check our their Myspace page or even just download the songs.

Still, they’re a quick money maker and bands and labels will still put them out because of the ease of which they can be assembled. The Mad Caddies are no exception with their greatest hits album, Consentual Selections. To gather the track list, they hit the internet and got fans to vote for songs they think should be represented on it and thus we’re presented with the twenty-four tracks that make up the album; and no matter the questionable value of greatest hits album, one thing’s for sure is that The Caddies have written some fantastic songs over their career.

Over the years the band has always stayed mainly a third wave ska band but they’ve never been too concerned with staying solely within that framework.  So while they have some great ska-punk songs like Leavin’, The Gentleman and Road Rash, they also throw in a variety of styles from reggae (Drinking for 11, Reflections, Backyard), polka (the always enjoyable All-American Badass), Dixieland jazz (Monkeys and Tired Bones), and even acoustic sing-along (Whatcha Gonna Do). Somehow though, the band is able to keep it flowing throughout it all – no matter the style or year of recording. It means they can go from 2003’s Just One More to 1997’s The Bell Tower and it still flows seamlessly – proving that the band has always had a knack for writing good ska tunes.

As an individual CD, Consentual Selections succeeds on almost all sides (it is a bit lengthy at twenty-four songs and seventy-plus minutes) and it reminds you that there’s still some great ska out there if you want it. Sadly, I already own pretty much all of these songs in their original albums and chances are I’ll pull those out before I’ll ever pull out the greatest hits compilation.