Rude Boy Invasion

"This music is limitless," says Joe Basi, the 22-year-old drummer for Fort Lauderdale's King 7 and the Soulsonics, an octet formed last fall by ex-members of the Jive Step Bunch. The band has a split single out on the Fort Lauderdale indie Cole Mack Records and is slated to appear on Spawn of Skarmageddon, a Moon compilation due out next month. Basi was introduced to ska via the 2-Tone groups as well as old records by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and sees the music's bottomless energy and ability to fuse various genres as the key to its logic-defying staying power. "There's a lot of happiness to it, and you've got a lot of different styles at work in the music," Basi continues. "It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and hopefully that will continue."

Robert Hingley of Moon most surely agrees: "There's a vitality to the music that is very attractive, and there's a huge subculture to it that involves different nationalities and races and political viewpoints. It's been commercially successful at a number of different times over the decades. This was rebel music from the get-go that echoed the spirit of independence in Jamaica in the Sixties. That's the spark to the music that makes it so endearing."

Skapocalypse Now! is Friday, January 17, at the Edge, 200 W Broward Blvd, Fort Lauderdale; 954-525-9333. Bands include the Scofflaws, MU330, the Skunks, Skavoovie and the Epitones, the Usuals, Skif Dank, the Rug Cutters, King 7 and the Soulsonics, the Pork Pie Tribe, and Missile Command. The all-ages show begins at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $11 advance, $13 the day of the show.