Vespa

ska

VESPA is one of the first Polish bands playing ska music. Created in Szczecin in 1995 by secondary school students Radar (vocal), Krzaq (bass), Pasterz (drums) and Kantor (guitar). The band was soon joined by Maciek (guitar) and they called themselves VESPA and began to conquer the world. At this time the band members were fascinated by so called third wave of ska but due to poor music skills at that time, they sounded more like poor ska-punk. Soon their instruments were joined by alto saxophone (Szymon), tenor saxophone (Alicja), trumpet (Ania) and keyboards (Grzesiu), at the position of vocalist Radar was replaced by Patryk. Szubryt began to play drums, but soon he gave the floor to Arek. In this squad Vespa recorded the garage demo tape Hoolana do rana distributed among friends in amount of 50 pieces. The band performed on stage intensively and finally thanks to the gig with the legend of Polish punk rock - Dezerter - they made contact with Pietia, the boss of Warsaw based QQRYQ Records, the mightiest Polish label realising independent music at that time. Although, its catalogue was dominated by hc and punk, QQRYQ took the risk to release Vespa's material, despite the fact that Polish ska scene AD 1997 could hardly be called a margin. The recording sessions were made in February 1997 in Cytrus studios located in Gryfino near Szczecin. In autumn 1997 in QQRYQ catalogue finally appeared the tape with the debut material simply called Vespa. There appeared a few classic songs ...