The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ 1997 hit “The Impression That I Get” remains one of the signature records to emerge from ska-punk’s brief commercial heyday.
The Bosstones formed in Boston in 1983, although it’s probably more accurate to say that Boston formed the Bosstones. “[Their music] speaks to a mindset that I’ve always considered quintessentially Bostonian, one that is often overlooked,” writes Boston magazine’s Joe Keohane in a 2016 appreciation of the band. “It’s this strange ability to feel both young and old at once, to be full of youth and reckless exuberance, but also react to everything like a sentimental 80-year-old crank rotting into a porch in Hyde Park. It’s a dichotomy that runs throughout all of the Bosstones’ work.” Guitarist Nate Albert, bassist Joe Gittleman and skanker Ben Carr — a ubiquitous onstage presence in his role as a dancer and occasional backing vocalist — first met as high schoolers, while frontman Dicky Barrett was already a veteran of the local hardcore punk scene, putting in time with bands including Cheapskates, Toxic Toast and Impact Unit. With the additions of saxophonist Tim “Johnny Vegas” Burton, trumpeter Tim Bridewell and drummer Josh Dalsimer, the Bosstones developed a sound later dubbed “ska-core,” combining hardcore with ska — Jamaican music noted for its walking bass lines, off-beat rhythms and the “skat! skat! skat!” guitar strums that inspired the genre’s name.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (an updated moniker suggested by a bartender at the Kenmore Square punk club the Rathskeller, more commonly known as simply the Rat) signed to local independent Taang! Records to issue their 1990 debut LP Devil’s Night Out. Bridewell departed the lineup soon after, and with the additions of trombonist Dennis Brockenborough and saxophonist Kevin Lenear, the group recorded an EP, Where’d You Go? Drummer Joe Sirois, whom Barrett befriended while a student at Bunker Hill Community College, replaced Dalsimer during the opening leg of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ first American tour in 1991; these performances cemented the band’s reputation as a formidable live act, also introducing fans outside of the northeast to the retina-damaging plaid suits that became their sartorial trademark. The college radio hit More Noise and Other Disturbances followed on Taang! in 1992, and the Bosstones signed to major-label Mercury to cut their third LP, Don’t Know How to Party. Question the Answers, issued in late 1994, launched the band to new renown: the following summer, they toured as part of the annual Lollapalooza festival lineup, and performed onscreen in the 1995 coming-of-age teen comedy sensation Clueless, which grossed $56.1 million in the U.S.
The crossover commercial success of ska-punk acts like No Doubt, Sublime and Rancid further greased the skids for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ breakthrough effort Let’s Face It, helmed by longtime producer Paul Q. Kolderie in tandem with Sean Slade. Barrett and Gittleman co-wrote the album’s lead single, “The Impression That I Get,” which first appeared on the benefit compilation Safe and Sound: A Benefit in Response to the Brookline Clinic Violence, released in the wake of the Dec. 30, 1994 slayings of two abortion clinic workers in two different Brookline, Mass. clinics. “The Impression That I Get” — inspired by the death of Barrett’s friend’s younger brother — grapples directly with the vicissitudes of life and the inevitability of loss, and its soul-searching lyrics belie the powerhouse energy of the song’s opening fanfare. “Have you ever been close to tragedy/Or been close to folks who have?” Barrett growls. “Have you ever felt a pain so powerful/So heavy you collapse?” Barrett isn’t much of a singer in any conventional sense — the dude sounds like he gargles with razor blades and swamp water — but the unexpected poignancy of his performance gives “The Impression That I Get” its gravitational center: mute his vocals here in KORD, and what remains of the song all but dissipates into nothingness.
Mercury execs declined to release “The Impression That I Get” as a single — a strategy to compel listeners to shell out for Let’s Face It instead — but the song still reached number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 23 on its Hot 100 Airplay countdown. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones also played the song during their appearance on the Oct. 25, 1997 episode of NBC’s venerable sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, but its omnipresence soon wore thin, at least back home. “I didn’t love [‘The Impression That I Get.’] I suspect the band felt the same way, at least after playing it ad nauseam,” writes Boston’s Keohane. “In 1998’s exceptionally rowdy Live at the Middle East, Barrett introduced it by saying, ‘I think we know this fucking song,’ and the crowd, which up until then had been going henshit, offered up a golf clap.” The Mighty Mighty Bosstones resurfaced in 2000 with Pay Attention, which stalled at number 74 on the Billboard 200; Mercury parted ways with the group soon after, and in late 2003, the Bosstones went on hiatus. Barrett next turned up as the announcer for ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, while his bandmates turned to their own projects; the Bosstones reunited in 2007 and continued recording and touring until 2022, when the group formally split over Barrett’s opposition to COVID-19 vaccines and his participation in the production of a video promoting an anti-vaccination mandate rally spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Barrett seems much happier spouting deranged conspiracy theories on right-wing podcasts than he did basking in the success of “The Impression That I Get.” “It was double-edged, really,” he told Cleveland Scene in 2018. “It was great, but at the time, I didn’t properly enjoy it the way I should have. I thought the sky was falling in, and it was the end. I thought, ‘Oh my god, everyone knows who we are.’ We were rude boys from Boston, and we weren’t supposed to be popular. All of a sudden, we were. I didn’t want us to be known as sellouts. We did the same thing we had always been doing. It was just that people gave a shit all of a sudden. Then, I realized it wasn’t so bad. I learned that the people that supported us before were proud of us and thought we deserved it. Pop music joined us on our terms; we didn’t join pop music on its terms.”
The Impression That I Get (KORD-0068)
