A Fresh Hodgepodge of Ska in ‘Runnin’ Naked’ : ***, VARIOUS ARTISTS, “The Ska Parade: Runnin’ Naked Thru the Cornfield,” A to Y Productions

“The Ska Parade,” a weekly radio show on UC Irvine station KUCI (FM-88.9), has been the best friend a pop subgenre could have.

Ska-tinged rock was strictly for cultists when co-hosts Tazy Phyllipz and Albino Brown began the show in 1990. The duo’s previous CD compilation, “Step On It,” from 1995, helped mark ska’s step up to the big time.

“Runnin’ Naked” arrives Tuesday, at a moment when it’s easy to deride the newly established ska empire as having no clothes. How many times can the same static, warmed-over Blues Brothers horn charts and routine punk-chord grinds be thrown over a quick, skipping Jamaican rhythm (the definitive ska element)? And why are those elements always attached to lyrics that amount to little ado about less?

The occasional ska-flavored hit still can grab. (Example: the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get,” at least until it got overkilled by numbingly repetitious modern rock radio playlists.) But most ska that reaches the mainstream is guilty until proven innocent of prevailing triteness and irrelevance.

“Runnin’ Naked” presents a fresher vision of ska. Stylistic “hodgepodge,” the album notes attest, is essential to deploying the lively ska rhythm in interesting ways. With 23 songs by 17 bands, the compilation posits an alternative ska universe.

O.C. heavy-hitters Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris and the Aquabats turn up; the latter two with slight but amusing novelties, and RBF with a stylistically unimaginative but lyrically quirky cover of a ska-punk song by their defunct heroes, Suburban Rhythm. The other marquee names are a couple of holdovers from the British 2-Tone ska-rock movement of nearly 20 years ago--the reunited, revamped Specials and Dave Wakeling and Bang. Both deliver spirited covers from their ‘80s catalogs.

A good compilation is a guide to new pleasures, and “Runnin’ Naked,” which consists mainly of recordings exclusive to this release, comes through with delights from three unfamiliar bands. The Equators, an English vocal group from the ‘70s that influenced the 2-Tone movement, reunites here for three transoceanic recordings, lending vocal tracks made in England to backing instrumentals and guest vocals performed here by California-based musicians.

The method works, especially on “Softly, Softly,” a pumping Memphis-soul inspired workout (featuring Angelo Moore of Fishbone). “Age of Five” shows that ska can be light and bright without sacrificing character and insight. It’s about a little kid coming to terms with life’s essential inscrutability.

BoitoVision’s two calypso-flavored numbers offer silly but tasty ribaldry and an interesting combination of Gypsy violin, klezmer-ish horns, and island rhythms. Singer Greg Lee, moonlighting from the band Hepcat, is all gravelly-voiced, amiable personality. Send these guys on tour with Buster Poindexter.

The third find is Marshall Law, featuring former Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist Arik Marshall. Nicely honed Hendrixisms (airy and twangy ones as well as the heavy stuff) punctuate songs that mix the P-Funky with the Jam-aican. Again, we have a band honoring ska’s lightheartedness without dumbing it down: “Black Jewpiter” mixes substance and fun as it imagines an easing of tensions between blacks and Jews via space travel to a planet where “the fiddler on the roof is playing Coltrane.”

Thee Spivies, from Long Beach, do a garage-punk take on the Beach Boys, circa “Surfin’ USA,” and the British band, the Big 6, merges ska with Coasters-style lighthearted ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll. O.C.’s My Superhero gets a special push with three tracks, including a solid (but previously released) anthemic original and spunky covers of Generation X and Camper Van Beethoven. The band still looks like a contender but not yet a champ.

Suburban Rhythm shows why Reel Big Fish lamented its demise. Its archival track, “Coming Out of the Woodwork,” is a fine song about how racist attitudes don’t cease but simply become better disguised.

Compilers Phyllipz and Brown do a neat job of keeping their ska and ska-related “hodgepodge” from sounding disorganized. An organizing intelligence is at work in the sequencing, as the 73 1/2-minute CD follows logical stylistic progressions. A fine four-song stretch links songs touching on racism, traditionally the crucial ska-rock theme.

The liner notes offer a nice patois-flavored prose account of “The Ska Parade” show’s history and vibe, but the thick CD booklet flops by omitting any useful, straightforward facts about the artists and their material. The space that should have been devoted to such is farmed out to a funny but out-of-place poem by Brown deriding addlebrained hippiedom. If nothing else, it shows why the brothers didn’t start a program called “The Dead Parade.”

(Available from A to Y Productions, P.O. Box 5766, Irvine, CA 92616; e-mail: skaparade@aol.com

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.