Stardate 1995.  My bosom chum Pat (aka Rabid Garfunkel) and I are in my Accord, on our way to the San Francisco bay area to see some Giants games and do other stuff.  He pulls out a CD from some ska group he had been raving about incessantly after seeing them open a Toy Dolls show.  The cover featured eight guys mugging for the camera in bright green wetsuits and Robin masks (something you don't see every day) who called themselves the Aquabats.  The album was dubbed The Return of the Aquabats, and the first cut was entitled "Playdough" - a lightning fast ska-fused rocker (or would that be a rock-fused ska-er?) lamenting the loss of the care-free innocence of youth.  Listening to Devo, going to Thrifty and buying Star Wars action figures, wearing Vans and OP shirts, yeah, why would geeky guys in their mid-20s in 1995 be drawn to a song like THAT?

Running through my old life
Looking for my lost toys
Where has all my fun gone?
Now that we're all older
Before we grow much colder
Let's all look forward to the new dawn

Aw, touching.  Well, as touching as a bunch of wacky ska musicians dressed like superheroes are gonna get, anyway.

Problem was, by this time the CD had gone out of print.  Fortunately, I had just begun to use this Intarweb thingamabob, and I found an obscure (and long since defunct) web site called Ska Source, which was basically just a guy selling ska CDs he had collected.  He still had several copies of Return, so after a quick e-mail exchange and a mailed check, I was in masked marvel bliss.

Click here to watch a fan-made video for "Playdough" on YouTube.  This version is actually a remake of the song recorded for the group's second CD, The Fury of the Aquabats, but it was all I could find.