Thurs. Dec. 31   

 On New Year’s Eve, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ ‘80s peers Bim Skala Bim reunite for a show at the Middle East Downstairs. It’s been seven long years since we’ve seen the ska-bearers. It was Bosstones bassist Joe Gittleman’s idea to get Bim Skala back together. He rang up guitarist Jim Jones a while back.
     “Everybody rallied around the idea,” says Jones. “The last couple of weeks have been frantic, relearning all those songs, especially the lyrics. I think we’ve got it down now. We’ve been e-mailing back and forth. We have a 90-minute set with a couple dozen songs.”
     Bim Skala Bim, prominent in the Boston ska-punk scene of the day, played over 2000 concerts, Jones estimates. But eventually other matters, such as having families, live on the road and musical differences, entered the picture.
   Jones was the first to leave. He’d been in Boston more than two decades and he and his wife wanted to go move on. (He still plays music out west, but his main job is as a website developer.) Other band members followed. Drummer Jim Arhelger went to Colorado. Trombonist Vinny Nobile moved to New York and later Greenwich, Conn. Singer Dan Vitale ended up in Panama.
    Three members stayed in state. Bassist Mark Ferranti lives in Somerville. Saxophonist/keyboardist John Cameron is in Gloucester and percussionist Rick Barry is in Arlington.
    The band was started by Vitale and Ferranti in 1983, hot on the heels of the English ska-punk “two-tone” movement. They consider their classic lineup to have run from 1986 –1996. That, said Jones, was when most of the songs were written and the most studio albums (five) released. It’s this group which plays Boston and Cambridge.
    What was the vibe like during the heyday?
     “Every show was like a party,” Jones says. “I’ve played in other bands and genres, and it could be fun, but there was never that connection and that audience participation.”
     The music evolved, said Jones, from a strict ska-and-reggae base to a fusion of those elements with punk rock. “Everybody brought in diverse styles,” he adds.
    “We went through an awful lot. We werehard on the road for eight years and it took its toll,” chips in Nobile. “It brought us close together and also put us at odds. It was the best of time the worst of times.”
   But getting together again? All good. “Bim Skala Bim played the widest range of ska music,” says Nobile. “From traditional ska to ska-blues, two-tone type ska, calyso-ska, mixed in with reggae and sometimes punk rock stuff. We covered all the bases of beats within the ska genre. I love Latin music and we mixed that in, odd time signatures like 9/8. … The music was about celebrating life and commenting on politics. Not heavily.

 (This is an expanded version of a story that ran in the Boston Herald, www.bostonherald.com Sunday.)

Tickets: $20. Starts at 9. Openers, The Morgan Knockers and the Have Nots

472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge 617-864-3278, www.mideastclub.com