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    The Specials are back!

    Just as eveyone is starting threads about their fave bands of yesterday, I thought I'd canvas support or fish for comments on the The Specials 30th Anniversary reunion!

    For those youngsters (or challenged in the musical taste department ), The Specials were a band formed in the late seventies by art school student Jerry Dammers in Coventry to play a mix of punk and reggae. During that period they found that the two didn't mix very well, and Jerry went back to the sound ska (a more uptempo ancestor of reggae) which mixed perfectly with punk's tempo and attitude.

    Each member of the band was either a friend of Jerry or swiped from other prominent local bands (singer Terry Hall from punk band The Squad, Roddy 'Radiation' Byers from The Wild Boys) and soon their sound was getting enough attention to garner a support slot on tour with The Clash.

    In those days racism was a big issue in the UK (especially in industrial towns like Coventry), so a band with black and white members was unusual. With the high unemployment that was prevalent as recession hit industries closed factory after factory, Jerry could see that support for the far-right was rising and that the burgeoning skinhead revival was ripe for that kind of misdirected frustration.

    So, taking his cue from The Clash's Paul Simonon, The Specials took to wearing suits, pork pie and trilby hats with sunglasses in the style of the Jamaican rudeboys of the fifties and sixties, to create an identity that was compatible with, but altogether smarter than the skinhead uniform of jeans, boots and bomber jackets. The band would then set to music, social (and often biting) commentary and along with cover-versions of ska and rocksteady classics, tried to subvert the skinhead revival into something positive.

    Their first big hit was in 1979, the self-released track called Gangsters. It was such a big hit, their sound so distinctive and their live shows fast gaining a fearsome reputation, that record companies scrambled to sign them up. Jerry wanted complete artistic control, which most record companies ran away from, so he signed a deal with Chrysalis records to create an independent label-within-a-label (unheard of in those days). And so 2-Tone records was born and gave a platform to other musically related bands such as Madness, The Beat, The Selecter etc.

    Unoffical but encyclopedic 2-Tone resource

    Anyway, after that intro to the band, all I can say is that I'm going to see them at Brxton on May 12th and I cannot wait!
    Last edited by gunrock; 04-03-2009, 10:00.

    #2
    I didn't know much about the group. Ghost Town is a tune that most people should know. It's an excellent, classic song.

    I will definitely investigate more of their work.

    Comment


      #3
      Yeah, Ghost Town is not only excellent musically, i.e for it's mix of Eastern european chord progressions and dub style bass and drums, but it's lyrics were exceptionally relevant to the time. In 1981 civil unrest and full-scale rioting due to high unemployment was occurring while the track was in the charts!

      The tensions in the song also came from within the band (they all hated the song and thought Jerry had gone mad, as he was asking them to play dischordant notes and they thought it was ****). They broke up in the dressing room, after their performance of it on Top Of The Pops...

      Also check out Too Much Too Young (their first No.1 single), a barbed swipe about teen pregnancy, Do Nothing, about British apathy and police brutality and Rat Race about rich students and their feigned interest in left-wing politics.

      Of course move onto their album tracks (they only released 2 albums and they can be picked up or download for about a fiver each) and you can find songs about the futility of marrying for a baby (Stupid Marriage), rages against street violence (Concrete Jungle) and songs about the US stirring up trouble in the middle east (Man at C&A).

      As you might see from this brief synopsis, many of the subjects are still relevant to this generation (even if the musical style is not)!

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by gunrock View Post
        Yeah, Ghost Town is not only excellent musically, i.e for it's mix of Eastern european chord progressions and dub style bass and drums, but it's lyrics were exceptionally relevant to the time. In 1981 civil unrest and full-scale rioting due to high unemployment was occurring while the track was in the charts!

        The tensions in the song also came from within the band (they all hated the song and thought Jerry had gone mad, as he was asking them to play dischordant notes and they thought it was ****). They broke up in the dressing room, after their performance of it on Top Of The Pops...

        Also check out Too Much Too Young (their first No.1 single), a barbed swipe about teen pregnancy, Do Nothing, about British apathy and police brutality and Rat Race about rich students and their feigned interest in left-wing politics.

        Of course move onto their album tracks (they only released 2 albums and they can be picked up or download for about a fiver each) and you can find songs about the futility of marrying for a baby (Stupid Marriage), rages against street violence (Concrete Jungle) and songs about the US stirring up trouble in the middle east (Man at C&A).

        As you might see from this brief synopsis, many of the subjects are still relevant to this generation (even if the musical style is not)!
        Thanks for the interesting info. Those political & social issues are still very relevant in today's world. It's sad to hear that the group split over such a brilliant tune. It's funny that they have reformed at a time when the country is dealing with very similar issues to the early 80s.

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