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!
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!
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