More promo time for me; yay. My Dexy's promo went well, so let's see what I can do for for another band from my corner of the world. Like Dexy's, Coventry's The Specials melded the snotty attitude of punk with the horns of a genre whose heyday was some ten to fifteen years earlier, though instead of chugging Motown and Stax tributes, The Specials reappropriated the off-beat stomp of Jamaican ska music to create something exciting, urgent and distinctly British. Like Dexy's (again), The Specials were the brainchild of a maverick mastermind with a singular vision, though - unlike Kevin Rowland, who revelled in being centre stage - Jerry Dammers preferred to stay behind the scenes, playing keyboards and writing some of the most memorable songs of the post-punk era, not to mention creating an iconic record label whose acts all shared a fun, new, multicultural sound and vision, and whose logo still adorns t-shirts up and down the UK (and beyond) to this day, 2-Tone.
The Specials set out their agenda early on, with debut single 'Gangsters' lifting the tune verbatim from ska legend Prince Buster's 'Al Capone' whilst lyrically deriding the darker side of the music industry and, in particular, the shady business dealings of Bernie Rhodes, the controversial manager of The Clash who had secured that band their lucrative recording contract with CBS, and later manager of - you guessed it - The Specials and Dexy's Midnight Runners. The stunning opening line ("Why must you record my phone calls? Are you planning a bootleg LP? You said you've been threatened by gangsters, now it's you who's threatening me"), as warbled by the soon-to-be instantly recognisable tones of lead singer Terry Hall, displayed a band already disillusioned with the hollow, plastic and downright malicious post-punk music industry in Britain before they were even out of the traps. It was also an extremely brave move on their part; by 1979, having a go at "the establishment" came as standard with young bands. But criticising the behaviour of the record industry (and, more specifically, certain people within said industry) that gave punk bands the opportunity and the platform to say things that had previously been seen as outrageous required, to my mind, more courage than was required to come out and criticise the monarchy or the Prime Minister or the larger capitalist or patriarchal hegemonies. On the day The Specials decided to release 'Gangsters' as their debut 7", not a single fuck was given.
The Specials eponymous debut album, featuring 'Gangsters', would go on to be released in October of 1979. In the meantime, Dammers set about finding like-minded bands and artists for his 2-Tone label. 2-Tone released the respective debut singles of Madness (who would go on to become one of the most successful British pop bands of the 1980s), The Selecter and The Beat in the last few months of 1979, each one a slice of infectious ska-punk that acted as further confirmation of The Specials legacy whilst the band were still in their infancy. I sort of feel like a vote for The Specials is a vote for the whole 2-Tone movement, given it was Dammers who started it, so even if you shouldn't take these songs into account when voting, I really do feel that they give a certain context to The Specials and help to prove how influential the band were during their own lifetime.
Madness - 'The Prince'(an ode to the aforementioned Prince Buster)
(Notice the iconic, uniform, stylized, two-tone black-and-white aesthetic that came to represent the movement; a prevalent part of all of the label's releases.)
Anyway, it is the band's debut LP, The Specials, which remains the greatest 331/3 document of this great band (though not their finest moment; more on that later). Beginning with a scintillating cover of Dandy Livingstone's ska classic 'A Message To You, Rudy' - a song originally aimed at tough Jamaican "rudeboys" with a penchant for causing mischief, which was equally poignant when addressing the actions and behaviour of many of the English punks of the day, and featuring a star cameo from the legendary ska trombonist Rico Rodriguez - the album is riotous romp through a series of witty, barbed, incendiary ska tunes. Here are a few choice cuts from an album that Pitchfork called one of the Top 50 of the 1970s (and which, rather confusingly, Rolling Stone named on of the best of the 1980s, though that's what differing release dates will do for you I guess):
'Too Much, Too Young'(a UK #1 that caused controversy for its frank lyrics about teenage pregnancy and the fact that it openly promoted the use of contraception, in a time when Britain was considerably more, shall we say, church-going than it is these days)
Just a year after their debut, The Specials were at it again, expanding their sound production-wise to create a fuller-sounding record that was a natural progression from their first. It may not have had the immediacy of their debut, but More Specials was still packed with great songs (including a cover of ska standard 'Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)' that remains one of my all-time favourite party songs) and clearly displayed a band that had, sonically, advanced so far ahead of their peers (the aforementioned Selecter and The Beat, not too mention other ska-punk bands that had emerged in their wake such as Bad Manners) that it was almost embarrassing. I guess this is where I put a few of my favourite tunes from their sophomore effort:
Alright, I'm going to break from continuity and chronology in order so that I can eventually end on a high-point. By the time The Specials' third album In the Studio arrived in 1984, only Jerry Dammers and drummer John Bradbury remained from the original lineup. Terry Hall and Neville Staple, the band's most prominent vocalists, had left to form the pop group Fun Boy Three with rhythm guitarist Lynval Golding in 1981, whilst lead guitarist Roddy Radiation, bassist Horace Panter and the entirety of the horn section had been whittled away over the years. The third album had a poppy sheen which was totally at odds with the early incarnations of the group, and the album is something of a forgettable mess. That said, every cloud has a silver lining, and the album did throw up one standout anthem. '(Free) Nelson Mandela' became a worldwide hit, being played at anti-Apartheid demos around the world, and at major sports events and ANC rallies in Mandela's native South Africa. It remains a much-loved song throughout Britain and Africa, and in many places in between. Its triumphant tone was somewhat at odds with the traditional idea of a protest song, and it is hard not to get carried away in the feel-good vibes of it all.
Now that we've taken that brief detour from the group's actual timeline, it's time to move on to the original lineup's swan song, and the band's crowning achievement. Released in 1981, not long before the band was ripped apart piece by piece, 'Ghost Town' is one of the greatest songs of all-time, by anybody. Period. Its eerie tone and apocalyptic lyrics addressed the urban decay and growing unrest in Britain at the time, and its release at a time when riots were happening up and down the country only adds to the song's status as one of the great pieces of British post-war social commentary. It is haunting and hypnotic, and I would genuinely put the song up there on the same pedestal upon which the likes of 'Like A Rolling Stone' and 'A Change Is Gonna Come' and 'God Only Knows' and 'A Day In The Life' sit; a transcendent masterpiece that completely defies all expectations of what popular music is capable of.
But really, how the Soft Boys were able to seamelessly wave so many dispate, hip-to-quite-unhip influences (psychedilica, art pop, punk, post-punk, 60s country rock) and managed to make music that was mordant, cynical, menacing, romantic and radiantly lovely all at once, they were among the most underrated musical wizards of their time, and you can see so much of their influence both in the british guitar-based rock and american alternative that followed.
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