The Specials, The Specials as good a statement of British multicultural intent and unity as any record ever made. It didn't arrive completely alone but as part of a movement. There were similar declarations at round about the same time from other bands who were on or associated with the Two Tone record label The Specials formed; Madness, The Beat, Dexys Midnight Runners, Selecter.
But Specials were the band who highlighted the racial factor to the greatest degree and had fabulous Number One singles that took the temperature of the times while doing so. They arrived at just the right time for me. When I was 14 or 15. I wasn't necessarily crazy about them at the time, didn't buy their records 'til later but I was politically conscious as were my friends at school and it was clear that they were a very, very good thing.
Their front three was pretty much unbeatable Neville Staples, Terry Hall and Lynval Golding. At a time when black footballers were starting to breakthrough properly into English football despite the full on racist reaction from the terraces. They were a statement in itself. My school was hardly inner-city multicultural, there were a few Black kids, a few Chinese ones, a few Indians and Pakistanis but one thing nobody was was racist.
But there was plenty of it elsewhere and The Specials and Two Tone's mission was to combat it along with the Anti Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and everything else. The National Front and the racist wing of the Skinhead movement were highly visible, these were pretty violent times, though they didn't necessarily seem so growing up in a leafy London suburb.
Anyhow the records sounded great on their own. They made you want to dance and their message was loud and clear, even if racists turned up at Two Tone gigs and did their upmost to disrupt them. This was the point of all these bands. They all took their inspiration from the great Black music of the Sixties and early Seventies, Ska, Soul and Reggae but they used it to paint very contemporary pictures of what British urban working class was life at the turn of the Eighties.
The Specials first album is very kitchen sink in many ways. It's certainly black and white. It tells a lot of familiar stories. Teenage pressure and pregancies, racial conflict, night club violence. It has one false note in Little Bitch which just sounds nasty, misogynist and unforgivable now. Otherwise, it's spot on, has all the right targets and hits a string of bullseyes.
I didn't go and see the band first time round but I did when they reformed in 2009. Remarkably for the first gig of their UK Tour. Six of the original seven with only Dammers left out, probably because he didn't wanted to play the old songs as they were.
Tickets were like gold dust but a friend managed to get a couple somehow . On the night the level of expectation building up to their arrival was probably like no gig I've ever been to in my life. When they arrived they more than lived up to it. Generally you hark back to the gigs of your teenage years and early twenties as the most important ones. But this was certainly one of the best I've ever seen.
The record now sounds like a series of perfectly drawn vignettes. Statements about mantaining a positive approach even under intense provocation. The band are smart beyond their years as so many were at the time. I'm biased because I grew up then, but I'd say 1978-83 is one of the three great British Golden Ages of Pop Music along with '65-'68 and '71'-74.
In many ways The Specials spearheaded the second wave of Punk and were much needed. They were just as indignant and in many respects they had a much more focused and thought through message. Pretty much everything they recorded is essential. It has a message and sound that is at once very much of its time yet still doesn't date.
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