The Specials reissues
Uncut, May 2002
"This ain't a track, it's a movement," proclaim The Streets on their recent 2-step-meets-2-Tone tune 'Let's Push Things Forward'. There are songs so potently and provocatively original they do seem to demand the formation of a subculture around them. But 'Gangsters', the Specials' 1979 debut, has got to be one of the very few cases where this literally happened: seemingly overnight and out of nowhere, an entire scene of ska bands assembled itself in response.
That may not have been Jerry Dammers' masterplan, but he was consciously attempting to create a brand new sound. Having already tried to merge punk with contemporary roots reggae and come a cropper owing to the hard-to-bridge difference in tempo and feel, Dammers decided to wind back the clock to reggae's precursors, ska and rocksteady; their speedy pace and jerky rhythm guitar chops were more compatible with new wave angularity. 2-Tone arrived at just the right moment: the arty vanguard of post-punk (PiL, The Pop Group etc) was preoccupied with dub's spacey sound and apocalyptic dread, leaving a gap in the market for an uptempo and upful punky-reggae sound. Defined by trebly, 7-inch brevity rather than bass-heavy 12-inch expanse (a la Metal Box), 2-Tone was populist and radio-friendly, yet its black-white hybridity and mixed-race bands were a perfect fit with the progressive RAR politics of the day.
For all its outward appearance of fun and energy, though, what's striking about The Specials is how grim the music's world view mostly is — a stance of sullen disaffection embodied in singer Terry Hall's unblinking eyes and perpetual scowl. Songs like 'Too Much Too Young' (a venomous diatribe addressed to an ex-girlfriend who's lost her youth to early motherhood) and 'Concrete Jungle' (a snapshot of '79 street life, a boom year for racial attacks and random violence) recall the desolate monochrome vistas and dosed-off options depicted in Sixties social realist films like Saturday Night And Sunday Morning and Kes.
Grey was always simultaneously The Specials' forte and fault — those lugubrious trombones! From its colour cover (featuring some band members actually smiling!) to its new sonic flavours (Dammers had become infatuated with muzak). More Specials was a bid to move forward and leave behind the legion of clones. Elvis Costello's sparse, near-mono production on the debut aimed to capture the band's legendarily electric live performances; now Dammers had fallen in love with the studio, an ultimately ruinous passion.
It's easy to see why the pork pie massive were puzzled and pissed off by the sudden depletion of energy on More Specials, but Dammers' new penchant for arrangement and production pays off with brilliant songs, like 'Stereotypes' (all Dr Zhivago-like balalaikas) and 'International Jet Set' (Casio-rhumba riddims and whirling Wurlitzer that stage the EZ listening revival 15 years ahead of schedule).
A Heaven's Gate-style financial calamity, 1984's In The Studio feels fatally sapped by its protracted gestation (three years, hence the album's wry title). Although Hall's only writing credit on the first two albums was More Specials' nuclear armageddon-themed 'Man At C&A', a crucial proportion of the band's spirit — its bleak, black humour — seems to have disappeared when he left for Fun Boy Three along with Neville Staple and Lynval Golding. Apart from the sinuous-melodied, mischievous 'What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend', the dominant mood is sanctimonious, especially the GLC-friendly protest-pop singles 'Racist Friend' and 'War Crimes'. In The Studio sounds literally studious, a series of meticulous and joy-drained genre exercises, sedate and sedative.
The wounds of class
"Nothing ever change..."
For the longest while, 2-Tone seemed like a sealed-off pocket in Britpop time: it vaporised as abruptly as it arrived, leaving little legacy apart from America's ill-advised ska-revival revival. But echoes pop up in the oddest places. Samples from 'Monkey Man' and 'Friday Night, Saturday Morning' graced underground rave anthems by Bodysnatch and 4 Hero. Tricky is a huge admirer of Terry Hall, and had him guest on the Nearly God album. Dammers' film score-steeped, sepia-toned sound circa More Specials and 'Ghost Town' is an unacknowledged precursor to Portishead circa 'Sour Times'. And there's a definite ska feel that crops up repeatedly in 2-step garage, from Doolally's 'Straight From The Heart' in 1998 to this year's 'Too Much Brandy' and 'Push Things Forward' by The Streets. 2-Tone's mood-blend of jaunty and glum — a dancefloor hemmed in by desperation on all sides — has perennial appeal and resonance.
8 comments:
Not sure if you'd agree, but as I recall The Specials were, by the mid-90s, a firmly established member of the BritCanon, the list of Great British acts that became codified sometime around Blur vs. Oasis. I say BritCanon represents the mindset that expects the listener to give both Dark Side of the Moon and Never Mind the Bollocks automatic 5 stars without dissent. Of course, there are numerous downsides to the formation of a BritCanon (not least, it suppresses fair criticism), but one aspect is that everyone can claim to be inspired by the Specials, even if their music admits no direct debts to the Specials, because the Specials are part of that acceptable nebula of BritCanon. "Yes, I'm inspired by the Specials, just as I'm inspired by the Shadows, Stone Roses and Status Quo."
More reasonably, you can hear echoes of the Specials in the more kitchen-sink Britpop tracks (mind, kitchen-sink is an illustrious British tradition, of which the Specials are just a standout example). Also, Massive Attack?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUceCfTQhow 1:35
I must admit I never noticed the Specials were a hallowed reference point for Britpop. It's not immediately apparent in what I remember of the music. Mind you, I do remember interviewing Elastica and Justine insisting that contrary to appearances she did like some black music - she loved ska. (Which I thought was funny as it's just about as New Wave compatible form of music as can be imagined. It wasn't clear if she meant the original ska or the 2 Tone revival - I suspect the latter). Now I see, having read the Terry Hall tributes, that Damon Albarn was a huge fan and collaborated with Terry. Did Blur ever do anything that sounded like 2 Tone, though? I cannot claim exhaustive knowledge of their urrv, but nothing really springs to mind .
What strikes me far more - then, and now - is that 2-Tone was an ancestral trace in the music that I thought of as the anti-Britpop, or in another way, the true British pop of the 1990s. I.e. rave, jungle, trip hop etc. The samples of The Specials and Madness that you'd get in hardcore (4 Hero, Bodysnatch, others). Later on in UK garage. Even dubstep with Kode 9 + Spaceape's "Ghost Town" reimagining. Or slightly off to one side in the UK dancescape - Basement Jaxx with the Selecter "On My Radio" raiding "Same Old Show".
I can't really hear it in Massive Attack, but Tricky called on Terry for Nearly God.
Then you get Lily Allen, where some of it is almost like the long overdue female corrective to the rather boys-only 2-Tone vibe - while also a fond homage.
The Streets obviously. And he's originally from the Midlands, right?
You could hear The Good, the Bad, and the Queen as on some level Damon's "I wanna a Specials, a Specials of my own". And I heard that first album as a long overdue corrective to Britpop's whiteness.
(Bear with me, some of this may just be me thinking out loud). As I said before, along with Britpop came the BritCanon, the veneration of major British rock/indie acts in all their forms. For instance, as I recall Noel Gallagher said at Britpop's peak that the best albums were the Beatles' Red and Blue Albums, Never Mind the Bollocks and The Wall. Surely his pedestalling of the last two demonstrates the erasure of traditional rock divisions? (Though intriguingly, it's mite tricky to see the influence of Pink Floyd on Oasis, which you most definitely could not say about the influence of either the Beatles or the Sex Pistols).
And that hints at the possible reason why it's tricky to detect the influence of the Specials on Britpop. Now, as such an epochal, acclaimed British band, the Specials are firmly within the BritCanon. I can't envisage any Britpop groups disparaging the Specials at all; that would be comparable to supporting Germany in football. But Britpop was largely an cheery, optimistic, sunny genre. The bleakness of the Specials or Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd simply did not merge with Britpop, meaning that they could be mentioned but not quoted. You can easily point to shared lyrical themes and conceits e.g., class, or sardonicism. But Britpop lacked the gloominess for an overt purloining from the Specials. One should also note that Madness had also joined the BritCanon, but their facetious streak and their laddishness made them a much better target for a Britpop allusion.
(It's also worth noting that Britpop's reverence for British acts of the past led to several absurdities. For a while, certain bands were declaring that Tom Jones was as cool as pants, and Oasis began What's the Story (Morning Glory) by quoting Gary Glitter's Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again.)
Finally, the link I posted, Massive Attack's Eurochild, lifts lyrics straight from the Specials' Blank Expression. How on-the-nose do you need it to be?
Hmm, I'm not sure I would agree that a BritCanon emerged suddenly in the mid-90s. In fact there's always a canon of some sort, it just shifts. So for instance, around the time of punk and New Wave, the Canon of British rock greatness that exists would be Beatles, Stones, Bowie, The Who. I'm thinking of the cassettes I taped off friends at that time, best-ofs - it was the two Beatles 'staring down EMI's stairwell' comps, Rolled Gold, and ChangesBowie. No one I knew had any Who but I would have taped them given the chance. This is a time when I owned about 6 albums total. But these were the Major British Artists that you had to know (and wanted to listen to) to have even a basic grasp of what rock was. Perhaps if you had a bit more money or a wider friend pool you could add Syd Barrett-era Floyd, Kinks, a Led Zep, the first two Roxy to that list.
What interests me is how things fade out of the canon and other things come in.
There's perhaps a distinction here between Canon as a Pantheon (the accepted great, the Classics) and Canon in the way Harold Bloom used it, where a canonic artist is someone actively influential today. In fact he says that later artists constitute (and reconstitute) the Canon through the process of being influenced, which is partly voluntary (choosing your influences) and partly involuntary (what turns you on, what ignites an initiating spark in you as an artist-to-be). There are periods when a seemingly impregnable Canonic Heavyweight drops out as a reference point - there's a long period for instance when Bowie, having been insanely influential, stops influencing anybody. From mid-80s through to Suede, he is simply not a reference point, in part because he's been all used by the earlier copyists, but also because he is still around and very actively being an embarrassing figure releasing shit record after shit record.
At any rate, back to the subject, I do not remember Specials or 2 Tone being any kind of reference point in the early-to-mid '90s - EXCEPT for these ghostly echoes you'd get in the rave scene and trip hop.
And you pinpoint one of the reasons with Britpop - it was relentlessly cheery, perky stuff. And mostly utterly apolitical too. You would have the odd 'character sketch' social comment song in the mode of the Kinks, with Blur. But yeah that sort of scathing, searing, mournful thing that Terry Hall's face and voice brought to Dammers and the other writer's lyrics - the class animus of "Rat Race" for instance - I don't hear that anywhere in Britpop. It's Britpoptimism almost uniformly.
Interestingly Paul Weller is part of the Britpop Canon, but someone they manage to not take up his dour sourness or political ire.
(Again, thoughts out loud). The question is not whether the idea of BritCanon is true, but whether the idea of BritCanon is useful. And there was another phenomenon that blossomed in the 90s which, I contend, provides the argument for BritCanon: the formation of heritage rock. Plenty of rock’s old-timers (Dylan, Macca, Stones, Neil Young, Bowie, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed etc.) spent the 80s releasing work considered pretty ropey at best. But the 90s saw many of those acts achieve greater commercial triumph and significantly more critical acclaim than in the previous decade. Along with this, we had reformations galore, from the Pistols to that Beatles pseudo-reunion, we had the start of classic albums released in deluxe format, and we had magazines founded that specifically cater to music fans focus on heritage rock (remember that your original article was for Uncut). When heritage rock collided/colluded with Britpop, a movement that, with a mischievous grin, saluted its British forebears, we got BritCanon (which is clearly a canon in the sense of a pantheon). We got the youngsters and the oldsters almost legislating which acts of the past retain credibility (no Dire Straits or Phil Collins, thank you very much). We got an occasion which was both liberal (you can like music from multitudes of ages and genres) and conservative (don’t cheek your elders). Roughly, you could say “no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977” in 1977, but you couldn’t say “no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1995” in 1995.
Now, what I think makes this a useful concept is that, although acts may enter the canon (obviously not BritCanon, but recent years have seen Prince’s most feted albums cement themselves fully in the greatest albums rundowns after decades of invited ridicule), nowadays acts can’t leave the canon once admitted. Just compare Michael Jackson and R. Kelly. It seems safe to say that R. Kelly will be tippexed from music history, but Michael Jackson will just receive an asterisk and still retain his position in the canon. Similarly, to criticise an album in the canon is seen not to express a personal opinion, but rather to adopt a contrary position. I tend to think Beatles albums have a bit too much filler, but me saying that unintentionally appears deliberate shit-stirring.
This leads to another negative-but-useful-to-recognise aspect to BritCanon: it discourages reinterpretation. The interpretation acknowledged by BritCanon becomes the only sanctioned interpretation (e.g., Rumours can only be understood in light of Fleetwood Mac’s dysfunctionality). A relatively radical take (say, oi! being the apex of punk) becomes intolerable. Now, both these faults are routine by-products of canons, but I do feel that BritCanon suffers from them with particular acuity. So when I use the term BritCanon, it’s more diagnosis than observation. I suppose BritCanon is a lazy, catch-all term to describe the lazy, catch-all behaviour of unthinkingly sticking to the consensus. And that unthinking element can lead to the consequence of a group claiming the Specials to be a major influence on their work despite a complete lack of common features.
Oh, there's no doubt that things got cemented and stuffy in terms of the pantheonic consensus during Britpop.
But it's not like there weren't earlier canonic formations - there was a kind of counter-canon that a label like Creation was marshalling in the mid-80s, with input from people like Nikki Sudden and Bobby Gillespie who were serious record collector types.
I'm not sure I believe there's really any such thing as a permanent place. If things can move in, others can be dislodged.
Here's a good example - you mention the Beatles. Now I remember that for almost the entire duration of the '80s, the Beatles were not a reference point for any serious, hip group. (Okay one exception - Husker Du covered 'Ticket To Ride'). But Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, etc - the Stones and the Velvets and the Stooges and Love and Byrds were in there, as things to draw on. But Beatles - no.
It was the Stone Roses who put them back into canonic contention - almost singlehandedly.
I went up on the train to Manchester to interview 808 State and lo and behold in my carriage was Alan McGee. This is 1990 or '91. Along with unguardedly telling me that Primal Scream didn't musically appear on the Weatherall remix of "Come Together", he said something I vividly remember, which was "don't you think the Beatles are more relevant than ever?". I can guarantee he would not have said that around the time of putting out those first Jesus & Mary Chain singles.
Another example is Kate Bush, who now seems unassailable but for a long time wasn't on the hip list at all. Suede were the first group I can remember saying she was an inspiration. And then in the last couple of decades, loads of mostly female artists have cited her and clearly bear the mark of Kate. That's the Bloomian principle in operation.
I wouldn't say a canon is of finite capacity, but there is some effect where new additions subtly displace older ones, especially when the older ones no longer have any discernible influence on current music.
Someone the other day on Facebook was saying that the Byrds's star had really declined - they weren't on the map in terms of young people's sense of the music that mattered. But in the 1980s they seemed immense, they were everywhere.
Okay, I've got to start with this: the Happy Mondays (my favourite band) were making explicit Beatles allusions well before the Stone Roses. The original edition of their first album Squirrel and G Man... had Desmond, which borrowed the melody from Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; threats of a writ led the track being replaced by the much better 24 Hour Party People. Then on Bummed, Lazy Itis took a bit from Ticket To Ride, and the song is jointly credited to the Mondays and Lennon-McCartney. Please can we just stop assigning all the Mondays' achievements to the Stone Roses?
Secondly, you don't talk much about heritage rock. If heritage rock became entrenched in the 90s (Time Out Of Mind, Johnny Cash's American Recordings, Bowie recovering some form etc.), then I'm not sure the absence of Beatles references during the 80s is that relevant. And Kate Bush's comeback with Aerial was very much a function of heritage rock. Yes, the Bloomian canon is in effect with contemporary artists giving her the nod, but the prevalence of this Bloomian canon is surely due to the pantheonic canon? A singer has to discover Kate Bush before they can be influenced by her, and they're more likely to discover her if she's canonical.
But your point about the Byrds has made me wonder if a canonical act's pervasiveness is fractal, if that's the correct word. To get a proper answer to this, we'd really need statistical data, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Byrds were still enormous in specific locations, with a few local scenes championing them as their forefathers. The more you zoom in, the more details you see. I suspect that would be true of most acts in the canon.
Or indeed a counter-canon. A counter-canon clearly has some debt to the canon it's reacting against. Look at LCD Soundsystem. Their first single Losing My Edge is a humblebrag of their HipsterCanon tastes. I guess this HipsterCanon is the antithesis generated by the thesis of, well, let's call it the OrthoCanon. And thus we get the synthesis of, shall we say, the ÜberCanon?
But asking whether acts can fall out of the canon nowadays is close to prognosticating. Wih the recent meltdown of Ye, I was considering if earlier hip-hop acts with similar reprehensible moments would tumble out the canon. I think we all know the primary example of that is Public Enemy, what with Welcome to the Terrordome, Swindlers' Lust, their side project Confrontation Camp, and of course Professor Griff's pronouncements during interviews. Could they be shoved out the canon for being beyond the pale? No, because the canon they belong to is the National Recording Registry, which includes Fear of a Black Planet. A governmental canon (which also includes Livin' La Vida Loca). The structures for maintaining the canon are considerably stronger than they have been in the past. We have built a situation where escaping old influences is nigh-on impossible. It's like we have a mania for the retro or something.
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