The Best Of The Specials

Product Information

Chambers, Pete (2008) 2-Tone-2: Dispatches from the Two Tone City, 30 Years on, Tencton Planet Publications. He has made a huge contribution to the fantastic time and reception we have received since we started and reformed in 2009. He released two solo studio albums and also collaborated with many artists including David Stewart, Bananarama, the Lightning Seeds, Sinéad O'Connor, Stephen Duffy, Dub Pistols, Gorillaz, Damon Albarn, D12, Tricky, Lily Allen and Shakespears Sister.

Wikipedia Terry Hall (singer) - Wikipedia

Segueing between the Bedouin drone of War Crimes, the arch, London-sniping funk-pop of Bright Lights, and the downbeat roots reggae of Racist Friend, the album painted on a broader canvas than its predecessors, though the bleak tone that pervaded many of the songs helped ensure In the Studio ended up a commercial disappointment.

Yet Nelson Mandela was the most joyous music Dammers had ever recorded, a bustling carnival of staccato horn bursts, highlife guitar jangle, Latin-flavoured Afrobeat shuffle, ecstatic choir voices – featuring Elvis Costello, the Beat’s Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling, former Special Lynval Golding and Afrodiziak, top session singers whose CVs included work with Pink Floyd, the Jam and Madness (and counted future Soul II Soul star Caron Wheeler in their number) – and vocalist Stan Campbell pleading with the world to free Mandela and his people: “Are you so blind that you cannot see? In 2008, BBC Music agreed that the economic and political conditions of the day had heightened the record's impact, saying, "To understand the impact of this spearhead of the ska revival on early Thatcherite Britain you have to imagine something so left field and yet so apt occurring today.

The Best of the Specials (2017) - IMDb Top Gear: The Best of the Specials (2017) - IMDb

Reverting once again to the name of the Specials, the band's second album, More Specials, was not as commercially successful and was recorded at a time when, according to Hall, conflicts had developed in the band. On 1 February 2019, the band announced a spring North American tour to promote the 1 February 2019 release of Encore (out via Island Records). The track describes an incident of date rape, and its frank and harrowing depiction of the matter meant that airplay was severely limited.Protest Songs 1924-2012 is an idiosyncratic version of that history, born out of extreme circumstances and guided by the personalities of Terry, Horace and Lynval. Formed in 1977, Coventry two-tone and ska revivalists The Specials are one of the most important and revolutionary bands in the history of pop culture. In the aftermath of Ghost Town’s success, abandoned by most of his bandmates, Dammers assembled a new line-up of the Specials, reclaimed their earlier nom-du-ska The Special AKA, and repaired to the studio for over two years to work on a third album.

The Specials: 10 of the best | The Specials | The Guardian

By the time that album, the aptly titled In the Studio, was released in June 1984 (a full year after the Fun Boy Three’s career had wound down, following a slew of singles and two acclaimed albums), Dammers and drummer John Bradbury were the sole remaining originals within ranks bolstered by Stray Cats guitarist John Shipley, vetean Specials flugelhornist Dick Cuthell and vocalists Stan Campbell and the marvelous Rhoda Dakar, a former member of 2-Tone band the Bodysnatchers who’d recorded the vocals for the Special AKA’s chilling 1982 single The Boiler. Plus, of course, the lack of Hall, Panter and Golding means that some will be quick to dismiss this particular iteration of the band (it was released under their The Special A.

The itchy, restless energy of ska – reggae’s uptight, joyful ancestor – was a perfect complement to the dynamism of punk, as the Automatics discovered in 1977, when they began plying the mixture at pubs and clubs in their hometown of Coventry.