A woozy, lackadaisical brass opening gives way to a skanking, full-throttle banger, with one of the finest dub bass breakdowns you’ll ever hear smack bang in the middle. Neville Staple with Tony McMahon, Original Rude Boy: From Borstal to the Specials, Chapter 9: "Bhangra House".

The 10 best songs by The Specials | Louder

In May 2009, Golding claimed that Allen's reuniting him with Hall played a "massive part" in the group's later reformation.Initially the frontman of 'the Coventry Automatics' in 1977–78, which became the Specials in early 1979, [6] Hall first came to prominence in the UK in 1979 when BBC Radio 1 disc jockey (DJ) John Peel played their debut single " Gangsters" on his show. And on this acidic bummer the 7in closed; for those who invested in More Specials, the album version took an inspired, extended dub excursion, Staple (who had always preferred weed to booze) toasting against alcohol, hard drugs and violence and in favour of music (“I don’t need no speed to make me go fast/ Just give me ickle 45 and 33”) as Dammers hammered out ghostly synth figures, Roddy Radiation picked flamenco notes and the drum-machines did battle with echo-slathered snares. Most affecting of all the chapters from this love-story-gone-wrong is Blank Expression, a forlorn torch song set to an about-to-fall-apart skank that finds our hero unexpectedly crossing paths with his ex. The album, released by Trojan Records as King of Kings, was credited to Desmond Dekker and the Specials.

The Specials - The Best Of The Specials | Banquet Records

On 8 June 2009, it was announced that the Specials would embark on a second leg of their 30th anniversary tour, taking in the locations and venues that they missed earlier in the year.It's fitting, then, that in 2021 the Specials are releasing Protest Songs 1924-2012, an unpredictable collection of unique takes which celebrates the long history and endless versatility of the form, from folk to post-punk, from righteous uplift to biting satire, and from Kingston to Alabama.

The Specials - Wikipedia The Specials - Wikipedia

Since the break-up of the original line-up, various members of the band performed in other bands and have reformed several times to tour and record in Specials-related projects. Despite the live success, the band fizzled out after a 1998 Japan tour (which Panter missed due to illness [19]), although limited touring with a different line-up continued into 2000. In 2013, NME ranked The Specials at number 260 on its list of " The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".Indeed, it’s no big leap to imagine that the ex whose current relationship he so gleefully lampoons on the Specials’ update of Prince Buster’s Judge Dread, Stupid Marriage, is the same girl who’s “married with a son/ When you should be having fun with me” on Too Much Too Young and with whom he’s reached the end of the line on I Can’t Stand It (one of the first songs Dammers ever wrote, though it wouldn’t be recorded until the Specials’ second album, 1980’s More Specials). Other tracks are reworkings of Jamaican originals: "Too Much Too Young" was based on Lloyd Charmers' "Birth Control" and "Stupid Marriage" draws heavily on the Prince Buster hit "Judge 400 Years" (also known as "Judge Dread"). After going on tour with Rodriguez, the band (without Dakar, and as "Rico and the Special AKA") also recorded the non-charting (and non-album) single "Jungle Music". But while the group soon cut a demo tape with an eye to getting a record deal, or at least some airtime on the John Peel Show (neither of which happened), it took the intervention of Clash manager Bernie Rhodes to bring Coventry’s finest to the wider world. 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.