When the Specials kicked off the nouveau ska craze in England not long ago, it seemed like a fine idea. Working from a local base in Coventry, the Specials launched their own label, gave a start to kindred groups (Madness, the Selecter, Bodysnatchers, the Beat), scored hit after hit with a revamped version of early
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Jamaican rock and attracted listeners both black and white – which was only right, since they themselves were a racially integrated band. The Specials made a good distribution deal with Chrysalis, Elvis Costello, hotter than hot, produced their first album.
The only problem was that The Specials wasn't very good. It was stiff, not from moldy-fig cultism (ska, after all, had been a dead letter in Jamaica since the rise of rock steady in 1966, and a memory in the U.K. since the disappearance of the mods somewhat earlier) but from a singular lack of imagination. Forced enthusiasm, no doubt terrifically convincing onstage, didn't salvage woefully inexpressive vocals, and the second-time-around novelty of the ska sound dried up fast when the Specials failed to catch the delicate, witty rhythms that had brought the sound to life in the first place. As for Madness, a clunky, clowning, all-white outfit from London, their "wild" sense of humor couldn't disguise the fact that they were little more than the Blues Brothers with English accents. Listening from his record store in Kingston, ska legend Prince Buster, the inspiration for the whole minimovement, must have had himself a few good laughs – along with, one hopes, a few good royalty checks.
It soon became evident that the one great band to emerge from the ska revival was the Beat (renamed the English Beat for U.S. consumption), a group of black and white punks from Birmingham. They had the verve the Specials and the others lacked. Pushed by a fifty-year-old Jamaican sax man, they had rhythm: more a hard combination of 1977 punk and the Maytals than the tricky pulses of ska. It was, as the Beat liked to say, music to make you think while you danced. The songs were funny and ominous and sexy. The vocals were full of personality, and they snapped like locker-room towels. All the good ideas of the Specials–commercial independence, interracial comradeship, cultural boundary hopping–were there, but so was the music, and the tension necessary to put across the ideas behind the music.
More Specials makes not a nod in the tougher direction of the Beat. Still, in some ways, it's an attractive little LP. Again, the singing is flat, the mood contrived–the sound of the late-night brainstorm that's never quite so fecund the next morning – and the source is ska plus pure trash music: airplane Muzak, movie themes, a James Bond roll call ("Goldfinger! Live and let die!") and a bit about the next world war that crashes with cheesy sound effects. Taken as a piece, the album is pleasing, almost diverting. The Specials are digging ideas out o
If punk-leaning fans scratched their scabby noggins when Jerry Dammers and Co. released this lounge-soaked classic in 1980 that's only because they were idiots. All the energy, excitement, and anger of their debut remains, but the musical variations are endless. The only misstep is the dub tag-on to the corrosively brilliant "Stereotypes." The summit of the ska revival.
