RIP Terry Hall

[msza2]

There's a live version of Stereotypes I came across recently that is more in line with their ska sound.

[Silent Majority]

As much as any ska fan would have loved a straight up sequel to the first album, I really respect Dammers' push from the Bad Manners cliché. And I love Bad Manners. Some band members said, as a criticism, that they were going from With the Beatles to Sgt Pepper's without doing Rubber Soul. What a gutsy, integrity filled move. And then, boom, fucking GHOST TOWN, the greatest song to get to the top of the charts, which it did at the perfect moment.

[Chairman Ralph]

As much as any ska fan would have loved a straight up sequel to the first album, I really respect Dammers' push from the Bad Manners cliché. And I love Bad Manners. Some band members said, as a criticism, that they were going from With the Beatles to Sgt Pepper's without doing Rubber Soul. What a gutsy, integrity filled move. And then, boom, fucking GHOST TOWN, the greatest song to get to the top of the charts, which it did at the perfect moment.

I respect that idea, but I think Dammers's clever-cleverness ran away with itself, to some degree. I honestly didn't want The Specials Pts. I-10, but More Specials doesn't quite work for me -- because it seems like two albums in one. Which was part of the point, I guess, but I'm not sure how many fans got it at the time. I certainly didn't! So I guess I'll have plead guilty as charged, I suppose.

I think a more logical path would have been to keep the energy and immediacy intact, with a few nods to what was happening next. Maybe save the weirder, quirkier non-ska stuff for an EP, or a 12-inch, which was a big format at that time.

I always had trouble with John Bradbury being sidelined at certain points for that chink-chink-pop drum machine. Not that I have a knee jerk hatred of them, necessarily -- having often had to play with them, live and in recordings -- but there's a time and a place for things, as they say, and that wasn't quite it.

There's also a fair bit of filler going on, with the two instrumentals (Holiday Fortnight, Sock It To 'Em JB), which are fun, but I don't think would ever have seen the light of day if there were two other, stronger songs had taken their place.

And Ghost Town was a perfect moment, but also one that marked the end of the original band, since Terry, Lynval and Neville left right afterwards -- since they didn't share Dammers's vision, one that he apparently didn't seem willing to discuss with them. As Horace Panter has said -- and told me, as well, when I interviewed him in '96 -- he couldn't bear to listen to More Specials for 20 years, because of the misery involved of making it.

The saving grace was that both factions went on to make equally worthy music, with Fun Boy Three, and the Dammers-led "cast of thousands" that made In The Studio, which boasts some of their most underrated moments, in my opinion.

But like I said, I'm always willing to give something another listen, so I'll see how that live version of Stereotype works for me. Songs that seemingly sit there on vinyl often have a funny way of coming alive onstage, when you least expect it. So there is that.

[BR16ADE_R055E]

RIP Terry.







“You’re Wondering Now” ...

Is that Steve Craddock on guitar?

Yes.