In September 1980 the new post-ska Specials sound was unveiled with the double A-sided single "Stereotypes" and "International Jet Set". The former whisked together a kitschedelic meringue of movie-score and lounge-music motifs: balalaikas and Cossack choirs, mariachi trumpets and milky-sounding organ pulses, all gently propelled by the pitter of programmed drum beats. The lyrics revisited the leisure grindstone of "Nite Klub" but in a more wry and distanced fashion, caricaturing a young piss-head who 'drinks his age in pints', drives while inebriated, and ends up 'wrapped round a lamp-post on Saturday night'.
The Specials - Stereotypes 1980
"International Jet Set" was even more eerie and evocative. Laced with Casio-rumba rhythms and swirling Wurlitzer organs, it's a tale of frequent-flyer paranoia, sung by Terry Hall in a high-pitched, highly strung whinny. To Hall, barely able to keep his panic in check, a group of jovial businessmen 'Seem so absurd to me/Like well-dressed chimpazees'. His fear of flying turns out to be justified: the plane has to make an emergency landing and the captain's voice is revealed as just a recording.
The Specials - International Jet Set 1980
Dammers had fallen in love with the studio and its possibilities for endless overdubs and fine tunings in pursuit of absolute perfection (a passion that would ultimately be ruinous). But not everyone in the band cared for this new producer-dominated direction: John Bradbury and Roddy Radiation both preferred high-energy sounds (Northern Soul and rockabilly, respectively). As a result, the second album More Specials was ultimately something of a motley compromise, a ragbag of revivalisms. Only the nuclear doomsday fantasy "Man at C&A" approached the full-blown film-soundtrack/Muzak fusion Dammers achieved on both sides of the single.
The Specials - Man at C&A 1980
More Specials announced the end of the black-and-white 2-Tone aesthetic with its full-colour cover: a blurry snapshot of the band relaxing (astonishingly, some of them were even smiling).
"Do Nothing", the next single off the album, was oddly subdued and fatalistic, a downtempo rock-steady number about a stylish layabout who mooches down the High Street, 'trying to find a future'. The only ray of sunshine comes from the pair of new shoes on his feet. Yet the song seems to see right through the mod fantasy - dressing well as the best revenge over you social superiors, style as a magical solution. In a land where 'nothing ever changes', Hall sings, 'Fashion is my only culture'.
The Specials - Do Nothing 1980
Inspired equally by a trip to Kingston, Jamaica, and by witnessing the effect of Thatcher's policies on Coventry's economy and nightlife, "Ghost Town" sketched a sonic portrait of de-industrialization. The song starts with the desolate whistle of wind rustling through a deserted town. A wraith-like woodwind instrument drifts into earshot, soon joined by what sounds like a Wurlitzer playing in a long-derelict cinema. The lyrics contrast the gaiety of the good-old days (the roaring nightlife back when workers had money to burn) with the present of idle factories and boarded-up nightclubs. Near the end, "Ghost Town" cuts from Hall's exhausted sigh, 'Can't go on no more' to Staple's baleful 'People gettin' angry'. Finally, the song strips down to just bass and drums and the return of that whistling wind - so chillingly cinematic you can almost see the tumbleweeds.
The Specials - Ghost Town 1981
Two superb tracks on the flipside made the whole record a kind of concept EP: three angles on the British way of living death. Lynval Golding's "Why" addressed the racist thugs who'd attacked him outside the Moonlight Club the previous year, asking plaintively, 'Did you really want to kill me?' Then the more belligerent Staple steps forward to shout down the fascist British Movement: 'You follow like sheep inna wolf's clothes'.
The Specials - Why 1981
Wonderfully wan and listless, Terry Hall's "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" subverts The Easybeats mod classic "Friday On My Mind" with its depiction of a wage slave's dismal idea of big fun: sinking pints at the Locarno while watching other people pick each other up, then waiting at the taxi-rank in the small hours (a meat pie in his hand, one foot planted in someone else's spew) wishing 'I had lipstick on my collar instead of piss stains on my shoes'.
The Specials - Friday Night, Saturday Morning 1981
The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind 1966
After the brilliant but commercially suicidal single "The Boiler" (a harrowing rape account recited by Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers, 2-Tone's all-girl group) Dammers produced a trilogy of protest singles - "Racist Friend", "War Crimes" and "Nelson Mandela" - whose sentiments were admirable but whose sonic execution lacked almost everything that had made The Specials special.
The Specials with Rhoda Dakar - The Boiler 1982
The Specials - Racist Friend 1983
The Specials - War Crimes 1982
The Specials - Nelson Mandela 1984
Fun Boy Three, the band formed by ex-Specials Golding, Hall and Staple, meanwhile scored a series of hits that were alternatively glum (the Reagan/Thatcher-inspired "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum"; the world (affairs) weary "The More I see the Less I Believe") and jolly (two Top 5 singles in partnership with all-girl trio Bananarama).
Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum 1981
Fun Boy Three - The More I See the Less I Believe 1982
Fun Boy Three with Bananarama - It Ain't What You Do... 1982
Bananarama with Fun Boy Three - Really Saying Something 1982
