Category: Specials

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 094: The Specials – ‘Nite Klub’ (Chrysalis Records ’79)

Good morning friends,

well, there was no way whatsoever in being able not to include The Specials in this series, was it? As far as I’m concerned it is of course debatable whether I chose the right song or not, but the main thing is that the band features – simply because they are ace – all of the time!

Now, ‘Nite Klub’ it is. And not ‘Ghost Town’, but there you are. Of course the importance of the latter is clear to me re deindustrialisation, urban decay, violence, but I reckon everybody is fully aware of the role The Specials played in the late 70’s – being a black and white Ska revival combo praying love and happiness in the heydays of punk and National Front probably wasn’t the easiest thing one could have gone for! And ‘Ghost Town’ was not the only song which showed what they stood for, there are many others which make this more than clear!

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: there is a small chance that only one single person reads this nonsense who is too young – or too busy with Ed Sheeran – to know anything about Two Tone and The Specials in particular, so, should you be wondering what the heck I’m talking about: please delve deeper, it surely is worth five minutes of your life, promised: ‘Nite Klub’ is as good a start as any other song on The Specials’ debut album!

Opening up with the sounds of clinking glasses, muffled conversations and some Jamaican patois which is so non-understandable that it still drives me nuts whenever I hear it some 46 years later, it also features Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders on backing vocals, which surely brings bonus points, at least in my little world.

mp3: The Specials – Nite Klub

‘Nite Klub’ has always been a firm live favorite, if you watch videos of gigs of the time (‘Dance Craze’ is highly recommendable in fact) you’ll see the band clicking on all cylinders, giving us bursts of energy … all of this with a bassline which is beyond this world, although you could tell the same about the horn section (something which becomes even more evident in the live part of the deluxe version of the first album).

Briefly coming back to ‘Ghost Town’ again: people love to interpret things into a song, but this does not always make sense, I always thought: the more sophisticated amongst you could ask for example whether ‘Nite Klub’ follows the lineage of Caribbean music with sociopolitical commentary in confronting the opulence and disparity of British nightlife during times of an economic standstill and continuing unemployment.

Then again you could not do this and simply take the tune like I always did – a tale about myself, with a bottom line I can fully relate to (because I did not do pretty much else when I was younger): pissing down your hard-earned cash on overpriced booze, surrounded by beautiful girls who would not care about you at all – sometimes things are exactly that simple, they are not more, but also they are not less!

Enjoy,

Dirk

This might be a first.  A song which featured in the ongoing ‘Great Debut Singles’series also popping up here on a Monday morning.  But the previous appearance was November 2017, so I think it’s OK to hit the repeat button.  Oh, and as I got such a good reaction to the previous post, I’m going with a cut’n’paste effort.  The only difference being that the mp3s on offer are of a significantly higher rip….

Bernie Rhodes knows don’t argue

And with that, the first record issued by The Specials was unleashed on the listening public.

1979 was a fantastic year for music, certainly here in the UK. It was the year that many of the post-punk/new wave bands really came to prominence, and it was the year that sparked the two-tone craze.

I was sixteen years of age and totally unaware of ska. Glasgow had always been a rock sort of town, although things were in the air that would see a gradual softening of the hard elements of the genre and a whole new sound associated with the city would become incredibly influential. But it was a city that was predominantly white in nature, albeit we had an increasing Asian population that had been migrating here in increasing numbers with next to no fuss in terms of assimilation. There was next to no Caribbean population and black people were really few and far between, and as such there was little demand for local radio stations to ever feature a style of music that had originated in those communities. It was also a sound never played on BBC Radio 1 (as I’ll come to a bit later on).

Hearing bands like The Specials, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat was something entirely new and felt exciting because it was so different. And there’s no doubt too that the rude-boy look of the black and white clothing and pork-pie hat was something that was visually appealing to any mid-aged teen. And the stylish and unusual dancing that accompanied the songs whenever any of the acts appeared on Top of the Pops hit a chord with those who were slightly younger and made the whole thing seem fun.

1979/80 marked my first forays into DJing, if playing records on a single deck at a youth night in the school could be regarded as DJing. The senior pupils were encouraged to help the teachers at these nights, which were basically an effort to provide bored 12-15 year olds with something to do instead of hanging around street corners and picking up bad habits. There were three of us who brought along our own 45s to play while everyone ran around making lots of noise burning up all that excess energy. Very gradually over a matter of weeks, our little corner of the hall began to get a dedicated audience, and it was all driven by the fact they loved to do the Madness dance(s). In two hours of music, you could bet that more than half came through records on the 2-Tone label or its offshoots. And these kids were of an age when playing the same song two or three times in a night didn’t matter.

Gangsters wasn’t aired as much as others, possibly because it wasn’t the easiest to sing-a-long to; nor did it have a nutty dance of its own. But all these years later, I think there’s many who agree it was the best of the early 2-Tone releases, possibly surpassed only later on by Ghost Town by which time the serious side of the various bands were making astute and pertinent political and social observations.

I had no idea that Gangsters was a re-working of Al Capone by Prince Buster, a song originally released in 1964. Indeed, if it wasn’t for Madness, I wouldn’t have had any idea who Prince Buster was. Ska music never featured on any BBC Radio shows that looked back in time at chart rundowns of years gone by. Tamla Motown and soul music was often aired, but I genuinely cannot recall any ska – evidence that big-name DJs and their producers (with the exception, of course, of John Peel) were incredibly conservative with the music they chose to air.

The first 5,000 copies of this single, which came backed with a song by The Selector, came with a plain white sleeve stamped with the title. These sleeves weren’t the most robust, and most of them have deteriorated very badly over the years. If you somehow managed to pick up a copy, all of which were distributed by Rough Trade to the smaller independent record shops, and you’ve managed to take good care of it, then you could probably flog it to a hipster for a few hundred quid.

The vast majority of the 45s were released in what would become the generic 2-Tone sleeve with the immediately identifiable logo, all of which were distributed via Chrysalis records to all stores across the UK and further afield.

Worth noting too that the single was credited to The Special A.K.A. with the band then reverting to the much easier on the tongue The Specials for the string of hit singles and albums that would follow, although they did go back to the original name in 1982 after a number of members left to form Fun Boy Three.

mp3 : Special A.K.A. – Gangsters

Here’s the other side of the single; it’s an instrumental that was recorded prior to vocalist Pauline Black joining the band:-

mp3 : The Selecter – The Selecter

The single spent twelve weeks in the chart from the end of July 1979, peaking at #6 in early September.

JC

4 April 2014

A LOT OF THE FOLK PICTURED ON THIS SLEEVE WILL BE GRANDPARENTS NOW…

There are loads of stats that can be thrown about from today’s offering.

– in February 1981, this became just the second EP ever to reach #1 in the UK singles charts; the first had been back in 1976 when greek crooner Demis Roussos took his Phenomenon EP to the top of the hit parade

– Too Much Too Young became the first live track to reach #1 in more than 9 years; the previous occasion had been Chuck Berry with My-Ding-A-Ling

– at 2:04, the lead track was the shortest #1 throughout the 80s

– the five tracks on the EP had ten different composers

– Terry Hall‘s dad was in the audience for the Coventry gig at which the b-side was recorded; this was the first time he’s seen The Specials perform in concert (the two songs on the a-side were from a separate gig in London)

——-

The thing was, back in 2014, the mp3s put up were of appalling quality with all sorts of hisses and crackles.  The fact I’ve now picked up a better copy gives me the excuse to re-post the music.

mp3 : The Specials – Too Much Too Young (live)
mp3 : The Specials – Guns Of Navarone (live)
mp3 : The Specials – Skinhead Symphony (live)*

* features Longshot Kick The Bucket, Liquidator and Skinhead Moonstomp

I feel it is only right that I should close with the two comments which were contributed to the original post, as one is smart/witty and the other is educational.

Jacques the Kipper says:
April 4, 2014 at 12:47 pm

I can see Ellen Degeneres at the back on the left…

Peerless.

Stevo Kifaru says:
April 12, 2014 at 9:24 pm

And ironically/coincidentally the three live tracks on the b-side of this E.P. were recorded at Coventry Tiffany’s where the previous (and first-ever live recording to hit the U.K top spot) No1 My Ding-a-ling was also recorded, albeit the venue was called the Locarno then….

That’ll be The Locarno which is namechecked by Terry Hall in this stunning b-side:-

mp3: The Specials – Friday Night, Saturday Morning

JC

Bernie Rhodes knows don’t argue

And with that, the first record issued by The Specials was unleashed on the listening public.

1979 was a fantastic year for music, certainly here in the UK. It was the year that many of the post-punk/new wave bands really came to prominence and it was the year that sparked the two-tone craze.

I was sixteen years of age and totally unaware of ska. Glasgow had always been a rock sort of town, although things were in the air that would see a gradual softening of the hard elements of the genre and a whole new sound associated with the city would become incredibly influential. But it was a city that was predominantly white in nature, albeit we had an increasing Asian population that had been migrating here in increasing numbers with next to no fuss in terms of assimilation. There was next to no Caribbean population and black people were really few and far between and as such there was little demand for local radio stations to ever feature a style of music that had originated in those communities. It was also a sound never played on BBC Radio 1 (as I’ll come to a bit later on).

Hearing bands like The Specials, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat was something entirely new and felt exciting because it was so different. And there’s no doubt too that the rude-boy look of the black and white clothing and pork-pie hat was something that was visually appealing to any mid-aged teen. And the stylish and unusual dancing that accompanied the songs whenever any of the acts appeared on Top of the Pops hit a chord with those who were slightly younger and made the whole thing seem fun.

1979/80 marked my first forays into DJing, if playing records on a single deck at a youth night in the school could be regarded as DJing. The senior pupils were encouraged to help the teachers at these nights, which were basically an effort to provide bored 12-15 year olds with something to do instead of hanging around street corners and picking up bad habits. There were three of us who brought along our own 45s to play while everyone ran around making lots of noise burning up all that excess energy. Very gradually over a matter of weeks, our little corner of the hall began to get a dedicated audience and it was all driven by the fact they loved to do the Madness dance(s). In two hours of music, you could bet that more than half came through records on the 2-Tone label or its offshoots. And these kids were of an age when playing the same song two or three times in a night didn’t matter.

Gangsters wasn’t aired as much as others, possibly because it wasn’t the easiest to sing-a-long to; nor did it have a nutty dance of its own. But all these years later, I think there’s many who agree it was the best of the early 2-Tone releases, possibly surpassed only later on by Ghost Town by which time the serious side of the various bands were making astute and pertinent political and social observations.

I had no idea that Gangsters was a re-working of Al Capone by Prince Buster, a song originally released in 1964. Indeed, if it wasn’t for Madness, I wouldn’t have had any idea who Prince Buster was. Ska music never featured on any BBC Radio shows that looked back in time at chart rundowns of years gone by. Tamla Motown and soul music was often aired but I genuinely cannot recall any ska – evidence that big-name DJs and their producers (with the exception of course of John Peel) were incredibly conservative with the music they chose to air.

The first 5,000 copies of this single, which came backed with a song by The Selector, came with a plain white sleeve stamped with the title. These sleeves weren’t the most robust and most of them have deteriorated very badly over the years. If you somehow managed to pick up a copy, all of which were distributed by Rough Trade to the smaller independent record shops, and you’ve managed to take good care of it, then you could probably flog it to a hipster for a few hundred quid.

The vast majority of the 45s were released in what would become the generic 2-Tone sleeve with the immediately identifiable logo, all of which were distributed via Chrysalis records to all stores across the UK and further afield.

Worth noting too that the single was credited to Special A.K.A. with the band then reverting to the much easier on the tongue The Specials for the string of hit singles and albums that would follow, although they did go back to the original name in 1982 after a number of members left to form Fun Boy Three.

mp3 : Special A.K.A. – Gangsters

Here’s the other side of the single; it’s an instrumental that was recorded prior to vocalist Pauline Black joining the band:-

mp3 : The Selecter – The Selecter

JC

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2008

Like many others of my age in 1980, I bought a whole bundle of singles by new emerging bands such as The Beat, Madness and The Specials. I didn’t go the whole hog and buy the natty suits and pork-pie hat, but I loved my ska bands.

In 1981, The Specials released Ghost Town, a song that was completely unlike any other that had ever emerged from the ska movement. It bulleted up the charts and spent a number of weeks at #1. In retrospect, it has been called the most prophetic of songs ever to be a chart-topper, and there’s all sorts of great pieces of writing all over the internet about how politically significant it all was.

But…….I’m sorry to say, and this may be seen as a piece of heresy, but my love for the song is solely related to the tune and the great vocal performances…

However, that shouldn’t be taken as meaning that I wasn’t aware of the political stooshie that Ghost Town was causing. I was growing up fast in 1981, just about to leave school and go off to University. I had a comfortable and very pleasant upbringing, but I was from an area where I had friends who should have come with me to university, but were in circumstances where they had instead to take on a job to in banking or with the civil service to help support their parents, one or both of whom were out-of-work. Poverty and deprivation weren’t alien concepts to me.

There is no other way to put it – Ghost Town is a savage attack on the state of British society at the outset of the 80s. The Tories under Margaret Thatcher had come to power in 1979 thanks in part to a famous main campaigning slogan of ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ with a poster that showed a huge crowd of people waiting to get into the unemployment office and sign-on.

Two years on, the situation was even worse – unemployment rates had almost doubled across the country. In some areas, particularly where there was a high concentration of young ethnic minorities, as many as 8 out of 10 folk weren’t in employment.

Throw in the rise of the fascist far-right in the shape of the National Front who were blaming non-whites for the state of the nation and a police force that was being given more and more stop-and-search powers by a government determined to appear as the party of law-and-order, then the ingredients were there for something to kick-off.

The people were getting angry.

So angry in fact that in April 1981, something happened that was totally alien in the UK. There was a riot in the streets.

It happened in Brixton in London, and it began as the reaction of a crowd to what they saw was the racist arrest of a local youth (something that was subsequently proven to be true).

The trouble escalated over a 48-hour period before being brought under control. For the first time that I could recall, pictures of police and civilians fighting toe-to-toe in the streets were shown on television, along with images of what seemed to be a whole neighbourhood on fire. And it really did look as if there was going to be some sort of major uprising, but within two or three days, the police had regained order.

Two months later, Ghost Town was released as a single.

But the song wasn’t just a reaction to what had happened in Brixton – in fact it had been written and recorded before the April riot. But to some it seemed to act as a rallying call, for within weeks of its release, as it climbed its way up the charts, there were more riots on the streets.

This time it was Toxteth in Liverpool that was initially in the spotlight. Again, it was initially a reaction to tensions between the police and disaffected black youths, and similar scenes of carnage were beamed live into our homes courtesy of the TV (and all this in the days before we had 24-hour news channels). Toxteth was on a larger scale than Brixton and before long, other riots broke out, the largest being in Handsworth in Birmingham, as well as in many other towns and cities across England.

My recollection is that it took about a week to get things back to normal.

Living in Scotland, I had a feeling of being sheltered from all of this trouble. It may have been Liverpool, Birmingham, London and so on, but it felt as if it was as far away as Detroit, Chicago or Los Angeles.

There was no rioting in Glasgow. Nor was there ever any threat of rioting in Glasgow, despite the unemployment problems being every bit as bad here as anywhere else. What I believe was crucially absent at the time, was a disaffected ethnic minority in my home city that was prepared to take to the streets in protest. I’m not going to make any absurd claim about racism not being an issue in Glasgow in 1981, but it certainly was nowhere near as big a problem as it was in the inner-cities south of the border. Oh and its fair to say, that policing methods were slightly different as well…

The fact I was physically separated from the trouble and violence is why I never, at the time, made the connection between Ghost Town and what was happening in many parts of the country. It was only in the cold light of day a short while later, when the music papers in particular made the connection that the little light bulb went on above my head.

To lots of people, this song will always be associated with events that briefly threatened the very fabric of British society. To this humble scribe, it’s just a great song.

Here’s the 12″ cuts with the second of the the two b-sides featuring probably my favourite ever Terry Hall vocal. Having said that, the other b-side is up there with the very best of The Specials.  It really is a maginificent three-track single.

mp3 : The Specials – Ghost Town
mp3 : The Specials – Why?
mp3 : The Specials – Friday Night, Saturday Morning

Enjoy.

There are loads of stats that can be thrown about from today’s offering.

– in February 1981, this became just the second EP ever to reach #1 in the UK singles charts; the first had been back in 1976 when greek crooner Demis Roussous took his Phenomenon EP to the top of the hit parade

– Too Much Too Young became the first live track to reach #1 in more than 9 years; the previous occasion had been Chuck Berry with My-Ding-A-Ling

– at 2:04, the lead track was the shortest #1 throughout the 80s

– the five tracks on the EP had ten different composers

– Terry Hall‘s dad was in the audience for the Coventry gig at which the b-side was recorded; this was the first time he’s seen The Specials perform in concert

I’ve long hummed and hawed about whether to use this 45 on the blog for the simple reason that it is record in terrible condition with all sorts of hisses and crackles.   But in the end…..

mp3 : The Specials – Too Much Too Young (live)
mp3 : The Specials – Guns Of Navarone (live)
mp3 : The Specials – Skinhead Symphony (live)*
* features Longshot Kick The Bucket, Liquidator and Skinhead Moonstomp

Enjoy. And hopefully you can track down versions with a far better sound quality.