More Specials

Product Information

Matrix / Runout (Side A, stamped / etched, variant 1): CHR TT 5003 A // 3 ▽ E C R S TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 1 1 1 3 CHR TT - 5003 A 3 √ANOS Hall formed Fun Boy Three with his Specials bandmates Staple and Lynval Golding. They also enjoyed chart success for several years, collaborating twice with girl band Bananarama, on It Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It) and Really Saying Something. Hall would also land a Top 10 single with Our Lips Are Sealed, a song he co-wrote with US indie star – and then romantic partner – Jane Wiedlin for her band the Go-Go’s. Hall was still struggling with his mental health, he admitted around this time. In 2003, he had begun self-medicating with alcohol. In the last decade of his life, he sought medication, having been wary of it since being put on Valium as a teenager, as well as taking up art therapy. Great protest songs may spring to life in a specific time and place but they hit upon a larger truth which enables them to resonate across the years and miles. “Trouble Every Day was about the Watts riots in 1965 but it immediately came to mind with what was happening in 2020,” says Horace, turning to an example from the Special’s own catalogue. “People in every major city in England think that Ghost Town was written about them.”

Terry Hall, however, had always remained implacably resistant to a Specials reunion, while piloting an irregular solo career that took in everything from world music to a tenure as resident DJ at the Guilty Pleasures club nights ("I've stopped now - you were getting a lot of hen parties coming in," says the man who once skewered the awfulness of a cheesy disco, hen party and all, on the Specials' Friday Night, Saturday Morning). He says he found his feelings softening after seeing the reconstituted Pixies live: "It felt a bit ... not like religious, but they were fantastic." He and Golding began performing together occasionally, and mooting the idea of a reunion. Eventually, the Specials performed live, unannounced but to rapturous response, at last year's Bestival. Terry: I think politicians love the division. It’s a great thing for them. They thrive on it. I don’t think they want everyone to be together. Brexit has conjured up so much stuff, and all these personalities are appearing, like Jacob Rees-Mogg. They like the division and I can see it getting a lot worse. Walker, John; Robbins, Ira; Neugebauer, Delvin. "Specials". Trouser Press . Retrieved 18 January 2018. The Specials: More Specials" (PDF). Billboard. Vol.85, no.42. 18 October 1980. p.66. ISSN 0006-2510 . Retrieved 30 May 2020– via World Radio History. Miranda Sawyer: But can you think of a song that isn’t yours where you thought : this changes everything?

Playlists

Snivilisation (liner notes). Orbital. FFRR Records. 1994. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) Lynval: I like Nite Klub. It’s a bit of a naughty one: “I won’t dance in a club like this/ All the girls are slags/ And the beer tastes just like piss.” It’s what we guys, when we get together, we talk about. We don’t shout it out loud to people. I quite enjoy that.

The Specials can be found online here: thespecials.com. They’re also on Facebook and tweet as @thespecials. With every record I’ve done, I’ve made reference to it,” says Hall, “but this is out-and-out. I was diagnosed with manic depression and schizophrenia about 11 years ago and that diagnosis made a big difference, because then I started taking medication. And the change in me, to be able to function… I couldn’t have done this 12 years ago. People used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you try yoga? Or St John’s wort?’ But there’s a massive difference when you’re in a deep depression and feeling shitty with the world, and the stage that I got to, where you want to give yourself a lobotomy, it’s that bad.” The Specials on stage, June 1980 (l-r): Lynval Golding, Neville Staple, Roddy Radiation, Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers, John Bradbury. Photograph: Ray Stevenson / Rex Features Terry: I’m actually going to see Joe in a couple of weeks, his band. I don’t know. We get asked that a lot. “What are you listening to now?” And what I’m listening to now is a Grateful Dead album, because I never heard it first time round...They released their debut single, Gangsters (a reworking of Prince Buster’s Al Capone) in 1979, which reached No 6 in the UK singles chart. They would dominate the Top 10 over the next two years, peaking with their second No 1 single, and calling card, Ghost Town, in 1981. The lyrics, written by the band’s main songwriter, Dammers, dealt with Britain’s urban decay, unemployment and disfranchised youth. Riegel, Richard (March 1981). "The Specials: More Specials (Chrysalis/2-Tone)". Creem . Retrieved 22 June 2023. Stevens, Jenny (9 April 2015). "Chalkie Davies's best photograph: the Specials in Paris". The Guardian . Retrieved 18 January 2018. Horace: We learned how to present a show while on tour with the Clash. You would see how they go on stage and it was just like, Bang. We learned to give 100%. Not just shamble on stage and “If you don’t mind, we’d like to play a few songs.” We were totally different after that tour. I always say that we started that tour as civilians but ended it as a group. All the same, there still seems something unlikely about finding the Specials in such a cheery mood. For all their celebrated live shows, and the brilliance of their slender oeuvre, an aura of darkness clings to the Coventry band's story. Eight years ago, I interviewed the band's ex-members. They expressed plenty of pride in their achievements, but there was nevertheless a sense that all of them had been rather traumatised by the experience of being in the band.

Coinciding with the album's release, the Specials began the More Specials Tour in autumn 1980, but the conflicts between band remembers that had surfaced during the album's recording sessions continued to develop throughout the tour, with relations between members being the worst they had ever been. [35] Dammers recalled band members becoming tired and constantly feeling under pressure, and throughout the tour, they watched "the country falling apart" as shops throughout the British towns and cities they played became shuttered up and closed down: " Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad, she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong." [35] Copland-Gray, Martin (6 August 2013). "Louder Than War Interview: Ranking Roger From The Beat". Louder Than War . Retrieved 14 January 2018.

This EP is credited as the Special AKA featuring Rico. In some countries, such as France and Germany, the EP was instead released as a 7-inch single consisting of "Too Much Too Young" as the A-side and " Guns of Navarone" as the B-side. a b "British album certifications – Specials – More Specials". British Phonographic Industry . Retrieved 17 November 2020. Horace: I’m the only participating member of the Specials who still lives in Coventry and no, I haven’t been approached to do something. I would like to see money put by to provide for music lessons for children in schools, a proper legacy. I’m more interested in that than “Here’s a couple of boutique hotels”, and who needs another wine bar for goodness sake?

The most common question from the Observer readers concerns whether Dammers will ever rejoin: when I ask it today, Hall, Golding and Panter give answers that are noticeably varied. Is the door open for him or not? Dammers himself, when I speak to him later, says that he was served with a legal letter and forced out of the band. Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s and Hall’s former partner wrote that she was “gutted”. “He was a lovely, sensitive, talented and unique person. Our extremely brief romance resulted in the song Our Lips Are Sealed, which will forever tie us together in music history. Terrible news to hear this,” she tweeted. The song "A Message to You, Rudy" was featured in a SFR television commercial directed by Bruno Aveillan, with world champion football player, Marcel Desailly in 2001 We’d been listening to Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and [dub poet] Linton Kwesi Johnson—those spoken-word reggae pieces from the ’70s. It was a platform for Lynval to relay his experiences of being an immigrant—in England in the ’60s and again when he moved to America in the ’90s. We had to be almost dispassionate about it and say, ‘No, Lynval, you can't waffle on for 32 bars. You’ve got to condense your meaning into 16 bars.’ It was an exercise in how to channel emotion.” Terry: The last thing that I saw that I really, really liked was the Fat White Family. They were funny and everything you wanted. Bit druggy, funny, they look really good.

Release

Hall wasn’t part of a Specials reunion, the Specials Mk 2, which lasted from 1993 to 1998. He released his debut solo album in 1994, Home, produced by Broudie; a follow-up, Laugh, came in 1997.