{"id":1258,"date":"2008-02-29T16:16:15","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T20:16:15","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-11T14:45:32","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T18:45:32","slug":"production-matters-the-specials-and-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/production-matters-the-specials-and-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Production Matters: The Specials and The English Beat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zWZzsxgH2gY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nHere I go again, hoping to launch a discussion over a type of topic that is an anathema to many of you. I thank you in advance for your <strong>tolerance<\/strong> and, moreso, <strong>efforts<\/strong> in confronting the challenging relationships among <strong>form<\/strong>, <strong>content<\/strong>, and <strong>perception<\/strong>. It goes without saying that I do not expect you to thank me in advance for the surprising degree to which you might feel yourself caught up in this discussion.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><big><em>Have you ever faced such issues, largely based on the production and presentation of one band&#8217;s otherwise stellar release? Was your choice worth it?<\/em><\/big><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Assuming you&#8217;re <strong>cool<\/strong>, you probably like <strong>The Specials<\/strong> &#8211; definitely their first, Elvis Costello-produced album and, most likely, their &#8220;underrated&#8221; second album. I really like that second album and try not to miss an opportunity to tell real rock &#8216;n roll fans how underrated it is. I&#8217;m pretty sure this makes me come off like a real rock &#8216;n roll fan with a degree of added insight. It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m going to get laid for holding &#8211; and proclaiming &#8211; this opinion, but I&#8217;ll probably get a toe in the door with some rock nerd whose record collection is much cooler than my own.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/southside.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"356\" height=\"237\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">Watching the girls go by<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>From the git-go, The Specials stood out from the <strong>2 Tone<\/strong> pack. Their debut album was a rare &#8220;party&#8221; album that actually sounded like a fun party to attend, unlike, say, a <strong>Southside Johnny &amp; The Asbury Jukes<\/strong> album might sound after 3 songs. (OK, that&#8217;s not fair &#8211; and we need to keep on the good side of <strong>Conan<\/strong> and his band. The Jukes could hold my attention for 5 songs&#8230;) Somehow, the production manages to sound ragged and loose &#8211; with the songs couched in an almost second-hand or &#8220;overheard&#8221; perspective, as if you are hearing them from another room &#8211; <em>yet<\/em> you can tune in to all the instruments and singers. And although us Yankee listeners may not be able to understand every word they sing, we get the gist: declarations of unity, pacifism, and clear-headed responses to a mad mad world are tempered with obvious identification with the phyical world as well as the world of spirits and herbs. I&#8217;m sure you all own that first record, so here&#8217;s a visual refresher of the wonders of the band&#8217;s <strong>&#8220;A Message to You Rudy&#8221;<\/strong>.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UmbcOpPvQGk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>How cool were The Specials? The production of the band&#8217;s debut album is such a great reflection of the stew they cooked up live, as seen in the following clip of <strong>&#8220;Monkey Man&#8221;<\/strong>.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i71NC9-s__A?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>SUPERCOOL!<\/em> And if you haven&#8217;t spun it in 20 years, don&#8217;t forget to revisit <em>More Specials<\/em>! (I must say, I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s a sign of how cool and exquisite my taste is or how far from cool I still am today that I never got into anything that dripped out from the band&#8217;s catalog once <strong>Jerry Dammers<\/strong> reconfigured the band as <strong>The Special AKA<\/strong> and released that Nelson Mandela ep. Something tells me that you don&#8217;t get enough &#8220;cool points&#8221; for talking about the possibly underrated nature of that release to make it worth my effort. I&#8217;ll take my chances.)<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UTNpaaPHENE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>The English Beat<\/strong> also came out of the gates <em>on fire<\/em>! If you were of listening age &#8211; <strong>and fairly cool<\/strong> &#8211; when that first album hit the States, you knew you&#8217;d found a rare &#8220;New Wave&#8221; album that you could sneak onto the turntable and play for your dinosaur &#8217;70s rock friends without immediately being called a pussy. You couldn&#8217;t quite do that with The Specials&#8217; first album. They were a bit <em>out there<\/em>, the record didn&#8217;t have the sort of FM-friendly <ins><strong>muscle<\/strong><\/ins> that The English Beat&#8217;s <em>Can&#8217;t Stop Dancing<\/em> had. The English Beat were kind of like <strong>The Police<\/strong> when it came to surprisingly muscular New Wave production values, don&#8217;t you think? Soon-to-be-left-behind (or so we thought) Rock Doods also were drawn in by &#8220;Mirror in the Bathroom&#8221;. I still don&#8217;t know what those lyrics add up to, but I knew a lot of guys in college who confidently adopted the song as a rallying cry for chopping up some <em>lines<\/em>, baby! Rush&#8230;The English Beat&#8230;rub a little powder on your gums!<\/p>\n<p>You know what else was cool about The English Beat? <strong>Chicks dug &#8217;em!<\/strong> Sure, there were girls who were actually cool who dug those Specials albums as much as you did, but even the sorority girls with just enough taste for danger, relatively speaking, and looks worth pursuing wouldn&#8217;t run away if you put the needle down on <strong>&#8220;Hands Off She&#8217;s Mine&#8221;<\/strong>. These same sisters would have found The Specials a bit&#8230;<em>icky<\/em>. Can you see how, in terms of the bands&#8217; contrasting productions and presentations, The English Beat were the fairly hip and relatively sensitive soccer and tennis jocks while The Specials were the boys still struggling not to wipe snot on their sleeves?<\/p>\n<p>So The English Beat could impress the Rock Doods AND the Sorority Girls. The choice should have been a no-brainer: <strong>&#8220;I love The English Beat!&#8221;<\/strong> However, the fact is that although I think that debut album and enough songs on their next two albums <em>are<\/em> fantastic, I can&#8217;t muster up as deep a connection with them as I&#8217;d like. On an objective level, The English Beat put out a brilliant debut album that I should hold in as high esteem as The Specials&#8217; debut, but something&#8217;s missing. Or maybe they&#8217;re giving me more than I can handle?<\/p>\n<p>For those of us too-cool-for-school to accept the good fortune set in our laps, The English Beat would be deemed a &#8220;lesser&#8221; second-wave ska band. One of those bands we file under <strong><em>Yeah, but&#8230;<\/em><\/strong> I know my man <strong>Andyr<\/strong> knows what I&#8217;m talking about. We lived it together, but does anyone else get a feel for this divide? Take a look at the following video. This is what were were willing to turn down for some self-knighted notion of <strong>Rock Nobility<\/strong>. I searched YouTube far and wide and did not find this girl &#8220;skanking&#8221; to The Specials.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OeertZ_wBiI?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><em>Have you ever faced such issues, largely based on the production and presentation of one band&#8217;s otherwise stellar release? Was your choice worth it?<\/em><\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/production-matters-the-specials-and-the\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/production-matters-the-specials-and-the\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/production-matters-the-specials-and-the\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here I go again, hoping to launch a discussion over a type of topic that is an anathema to many of you. I thank you in advance for your tolerance and, moreso, efforts in confronting the challenging relationships among form, content, and perception. It goes without saying that I do not expect you to thank <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/production-matters-the-specials-and-the\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}