MIDLANDS MUSICAL MOVEMENT AND ITS FIGUREHEAD
DANCE Craze, the documentary film that tracked the 2-Tone ska revival, has been back in cinemas 40 years after its release, helping to celebrate the life of the late Terry Hall of The Specials.
It was Hall’s voice that launched the sound of 2-Tone ska – the music and fashion subculture which formed in the West Midlands and swept up Britain’s youth in the early ‘80s, proclaiming a message of racial unity.
‘‘Why must you wreck all my phone calls?’’ was the opening line of Gangsters and our first taste of Hall’s melancholy but intoxicating voice. A departure from pop’s centre ground, we had a lyricist whose words reflected back what he saw and lived.
The Specials were brave enough to use their platform to tackle racism and unemployment in a divisive period. They weren’t the only ones.
‘‘For me, The Beat, UB40 and Dexys Midnight Runners also wrote with a conviction for change,’’ Birmingham radio broadcaster Adrian Goldberg said.
Hall’s journey into music began with The Automatics, a Coventry punk outfit where he met Jerry Dammers, the ideas man who was busy hatching the plan for 2-Tone records.
Dammers realised punk was almost pogoed out, but had the nous to realise if he wanted his beloved ska music to usurp it, some uptempo tampering was required to reach the audience.
For sure, Dammers was the visionary but a movement needs a focal point, something to hang your pork-pie on, and Terry Hall,
Hall, who died last December, offered precisely that.
Gangsters was released as a double A-side single backed with The Selecter’s eponymous track on the flip-side and it was legendary Radio 1 DJ John Peel who gave it its first play.
‘‘We knew it had been sent to the station,’’ Neol Davies, songwriter for The Selecter said. ‘‘I remember sitting in the living room listening each evening, then he played it.’’
Thereafter, the DJ was inundated with requests to hear more of these rough-edged Jamaican rhythms and the track duly charted at no.6 in a matter of weeks.
As soon as the sound took hold, Dammers eloquently cut a deal with Chrysalis records to take over distribution, providing the cash to sign new acts such as local lads The Beat, The Bodysnatchers and Madness for their debut singles.
Too Much Too Young, a live EP by The Specials, hurtled to the top of the UK charts. Its controversial theme of birth control only seemed to galvanise interest further.
The Dance Craze UK tour, another Dammers idea, was a nationwide tour to increase the visibility of 2-Tone bands. However, stress fractures were showing within The Specials by then and the announcement of their split coincided with their Top of the Pops appearance for Ghost Town, their second and final chart-topper.
For a music movement which lasted just two years, its legacy has transcended time and genre, just as the prescient Dammers predicted.