The Specials and the Battle of Midsummer Common (too much fighting on the dance floor!)

This interview with the reforming Specials was very interesting for a number of reasons, apart from the fact of the band’s (at least partial) reunion. I really liked the Specials, although they weren’t one of my very favourite bands. I think that was because of the rather whiny, preachy nature of some of their songs, such as “Racist Friend”, “Rat Race” and probably everything they released after the Fun Boy Three departed. But I suppose a bit of preachiness was hardly surprising given that Jerry Dammers’ father was a senior canon at Coventry Cathedral.

It was interesting (and a bit alarming) to see how much Terry Hall had aged. It was also interesting to see John Bradbury get a bit of publicity, given his virtual invisibility during the Specials’ existence. But most interesting of all was the mention of the chaotic concert in Cambridge in 1981 which resulted in Hall and Dammers being convicted of public order offences (though not incitement to riot as the article claims ), and possibly inspired the “too much fighting on the dance floor” line in their (much overrated) song “Ghost Town”. And I was there.

Unusually, the concert took place in a marquee on Midsummer Common. Most major gigs in Cambridge happened at the Corn Exchange, squalid, uncomfortable, perfect venue for punk. (I’ve just looked at their website – it’s still there and it’s got SEATS!!!). Fights happened but it was nowhere near as dangerous as student folklore suggested. I think for a while in late 1980 and early 1981 there weren’t any gigs going on there, something weird to do with the noise disturbing experiments going on in the university labs next door.

Anyway, too much digression. The odd thing is, I can’t remember much about the event itself. I think we had a few pints beforehand in the Salisbury Arms (now back in the Good Beer Guide, but I’m not going to digress again), whereas I didn’t usually drink before gigs. Perhaps that is why I wasn’t more afraid. I don’t think we even had tickets: we were going to buy them on the door but by the time we got there (I think the Specials were already on stage) things were already so tasty that there wasn’t anyone there to take money. I don’t remember if the music was good or not, it just got interrupted a lot. The incident that got Hall and Dammers into trouble was (as the song says) a little bit frightening but the thing that stood out in my mind was the ridiculous cap Jerry Dammers was wearing. The only songs from their set I actually remember were particularly angry renditions of “Pearl’s Café” and “Do The Dog”, and the whole thing ending up with a manic “Skinhead Moonstomp” with uninvited skinheads dancing on the stage.

Interesting experience? Yes. History in the making? Not really.

An old Craig Finn podcast (and a digression on positive hardcore and posi-punk)

A few months ago, when their last album was coming out, there was an interesting article about The Hold Steady in the paper and I thought I had to hear what they sounded like. So I headed for their website and downloaded this twenty-minute podcast by singer Craig Finn, recorded in 2006. It was a disappointment in that it contained absolutely nothing by THS, but what was there more than made up for it – five classic American punk tracks from the late Eighties / early Nineties. I was going to delete it but then I read Finn’s article about American hardcore in the Guardian the other day (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/13/us-punk-rock-hold-steady) and I had to listen to it again.

Replacements – “I Will Dare”
Bad Brains – “Right Brigade”
Soul Asylum – “Sometime To Return”
Gorilla Biscuits – “Start Today”
Descendants – “Sour Grapes”.

The song by the Replacements is especially worth a mention. All of this podcast is great but there is something about it that makes me feel a bit sad. This is young people’s music. And I am getting old.

Unfortunately, the podcast disappeared from The Hold Steady’s site a few weeks later so I can’t do a link, and I don’t normally post music here because it is more hassle than it’s worth. But if anyone really, really really wants to hear it let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

To digress briefly, I was intrigued by Craig Finn referring to the Gorilla Biscuits as “positive hardcore”. About 20 years ago I was puzzled by a reference in Marc Riley's song “Snipe”, to something called “posi-punk”. I had assumed I had misheard it but I wondered if it meant the same as Finn’s positive hardcore. It turns out that they are entirely separate sub-genres of punk, posi-punk being an early name (coined by the NME, which explains why I never heard it, being a Sounds person back then) for what became known as Goth (Goth music? positive?!?). What interests me about this is the fact that punk, for all its apparent emphasis on freedom and spontaneity, attracts such trainspotterish distinctions.

Silos Abbey – Canto Gregoriano (Gregorian Chant)

I’ve got to be brief. I’m sorry, but this (a big hit during the last plainsong craze in the 1990s – they happen about once every decade) didn’t do much for me. It is very serene – more serenity than you can shake a stick at – but there just doesn’t seem to be very much happening. It’s not the monks’ fault - I suppose we are so used to polyphony that anything else comes as a shock.

No Se - Bez Wdzięczności (Without Thanks)

I chose this album on Jamendo, released in 2002 by Polish punk band No Se (from Bytow, west of Gdansk - I think this was their first) more or less at random and I was not expecting much from it, but it is very good. Hardcore sound, sometimes (at – relatively - slower speeds) with heavy metal influences.

The standout tracks are “Noc Sylwestrowa 98” (New Year’s Eve 98) and, best of all, the furious rap-style “Przemoc” (Violence). The only track which is not quite as convincing is the slower, longer “Koniec” (End). But overall, powerful stuff.

Download at http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/no.se.punk.

Lee “Scratch” Perry and various – Arkology

I feel I ought to know this music inside out, but I am only vaguely familiar with it. I tended to tune out a bit mentally when John Peel played dub, not because I didn’t like it, but because listening to it didn’t seem to take much effort, and by extension I got the impression that creating it didn’t take much effort either. I now see that that is totally wrong, and I can see, at least sometimes, the great subtlety of a lot of these pieces. This is wonderful music – the peak probably being Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves”, whose almost sublime beauty makes The Clash’s cover (much as I revere them and much as they obviously revered the original) sound clunky and loutish.

I must confess my attention started to wander during disks 2 and 3 (apart from “Police And Thieves” and “Roots Train” (Junior Murvin again, with Dillinger)), but it came back in a big way for the last two tracks, the Congos’ blissful “Feast Of The Passover” and Perry’s “Roast Fish And Cornbread” (weird weird weird but wonderful wonderful wonderful).

Listening to dub for three weeks on end, if only at a rate of 15 minutes or so a day (this is a 3-disk set), with a Friday afternoon off, is a bit much, though, a bit like (I imagine) smoking a Camberwell Carrot, or (I recall) eating a whole Sainsburys family size Black Forest gateau alone on a Sunday afternoon. I am going to give it a rest now.