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How I lost my faith in Two Tone
You see there is a constant in these two blogs. Vic Ruggiero.
Vic was talking to me the other day about how he wanted to do something with the two tone beat. He was trying to get me excited about the idea but I was lukewarm. I was trying to explain how it just doesn’t get me going anymore.
I can tell by how he’s dancing around behind the organ like Jerry Dammers at our shows that he is plotting something.
You see….Two Tone has a strange place in my life nowadays.
When the slackers guys need a laugh or Im feeling especially stupid – I do my two tone dancing for them – do my Chas Smash moves – or my Buster Bloodvessel impression.
I guess its silly with a bit of sarcasm now. Its fun but with a hint of malice.
Its not like it was. I used to dance for real. I used to believe.
Between the ages of 13 and 20 I loved the whole Two Tone experiment.
By this I mean the bands that came out of the UK in the late 70s….The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, the Beat and Bad Manners and others. Yes, I know only a small fraction of these band’s output actually came out on Two Tone but I loved it all. The two Specials albums and the Ghost town Ep. The two Selecter albums. The 3 main Beat albums. All the many Madness and Bad Manners Lps. And of course, the exuberant Dance Craze soundtrack. How many times did I sit in my room marveling at Chris Kane’s sax on the live version of “Inner London Violence.” Even though I was locked in my room in suburbia not a “council flat.” (What the hell is that anyways….oh public housing…right.Got it)
Their songs were my manifestos….I was a member of the Nite Klub as my town looked like a Ghost town. I railed against the Big Shots (Beat). I was an Embarassment while wandering Razor Blade Alley. It was my own little fantasy world.
I was an avid collector. I bought the albums. Bought the 45s. Got a bunch of bootleg tapes of live concerts. (By the way, if I ever found out who stole them from my car in 1987….you gonna get hurt!!!).
I was obsessed. I started with the music. Then in high school, I met some friends as obsessed as me and it became all about the fashion. Trying to look like Suggs. Trying to get the same porkpie as Lynval.
Towards the beginning of my obsession I had seen the Beat perform at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. The previous concert I had been to was the Who at Jack Murphy Stadium. At the who, people were standing around doing air guitar. The Beat show had maybe a 1,000 people dancing, leaping around with abandon.
I remember thinking that Ranking Full Stop was the coolest song ever.
(“wow…a song that tells you to dance…stop…and then dance again.”)
I was hooked.
Later on, I saw Bad Manners with the original lineup at fenders in Long Beach – wow!
That was a fun show. It seemed to be huge at the time (maybe 300-400 people). The crowd was electric. The fatman really had us going. So much energy. Im trying to remember but I think Fishbone opened for them. Good times.
This show was much more fun than the one at San Diego state later that week. I talked my parents into letting me go to both (I was 16). The SD show was on a school night. My Dad said, “why do you want to go see them again…there are just gonna play the same set?” I growled no they weren’t….not Bad Manners!
It turned out my Dad was mostly right because they did only play one or two songs different.
The show didn’t go as well for me either! A bunch of college students (dumb frat boys) decided to pick on a 16 yr old kid for no good reason! But I was saved by the “older” scene guys (in their early 20s) who rushed to my protection. (Thanks Secret Society Scooter Club). I guess the frat guys didn’t want to mess with someone their own age.
We would also go see the movie, Dance Craze. It was like a ghost dance in honor of 2 Tone. Everyone would treat it like a show and we would go up in front of the movie screen and dance in theater.
I remember asking my friend Jonathon before we went off on our multiple bus odyssey across San Diego about how I was gonna dance at the show. Jonathon told me to just look at the back cover of One Step Beyond and copy Chas Smash’s moves.
But I got into ska at a weird time. 1982-83 was a peak of its popularity in California where I was growing up. It was a little bit after it hit in the UK.
By the time I was dressing up in my rude boy suit it was 1985 and two tone might as well have happened 100 years ago. The bands were all moving away from ska/reggae influences in their music. We were being treated to the Fun Boy 3 and the Color Field. Sunday Best (“pirates on the airwaves”-Ill let the nerds figure out which band members were in that one) and the maudlin Special Aka album. Madness had “evolved” into the bland 80s pop of Keep Moving and then the complete crap of Mad Not Mad. Bad Manners had wandered into a strange place and made an album with them dressed in tights/bondage outfits/and mesh shirts on the cover! The album included much funk and disco. The album was appropriately titled, “Mental Notes.” And of course, there was the Beat’s successor bands, General Public and the Fine Young Cannibals.
Once I got the bulk of the Two tone albums I was reduced to looking for crumbs to hear new stuff. Madness 45s like “Un Paso Adelante” the Spanish version of One Step Beyond. Then I picked up the two Bodysnatcher 45s and the Swinging Cats 45. Then all the silly little bands that popped up in the wake of two tone like the Graduates (later Tears for Fears) who had their never quite a hit, “Elvis Should Have Played Ska.”
There just wasn’t much new stuff coming out between 1982 and 86. Please forgive me for all the crap I listened to.
The lack of people playing Ska was one of the motivators towards me forming a band. If I wanted to hear the music I was gonna have to do it myself.
The first 3 Donkey Show songs were Reburial by the Skatalites, Gangsters by the Specials, and Madness by Madness. Yeh, I know its Prince Buster but we did the madness version – I even played the saxophone solo note for note (I wonder if I can still do that?) So we were very indepted to two tone. It was a big part of what we did.
We even got to be part of Buster Bloodvessel’s backing band, Buster’s All Stars, in 1988 and toured as an opener for Bad Manners in 1989. Dougie from Bad Manners crashed at my house. Ate dinner with my family.
Bad Manners was actually nicer than most of my actual band members (an aside – the first rehearsal I ever had at my parents garage – found empty cans of beer under the work bench (we were underage!), wrappers from fast food all over the front yard – I should have known that this was how it was gonna be.)
But eventually I turned away from Two Tone. I got more into the old Jamaican ska/..reggae/..rocksteady and less interested in the 80s stuff.
So what happened?
When I first heard two tone I thought that the English guys had invented this music out of thin air! Later I started noticing the names like “C. Campbell” on the back of the album covers. Who was this guy? Then I started noticing the bites…like ‘Beat down Babylon’ is Too Much Pressure. So maybe I thought a little less of them musically but hey…its not like Jamaican guys were getting the stuff out of thin air either…music always comes from somewhere (mongo who?). I personally love a good bite that takes a song in a new direction.
I guess the interviews that I would read in Melody Maker or the NME or in Trowser Press by Terry Hall or the guys from Madness or General Public didn’t help. They all seemed to be bending over backwards to distance themselves from Ska. How they were into more sophisticated music now. Wow…where is the Tenderness Dave W?...how can you dance with a mad man Chas Smash?. That at the time they were just playing dress up. As opposed to the Fun Boy Three? My personal favorite is the song on the second side of their second album, Waiting, where they talk about what clothes they like to wear. Apparently, Terry Hall likes to wear moccasins and Neville likes leather trousers (Look it up).
Nowadays, I can understand their position a little better. When you are in a scene or part of a movement in can be a tight fitting jacket. You want to make music that comes from “you” but at the same time, you can get a backlash or be made to feel uncomfortable anytime you push boundaries. You tend to forget about how a scene being there has helped you make the music happen in the first place.
Guys like Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples, they were the face of the band, but it wasn’t completely their band. They had been told what to wear, what to say, how to play. Jerry Dammers was the brains behind it and they were just bit actors in his play. Characters. Soldiers in an army.
Plus they had all been traumatized by the whole National Front violence thing at their shows. So Im sure that made them want to move away from anyone wearing a crombie and doc martens.
And they had been on the Top of the Pops when they were 18,19,20, 21.For some of them, this was their first band!
At the end of the day, maybe English pop similar to Echo & the Bunnymen, was what was in Terry Hall’s dark moody northern English heart the whole time. The guy definitely seems like he would be comfortable on any overcast day.
And I’m sure every interviewer was asking them about Two tone. Two tone this. Two tone that. So to move on with their lives they had to disavow it.Or did they?
Anybody who knows me knows I am loyal to Ska and the musics that came immediately out of it. I bristle whenever anyone puts it down. I just wish the Two Tone generation could have respected it a little more. I wish they had said something like, hey, “we were lucky. We were part of a moment when rock n roll met reggae and it was beautiful. Now, I also like playing music with wind chimes and strumming acoustic guitars.This could be cool too right?”
But they didn’t say that. They had to put Ska down.
Maybe it was also just a thing that the Two Tone influence was so strong, that when you are playing in an American ska band you had to work hard to get past it. You had to metaphorically kill your fathers to make space for yourself (ska Oedipus anyone?) A lot of the two tone generation had a patronizing, “yeah, we already did that” attitude towards the up and coming American bands. My attitude became, “yeah you did yours…now get out of the way…cause its my time now.” Shit, most of those motherfuckers didn’t want to play ska anyways so leave it to me and my friends. I was cool with that.
I would just get annoyed when the two tone guys would come back around everytime they needed a couple bucks. Like they built the American scene. They inspired it, but they basically left the child orphaned and it had to raise itself. Now, they wanted to come around and say..”that’s my boy” and “son…you got a couple bucks?” Bah.
In 1991, I watched the International beat perform. I think it was Hepcat, the Toasters, and Intl Beat. I was excited to see saxa. He is still my first influence on saxophone. But the magic was slipping away. It just seemed like a weak attempt to cash in on nostalgia for a movement that was long gone.
Recently, I saw Dave Wakeling perform as “the beat.” – appreciated the tightness of the band but it wasn’t 1983 all over again for me.
I used to memorize the two tone lyrics. “Too Much Too Young.” “It Doesn’t Make It Allright.” These were guides how to live my life.
Now I don’t relate to the polemic lyrics. Everything is a manifesto. Im right. You’re wrong. Hmmm. Wait, maybe they were onto something. Scratch that. Hehehe.
Madness holds up better for me now lyrically. The wry observations. And they were supposed to be the “shallow” band compared to the “deep” Specials and Selecter.
Im envious of the people who are excited about the Specials reunion. They have such pure joy about it. I guess there is the nostalgia of the older set who were there and the anticipation of those of us under 45 years old who were too young to have ever seen them.
But I don’t feel anything. That part of me is dead. Maybe I will get excited when I get to the see the band in Leeds this spring. If seeing the reformed Specials play doesn’t excite me, then I guess nothing will.
Dave
please forgive me for any typos
2:51 PM
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