Two new British bands tap into some island roots
Not boom, boom, boom, boom. It is more like chi-boom, chi-boom, chi-boom. Come down easy on the offbeat, like a rhythmic shrug of the shoulders. Kind of bluesy. Kind of calypso. Kind of fun.
Ska—a back-pocket onomatopoeia for the distinctive sound of the beat—means no harm, carries no heavy freight, sets out to make you happy and keep you dancing. Ska is the no-account stepfather of reggae, the blues-inflected Jamaican soul popularized Stateside by Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley and seen to splendid advantage in The Harder They Come, one of the best and most popular cult films of the '70s. Reggae shouldered a lot of political burden and social outrage, sometimes sounded almost introverted in its island concerns and religious visions. By contrast, ska is flat-out party music played faster than reggae and meant to be, if not frivolous, then feckless.
Reggae has already been absorbed into the English punk scene. The Clash perform their own blistering versions of reggae tunes. But a group called the Specials, as well as their allied band, Madness, have dusted off ska and made it shine like new. Both bands have had hit singles and albums on their home turf. Now the records have been receiving an encouraging amount of FM air play here, while Specials and Madness concerts around America have been enthusiastically attended by disenfranchised new wavers and punks without portfolio. Ska may or may not be the latest crest of the new wave, but it is at least clear that the Specials and Madness could safely join in a proud chorus of Stranger Cole's 1963 ska tune, We Are Rolling.
Stranger's original version, along with 15 other vintage ska songs, is available on a recently released compilation called Intensified! (Mango Records), which offers some interesting source material to set against the carnival modifications of the young English revivalists. Most of the Intensified! tunes have a loping energy, even when the recording quality is dense and almost smothering, as if the musicians were trying to play their way out of a bowl of tapioca. Both the Madness and Specials albums (the latter produced by the sullen genie of punk, Elvis Costello) are careful to preserve a spontaneous sound that just skirts being primitive. The groups rock a little harder than their forebears too. "We were the first band which wanted to combine punk and reggae," says Jerry ("General Dankey") Dammers of the Specials, "because we liked them both." Bass Player Horace ("Sir Horace Gentleman") Panter adds, "Both were rebel music." Notes Jerry: "Humble beginnings, what?"
Humble enough for musical comfort.
The seven members of Madness are middle-class kids from north London, who range in age from 18 to 23. The seven Specials all hail from Coventry, in central England, and will remain grounded right there because, according to Panter, "it's a small town and we know all the kids." "People there know we're nothing special," adds Dammers, who is the son of an Anglican minister. "It's important to keep on the same level as the people who buy your records."
Out of a grand total of 14 members, only two—Vocalist Neville Staples and Guitarist Lynval Golding, both of the