Feb 292008
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 me in advance for the surprising degree to which you might feel yourself caught up in this discussion.
The English Beat? Somehow a LESSER band?
The English Beat, I assure you, were the greatest live band of all time. They could in no way be considered a lesser example of the form.
A lesser ska band would be, like, the Selecter.
Mr. Mod, this post may be a little long-winded in getting around to things, but I’m more or less in agreement with you. The Specials achieved that elusive, often undefinable thing called greatness, at least for a brief period. The English Beat are highly entertaining, but they don’t have the same edge, the same go for the gut power, the same level of tell it like it is. That said, I’m always pleased to hear either band, although I agree also that the English Beat are a much better choice for a party.
Great One, I can see how my conclusions might be puzzling to you. I’m trying to describe a fine line here. With all due respect, weren’t you prepubescent when these albums came out? There’s a good chance you had to live through it, kind of like Berlyant liking that Garden State flick because he once lived in the zip code where that film was set. I do agree that The Selector were a much lesser ska band from that period. Also, to be clear, part of the point of my long-winded thoughts on this matter is to question my own aesthetic choices. I’m definitely not trying to “prove” that I’m “right” about anything here.
Motherfucker, the Beat and the Specials were my very first concert, and I saw them four more times in the next three years, the last mere weeks before they split. Don’t give me this “you hadda be there” jive, ’cause I WAS THERE.
Great One, you’re ignoring the more relevant question: Could you easily total your pubes when you attended these shows?
Low blow, Mod! The guy was THERE. Do you need photographic evidence, sweaty concert tees? 48, like Hrrundivbakshi, actually likes the Style Council, right? Surely the man doesn’t share your particular set of hang-ups. Why should he?
I get what you’re getting at: the Specials retained more underground ‘cool,’ managed to attract a ‘more selective’ audience. *You* felt more comfortable embracing them. Sheesh!
All right, slapdowns accepted. My thoughts, here, are centered on the production and presentation of each of those debut albums. I don’t doubt that The English Beat was a great live band, just like I don’t doubt that on many levels the band was not as talented or more talented than The Specials. I think there’s a contrast in critical and popular acclaim for these two bands in the US that largely results from how they presented themselves on their debut albums. For any young person back then who might have been hung up about such stuff – and I hope I’m clear about how hung up I can be – this slightly arbitrary divide was and maybe still is difficult to overcome. We’ll see if Mwall and I are alone in facing these issues.
I find myself not getting the larger issues being reached for here. I would definitely come down on the side of the English Beat over the Specials, though I think perhaps the Specials’ single greatest record, Ghost Town, is greater than any single track the Beat created. But the Beat’s body of work overall is much better in my opinion. Much better singing (Jerry Dammers’ voice has a certain charm, but it was very limiting), better rhythm section, clearer vision.
I think the Beat were better able to blend their influences and had a real pop sense, where the Specials tended to drift from style to style on different songs. And Special Beat Service is in my opinion a better album overall than either Specials album, even if it lacks the fire of the first Specials album.
I too saw both bands in their heyday. I don’t know if I’d say the Beat were the best live band ever, but the ballroom show I saw was certainly much more fun than when I saw the Specials opening for the Police.
As it happens, I was listening to an old Bob Dylan radio show in the car today, and he played Enjoy Yourself by Guy Lombardo, and then he played Prince Buster’s version, which I don’t think I’d ever heard. It was awesome, and having just heard that rhythm section (presumably the Skatalites), it was hard to take the Specials version seriously.
I still have CDRs of all three Beat albums, and each of these is padded out with singles I bought way back when, including a bunch of 12″ extended versions, very dubwise and very hot.
Is the prominent saxophone part of the problem with the Beat? I seem to remember from previous discussions that Mr Mod and andyr are anti-saxophone.
I was THERE for a fine first generation English Beat show too. Very groovy, very danceable. I even dressed up, and was laid shortly thereafter (well, you know, later that month) by a fashionable yet, as it turned out, really quire consistently wasted young woman. The EB were no doubt one of the most charming and groovy bands of their generation.
Right, Mr. Mod?
No, the sax isn’t the problem. Are Mwall and I the only Townspeople who thought they were cool and could discern an assumed hipster preference for the nooks and crannies of The Specials’ productions? Were the two of us living in our own self-imposed state of would-be coolness? The English Beat albums are produced more like albums of that time by The Police and XTC. Yes, they were a totally groovy band, but you don’t see how their production shined off some of their would-be legendary appeal? I argue that BECAUSE The Specials sounded rickety and off-kilter that they’re more highly regarded “artistically.” I know this is tough to grasp. I don’t expect many of you to be trapped in such a hellish worldview.
What I don’t understand is why you’re worried about “assumed hipster preferences” and which band is more “highly regarded” because of some nebulous “legendary appeal.” On the one hand you talk about this as if it were a matter of you personal worldview, but then the issue seems to bleed over into critical consensus. That’s why I responded just about what I thought about the music. If we’re talking about how reputations evolve over time, I can only say that I think the Beat has held up better for me. I don’t have the tools to gather the data on what the hipster community thinks about this.
I know what your talking about Mr Mod. IMHO, The Specials are “cooler” then the EB. It’s not the music per se but the total package. To me, the Specials seemed much more two-tone while the EB were much more colorful
I saw the EB with mwall and chickenfrank and they were great (along with The Bongos and Bangles)
This sounds like one of those crazy, subjective “manly bass playing”-type arguments I make around here. In a rare moment of clear-headedness, I’m siding with BigSteve on this one. Rickety production may make *you* think artists have greater indie cred, or hipster fashion points, or something, but that’s about it.
I will say this: in my opinion, it is *much* harder to record a modern-day, rickety-sounding album than a clean, slick one.
Watch out, Mod — you’re in danger of losing your flower-power, I’m-okay-you’re-okay, “healing” credibility over this!
I would argue that the rickety and less produced sound is only part of the difference. The Specials were one of those bands that could really speak to the soul of a particular time and place; there was a real sense with them of bringing the news. The Beat were a highly entertaining show but not much more than that. It has something to do with the lyrics but also simply a greater level of genuineness. “Mirror in the Bathroom” for instance loses points in my book for being yet another “aren’t we all shallow and self-obsessed song” despite whatever other implications the tune has. Not that I don’t enjoy it. But moved by it, no.
Uh-oh. The Sincerity Defense gives me the vapours.
No no no, not sincerity, which I don’t care about. Genuineness. I’m saying that the Specials are more about speaking to social realities that they seem to be intimately connected with, and the Beat more about groovy good-time escapism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s harder to feel emotionally involved with, at least for me.
I regret not first asking Townspeople “Which band is cooler, The Specials or The English Beat?” – without anyone having to defend their arguments. Look within, Townspeople, certainly more than a few of you would have answered The Specials. Now…why?
Just an aside, Mr Mod: You gave me those EB tickets about a year ago to their show at the World Cafe Live. The old men were great. Maybe they weren’t bringing the Fund or the Noise to the same degree as they did in the day, but it was great hearing those guys bringing “the professionalism”. Sound was great, energy was there. Hit you with the hits at the right spots. Similar to hearing the B-52s at a corporate party I attended. First I’m laughing at the sell-outs, and then I’m thinking this is pretty good. Jamie Moyer’s of rock? Ron Howard’s of rock? I don’t know. I just enjoyed it.
First off great topic Mr. Mod and a lot of interesting posts so far. Let me weigh in here. Before I do, though, let me address this cheap shot.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never lived in the zip code that movie was set in or anywhere all that close to it even. However, I had a roommate who did grow up there and who enlightened me as to some of the specific geographic and cultural references in said movie. Regardless, that wasn’t why I liked the movie, though that aspect did enhance it a little. I still don’t think its ending is that great, but anyhow let’s go back to talking about The Specials and The English Beat, shall we?
I first heard The Specials’ debut when I was 15. I’d never heard anything like it and I still love that album to this day, though in recent years I’ve definitely played More Specials much more and have grown to appreciate it and that even includes some of the weird stuff on side 2. Oh and Big Steve, it was Terry Hall who sang lead on their first 2 albums, not Jerry Dammers (who wrote their originals).
As for The English Beat, I really like their debut album I Just Can’t Stop It, though neither their 2nd or 3rd albums have really ever done all that much for me. I think mwall and others overlook songs like “Stand Down Margaret” when they just describe them as merely a party band, though. Perhaps their political songs are either more general like the one above than the more specific ones The Specials wrote (with the exception of say,the great “Doesn’t Make It Alright”). bit that side of their music is clearly being overlooked here. Also, “Mirror in the Bathroom” is a pretty creepy song (at least lyrically) about narcissism, as someone correctly pointed out here, so it shouldn’t just be dismissed as a fun song without any depth. I think it’s one of the best singles of its era, frankly.
With that said, I think the reason The English Beat don’t get as much respect as The Specials is two-fold. First off, they were more commercially successful in the U.S., as others have pointed out. However, part of it is that their lyrics were way more earnest than The Specials’ were, generally speaking. When I read that criticism of them in Simon Reynolds’ great post-punk book Rip It Up and Start Again, I began to understand why they’ve been cast aside a bit critically in favor of say, The Specials or even others from that era like Madness or The Selector. Now I’m not saying that this is fair or that I share this view, but I’m just trying to provide some insight here.
Matt, I don’t think the issue to me is whether there was social content to English Beat songs so much as whether that content was compelling. “Stand down, Margaret” is, as you say, more general in its point of view and to my mind not really gripping as a political song. It’s a good enough tune though.
Still, I like the EB a lot better than The Police, which is another excellent reference point that Mr. Mod has used here.
I don’t believe that not writing about politics and social problems directly correlates to “escapism.” And anyway isn’t Enjoy Yourself more escapist than Save It For Later, which is about blowjobs?
Perhaps one reason the Specials seem cooler is that they had more internal (and ultimately irreconcilable) contradictions, and so they may seem deeper.
In Mr. Mod’s defense, I have noticed that Those Kidz Today, few of whom were born by the time either band broke up, universally seem to prefer the Specials to the Beat. I suspect this is because the Specials had a better Look and a far cooler logo.
G48, we REACH! I was about to post something along these very lines, and you beat me to it. I submit that the reason Mod, Mwall and others think the Specials were “cooler” is because they *looked* cooler. And I don’t mean the way they dressed, or combed their hair, or whatever. I mean the way they were packaged and sold from a visual standpoint was, indeed, much, much cooler than anybody else in that ska genre. Think back to the first time you *saw* that first Specials album — it was black and white, and looked like you could have designed it on a photocopier — a very empowering, heady rush for those of us who wanted to make music, or write books, or whatever, of our own.
Plus, they always looked slightly sweaty, greasy-haired and *real* in a way that the better-packaged EB did not. Their “logo” (such as it was) was almost an anti-logo. In short, people: they were more “punk.” Mod, Mwall, the reason you liked the content of that first album so much is because it fit your preconceptions of how much musical punkish-ness the music *ought* to have, given its very cool Look.
Come ON — why do you think it took you so long to warm up to that second album? It’s not just because the songs were marginally weaker, or were produced slicker — it was, first off, because the cover was IN COLOR! Where was the industrial, grey, concrete-block bleakness that Mwall craved? What was with the colorful cardigan sweaters, and the smiles all ’round? Face it: you didn’t like that second Specials album at first because the Specials no longer looked as miserable as you. You felt betrayed!
Mod, Mwall, I urge you — think about this with an open heart. Let’s have some healing.
HVB
HVB, all you’re doing is beginning to acknowledge what I’ve been getting at. Why you and some others still try to make me feel guilty or misguided for my preconceptions and biases is beyond me. I’ve been clear all along that I’m conscious of them and question the value in allowing such feelings to guide my thinking and public poses. And as I’ve been saying, it’s not just the visuals, not just the Look, but the production of the albums that mattered to me and that still matters to some extent. I popped on that first English Beat album the other day, and a few songs into digging it all over and thinking about what a fantastic debut album it was, I started to get distracted and felt a bit overwhelmed by the Bob Sargeant (if memory serves) production. I started to get bugged that it had the sort of airtight, semi-slick production that would drag down so many otherwise fine British artists: Madness (and the Costello album that Langer and Winstanley would produce, Punch the Clock), The Police (yes, there were reasons to feel like I was being cheated before Sting became a complete idiot), and the ’80s production (by a Yank, no less!) that sanded down all the rough and interesting bits once and for all: XTC’s Skylarking.
As much as I tend to favor the English way with producing (and even overproducing) music, I think the productions of English Beat albums kept what might have been “wrong” with their music – and therefore occasionally a little more interesting – shoved in a closet. Who ARE those guys, I think, when I listen to their records? It’s like that old Who song says, “I Can’t Reach You”. Because of that, I took points off their otherwise great music, found their less-than-stellar albums cuts less than stellar (whereas, a less-than-stellar track on either of the first two Specials albums sounds, to my ears, pretty interesting, as I consider where they might have fallen short and imagine how the song could have been better). By taking points off their otherwise strong catalog, I invited further alienation into my life, got laid less often, and so forth. I think when I set up this thread, I left it open for you to share a band that you may have downgraded on similarly suspect reasons. As I’ve said throughout, I’m not concerned with Right or Wrong here but True Soul Searching…and possibly confirmation of the Hard Choices I made long ago.
I had no idea I was on the wrong side of the hipness divide, I never thought The Specials were as good as The English Beat. The Specials seemed more fad-ish and one-dimensional, the English Beat had more strong songs and the ability to expand and escape the ska ghetto (which we all know lived on to unleash a million mediocre bands for the next twenty years).
I like the Fun Boy Three records more than the Specials. Mr. Mod’s blindspot is a side-effect of his deeply-seated Elvis fixation.
It’s pretty funny the lengths people will go on this list to explain that somebody else’s taste is not their taste but a function of what’s wrong with their personality. So be it. Being cooler than other people is tough sometimes, ain’t it, Mod? Still, the English Beat Dance Craze was fun for a few minutes there.
Howdy, all — it’s nice to be back.
Not sure if this fits in with the overall topic of production per se, but…
Tempo is an issue for me on this particular apples-to-oranges question. I love many of their songs, but the EB seemed to play everything too fast. The Specials knew how to lay back; even their “rave-ups” (see “Do the Dog”) don’t feel frenetic. Maybe it’s because of this that my favorite EB track has always been their cover of “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”.
Over all, I have the opposite view regarding the relative musical depth and variety of these bands: the Specials are more vaired and interesting to me. Even allowing for their admitted relegation to the “ska ghetto”.
Just a little aside: does anyone else feel somewhat guilty boogie-ing to a song about Nelson Mandela’s incarceration?
Mwall wrote:
Damn straight it is! The hardest thing about it, I find, is those times when the efforts one makes to be cooler than the rest causes sweat stains to gather, shirttails to come untucked. Soon enough, though, we’re all put back together and thinking that we’ve got it all together.
Raggers, WELCOME BACK to the fray! Good points regarding the damage done by the fast tempo of EB songs, and you know I’m a lover of accelerated tempos.
The English Beat were more of a singles band than The Specials, which, to some, makes them lose cool points.
Okay, I’m not totally sure I still know what this thread is about anymore. I’ve been trying to fully formulate a point or two of my own. Here goes:
1) “Stand Down Margaret” is a political song with a fun, party beat. “Ghost Town” utililizes the music, lyrics, and arrangement in the service of its sociopolitical point. That, in a nutshell, is why I think The Specials were a better band.
2) This may be verging dangerously into AMG-link-wielding territory, but you can find bands who could at times be Specials-esque (e.g., many Damon Albarn projects). Has a band ever been English Beat-esque and even if they were, would anyone ever be able to tell?
3) Mr. Mod, do you think The English Beat represent sold, journeyman-like rock values? In your view, is the lack of respect they receive similar to the plight of Dire Straits and Seger?
To me their second album sounds like them trying deliberately to escape the ska ghetto, but being pulled in by the familiar on occasion and of course this tug of war is eventually what led to their split.
That’s a good question, but I have to say no as the song was supposed to be empowering and uplifting, wasn’t it?
Also, the point about The English Beat playing a bit faster than The Specials (this is only true when comparing their debuts, BTW) is dead-on. I was thinking of saying something about that in my previous post. Ultimately what it comes down to is that I think Jerry Dammers (with some help from the others) was a better songwriter than Dave Wakeling and whoever else wrote The English Beat’s songs.
dbuskirk might have a good point about the deep-seated Elvis fixation and I’m as guilty of it as anyone else on this blog, but keep in mind that I heard that 1st Specials Lp years before I heard any Elvis album. That leads me to another interesting point. The Specials are a gateway band for a lot of people (myself included) into not just ska and the Two-Tone scene, but to new wave, punk and alternative/indie music in general while the English Beat are generally not. Perhaps this is another reason why they get more respect?
Oats wrote:
Not exactly. I see The English Beat as both benefitting and suffering from the same things that result from the prodcution and presentation of Tom Petty. Both artists put out extremely competent, consistent, catchy, and enjoyable catalogs, but the way they put their stuff out there made it hard to tell if it was any better than what it seemed on the surface. The surfaces of both bands’ outputs strike me as a bit inpenetrable – or are their releases “shallow?” This is the razor’s edge I’ve always found myself walking regarding The English Beat. Would a more penetrable presentation have allowed for me to perceive depth?
Mod,
What producer do you think could bring out the “Beatness” of the English Beat?
Good question, Dr. John, assuming there is more Beatness that could have been brought out! I’ll not answer anyone from the Costello camp, such as EC himself, Nick Lowe, or Roger Bechirian, because I already have been accused of being clouded by my EC fixation. Of other producers and fellow musicians who were working back then, how about Martin Rushent, who did most of the Buzzcocks’ and Stranglers’ best stuff? I think he could have retained the “pep” that was essential to the EB while allowing for some other, possibly darker perspectives on their music to be heard. The production of The Jam’s Sound Affects would have worked for them as well. Who produced that, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven?