"He was an originator and a unique person in 20th Century music. He bridged the gap between early Jamaican music and modern British ska pop music. As a man, he was my friend and a great friend. I toured the world with him and spent as much time enjoying his company as his music. He had a great knowledge on many subjects from the Old Testament to horseracing; his personality and sound were as one and both adorable.
I know I speak for my whole band when I say I will miss him both as a friend and as a fellow musician."
If you happen to have a subscription to the London Times, I'm told they've printed an excellent half-page Rico obituary (you can only read the first two paragraphs until you hit the pay wall).
+ + + +
The Brooklyn Vegan notes (via Bim Skala Bim's Facebook page) that this evening, September 11, 2015, there was a Heritage of Ska event called "Honoring the Legends," which celebrated Rico's life and incredible career (he had been invited to it prior to his death). Here's what Bim had posted earlier this week:
"Rico's children and wonderful close friend, Rasta Larry, will be attending the special honorary show next Friday 11th Sept (planned since last year), at the 229 Club in London, where Rico was due to attend and receive an award accolade, from the Jamaican High Commissioner (along with Owen Gray and Prince Buster). The family will receive the award on Rico's behalf. The night will include a speech by Jerry Dammers and performance by The Neville Staple Band, plus other special guests.
Bless you Rico. Your legendary name and music will live forever."
While some may be puzzled by Dammers' latest musical incarnation, the evolution from the muzak/lounge-influenced ska of the More Specials album and Ghost Town EP to the mix of no wave jazz, soul, reggae, and world beat of The Special AKA's In the Studio to the cosmic jazz of the Spatial AKA Orchestra shouldn't be that unexpected or jarring (Dammers himself has been quoted as saying, "Ska to Ra is not such a big leap. The best instrumental ska consists basically of a sort of dreamy, spiritual jazz, over a street rhythm.”). The Spatial AKA Orchestra (a brilliant 25 piece band that counts amongst its members ska legend/Specials and Special AKA member Rico Rodriguez, Madness collaborator/member of 2 Tone act The Higsons and saxophonist Terry Edwards, poet Anthony Joseph, and a slew of top UK jazz performers) has been gigging somewhat regularly in the UK and Europe (they played in London this past July), but they haven't officially released any recordings to date (nor is there any information out there about plans to go into the studio from the elusive Mr. Dammers).
So, it looks like the unnamed people behind the Ska Boots series are filling what demand there may be for recorded music from The Spatial AKA Orchestra (as a former ska indie label guy and current member of a band I'm generally very reluctant to purchase bootlegs--bands should get paid for their music--but the obsessive music/vinyl fan in me sometimes overrides my ethical concerns). The Spatial AKA Orchestra's "Ghost Planet" b/w "Free Nelson Mandela" 7" single is derived from live TV performances of the band--"Ghost Planet" is from a 2010 "Later...with Jools Holland" show and "Free Nelson Mandela" comes from a Channel 4 BBC TV appearance.
The Spatial AKA Orchestra's "Ghost Planet" is an even angrier and more searing version of The Specials' extraordinary 1981 hit "Ghost Town" and its updated lyrics--as one of the members of The Specials' fan site so accurately and succinctly describes it--are "a damning summation of decline."
"Ghost Planet"
"This town is coming like a ghost town
All the buildings have been torn down
This place is coming like a drag place
A dead place
Wipe the smile from a child's face
This world is coming like a ghost planet
Man a feel like an ant on this here planet
If you treat man like mouse he will breed
Treat man like fly and he will swarm
This world is coming like a rubbish tip
It coming like a cesspit
That's feeding on its own vomit
Coming like a rubbish dump
In need of a stomach pump
This place is coming like a disgrace
A child's smile turned into a ghost place
This place was a back-stabbing, greedy, corrupt place
What, what is that, what is that sweet, sickly smell?
Is it heaven turned into hell?"
The reggae groove of the original has been worn down to a plodding (death) march to oblivion in this version, but it's as haunting and powerful as the original--maybe even more so, since humanity is still plagued by many of the same formidable problems we were facing back in 1981 and then some.
"Free Nelson Mandela" is a much happier affair--musically, not too dissimilar from the original--and presented as an instrumental, perhaps because the lyrics are no longer relevant, with Mandela long-ago freed (and now free of this mortal coil), and the South African apartheid system of governing peacefully dismantled years ago.
There is a great write-up of a recent Spatial AKA Orchestra show in Brighton in the Guardian by Alexis Petridis. It's a joy to read.
Here are the money quotes:
As his former bandmates reap the benefits of their national-treasure status, Dammers seems to be deliberately aligning himself with musicians denied mainstream acceptance because of mental illness, poverty or sheer bloody-mindedness. Their company suits him.
And...
Dammers's arrangements brilliantly join the dots between [Sun] Ra's work and funk, making the inaccessible accessible. At one jaw-dropping juncture, they play, in quick succession, not just Tubular Bells, but Joe Meek's I Hear a New World, a ska take on Erik Satie's 1893 solo piano piece Gnossienne No 1, the Specials' International Jet Set and the theme from Batman. It is a long way indeed from knocking out Too Much Too Young while wearing the limited-edition £99 Tonic Suit that Burton produced to commemorate the Specials' reunion.
Sounds like if Jerry & Co. ever make their way over here, they are going to be a must see!
+ + + +
They got Burton suits, ha you think it's funny Turning rebellion into money
In a candid interview with the BBC, Jerry Dammers talks about taking his Spatial AKA Orchestra (which includes Terry Edwards on saxes--he just wrote the Madness "One Step Beyond" book and was a member of The Higsons) on tour in the UK this March and finally gets to the heart of the split between him and The Specials--their refusal to write and perform new music (something The Duff Guide to Ska had long suspected was the source of all the dischord), and the snub of their hometown of Coventry on the 30th Anniversary Tour:
"It [the band] was supposed to be progressive musically. It was supposed to move forward. I grew up with the Beatles so my idea was that if you're lucky enough to reach a certain successful point, you should use that to try and be creative like The Beatles did, rather than just trying to repeat it over and over again and cash in on it."
The Spatial AKA Orchestra tour happens to start in Coventry on March 4 (with guest musician Rico Rodriguez!):
"...it's nice for me because I was actually kicked out of the reunion finally because I wanted to play in Coventry."
Dammers' anger at his former bandmates is almost palpable throughout the article. At one point, he walks out on the BBC reporter, since any discussion of The Specials was supposed to be off-limits during the interview, but he can't refrain from commenting/ranting about them...
According to this pretty decent article in Reuters, The Specials' mini US tour in April will commence with an appearance on NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" on April 13. In addition to their performances at the Coachella Festival on April 16 and Terminal 5 in NYC on April 21, The Specials will be playing two more North American gigs yet to be announced--and a full U.S. tour may be in the offering later in 2010!
The Reuters' piece provides a pretty good summary of The Specials' career (and the Jerry Dammers situation), but weirdly claims that the band inspired the Go-Go's! (There is certainly a connection between the bands: some of the Go-Go's were back-up singers on The Specials' debut album and More Specials, but the Go-Go's roots were in the LA punk rock scene and they formed not too long after The Specials did...and they sure ain't ska).
It's safe to say that even if The Specials had flamed out after their debut album, Jerry Dammers would have been canonized by the music industry and press for his extraordinary accomplishments with the band (both sound and vision) and the 2 Tone label. But after the enormous success of The Specials, which made it challenging to live up to everyone's stratospheric expectations for whatever the band did next and difficult for The Specials' music to evolve organically, Jerry's bull-headed determination to fulfill his artistic vision mostly frustrated his collaborators and sometimes baffled The Specials' fans--yet his results were (and still are) oftentimes brilliant.
After The Specials imploded during the recording of "Ghost Town" (and the release of the truly harrowing date-rape single "The Boiler," which Jerry acknowledged was meant to be only listened to only once), it took Jerry, Brad, Rhoda Dakar, Dick Cuthell, and a rotating cast of musicians under The Special A.K.A. banner three, difficult years for In the Studio to gestate to maturity--and it wasn't even a ska album! But it was extraordinarily unique (a challenging mix of jazz, reggae, and soul that grew on you and didn't sound like anything else that was unleashed on the pop charts in 1984), claustrophobic (especially the jab at "Housebound" Terry Hall), outraged (see "War Crimes"), uncompromising (see "Racist Friend"), and yielded what may be the catchiest protest song ever, the euphoric hit "Nelson Mandela" (the one moment of pure joy on an album that often found the world to be an ugly, petty, unjust place).
A couple of decades later, we jump light years ahead--courtesy of Sun Ra--from The Special A.K.A. to The Spatial AKA Orchestra, the free-form jazz dub group the Dammers now leads (after far too many years out of the limelight, apart from DJ-ing in clubs and working for various causes). Below, you'll find an interesting review of one of The Spatial AKA's recent gigs from The Independent, and underneath that, a few viddys of the band in action.
While I'm very much intrigued with what Jerry's got going on here with The Spatial AKA Orchestra, I'm sorely disappointed by what might have been had the rest of The Specials agreed to re-interpret their hits for the present day (instead of solely meticulously recreating the sounds of yesteryear, note for note) and take the band, its music, and ska to the next step in its evolution. Thirty years out, the ska faithful deserve better.
Here's the money quote from the article:
Part of the justification surrounding Dammers' ban from the Specials reunion includes the fans' belief that he has sold out on his punk credentials. True, in playing a 15-minute-long free-jazz version of the Batman theme, Dammers has entirely broken the golden rule of his generation. But the simple fact that he has dared to do so is considerably more punk rock than the irrelevant nostalgia-fest the rest of The Specials will be laying on this summer.
The Independent March 12, 2009 Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA Orchestra, Barbican Theatre, London By Reviewed by John Matthew Hall
Economic uncertainty, racial tension, a looming Tory government; not much has changed since the heady summer of 1979, when The Specials (then known as The Special AKA) first bounded out of Coventry.
The band's debut single, "Gangsters" – 169 seconds of ska-punk vitriol aimed at a failing fat-cat establishment that, quite frankly, could have been written about Fred the Shred and his band of bankers – rocketed to number six in the charts, a perfect soundtrack to Britain's growing social unease. Perhaps that's why six former members of The Specials decided to re-form this summer – to cash in on the nation's contemporary discontent.
However, Jerry Dammers' invitation to the party was swiftly revoked after he voiced his intention to rework some of the old classics, meaning that on their 30th-anniversary reunion tour, The Specials will be without the man who wrote most of the songs and hand-picked each band member.
Still, perhaps it's for the best, because while the other members of The Specials have been supping pints at ska and scooter festivals since the bulk of the band's demise in 1981, Jerry Dammers has been experimenting with jazz and afrofuturism.
His Spatial AKA Orchestra (geddit?) were initially formed as a kind of tribute to the cosmic free-jazz pioneer Sun Ra, whose space-themed big-band music fills much of tonight's set.
Coming on stage dressed like Ancient Egyptian wizards, the 18 members that make up the orchestra look like something out of Bill Bailey's darkest nightmare. Among their ranks are Mercury Prize nominees Denys Baptiste and Zoe Rahman, on saxophone and piano respectively, BBC Jazz Award winner Finn Peters on flute, and 1960s free-jazz icon Larry Stabbins, again playing sax.
After a spoken-word introduction from the Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph, the orchestra erupts into a wonderful, swirling wall of sound. Rather than simply recreate the music of Sun Ra on songs such as "It's after the End of the World", Dammers and his band completely reimagine them.
The wonderfully thick, wet bass lines invoke King Tubby's sound system far more than a smoky Chicago jazz dive while, from behind his giant bank of keyboards, Jerry Dammers unleashes contemporary drum & bass loops to conflict with the frantic horn and woodwind sections.
Tonight is a tribute not just to Sun Ra but also to his peers and influences. Martin Denny's exotic "Jungle Madness" gets a solid turning-out, while Alice Coltrane's dark and pounding "Battle at Armageddon" provides the night's most memorable moment, when Patrick Illingworth performs a truly breathtaking three-minute drum solo.
Part of the justification surrounding Dammers' ban from the Specials reunion includes the fans' belief that he has sold out on his punk credentials. True, in playing a 15-minute-long free-jazz version of the Batman theme, Dammers has entirely broken the golden rule of his generation. But the simple fact that he has dared to do so is considerably more punk rock than the irrelevant nostalgia-fest the rest of The Specials will be laying on this summer. Jerry Dammers as a cosmic free-jazz progressive? How times change.
What They're Saying About My Book "The Duff Guide to 2 Tone"
“An essential read…Stephen's eye for detail is incredible and his love for 2 Tone oozes from each page.” — Kevin Flowerdew, Do the Dog Skazine
“Written with a personal touch and with great passion about the bands and releases while giving a lot of emphasis to the lyrics, Stephen’s book is a great guiding hand to navigating your way to some great new music.” — Peter Walsh, 2-Tone.info
“It's some of the finest Madness analysis I've ever read.” —Donald Trull, Stateside Madness
“Steve's own story would make a great book, but instead he's written The Duff Guide to 2 Tone, a 250+ page collection of 2 Tone-related pieces from his blog. There are reviews of original pieces, but the book's real purpose is to show how the 2 Tone sound and—more importantly its ideals—carry on today...Get this book right away!" — Charles Benoit, Reggae Steady Ska
"...Shafer has definitely not forgotten how socially conscious issues were at the root of Ska even from the beginning. He makes certain to thread the political issues that motivated the development of Ska throughout his narrative; painting a picture that took both the oppressive political environments and the often ecstatic musical content into account. And in that, he nails down for me what the enduring pull of Ska was to its many fans. Was there ever a more upbeat dance music that combined its boundless energy with a push for progressive social values and calling truth to power?" —Post-Punk Monk
"...[The Duff Guide to 2 Tone is a] chatty, informative and knowledgeable work, one that you can either sit down and read or use as a reference source..." —Nik Skeat, Scootering Magazine
"During the reading of the book it is dangerous to have a screen open next to you with Discogs. I have found lots of ‘new music’ via the stories in The Duff Guide to 2 Tone which I must have." -- Peter Vrakking, Blue Beat & Ska
In the mail today, I received the first copy of my new paperback book The Duff Guide to 2 Tone --and am thrilled to announce that it is now...
About Your Duff Guide
Steve Shafer/The Duff Guide to Ska For most of the 1990s, I was the promotions, marketing, production guy for Moon Records (RIP). It was one of the best jobs I ever had. Seriously, I miss it badly. During 1999/2000, I ran 7 Wonders of the World Music, the first digital download-only ska label that was too ahead of the curve for its own good (RIP).
I filmed and edited this Toasters video for $2,500, which made its debut on MTV's 120 Minutes. I also put together these compilations for Moon: the first three Skarmageddons; Ska United: A Global Ska Sampler; Skank Down Under; This Are Moon Ska I, II, and III; and Moonshot!
Here's an old interview with Adam Monkey from Read Magazine that covers my days at Moon and 7 Wonders. I also did a somewhat more recent interview with Read Junk.
I've been interviewed about ska music and Moon Records for The New York Times, Heather Augustyn's "Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation," Aaron Carnes' "In Defense of Ska," Kenneth Partridge's "Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing," and Marc Wasserman's "Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History" (I also wrote the introductory chapter "1985: The Year American Ska Broke" for Wasserman's book).
And I'm the author of "The Duff Guide to 2 Tone," which can be ordered from Amazon--and is available in the US from Jump Up Records, and in Europe from the 2 Tone Village Shop (Coventry, UK), Champion Sound Records (Hull, UK), Aggroshop (Nijmegen, Netherlands), and Copasetic Mailorder (Hamburg, Germany). Plus, my book was on sale in the museum shop for the "2 Tone: Lives & Legacies" exhibition (May 28 - September 12, 2021), curated by Simon Reynolds, Cory Barrett, Pete Chambers, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike and Daniel Rachel, at the Herbert Art Gallery Museum in Coventry, UK.
I'm now working on my next book, "Calling All the Rude Boys: The Duff Guide to The Toasters, 1981-1992," to be published in 2023.
If you have a ska or reggae release that you'd like me to consider reviewing, please send an e-mail to Steve at duffguidetoska@gmail.com. You should know that I am old school and prefer music in tangible formats (plus I might use your music when I DJ ska events). I'd also appreciate any news or tips you may have about bands.
All reviews and interviews posted on The Duff Guide to Ska are copyrighted and are the sole property of Steve Shafer. Please contact me for permission to reproduce anything on this blog.
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Rougher Records 1981/2011 7" vinyl single (Reviewed by Steve Shafer) Despite my burgeoning interest in reggae and ska ( UB40 , P...
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Check out The Duff Guide to Ska Video Channel for footage of ska bands in action in clubs around NYC, as well as unusual and rare ska videos from the 90s! Bands featured include The Toasters, The Bluebeats, The Forthrights, Across the Aisle, The Caroloregians, The Moon Invaders, The Rudie Crew, Tip the Van, Hey Stranger, Beat Brigade, Bigger Thomas, King Chango, The Scofflaws, UB40, The Hard Times, Jah Love and the Valentinians, The Shifters, Rudies Don't Care, Big Audio Dynamite, Stranger Cole and Patsy with Crazy Baldhead, Queen P of Ocean 11, King Hammond, The Snails, King Django, Doomsday! The Ultimate Tribute to Mephiskapheles Consisting of Former Members of Mephiskapheles, Destroy Babylon, The Frightnrs, The Pandemics, Los Skarroneros, The Bullbuckers, The Scofflaws, The Reggay Lords, The Copacetics, Rude Boy George, Dave Hillyard and the Rocksteady 7, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, The Specials, Roddy Radiation and Lynval Golding, The Ladrones, Chris Murray, Radio Riddler, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, Astro, and Mickey Virtue, Barbicide, The Twilights, Bim Skala Bim featuring John Bunkley (Gangster Fun), The Pomps, and more!
