The sound of This Town: 10 essential 2 Tone songs
For a brief and rather glorious period at the dog end of the 1970s, the 2 Tone ska movement gripped the nation’s pop kids. Bursting forth from the Midlands with stylish chequered clothes and snappy black and white graphics, a frenetic mash up of punk and reggae celebrated multiracial harmony, with a colourful cast of characters pitching good time party anthems in direct opposition to a rising tide of racism embodied by the National Front movement.
It made chart topping pop heroes of the unlikeliest of bands – and if it all burned out rather quickly in 1981’s long hot summer of inner city riots, it left behind some truly remarkable records.
This Town, the new drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, is a fictionalised depiction of the 2 Tone movement in all its guts and glory – and it has an outstanding soundtrack. This is my own top 10 pick of the greatest and most essential songs from the 2 Tone era.
10. The Special AKA, Gangsters (2 Tone, 1979)
The single that kicked it all off, from the greatest ska band of them all. Written by visionary band leader and keyboard player Jerry Dammers, who also formed the independent 2 Tone record label to put it out. Based in Coventry and active in the Rock Against Racism movement, Dammers assembled a line up of black and white musicians from the city’s punk and reggae scenes, dreaming up a music that re-energised fast moving 1960s Jamaican reggae precursor ska with a sharp shock of new wave attitude. Gangsters was inspired by original Jamaican toaster Prince Buster’s Al Capone but relocated the action firmly to a seedy, confrontational English milieu, perfectly captured by then teenage punk frontman Terry Hall’s braying vocals. “I dread to think what the future will bring/When we’re living in gangster times,” he presciently frets.
9. Madness, One Step Beyond (Stiff, 1979)
The London wing of the 2 Tone movement was a cheeky gang of north London self-styled “nutty boys”, whose charismatic frontman Suggs brought a swathe of music hall humour to their barnstorming piano and saxophone led ska. Debut single The Prince was a tribute to Prince Buster on Dammers’s 2 Tone label, before Madness signed to Stiff records and rapidly became one of the best loved bands in Britain. One Step Beyond is a joyful cover of a 1964 Prince Buster instrumental, with enthusiastic toasting (“Hey you, don’t watch that, watch this!”) from the band’s mascot dancer, Chas Smash.
8. The Bodysnatchers, Easy Life (2 Tone, 1980)
An all female ska band formed after bassist Nicky Summers saw the Specials at the Moonlight Club in London in 1979. Jerry Dammers produced this skanking feminist treat, in which singer Rhoda Dakar firmly rejects the career option to “stay home and play houses/Clean for my man and press his trousers.” Dakar was later backed by the Specials on her extraordinary 1982 solo single, The Boiler, a sinuously atmospheric reggae rumble about sexual abuse and rape that reached number 35 in the pop charts despite ending with a minute of bone chilling screaming. Five members of the Bodysnatchers went on to form The Belle Stars and scored a series of charming hits including Iko Iko and Sign of the Times.
7. The Selecter, On My Radio (2 Tone, 1979)
Also from Coventry, this multi racial, bi-gender outfit fronted by the ice cool Pauline Black scored an instant hit with On My Radio, paired as a double A-side with The Specials debut single. A jaunty yet angular attack on musical conformity, it boasts the earworm hook: “It’s just the same old show on my radio.” Jogging along with a weird 7/4 time signature and splashy Hammond Organ solo, it nevertheless became an oddball British radio staple that still sounds fantastic today.
6. The Clash, Rudie Can’t Fail (CBS, 1979)
There were a lot of fellow travellers amongst the original heroes of punk, with Paul Weller and Elvis Costello enthusiastically endorsing ska (Costello produced the Specials debut album and originally released his own hit Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down on the 2 Tone label). The Clash arguably kicked the whole thing off with their punk take on Junior Murvin’s Police & Thieves in 1977. Early champions of The Specials, they took the Coventry mob as support on tour before they’d even released a single. From 1979’s legendary London Calling album, this ebullient horn blasting rocksteady meets rockabilly duet by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones cements The Clash’s status as 2 Tone heroes.
5. The Specials, Too Much Too Young (2 Tone, 1979)
The whole of the Specials debut album could be included in a ska top 10. The joyously uplifting A Message To You Rudy (sung by Neville Staples, with a glorious trombone from Jamaican ska muso Rico Rodriguez) is the most popular Specials song on Spotify (92 million streams and counting). But this snappy anthem delivered by Terry Hall switching between punk attack, ska jog and dub reggae is hard to beat, a massive hit about birth control. It could stand as a poignant theme for the whole 2 Tone movement, a hugely energetic life affirming scene which burned out almost as quickly as it rose up.
4. The Special A.K.A., Free Nelson Mandela (2 Tone, 1984)
The Specials broke up in disarray in 1981, with key members forming dour pop masters The Fun Boy Three (who also spawned Bananarama), whilst Dammers eventually concocted a new Specials line up (reverting to their original band name) with a trio of new vocalists, including Bodysnatcher Rhoda Dakar. This was really their last essential song, and the last gasp of ska as a chart phenomenon, a glorious singalong anti-apartheid anthem. It was a top ten hit that helped make imprisoned ANC leader and future world statesman Nelson Mandela a cause celebre in the UK.
3. The Beat, Whine & Grine/Stand Down Margaret (Go-Feet, 1980)
The other great pop heroes of ska, Birmingham quintet The Beat (known in the US as The English Beat for trademark reasons) brought a bright new wave edge to ska, with an attack reminiscent of The Jam and The Police. The lean sound was sweetened by guitarist-singer Dave Wakeling’s melodious vocals, co-vocalist Ranking Roger’s cheeky toasting and veteran Jamaican saxophonist Saxa’s rich tooting. The razor sharp Mirror In The Bathroom and a scintillating take on Andy Williams Can’t Get Used to Losing You are both superb, but this takes the prize, a wonderful melange of ripe old reggae that sneakily turns into a proper political protest song.
A dub version of Stand Down Margaret reached number 22 in the charts and saw the band performing on children’s game show Cheggers Plays Pop before the BBC even realised what they were dealing with. They told presenter Keith Chegwin that Stand Down Margaret was the innocent name of a Jamaican dance but appeared live on air in t-shirts depicting the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a robot in front of a nuclear explosion.
2. Madness, Baggy Trousers (Stiff, 1980)
Between 1979 and their original break up in 1985, Madness scored 22 top 30 UK hits, including songs that have remained classics of British pop such as My Girl and It Must Be Love. Their sound and style shifted over time, but the ska beat is at the centre of some of their finest work, including this uproariously entertaining smash about memories of school life. Stick it on at a family gathering and all ages will soon be careening around the dancefloor and bellowing at the top of their voices: “Baggy trousers! Baggy trousers!” Since reforming in 1999, Madness have become a British institution, even performing alternative national anthem Our House on top of Buckingham Palace at the Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2012.
1. The Specials, Ghost Town (2 Tone, 1981)
Jerry Dammers’s masterpiece and the original Specials’ final single. Icily chilling yet seductive, Ghost Town offers a sinister skank through inner-city decay that presciently rose to the top of the charts just as riots were breaking out in Brixton and Liverpool in June 1981. The volatile group broke up in the aftermath of performing it on Top of the Pops. It still retains its haunting power as a depiction of an urban landscape blighted by economic despair.
Widely revered as the greatest protest song in British pop history, its lyric has given Steven Knight’s new series it’s title: “This town is coming like a ghost town,” growls Neville Staples, before the late, great Terry Hall offers his deadpan assessment “Bands won’t play no more” and the band wails behind them like weird sisters. It sounds like a trip hop classic ten years ahead of its time, a fantastically bizarre record to have even reached number one, let alone remaining affixed near the pinnacle of British pop ever since.