If I had to pick the best concert I’ve ever been to, there are several candidates. I’ve written about seeing Pink Floyd play Dark Side Of The Moon in 1974, seeing the outrageous Tubes at Hammersmith in 1977, BobMarley at Madison Square Garden in 1978, or the sensuous and sublime Joni Mitchell in 1983. Steely Dan at Hammersmith in 2000 had probably the best sound.
But above all those, I think, in terms of sheer funky excitement was this genuine contender for
best gig ever. It was 17th November 1979 at Loughborough University Students Union
– The Specials, The Selecter and Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Three bands at the
top of their game.
What a gig. Each band put on a funky soul-stirring show that
would have been terrific if it had been just the one band alone. As a three-fer it was outstanding. I couldn’t say who was
better, they were all fantastic.
I even kept the street poster - massive, like the ones you used to see posted on street corners. Kept it for years until I emigrated and it was just too big to pack into my memorabilia case. Wish I still had it, as a memento of a wild night. The one pictured here is from the same time, different venue.
Dexy’s Midnight Runners had already released their debut single, Dance Stance (changed to its original title, Burn It Down, on the album Searching for the Young Soul Rebels) and had been looking for a major label deal. Jerry Dammers, leader of The Specials and founder of the 2-Tone record label, wanted to sign Dexy's and offered them a support slot playing alongside The Specials and The Selecter. They replaced Madness who had left the 2-Tone tour after their initial success. Dexy's eventually signed for EMI, but for this brief moment, they were attached to 2-Tone.
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| Dexy's Midnight Runners, 1979 |
Their second single, Geno had yet to be released. For now, they had to be content with third billing. Six months on from this gig, Geno would get them to Number One.
Like the other bands on that night, Dexy’s were at their best in a live club situation, with exuberant horns and a front man, Kevin Rowland, consumed by a passion for the soul music of his youth.
Rowland told The Guardian “The lyrics are all true. I saw
Geno Washington in '68 at the Railway Hotel in Harrow. I was 15 years old and
out with all the older kids – short-haired,
cool-looking mods-turning-into-skinhead types. I
didn’t have any intention to be a singer at that point. I just thought you go
to school, go to work and that’s it. But when Geno came on swinging a towel,
something clicked in me."
This studio staged video for the
song 'There, There My Dear' gives you some idea of how Dexy's came across at the
time.
Where Dexy's relied heavily on the soul bands of the 1960s for their style, the Specials and The Selecter combined reggae and ska with the energy of punk rock.
Jerry Dammers said he saw punk as a piss-take of rock music: "it was great and it was really funny, but I couldn't believe people took it as a serious musical genre which they then had to copy. It seemed to be a bit more healthy to have an integrated kind of British music, rather than white people playing rock and black people playing their music. Ska was an integration of the two."
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| The Selecter, 1979 |
'Three Minute Hero' captures that energy in this live clip. Their leader and chief songwriter, Neol Davies, put together a group of the funkiest players in Coventry, topped off with the charismatic Pauline Black as lead vocalist.
They were terrific live, totally a match for their label-mates in musicality and sheer exuberance. And like The Specials, The Selecter were a deliberately mixed-race band. Pauline Black said 2-Tone was standing for multiculturalism before the word had even been invented. "It was an exciting time. We'd all come to it from different backgrounds, but we found a unity in the message we were saying."
Rock Against Racism was a reaction to the
rise of the far-right National Front and the race riots that had become more
frequent in the late 1970s, peaking in 1981, just as The Specials were getting to Number One on the charts with 'Ghost Town'. It was a time of violent confrontation on the
streets, reflecting conflict not just between whites and blacks, but the police as well. A disproportionate number of black men died in custody in
those years, and still do.
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| The Specials. Jerry Dammers (centre) |
"You could see the frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong."
Dammers wasn't afraid to use his platform to confront people on the issues of the day. He tapped into their frustration and lack of hope with songs that addressed them directly. Songs like Too Much Too Young, Rat Race, Stupid Marriage and Racist Friend.
You need stamina for a gig where all three bands are playing not just foot-tapping sounds but get-up, jump-about-go-crazy music. This was a student union, so not a massive gig, maybe a thousand people, and that lent an electric intimacy to the event. After Dexy's and The Selecter had done their thing, I remember thinking how can The Specials top that?
Once they hit the stage, their connection with the audience was such that there was never any question this was their show. They really were, yes Special. They could get a song about contraception to number one while uniting a black and white audience. It was completely unprecedented. The Specials live shows were so full-on and the crowd so rowdy, it really was like a punk gig at times, without the bad vibes. Each gig would finish with the audience invited onto the stage, and despite the chaos, the band carried on playing.
In fact, all three bands went through some tough times after the initial excitement of those first gigs, with infighting and wholesale personnel changes.
Once Dexy's Midnight Runners broke through with Geno, they copped a lot of flak from the media for Rowland's confrontational stance: "We took the music press on by putting statements out in adverts instead of giving interviews, which infuriated them. We took everybody on, really. I take responsibility. I was far too controlling and aggressive."
Dammers was arguably just as controlling within The Specials. He had a right to be, but after a while the others didn't share his view that everything has to be political. "At first it was a great laugh, we're all in this together, there's no stars here," said Dammers. The level of intensity in The Specials music and their live shows would have been difficult to maintain, though.
BBC Documentary - 2 Tone The Sound of Coventry
Seeing Bob Marley - live in New York 1978
