Hey You Rude Boy! It's the Two Tone and related thread (release by release).

Love this song - can't begin to explain why, it just resonates with me

 

The next release is Keep Moving by Madness which was released on Feb 20 1984 and got to no 6. This would be the last album to feature Mike Barson who had married and moved to The Netherlands and wanted a quieter life. He did come over to feature in the videos for the album but that would be it, at least until 1986 when he recorded Waiting For The Ghost Train as Madness' swan song single. He later returned in time for their Wonderful album and I think has been back ever since.
This album had some backing vocals by the group Afrodiziak, which included Caron Wheeler, this group would work with Heaven 17, Howard Jones, Madness, Elvis Costello and the next entry after this one.


This, unlike Rise and Fall was released in the US, although they took a couple of tracks off it and added Wings of a Dove and Sun and the Rain.

The year later they would release the Mad Not Mad album which had hit singles Uncle Sam and Sweetest Girl on it.

 

On March 17 1984 those people who didn't know who Nelson Mandela was suddenly did with the release of this historic single. Released on CHS TT 26 it made number 9 in the charts and although only stayed in the charts for 10 weeks, it had a life of its' own and helped change South Africa. At the time of this release, the UK government's position on Nelson Mandela was that he was a terrorist, yet soon, politicians would be forced to petition for his release as a political prisoner. This culminated in the 70th birthday concert at Wembley Stadium in 1988 followed by his release in 1990 and his inauguration in 1994 as President of South Africa.
The B Side of the single was Break Down The Door and the 12" included extended versions of both. There was a remake for the concerts in 88.
I notice that as well as Afrodiziak on backing we also have Dave Wakeling, Ranking Roger and Lynval Golding.

 

I have to admit I was unaware until now that the US and UK releases were so different. I should've noticed it when I got the expanded edition on CD a few years back, but I must not have been paying close enough attention. In addition to the addition of the singles and deletion of two tracks, the track order is completely different.

 

One Better Day entered the charts on June 2, and got to number 17, I think one of the lowest placings Madness ever had, and to be honest, although its a nice song, it is a little gloomy and not really something that was going to be played at a lot of summer parties.


Backed by the song guns, the 12" had Victoria Gardens and Sarah as additional tracks. I think that Victoria Gardens was initially going to be the single.


One of the few Madness singles not to have a custom label and also the last single they would release on Sire, when they came back they had their own label Zarjazz.

 

The Special AKA's last album entered the charts on 23rs June 1984 and despite the goodwill they had gained with the Nelson Mandela single, it only managed to reach 34 and stay in the charts for 6 weeks.

Gorgeous cover, regret picking this one up for $1 a few years ago.
It included all the singles released since War Crimes, so had tracks going back a good 18 months or so. Took Jerry Dammers a long time to record costing a lot of money and sanity.


Just after Free Nelson Mandela was released Stan Campbell left the group, leaving Dammers to do some vocals himself.

 

To try and get a bit more momentum out of an album that Jerry Dammers was rightfully proud of, there was one last attempt at a single in September, with What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend entering the charts on the 8th, it only got to 51 however and 4 weeks later, that was it, the end of The Specials Chart life (save reissues/remakes).

The song had lead vocals by Jerry Dammers, with Rhoda Dakar singing the B side Can't Get a Break. The 12" had an extended version of the A side and a free poster, which was an outtake from the video.

 

That Nelson Mandela song did a lot of good, it's amazing that something like a song can actually do such things. I also remember Peter Gabriel's Biko, the Not Gonna Play Sun City record so many took part in (Little Steven was behind it if I remember things right), and Midnight Oil did a number on the Blue Sky Mining operation. I like music that is informative and sensitizing like those all were, and The Boiler record by Rhoda Dakar with The Special AKA hopefully helped out too.

 

Two non hits now.
CHS TT28 The Friday Club Window Shopping

7" and 12" backed with instrumental and extended versions.
The Friday Club - Window Shopping



CHS TT29 JB's Allstars The Alphabet Army
JB was John Bradbury, the single on 7" was backed with Alarm and then various different versions of the A side on the 12".

 

Back after the weekend to mop up some compilations, post some magazine scans and bid au revoir.

 

In 1989 on the 10th anniversary of Gangsters' release, Chrysalis released The Two Tone Story. A pretty good representation of the label, 2 sides from the glory days, a side of live material (mostly from the Dance Craze album) and a side which dealt with the post Ghost Town era (leaving out the groups that made no impression on the charts).
If you had bought all the releases at the time there is only one track on this album that would interest you, and that is a previously unreleased live version of Stereotype. The first time I heard this track, I was confused at the ending, as I had never heard the album version at this time. I bought this album on cassette in the early 90s and after a few plays going to and from work I grew to realise that this is a killer version of Stereotype, so full of energy.

So when the CD came out and they needed to cut it down to under 90 minutes, they cut out The Boiler and the Live version of Stereotype. Argh!








Love the album cover, like the inner gatefold of Complete Madness, with all the memorabilia, seeing all the covers like this is such a fun way of showing the groups.

It is an incomplete story as so much is missing, but a pretty good overview. I loved this album and had it until I came to Canada in 2010 and I left all my cassettes behind. I had hoped to replace it with a CD version, but the CD is lacking, so I am hoping one day to find a vinyl copy.
Here is the live version of Stereotype.

 

Back cover of Two Tone Story.

 

Two years later, Chrysalis tried their hands at a Specials Singles collection, which was a good idea considering that a lot of the singles were not on the album and those which were, were usually in different forms.


Not a bad collection of tracks, although a place for Rude Boys Out Of Jail would have been good, strange that A Message To You Rudi, has been renamed Rudi, A Message To You.
I can't help thinking of the pre and post Ghost Town Specials as two separate groups, there is little that carries over between the two so although the later stuff is pretty good, to me, it isn't The Specials, so I find the compilation quite schizophrenic. Also the version of Do Nothing isn't quite the single version, with the vocals not quite right in the mix.

 

In 1993 Chrysalis thought they would try and get some more money out of the Two Tone catalogue and released two releases. The first was The 2Tone EP.



Can't argue with the track listing, it was of course a sampler from something much bigger as is mentioned on the bottom of the cover.

 

For some stupid reason I bought this EP on cassette single and not the now very scarce 45.

 

The compact 2 Tone story contained every single A and B side released on 2 Tone (apart from 12" versions). It also included the hard to find Raquel, and both sides of the aborted Elvis Costello Single. The box set included a book by George Marshall, who also released a standalone 2 Tone Story book detailing the whole story.

There was also a 2 cd version which comprised the first two CDs.
CD 1&2 contained all the A sides, with 3&4 containing the B sides. To be honest, that makes this release kind of clunky to play. If you play all 4 discs in order it would got from 1979 to 1984, and then halfway through revert right back to 1979 and going forward again. It would have been better to have resequenced it to have the B sides in their proper place, although that would have caused trouble when it got to later releases which had vocal and instrumental versions right after each other. Would still have been better though. They did it this way so they didn't have to do too much work to release the 2cd version.

 

On my vinyl copy of this it was visible how many times I'd played it and lifted the needle off when the post Ghost Town Special AKA tracks started. I gave it to a friends 10 year old son who had just got his first turntable (a good one too - not a Crosley piece of crap!).

 

In 1996 a budget collection of The Specials was released.


They used the Judge Roughneck version of Rude Boys, which confused me as I had never heard it before this release. A pretty good collection of the classic lineup though it somehow misses off Gangsters and Ghost Town.

 

I've not heard that live version of Stereotype, hopefully the full gig is waiting to be discovered. On a side note it'd be nice if the Tokyo and Montreal concert films are cleaned up and released some time, along with Dance Craze along with any outtakes that are hopefully preserved in a vault somewhere

 

Around the same time, The Selecter had their Greatest Hits release too.



Not a bad collection and sadly one of the few CDs that you can find easily of The Selecter these days.

 

It's OK, they aren't essential...

 

A decent compilation, but I'd have included Street Feeling.