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

It's quite common on the silver plastic label, but very hard to find with the proper 2 Tone paper label. I have one but it's not in great condition. It's the only one I've ever seen. Even the copy pictured on the back of the Complete Madness LP isn't a paper label one!

 

Thanks. I've just downloaded the Imgur app to my phone, but it's just a load of baffling modern toss! I felt like a 400 year old man just looking at it!

 

Totally agree with that. Love seeing people’s collections. Sadly I haven’t a lot of vinyl from this era but pick up what I can find.

 

Thanks. Records from this era used to be common but are less so now. A lot of young people love the likes of The Clash, The Jam, Joy Division and 2 Tone etc etc, as well as a lot of people wanting records again and less people parting with them. Almost all my 2 Tone records came from charity shops and car boot sales in the 1990s. They were very common then.

 

And I've seen the prices go through the roof on many of these...

Even the album that's my username/avatar is selling for around £15 in some places I go to. It sold tons so that's... nutty. The Specials debut I see going for £5-10 more and that sold a lot of copies as well.

 

Ah - I've not used it on my phone... I've just about got used to Discogs on it but that's probably because I'm referring to something on it, often at least daily.

 

It will be great to see what you have to say on what is coming up here.

 

Very likely you will have things I don't - it might be surprising to find what I actually don't have... Sometimes I need to check and I know that this thread will assist and inspire me and others to fill in gaps in the collection.

 

I'm not the OP, but you are, of course, correct. I saw "Two Tone" and I got a little excited.

 

Excited is totally ok with me. I’m very excited about this thread. Been wanting to do it for almost 10 years.

 

Being from Coventry and 11 years old at the time the explosion happened, I remember it vividly. I remember being in the Woolies (Woolworths) record department in the city centre with my Harrington with a huge Selector sew-on badge and being asked by the service assistant if I liked The Selector (unlikely I would be walking around with a Selector badge if I didn't). When replying with a 'yes', she said her daughter was in the band.

Great thread and if you weren't aware, there is a fantastic small music museum in Coventry, well worth a visit as it has a display of rare 2-Tone records, including many unique items. The 2-Tone phenomenon occupies most of it but it also has areas dedicated to Delia Derbyshire and The Beatles. THE COVENTRY MUSIC MUSEUM – The Sound Place to See

 

Just looking through my singles collection, I was... shocked to find I don't have the first Madness singles anymore! I have to rectify that ASAP!! So it can't be too many times in recent years that I've heard their original version of the song of the same name - but I just put this on and it's on here:

Various - This Are Two Tone

Which is a marvelous collection and the first of this nature that originally came out on LP and cassette in 1983. I thought there wasn't much between them, but although I do like the version on the album in my avatar... the single version smokes it IMO! That just made me sit up and take notice.

 

Wow - that's very cool! I got a reissue copy of Too Much Pressure (their debut LP for those who don't know) last year, which was signed by Pauline and Arthur 'Gaps' Henderson. I'll show that at the appropriate time - when the album comes up for discussion.

I briefly said about the museum on page 1 BUT the more mentions the merrier, I say. There's also a room downstairs with a few instruments and here's a pic of me playing an Epiphone bass donated by The Specials bassist Horace Panter when I first visited in January last year... it was so good, I've been back twice... hat also supplied by the museum!

 

Thanks for this thread. This is one genre I come back to again and again--in fact, I just went through a heavy English Beat (sorry) phase. I was lucky to grow up in Boston, which latched onto ska in a big way, even spawning a bunch of local bands. As I recall, the Clash were the gateway drug for most of us rather than the mod scene.

Every so often, the Specials or the Beat come through town on a reunion tour, but I'll never go because I have such fiercely guarded memories of that time.

I'll have to dig out my memorabilia and get an Imgur account. In the meantime, I'll be watching this thread closely.

 

The debut albums of both The Beat and The Specials are superb.
Hows 'bout this:

"Tears of a Clown" - The Beat.
Tears of a clone.
I just checked to check if my The Beat button, complete with The Beat Girl,
is still in its rightful spot.
It is.

 

I love this post, such a great memory to have.

 

CHSTT4 On My Radio/Too Much Pressuer. Released on Oct 13 1979, broke the top 10 getting to no.8 and was in the charts for 9 weeks.

The Selecter was formed by Neol Davis after The Specials released their first single, and included the daughter of the woman who worked at Woolies, Pauline Black. The other original members of the group were Arthur "Gaps"Hendrickson, Compton Amanor, Charley "H" Bembridge, Charley Anderson and Desmond Brown.
The third release on Two Tone, another hit. The late 70s was a very exciting time with new music bombarding you all the time so for this fledgling label to score 3/3 hits was pretty amazing, it helped to have a label like Chrysalis behind them of course.

 

The B Side, Too Much Pressure.

 

In 1980 a strange magazine was published called Flexipop, the actual content of the magazine was usually quite silly and irreverent, but what makes Flexipop memorable almost 40 years on was that every week there would be a flexidisc on the cover, with tracks you couldn't get elsewhere (The Jam Boy About Town and Pop Art Poem, The Pretenders with a demo of Stop Your Sobbing and What you gonna do about it, Adam and the Ants with A.N.T.S). On the first edition was a track by The Selecter, a version of On My Radio, called Ready Mix Radio, a kind of dub version which was pretty good in its' own right.


Flexipop Magazine

 

I swear I had one of these as well - sounded alright as far as I can recall, and I loved stacking my singles and watching them drop and play one by one

My 2-Tone story is at the age of 10 I moved back to the village where I'd grown up. Before then I vaguely remember Showaddywaddy and Darts, but no real music interest. Anyway, I moved back and the Junior school was having a leaving do, where we could bring in music to play - so i wander into the room to find the cool kids playing I think the Too Much Too Young E.P., and I fell HARD for the music, totally obsessed with 2-Tone for the next few years, and it still has a very special place in my heart. I got to see Madness in 1983, but didn't get to see The Specials at the time. However I did get to see the first reunion tour in Glasgow, which was such a joyous occasion with everyone in the place singing every word to every song - definitely one of the best gigs I've ever been to!

 

This thread inspired me to throw on the first Specials album. I don't usually go in for the sound quality discussions here, but it must be said that Elvis Costello did a great job of staying out of the way as a producer and letting the band make a *really good* sounding organic recording that holds up and isn't dated in any off-putting way (beyond the band already having a retro flair).

 

Nice one, I've not heard this before - The Selector revisited dub with the flip of their Chrysalis single Celebrate The Bullet that's well worth a listen although outside the scope of this thread

 

Is there a Tune by anyone more Harrowing than The Boiler, the ending cuts deep so deep probably better not to post, great beat as it is.

Live cut ep b-sides I remember such as Liquidator & Guns of Navarone

Had quite a few friends heavy into 2Tone at the time although some later dissatisfied with something
went the ‘Oi’ route and so they became horrible individuals for a time although accept that is not 2Tone.

 

A pretty good compilation, that mops up quite a few of the original Ska tunes that these bands went onto re-interpret is this collection called Ska Madness, which was actually compiled and notated by Rhoda Dakar.
Ska Madness


The major omission no Prince Buster. Trying to find a compilation of his is turning out to be pretty hard, at least here in Canada.