I believe that this has been uploaded on here previously. But this version shared by Mark has been speed corrected and I have put together some new artwork. Many thanks Mark! This and the Oakville gig are two of my favourite Specials bootlegs. This was the last tour the original band played on, in fact the last gig the band did with Jerry Dammers was just a week after this. By this time the band were spent, having been pretty much touring constantly since the success of 'Gangsters' two years previously. They were always very different people with different ambitions for the band. The bass player was into jazz, the guitarist into rockabilly and the keyboard player was experimenting with easy listening. The members of The Specials clashed both musically and physically. Any surprise!?
I love this set, it is a mish-mash of styles, but brilliant for it. There's the fantastic anti-racist anthem, 'Why?' recounting an attack suffered by Lynval Golding, next to the harrowing rape account as told by Rhoda Dakar in 'The Boiler' (originally a Bodysnatchers song). Everyone gets in on the act, including trombonist, Rico Rodriguez as the band play his 'Chang Kai Shek'.
So this is the farewell sound of one of Britain's most important bands. In the months to come the disparate elements of the band would re-emerge in very different forms, Terry, Lynval and Neville as The Fun Boy Three, Roddy with his Tearjerkers and Brad, Horace and Jerry reverting to the Special A.K.A., a project that a couple of years down the line that would contribute massively to the overthrow of the Apartheid regime and huge political change to South Africa. Not bad for a little ska band from Coventry!
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