100 Best Albums of the Eighties

68. The Specials, ‘The Specials’

The Specials found a happy medium between the aggression of punk and the more danceable, upbeat rhythms of ska. Sporting porkpie hats and two-tone suits, the racially mixed seven-member band from Coventry, in Britain, spearheaded a ska renaissance. The Specials’ debut album, produced by Elvis Costello, also launched the briefly successful 2-Tone Record label.

The Specials opens with a cover of Robert “Dandy” Thompson’s ska anthem “A Message to You Rudy,” then dives into more manic numbers, like a gritty version of Rufus Thomas’s “Do the Dog” and the band’s own “Concrete Jungle.”

In his first outing as a producer, Costello captured the spirit of the Specials’ frenetic live shows by re-creating a club environment in the studio. “It was a terrific atmosphere,” says vocalist Neville Staples of the sessions at London’s PW studios. “We just went in and played our show. It was all live in the studio.”

In fact, for the song “Nite Club,” the band even brought in an audience. “We had roadies, Chrissie Hynde and a few other friends,” says Staples. “It was a laugh, because we had a little drink to get the pub atmosphere going.”

“We wanted it to be like the first Clash album,” said bassist Horace Panter shortly after the album’s U.S. release in 1980. “Not necessarily produced, just recorded. Costello was more of an observer, if you like. Suggesting things that we were too involved in to see ourselves.”

In addition to its punk-meets-reggae sensibility, The Specials is charged with antiracist sentiment: “Just because you’re a black boy/Just because you’re a white/It doesn’t mean you’ve got to hate him/Doesn’t mean you got to fight,” sings Terry Hall in the calypso-flavored “Doesn’t Make It All Right.”

“We were working as a black and white unit,” says Staples. “At the time there was a lot of racism happening. So we just thought, ‘Well, we went to school with black and white guys. Instead of fighting and calling people names, let’s work together.’ So we combined black music with punk. We just mixed the two cultures.”