Posts Tagged ‘Terry Hall’

The SPECIALS – ” Protest Songs – 1924 -2012 “

Posted: August 31, 2021 in MUSIC
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The Specials have pushed back the release of their forthcoming protest song covers album by a week. The Specials who enjoyed a triumphant 2019 with the release of the critically acclaimed “Encore”, their first ever number 1 album, coming 40 years after they exploded onto the music scene and launched the 2 Tone movement, make a very timely return with the release of their brand new album Protest Songs – 1924 -2012. Standing up for your rights has always been paramount for The Specials. The very epitome of sharply-dressed cool when they first emerged in the late 70s, the Coventry group spearheaded the UK’s multi-racial 2-Tone movement, and their classic hits such as “Rat Race,” “Stereotypes,” and “Ghost Town” railed against socio-political problems ranging from racism to police harassment and mass unemployment.

Released through their new label Island Records, the album features twelve singular takes on specially chosen protest songs across an almost 100-year span and shows The Specials still care, are still protesting and are still pissed off! ‘Protest Songs – 1924 -2012’, which was originally due to hit shelves on September 24th, will now be released on October 1st to allow for the vinyl format to reach fans on the same day.

Protest Songs 1924-2012 allows The Specials the freedom to do exactly that. In the very broadest sense, it is a “covers” album, but as the titular dates suggest, it’s been drawn from the most diverse source material imaginable – and it’s offered the band the chance to broaden their own sonic palette.

As the recording process started, 50 songs were in contention, which The Specials then reduced to 30 and finally to the 12 cuts that made the record. After the lockdowns, Horace says that finally getting back in the studio “is what keeps us going – it’s our soul food,” so now he’s suitably nourished, the bassist is ready to give an exclusive track-by-track guide to Protest Songs 1924-2012.

The band confirmed the move in a statement posted to their Twitter: “In order to get everyone their vinyl on [the] release date we’ve had to move the release of ‘Protest Songs 1924-2012’ back a week to October 1st.”

Earlier this month the group shared the first track “Freedom Highway” a track written by the Staple Singers for the famous civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

Across the album’s 12 songs, The Specials also take on versions of tracks by Talking Heads, Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen and more. Meanwhile, the band kick off a new UK tour today (August 31st) at Bristol’s O2 Academy before wrapping things up at London’s Troxy on September 25th. They also play Dublin’s Trinity College next year on July 2nd.

1: Freedom Highway (The Staples Singers) (1965)

This makes for a suitably anthemic way to start the album as it’s all about unity and it captures the spontaneity of the recording. With a lot of these songs, we didn’t have a set arrangement before we went into the studio and with “Freedom Highway,” what we ended up with came from us trying to perform the song in different ways.

We’d started to break a few rules of what The Specials’ “sound” supposedly constitutes on our last album, Encore, and we wanted to continue that with this record. We weren’t exactly throwing the rule book out, but the overriding attitude was”‘f__k it, let’s just play what we want to play,” so being constrained by what we’d done on our previous records went out of the window. “Liberation” is a word I use a lot and I think a sense of that runs through “Protest Songs“.

2: Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen) (1988)

Terry [Hall, The Specials’ vocalist] chose this one. He’s a big fan of Leonard Cohen’s, though I’ve since discovered this song has been covered several times, including for one of the Marvel movies and (in 2008) for an anti-smoking campaign in Australia, of all things. We changed the song’s original arrangement quite considerably. The original version features an oud, it’s brilliant but insane. We’ve given it a Sly and Robbie or Grace Jones kind of vibe, which I really like. It’s got a quintessential Specials-style groove, but we haven’t detracted from the laconic way Leonard Cohen delivered his original recording.

3: I Don’t Mind Failing (Malvina Reynolds) (1967)

One of the joys of making Protest Songs was discovering Malvina Reynolds’ catalog. Most people only know her for the songs “Little Boxes” and (anti-nuclear anthem) “What Have They Done To The Rain?” – but there’s so much more to her. She was from a Jewish immigrant background and her people were opposed to the Second World War. She studied music theory at the University of California in Berkeley and she was a contemporary of Pete Seeger’s.

There were actually five Malvina Reynolds songs up for selection at one time, though we ended up picking this one and “I Live In A City” for Protest Songs. I particularly like “I Don’t Mind Failing,” because it’s saying you absolutely don’t have to be perfect as a person, but it doesn’t point its finger about it. It’s not saying “you mustn’t succeed”’ either, but it’s saying “so what if you don’t.” Just do your best, but if you fail that’s fine – you’re human. The message is ideal for The Specials, because we like to put things out there and give our audience the space to make up their own minds rather than trying to ram things down their throats.

4: Black, Brown & White (Big Bill Broonzy) (1938)

This is sung by Lynval [Golding, vocals, and guitar]. Big Bill Broonzy was a great influence on a lot of the English guys who became famous during Britain’s 1960s blues boom, like John Mayall and Jeff Beck. People mostly remember him for the song “Key To The Highway,” but he wrote loads of songs, he copyrighted over 300 during his lifetime. The version of this song that inspired us was recorded in 1947, but he recorded “Black Brown And White” quite a few times. In those days, the situation would be, “Hey, I’ll give you $15 if you go in the studio and record that song,” to which Broonzy would say “But I’ve already recorded it,” but the reply would be “Doesn’t matter, go and do it again.”

5: Ain’t Going To Let Nobody Turn Us Around (The Dixie Jubilee Singers) (1924)

This is the oldest song on the record. The version that inspired us was by the Dixie Jubilee Singers and theirs was a capella take. But I’m pretty sure the song was around much longer than that. It could well have been around since the American Civil War and I would imagine it originally came straight out of the church as it has that gospel thing going on.

It’s been covered any number of times. I remember we heard another jazzy version of it by a woman singer whose name escapes me, but Steve Miller also cut a version of it for an album called “Your Saving Grace” in 1969 (as “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around”) which I also remembered from my youth. That’s why our version of it starts with the a capella part and then the band comes in full tilt. It was a blast to record and the organ solo on it is just amazing. It captures the joy of us actually being in a room together and being able to play music together – that’s what being in The Specials is all about, after all.

6: F__k All The Perfect People (Chip Taylor & The New Ukrainians) (2012)

By comparison, this is the newest song on Protest Songs and it might surprise you to learn this was written and performed by Chip Taylor, who – to most people – is best known for writing “Wild Thing” (The Troggs, Jimi Hendrix) and Juice Newton’s “Angel Of The Morning.” But he’s had quite a career. He’s something of an Americana cult figure (he’s also actor Jon Voight’s brother) and he recorded this with his recent band, The New Ukrainians.

Apparently, he was in Norway and he visited a prison, so he wrote this with the prisoners in mind. It’s more about perspective than anything and it goes back to the same kind of sentiments that Malvina Reynolds expresses on “I Don’t Mind Failing.” It’s a great song and it was made for Terry [Hall] to sing. Chip Taylor’s version is good – it’s pretty laconic – but I think Terry certainly equals it, if not betters it.

7: My Next Door Neighbor (Jerry McCain & His Upstarts) (1957)

We originally found this on an American Library Of Congress compilation as I recall, but mostly I remember hearing this for the first time and thinking”‘this is insane – we have to do this song!’” Jerry McCain was apparently a contemporary of [another harmonica wizard] Little Walter and yes, effectively the song’s a jump blues, so it’s the sound of The Specials playing jump blues, but why not?

We’re really lucky to work with some fantastic musicians to be able to pull this off. Kenrick [Rowe] is a fantastic drummer, who also works with Jazz Jamaica and Aswad and he also previously worked with PJ Harvey. He’s world-class and so is Steve [Cradock] who everyone knows from his work with Paul Weller and Ocean Colour Scene. And Nikolaj [Torp Larsen] is a consummate musician. His arranging skills are great as well as his keyboard playing.”

It all meant we could tackle a song like this and it was great fun. As for the song itself – well, obviously it’s important to talk about the big issues like civil rights, but what about the guy next door who won’t give you your vacuum cleaner back? That’s something to protest about too!”

8: Trouble Every Day (The Mothers Of Invention) (1966)

Freak Out! was the first album I ever bought and I didn’t like it. I remember thinking “What is this?” The second side, especially, was unplayable to me, but the first side was OK. But back then I couldn’t tell anybody that I didn’t like it because I was only 15 and trying to be hip!

But this particular song stuck with me and it seemed to fit as we were doing an album called Protest Songs as it’s about the Watts Riots of 1965. Listening to it again, I thought it could have been written last week. I like the fact it doesn’t condone violence. It’s more about the stupidity of human nature. It’s about the man who burns down the shop during the riot, but doesn’t think about where he’s going to get his milk from the next day now he’s burnt the shop down.”

It was great fun to record. We’re were trying to goad Steve [Cradock] into freaking out on guitar and we succeeded as he goes crazy on it. Once again, we’ve never recorded anything like it with The Specials. It’s got that driving, motorik beat and it sounds German. It could be Amon Düül or something.”

9: Listening Wind (Talking Heads) (1980)

This is sung by Hannah Hu, a young and very talented singer from Bradford, Yorkshire, who also features on “Freedom Highway.” Terry [Hall] brought this one to the table because he’s a big Talking Heads fan, but he also said “I love this song, but I can’t sing it convincingly,” which is why Hannah was brought in.

We didn’t want to do it like Talking Heads did, which was like a sparse, proto-electro song. I suggested we do it in an indigenous Rasta way, so Kenrick [Rowe] brought up two guys he knew from Brixton, Bammy and Tony. The latter’s 92 years old, but he did this amazing drumming and it just sounded fantastic when added to the Count Rastafarian horns.

To have all these guys work with us and also this terrific 23-year old from Bradford singing was just something else. It’s that inter-generational thing about working together and making music sound astonishing.

10: I Live In A City (Malvina Reynolds) (1960)

This song has a really childlike quality about it. I was surfing around on the internet looking at videos when we were researching this song and there was one of Malvina [Reynolds] looking like a school teacher-y mom with a big acoustic guitar playing this song. You can hear why, because it’s almost like a nursery rhyme, like “The Wheels On The Bus” or something – it has that innocence about it. It’s just lovely and that was its innate charm. But it’s also an important song because it’s about equality. It’s saying, “well, everybody here helped to make this world we live in, so we need to look after it – and each other while we’re at it.”

11: Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes (Rod McKuen) (1963)

Rod McKuen was an American singer-songwriter and a poet, too, but he fell between stools. He was derided by a lot of the hippies for being some sort of whimsical, Kingston Trio-type folky, but he spent a lot of time in Europe. He’s well known for having discovered Jacques Brel and for translating his work into English – and of course, a lot of Brel’s stuff was later popularized by Scott Walker. McKuen also had one of the biggest record collections in the world at the time of his death, which I didn’t know either.

But this one is a strange song. It was first recorded in 1963, before America’s wide-scale involvement in Vietnam. It’s got an almost whimsical quality, as if it could have been written at the time of the American Civil War. But then, when it was re-released in 1971, it immediately struck a chord and became this anti-war anthem, because of the draft. It’s got those lines about “Come and take my eldest son/Show him how to shoot a gun” – about the idealism and promise of youth being destroyed by war, so every generation can relate to it.

12: Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley & The Wailers) (1973)

It’s really difficult to do a Bob Marley cover because…well, how can you do anything with something that’s perfect to begin with? Besides, everyone knows it as a full band song and you can’t top The Wailers’ performance. So we tried to deconstruct it to get down to what the words really mean. The music’s great, but sometimes the words get lost as a result. Lynval [Golding] did a really good job on it, he got right inside the song.

With help from Peter Tosh, Bob Marley originally wrote the song after he’d toured in Haiti, where he experienced the poverty that people were going through first-hand and the regime the people were forced to live under at the time. He was deeply moved by it and “Get Up, Stand Up” was the result. Sadly, the message is just as relevant now and the song resonates as strongly as it ever did.

 Protest Songs 1924-2012, out now.

The COLOURFIELD – ” Virgins and Philistines “

Posted: May 12, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Colourfield were an English band formed in 1984 in Manchester, England, when former Specials and Fun Boy Three frontman Terry Hall joined up with ex-Swinging Cats members Toby Lyons and Karl Shale. Despite the fact that all three members originally were from Coventry, the band was based in Manchester.

“Virgins and Philistines” is the debut album by British band The Colourfield, released on April 26th, 1985.

Returning to records years after their release can sometimes reveal the weaknesses that we’d failed to notice at the time. What seemed refreshing or innovative can, further down the line, appear primitive or tiresome. But we can’t simply hold our nostalgia responsible for the fact that records from the past sometimes, upon reinvestigation, sound dated.

And so it is that the recollection of Virgin And Philistines’ singles – ‘Thinking Of You’, ‘Castles In The Air’ – and its other standout moments have cultivated its candid melancholy and perversely perky pop, while the reality of listening to it exposes the tricks that memory plays as much as how fashions have changed. At the time it seemed a breath of fresh air, a semi-acoustic pastoral antidote to the neon pop landscape that surrounded it. Retrospectively, however, it sounds mildly overpolished, You’ll find the same problem with Aztec Camera, or Prefab Sprout, or The Lilac Time. But those who can accept this will find within its pristine forty minutes some of Hall’s finest moments, lyrically and melodically.

Terry Hall seems to understand the way that familiarity can breed contempt. He’s spent his career moving from one project to another, restlessly shaking things up, never staying with collaborators long enough for things to become stale. Virgins and Philistines may sound archaic, Making allowances for its technical approach is imperative, especially since its intentions remain clear, and when he pursued the idea with its follow-up, Deception, he soon realised that he’d reached a creative brick wall and called it quits. In fact Hall has never made more than two albums under any of the many guises under which he has operated. He bailed from The Specials in 1981 as ‘Ghost Town’ sat atop the charts, taking Lynval Golding and Neville Staples with him to form Fun Boy Three. He called time on Fun Boy Three within two years, despite further hits, and The Colourfield were born, his collaborators this time Toby Lyons and Karl Shal (of Swinging Cats). They in turn dissolved during the recording of their second album, and Hall moved onto further experiments: two solo albums, collaboration with Dave Stewart under the name Vegas, further collaborations with (amongst others) Fundamental’s Mushtaq, Damon Albarn, Tricky, Dub Pistols, The Lightning Seeds, and the rather painfully named (and oft forgotten) Terry, Blair, and Anouchka.

It was on the latter’s ‘Lucky In Luv’ that he sang “If life was fair / I’d be a millionaire”, and, to be honest, given the affection in which he’s generally held – underlined by the recent Specials reunion – it’s a little surprising that he isn’t. (Perhaps he is and simply doesn’t flaunt it, in which case the man deserves even more respect.) But one of the reasons for the high regard people have for Terry Hall is precisely that he’s never allowed us to become bored of his work. Its only constant is his doleful voice, its shortcomings at the heart of its charm. As soon as there’s a danger that whatever he’s working on might become formulaic he’s taken another left turn, and with this has come the unspoken suggestion that we too should leave his previous activities behind.

The Colourfield were one of those left behind. Two albums, a handful of singles that grazed the charts and a bunch of fuzzy videos on youtube are all that remain of this briefly wonderful exercise. The second album, frankly, is a mess, a painfully overproduced synthetic nightmare that could almost pass as part of the PWL catalogue. It’s hardly surprising Hall left the project behind, and little wonder that he looks especially morose – even by his own standards – on its cover. But 1985’s Virgins And Philistines is something else, and its reissue by Cherry Red – making it available on CD for the first time – is good reason to revisit it.

Virgins And Philistines‘ overwhelming mood is, true to form, that of imminent regret, the foreshadowing of things going wrong or at the very least not working out as hoped if, indeed, it’s not already too late. For the most part it’s focussed on domestic affairs, as though Hall has just emerged from a series of painful failed relationships. At its most optimistic, “romance is a word that should be seen but not heard” consisting merely of “castles in the air”, and even that often seems a forlorn hope: Hall’s seen “the world about us / and the Disneyland dream’s a lie” (‘Cruel Circus’). Even the lovelorn sentiments of ‘Thinking Of You’ are undermined by the slowly dawning reality that the object of his desire is resistant to his sentiments, assuming they’ve not walked away previously anyway: “I could be the one thing there in your hour of need / So if you decide to change your views I’m thinking of you”. At times, however, it broadens its reach to address social affairs: ‘Cruel Circus” refers to “fur coats on ugly people expensively dressed up to kill / In a sport that’s legal within the minds of the mentally ill”, while on ‘Faint Hearts’ he asks, “Will all this wishful thinking save your ship from sinking?”

In fact the number of lines that bear repeating here confirm that this was Hall at his most articulate, his attention to details as striking as Morrissey’s, his ear for a wry observation never more finely tuned. “I was travelling to nowhere when I fell off the rails” (‘Sorry’), “You took the good from the bad like the 36 pieces of cheap cutlery” (‘Take’), “I really wanted her hair to touch her knees / I really wanted to share forgotten dreams” (‘Castles In The Air’), “You can take me for a ride / but only if I get the window seat” (‘Armchair Theatre’): the examples are legion.

But the music – for the most part – matches this eloquence. On occasions, in fact, it’s a masterclass in songwriting. ‘Thinking Of You’ recalls Bacharach and David’s ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose’ in its use of Spanish influences, its seemingly upbeat, almost coquettish melody at odds with its despondent lyrical tone. ‘Faint Hearts’ has hints of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel Waltz’, Hall’s voice at its most yearning as he reaches for the top notes, Toby Lyons’ organ wheezing much as Steve Winwood’s did on Talk Talk’s The Colour Of Spring. ‘Castles In The Air’, meanwhile sports castanets and flourishes of flamenco, an autumnal melody, dramatic cello strokes and a guitar solo that, under most circumstances, would drag a song to the depths of hell but which here lift it into that blue haze between bitter and sweet. ‘Take’ may seem a little clunky in comparison, but its awkwardness matches Hall’s mood as he battles blatant belligerence with brutal honesty, the tremor in his voice challenged by the defiant self-denial at the song’s heart (“Me and the cat own the lease on the flat / And nothing you do will ever change that… / You could say that we’re having the time of our lives.”) ‘Cruel Circus’ even breaks unexpectedly, delightfully, comically into a music hall bridge, the sampled sounds of ducks, chickens and horses interrupting his pleading “Isn’t it enough to eat them?” while ‘Yours Sincerely’ is a deftly tender tune with which one suspects Kings Of Convenience may be familiar, though whether they’re capable of lines like “I took the wrong decision
/ So you turned on your ignition” is open to question. And then there’s ‘Armchair Theatre’, which alternates between the sincere, the twee and a knowing banality, highlighted by the way Hall delivers the line “I’m getting very bored indeed”.

But it’s actually a cover of The Roches’ ‘Hammond Song’ that steals the show, still sounding as magnificently heartfelt today as it did 35 years ago. Against gently strummed steel guitar strings, Hall shifts his attention from his own relationships to the naïve love of one younger than him who’s leaving town for someone he considers unworthy, much as McCartney did on ‘She’s Leaving Home’. It’s gentle, poignant and exquisitely understated, not a million miles from Simon & Garfunkel’s gentler moments, while its lush harmonies recall another hit of the time, Godley and Creme’s ‘Cry’.

Winning new converts to Virgins And Philistines might be hard: quite apart from the production, its heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentality may be simply too saccharine in cynical times. But that’s the danger of baring your soul, and Terry Hall never did it quite so beautifully as he did here. Like “the ghost of your love (that) will never die” in ‘Yours Sincerely’, its memory and wistful thinking still haunt those who experienced it. What we remember may not be quite what we find, but since nostalgia lies at its heart, let nostalgia be its reward.