| | Specials CD Specials Discography of CDs
 (3 Customer Reviews)
Produced by Elvis Costello, this self-titled 1979 debut quickly became gospel to the wave of ska then sweeping England. Infusing the catchy, jumpy music developed by artists like the Skatalites and Prince Buster a generation before them with punk's youthful disenfranchisement, bands like the Specials, the Selecter and Madness gave birth to a movement, one which strove for such noble goals as racial unity (then a particularly sore issue in Britain) and non-violence. THE SPECIALS states these ideals magnificently, wrapping them in tunes bursting with energy--tight, sincere and masterful.
Ska's musical style is an easy one to discern--syncopated rhythm guitar, infectious rhythms, horn sections a-go-go; vocals often reach the level of a rant, and the lyrics are usually of utmost import. The album's opener and by far its most recognized tune "A Message To You Rudy" spoke frankly and directly to those youngsters tempted towards the gangster life. "Do the Dog" is more outright social statement--an earnest appeal not to fall into life's easy, safe categories, be they military or social. Societal issues of every stripe are attacked--from "Stupid Marriage" to "Concrete Jungle."
The Specials' self-titled debut sparked the Two-Tone movement in the late '70s. With well-chosen ska classics and Prince Buster-inspired originals, the band mixed political and social activism and blended punk's intensity with an infectious dance beat. The Specials is a landmark recording that, while very much a product of its time, hasn't really dated at all. Produced by Elvis Costello. [The album was reissued in 2002 with enhanced CD-Rom material.] ~ Chris Woodstra
Includes liner notes by Adrian Thrill.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
The Specials: Terry Hall, Neville Staples (vocals); Lynval Golding, Roddy Radiation (guitar); Jerry Dammers (organ); Horace Gentleman (bass); John "Brad" Bradbury (drums).
Producers: Elvis Costello, The Specials.
Reissue producers: Nigel Reeve, Rob Owen.
Personnel: Lynval (guitar); Rico Rodriguez, Dick Cuthell (horns).
Audio Remasterer: Noel Summerville.
Recording information: TW Studios.
Additional personnel: Rico Rodriguez, Dick Cuthell (horns).
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.Spin (6/02, p.107) - "...A top-to-bottom classic..."
Entertainment Weekly (5/24/02, p.95) - "...They took a curatorial approach, lacing their ska workouts with punkish vitriol...Those pining for skinny ties can view videos too..." - Rating: B
Q (1/03, p.64) - Included in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums Ever"
Q (6/00, p.74) - Ranked #38 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Fused the energy, aggression and politics of punk with an electrified speed-addled version of ska...on a frantic musical merry-go-round..."
CMJ (1/5/04, p.6) - Ranked #6 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1980".
Vibe (12/99, p.164) - Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century - "...the greatest record of Britain's ska rage....they break into a creative dimension that eluded all their imitators." Specials Music Review Average Rating: (4.7 out of 5 stars)   Ska's Second Wave from the UK
Nice album made in the late 1970s and early 1980s from a group of young men from England who reminded people how cool ska music is.
Submitted by Byron (Chicago, IL)
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 If you want 1 album of 80s Ska, THIS IS IT !!
When you can listen to an album years down the track and still get a rush like the first time, you know that it truly merits 5 STARS (unlike most 5 star reviews!). All the best hits that 'made' this band are on this LP, including Message to You Rudi, Gangsters, & Nite Klub.) Add driving stompers like Concrete Jungle and Dawning of a New Era, and slower songs such as You're Wondering Now, and you have a great slice of what 80s ska had to offer. Highly recommended!
Submitted by Les C (Sydney, Australia)
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Awesome cd.
Great ska from the UK. They were one of the best. This is just a fun cd, and like the ones by Madness, the Selecter (the best in my opinion) and the English Beat -- they are just as fresh now as when they came out.
Submitted by George (New Jersey)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No they are the ska band from which all others measure
if you like smash mouth you need to listen this album and delight yourself with pure non-comercial and original ska band. i listen to this album long time ago and i never forgot it.
Submitted by carvalho90 (ridgeway,sc)
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Purchase Specials CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | English Beat I Just Can't Stop It CD (1980)
Specials album
 $8.39  
With the group's 1980 debut, I JUST CAN'T STOP IT, the English Beat single-handedly defined the high-spirited ska revival sound that later gained immense popularity in the late '90s. I JUST CAN'T STOP IT was a massively influential album that has aged better than anything recorded by contemporaries like the Specials and the Selecter. Unlike the more traditional Jamaican-flavored ska sounds offered by those bands, ...
| | More Specials CD (1980) Remastered; Enhanced CD
Specials CD music
$11.89
The Specials' sophomore effort boasts an even greater stylistic diversity than the band's remarkable debut. Though revivalist ska mixed with an early 1980s New Wave energy is still the keynote, as evidenced by the leadoff song, a cover of Prince Buster's "Enjoy Yourself," MORE SPECIALS also delves into cha-cha, cocktail jazz, and more. "Stereotypes," for example, brings together a lounge-ready mix of dub, mariachi, and Ennio Morricone-esque Western themes in a way that presages the post-rock revival of those genres in the '90s.
Other tracks, particularly the upbeat "Hey, Little Rich Girl" (which features sax work by Madness's Lee Thompson) and the old-school R&B-tinged "Sock It to 'Em J.B." (a tongue-in-cheek James Bond tribute), recall the Specials' first album. But it is the curveball, experimental work that is the most striking, especially ...
| | Television Marquee Moon CD (1977) Remastered; Digipak
Specials music CDs
$10.89 
New York's 1970s punk was markedly different to that of Britain. Rather than reject the past, American groups deconstructed its forms and rebuilt them with recourse to the music's strengths. Television's leader, Tom Verlaine, professed admiration for Moby Grape and the folk rock of early Fairport Convention. Elements of the latter appear on this album's title track, which offers a thrilling instrumental break, built upon a modal scale. Verlaine's shimmering guitar style provides the set's focus, but his angular compositions are always enthralling. A sense of brooding mystery envelops the proceedings, and Marquee Moon retains its standing as one of the era's pivotal releases.
Rhino's 2003 expanded edition of Television's seminal debut, Marquee Moon, doesn't add much on the surface -- in addition to the de rigueur liner notes and loving packaging, all standard fare on serious reissues here in the early days of the 21st century, there are a mere five bonus tracks. Some might complain, but dealing with scarcity is part ...
| | Arcade Fire Funeral CD (2004)
Specials songs
$12.15
This Montreal ensemble's fiery debut is marked by surging guitars, soulful strings, driving drums, brilliant bass lines, and the quavering vocals of married couple Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. The group's song structures careen through a vast territory of musical and personal history, with lyrics warm with memories of childhood neighborhoods and deceased loved ones, resulting in an alternating current of joy and sadness.
Favorably compared to the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and Broken Social Scene, the Arcade Fire's sound seems to come from a lifetime of listening to the Cure, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and many others--even a dose of soul gets worked into these grand anthems. Chassagne delivers some spellbinding ...
| | Elliott Smith From A Basement On The Hill CD (2004)
Specials album
$15.25
Elliott Smith's death in 2003 left a cavernous hole in the world of popular music. Tender, intimate, and painfully honest, the songs in Smith's catalogue capture the fragility of human existence with rare, breathtaking beauty. On his first posthumous release, Smith reaffirms his status as an extraordinarily gifted artist, giving fans yet another reason to mourn his tragic loss.
Conceived as an ambitious double album, FROM A BASEMENT ON THE HILL was ultimately narrowed down to 15 tracks by Smith's close friends, producer Rob Schnapf (Beck's MELLOW GOLD, Smith's X/O) and musician Joanna Bolme (the Minders, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks). The result is a heartbreaking collection of songs ...
| | Satantango DVDs (1994) Widescreen; Black & White; Subtitled
Specials CD music
 $53.35
| | Los Cafres Frecuencia Cafre CD (1999)
Specials music CDs
$9.75
| | Carolyn Maier Sessions CD (2000)
Specials songs
$13.45
Carolyn Maier took a different road to reach a vocal career. She was trained as a classical jazz harpist and has a degree in harp performance. Singing, however, was not all that mysterious, as she started that at the tender age of four. Sessions is her second album and her first for Lee Lessack's LML label. Perhaps it's the harp training that gives her clear contralto different qualities -- sometimes Celtic, other times folk, but mostly good solid traditional pop. Most of the material is familiar, and her voice works well with such favorites as "Autumn Leaves" and "I Remember You." She is joined in the latter by fellow harpist Corky Hale, and the contrast between the resonance of the harp and Maier's ...
| | 1946 - Blowing The Fuse: 27 R&B Classics That Rocked The Jukebox CD (2005) (Import) Import; Germany
Specials album
$27.85
| | Vinelo Madagascar: A Master Of The Maro Tady CD (2005)
Specials CD music
$15.89
| | Eliana De Lima CD (2008) (Import) Import
Specials music CDs
$22.05
| | Annie and The Beekeepers Annie Lynch And The Beekeepers CD (2009)
Specials songs
$18.99
'Annie Lynch and the Beekeepers owes much of its sound to the lilting country and bluegrass melodies of its forebears, but its musical palette is diverse enough to include a touch of New Orleans Dixie clarinet and some gorgeously resonant cello playing.' - The Boston GlobeAnnie and the Beekeepers is a folk and country inspired trio that met at Berklee College of Music in December 2006. When Annie Lynch (lead vocal, guitar), Ken Woodward (upright bass), and Alexandra Spalding (cello, vocals) first began playing together in living rooms and basements around Boston, the mysterious disappearance of bee colonies throughout the world was receiving a great deal of attention in the media. As the group built the foundations of their band in coffeehouses and clubs around the Northeast, the collapse of the bee colonies fascinated them and gave them their name. The Bee has long been a symbol for hard work and community, and the Beekeepers were inspired to preserve and promote those same qualities in their music. To that end, the songs on their first album, 2008's Annie Lynch and the Beekeepers and the forthcoming EP, Squid Hell Sessions (May 12, 2009), are honest, collaborative efforts, drawing on the sounds of Joni Mitchell, Gillian Welch, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. 

The members of Annie and the Beekeepers came to Berklee from across the country with different musical backgrounds - Annie is a self-taught guitarist and the Beekeepers' principal songwriter from Cape Cod; Ken is from Charlottesville and plays acoustic bass and sometimes stomps on a snare at the same time for fun; Alex grew up playing cello in orchestras in Northern California. Annie met Ken through her assorted attempts to learn bluegrass and saw Alex playing in a Berklee Joni Mitchell ensemble. One brief rehearsal later, the group of four gathered in Ken's frigid basement apartment with producer and peer, Frank Charlton, for two days of recording. Though the work was never titled or released, those two days in December of 2006 gave birth to a band that would go on to build a reputation for their unique instrumentation and lyrics, evocative layered harmonies, and heart warming live performance. 

In the summer of 2007, Annie and the Beekeepers joined Grammy-nominated producer, Jack Gauthier, at his lakeside studio for the recording of their debut, self-titled album, Annie Lynch and the Beekeepers. The album was released in January of 2008 and was played frequently on WERS Emerson Radio and WUMB Boston Folk Radio, and earned fans at The Boston Globe, The Tripwire, and various other regional publications and blogs. Annie and the Beekeepers went on to play 2008's Boston Folk Festival, CMJ and South By Southwest in 2009. 

Nearly one year after the inaugural release, Adrian Olsen, a friend and producer from Berklee, invited the band to use some studio time he had at Squid Hell in Jamaica Plain, MA. Without plans or expectations, the band laid down new ...
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