The brilliant thing about the whole two-tone/Madness/Ska thing was it got lads up dancing and generally having a laugh.Ok, ok. I think it annoys me more than it should cos I was a little too young and missed them by a couple of years, so I didn’t get into them until 81 onwards, by which time they were finished. I remember going to a party in 83, aged 11, with our kid’s specials records and insisting the dj played them so I could demonstrate my well practiced moonstomp, but all my peers just wanted to bop to pop music. I thought I’d discovered something amazing and those fools had no idea what they were missing. So it felt more, well, special to me.
I suppose it’s like being a football fan all year round and getting annoyed when people who never watch footy gan on mental about the World Cup.
PS When they play Madness at weddings and that and everyone is doing a generic, vaguely ska dance, I’m still the bloke who’s putting 100% effort into nailing the correct nutty dance moves and looking scornfully round the room
Prior to that you’d only see the metal dweebs sticking their thumbs in their belt loops and shaking their hair or disco tw@ts trying and failing miserably to be Tony Manero with mebbes a bit of punk pogoing.
The Specials and their ilk got ordinary lads up. It didn’t matter if you’d memorised the steps like an obsessive 11 year old, you just got up and let the fun police do their own thing while you just bopped along.
I was a shy retiring 18 year old at a freshers week disco where I knew next to nobody but a few Madness, Specials, Beat snd Selecter tracks later, had made loads of new acquaintances, male & female who you knew were kindred spirits.
I was at a 60th birthday party in the Black Country a few years back and the ska stuff came on. Immediately there were kids, oldies, lads, lasses, folks of all backgrounds, colour, footy allegiances just up and dancing.
THAT is the power of the two tone dance music.
