1970s – Page 3 – My (life in) music lists

Top five tunes: Second wave Ska

(I’ve done a bunch of these “Top five tunes” posts already but most of them have been ranking my favourite songs by a particular artist. This is only my second thematic-based list and the first of what I hope will be many genre-based lists.)

The context:

Admittedly, my knowledge of ska’s history and the evolution of its sound is very rudimentary. For me, ska is characterized by an upbeat and staccato guitar rhythm, often (but not always) punctuated by horn section flourishes. I’m sure if you spoke to my friend Andrew Rodriguez or even my younger brother Michael, you would get a more accurate and thorough story of the evolution of ska. However, I will endeavour…

What many people (including myself for a while) don’t realize is that ska didn’t begin in England in the 1980s but in Jamaica in the 1950s and that reggae evolved from ska, not the other way around. Musicians like Prince Buster, The Skatalites and Desmond Dekker started this genre by fusing Caribbean calypso sounds with American jazz and R&B. Bob Marley’s band, The Wailers, and Jimmy Cliff, both big names in reggae, actually got their start as ska acts.

It was the “second wave” of ska that came out of England, originating in the late 1970s, when bands like The Specials and The Beat, blended the sounds of Jamaican ska with English punk music. Many of the songs these English ska bands recorded were covers of Jamaican ska hits (in fact, the band Madness took their name from a Prince Buster tune), while many of their other songs pushed for racial unity (a theme especially common with the 2 Tone acts). Many popular 1980s bands, like UB40, General Public, Fine Young Cannibals, and the aforementioned, Madness, started out as ska acts but found larger commercial success when pop and new wave bled into their sound.

The so-called “third wave” of ska stretched from the 1980s into the 1990s as the ska sound finally hit North American mass culture. Punk and hardcore bands mixed ska into their sound with great success. Bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Rancid, Goldfinger and yes, even No Doubt, brought a new brand of ska to the alt-rock kids and inspired a short-lived ska revival in the late 1990s. I freely admit that my own intro to the genre came through cursory brushes with Canadian legends King Apparatus and then, later on with early Bosstones. These led to my later explorations with the bands you’ll read about below.

By the time I was deeply entrenched in university, these second ska acts were a big part of my wheelhouse. It got so my friend Mark and I had an ongoing joke on the matter. Whenever there was a song playing, he would ask (facetiously after the first few times), “Is this ska?” To which I would reply, “No, Mark, that’s not ska!”

This top five focuses on the second wave (the third wave might come in a future post), a “scene” that was short-lived but its inspiration was far reaching. Have a perusal and let me know if I’m missing out on your favourite tracks from this era. And yes, Mark, these songs are ska.

The top five:

#5: “On my radio” by Selector (1979)

The first song here is by the only group on this list to feature a female vocalist (and perhaps the only one to feature a female member at all). It is also the group I know least about, only discovering this particular song while listening to a ska compilation album a handful of years ago. However, I’m not completely unfamiliar with their name. I’m positive my friend Andrew Rodriguez has name-dropped them before in conversation and am reasonably certain he used to have their patch sewn onto the army parka he used to wear everywhere back in high school. The Selecter released two albums before Pauline Black left the band in 1982 to pursue a career in theatre. They reformed in the early 90s and have existed in various incarnations ever since. “On the radio” was the band’s first official single and charted quite high. Like many of the songs to follow in this list, it’s upbeat and danceable but Pauline Black’s vocals add a different quality, almost a Motown flair that is jarred awake by the call and response vocals at the chorus. Then, the organs come in on the bridge and we’re all dancing again.

#4: “Little bitch” by The Specials (1979)

Chances are if you google the phrase “second wave ska”, you’ll come across the term “2 Tone” pretty quickly in your scrolling. This is the name of the label founded by Jerry Dammers to release the punk-tinged, ska and reggae music he and his friends were producing and it ended up lending its name as a secondary term for the subgenre. Dammers was also a founding member of The Specials, also known at times as The Special AKA. Their self-titled debut album was produced by Elvis Costello and despite only being the source of two singles, is considered a classic, through and through. They only lasted two albums before rupture, Neville Staple, Lynval Golding, and Terry Hall leaving to form Fun Boy Three. Of course, the band has reformed in many iterations over the years. But back then, “Little bitch”, despite not being one of the songs released as a single, was a classic, a dance hall raver, shouting “one, two”, and carrying on, all staccato and unbreakable, full of the energy of youth and brilliance of age.

#3: “My girl” by Madness (1979)

As I mentioned above, Madness took their name from a Prince Buster song, one of the progenitors of the original ska movement in Jamaica. They also covered the song in question and another, “One step beyond” became quite the hit for them. A number of second wave ska acts covered their favourite numbers by their favourite Jamaican ska artists, reworking them for new audiences, but this track, “My girl”, was an original. It was written by keyboardist Mike Barson about his girlfriend at the time and was originally sung by him for live performances and on the demo, but lead vocalist, Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson took over when it came time to put it tape. The song was the final single released from the band’s debut album. Madness would go on to release five more albums before breaking up in 1986. Of course, there have been multiple iterations and reformations of the band over the years, touring and releasing new material, including a new album just this year. My first (and likely many other North Americans’) introduction to the group came by way of hit single “Our house”, a pop song that was a result of the band’s change of direction before disbanding the first time. “My girl” came to me via my friend Andrew Rodriguez who helped me put together a mixed tape of music from his collection one afternoon. It’s bouncy horns and guitars, tinkling keys, and peppy drumming, while Suggs wistfully waxes about the eternal man versus woman struggles to understand each other. Fun stuff.

#2: “Mirror in the bathroom” by The Beat (1980)

The Beat (known as The English Beat in North America and The British Beat in Australia) was formed in 1978 in Birmingham and featured Dave Wakeling, Andy Cox, David Steele, Saxa, and Ranking Roger, among others. They released three full-length albums before breaking up in 1982, its various members going on to form General Public and Fine Young Cannibals. “Mirror in the bathroom” is the opening track from The Beat’s debut album, “I just can’t stop it”, and as openers go, it’s one of the finest. The driving beat and riffing guitar line lay a fine bed for Saxa’s saxophone noodling and tease you right out on to the dance floor to skank about with abandon, whether the floor is packed or not. The song hints at danger and violence and late-night drinking. I certainly remember hoofing a shoe to this particular number on more than a few dance floors in the early hours during the nineties. And oh yeah, am I the only one here that thought that Goldfinger’s hit single, “Here in the bedroom”, ripped this one off a tad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHWrmIzgB5A

#1: “A message to you Rudy” by The Specials (1979)

Here we have the second appearance by The Specials and quite fittingly, it is a cover. Originally performed by Dandy Livingstone, “A message to you, Rudy” was way more successful when it was covered a decade later by Jerry Dammers and company. This version opens the band’s self-titled, debut album, which was described at the time as a perfect representation of their live performances, so I can imagine the song was also a mainstay on their set lists, even back then. It definitely was there when I saw them perform as part of their reunion shows that featured the majority of the band’s original members back in 2013. I say definitely because I have total recall of jumping around like a madman in total bliss. “A message to you, Rudy” in all its mellow jump and groove, horns and organs, and gang vocals was one of my favourite songs for a good while there in the mid-nineties, grabbing me from the moment I heard it. There was a risk, though, when I was in university residence of my getting sick of it. One of the young women on my floor heard me listening to it in my room one day and took a liking to it. She surprised me when she asked to borrow my CD because she typically listened to dance music and pop. The problem was that after making a copy she would play it constantly, sometimes blasting it loud enough from her room to be able to hear it when she was putting on her makeup in the shared bathrooms down the hall. Luckily, the phase passed and I can still say “A message to you, Rudy” is my favourite second wave ska track.

For other top five lists in this series, click here.

Top five tunes: The Cure

Who? The Cure

Years active: 1976-present

Band members (selected):
Robert Smith (vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, six-string bass) 1976-present
Michael Dempsey (bass) 1976-1979
Porl Thompson (lead guitar, keyboards, saxophone, 6 string bass) 1976-1978, 1984-1992, 2005-2010
Lol Tolhurst (drums, keyboards) 1976-1988, 2011
Simon Gallup (bass, keyboards) 1979-1982, 1985-present
Roger O’Donnell (keyboards) 1987-1990, 1995-2005, 2011-present
Peter Bamonte (guitars, keyboards) 1990-1994, 1995-2005
Jason Cooper (drums) 1995-present
Reeves Gabrels (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, six-string bass) 2012-present

Discography:
Three Imaginary Boys (1979)
Seventeen Seconds (1980)
Faith (1981)
Pornography (1982)
The Top (1984)
The Head on the Door (1985)
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987)
Disintegration (1989)
Wish (1992)
Wild Mood Swings (1996)
Bloodflowers (2000)
The Cure (2004)
4:13 Dream (2008)

Context:
What can I say about The Cure? They’ve been around forever. They’re iconic. They’re influential. And they’re a damned great live band, especially these days.

I started listening to The Cure in my last couple of years in high school. This was right around the time that Robert Smith was wavering between wanting to be a pop star and hating himself for wanting it. The band had just recently released “Disintegration” and was working on the recordings that would become “Wish”. However, my own introductions came the way of their early singles collection, “Standing on a beach” (or “Staring at the sea”, if you had the CD), copied to cassette tape by one of my friends, John or Tim, I can’t remember which now. I played that tape to ruins, from listening to it on my stereo blasting in my bedroom while playing games on my C64 to cranking loud volumes on my yellow Sony Sport Walkman while strolling the streets of Bowmanville or Oshawa. I became intimate with all the tracks on that compilation well before I moved on to explore their albums proper and really only felt compelled to do so after watching a “Spotlight” on the band on MuchMusic and enjoying the videos for a few tracks I had not had the pleasure of hearing.

I saw The Cure live for the first time in Toronto in 2000 with my little brother Mike. They were touring in support of their latest record, “Bloodflowers”, so the better part of their set focused mostly on the material therein (and also some their more recent tunes) and while it was a fine album, I couldn’t help hoping to hear some of the older tracks that I grew up loving. I saw them for a second time a few years ago, closing the first night of Osheaga in Montreal with my friends Mark and Tim (the same Tim mentioned above) and it was a completely different experience. They played for well over two and a half hours, sampling from the best of their entire catalogue and rocking through a killer encore playlist that read like a greatest hits catalogue. It looked and felt like Robert was having the time of his life and wanted to play all night, finally ending the set only after the festival organizers pulled the plug halfway through “Boys don’t cry”. Even then, the band finished the song all acoustic like. And from what I hear, this is The Cure’s M.O. of late, so if you get the chance, don’t hesitate to see them live.

The Cure has been one of the many bands that soundtracked the latter part of my teen years and into my twenties throughout the 1990s and I still listen to them quite a bit today. They’ve released some great albums over the years and many of these include a ton of standout tunes so it was quite hard to whittle this list down to only five tracks. I briefly thought about doing a series of top fives for The Cure, splitting them up by decade or genre or theme, but in the end decided to just do the one for now and focused on their singles. It was a hard decision and I am sure there are plenty of diehards out there that will look at this list with disdain and completely disagree with my picks, but the truth of the matter is that The Cure was a great pop singles band. Just as they were a great gothic rock or post-punk band. And perhaps one day, I’ll do another one of these lists on The Cure and focus on their darker and more epic tracks but until then, here are my Top Five tracks by The Cure.

The top five:

#5: Friday, I’m in love (from “Wish”, 1992)

“Friday, I’m in love” is the second single off “Wish”, The Cure’s highest charting and most commercially successful record. Both this song and “High” (the first single) charted well but looking back, the latter seemed to fare slightly better where “Friday, I’m in love” lasted longer in our cultural memory. It is probably the song for which Robert Smith and company are best known and the one most likely to be played at a wedding reception. Smith, himself, said of the song upon its release that it’s “a throw your hands in the air, let’s get happy kind of record.” To me, that’s almost an understatement. It’s three minutes and thirty eight seconds of pure joy. It’s a celebration, all jangle and pep and handclaps, a burst of music that sways and swirls on the dance floor with confetti tossed all about. It is as engaging as the first thrills of love, where nothing else seems to matter, no dark clouds or bills to pay. Then, just as quickly, it ends and there’s nothing to do but press Replay.

#4: Boy’s don’t cry (from “Boy’s don’t cry”, 1979)

Before all the big, teased hair and the lipstick, The Cure was a post-punk band, following in the footsteps of Elvis Costello or the Buzzcocks. A tour supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees (in which Smith often had to play double duty on guitars with both bands) changed everything. “Boys don’t cry” is a non-album single that was released just before said tour and shows off their angular guitar chops in a quick, two and a half minute tune. It was their second ever single and so was the second track on the aforementioned singles collection, “Standing on a beach”, which as I’ve already made clear, I played to death. The track made an indelible impression on me with its instantaneously recognizable three chord guitar strum intro that leaps into that irresistible guitar and bass line that gently climbs up before sliding back down your spine, getting into every one of your bones along the way. How can you avoid dancing to this track as Smith prattles on about forcing laughter to cover his broken heart at the loss of a girl? You can’t. It’s a fact as plain as the one that says boys don’t cry.

#3: Lovesong (from “Disintegration”, 1989)

I said a few moments ago that “Friday, I’m in love” is the Cure song most likely to be played at a wedding reception but I know a few cool couples that selected “Lovesong” to be their first dance song. It is, of course, as its title suggests, a love song. In fact, it was written by Smith as a wedding present for his wife, Mary Poole. The third single off “Disintegration”, the album considered by many to be the band’s crowning achievement, “Lovesong” is like an untouched rose in a murk of bramble and gloom. It was a huge hit in the states, climbing high in the singles charts, beaten out for the number one spot by Janet Jackson’s “Miss you much”. The song is quite lovely with its lazy organ sounds and bursts of jangle guitar and Smith’s breathy and breathless vocals, all underpinned by that bass line. Oh, that bass line. It’s one that I’ll always remember for the time just before I moved from home and my younger brother Mike learned and played it incessantly at varying speeds whenever he picked up his guitar. But above all, I am forever touched at the beauty and honesty in the lyrics: “Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again. Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am whole again.” Gorgeous.

#2: Close to me (from “The head on the door”, 1985)

“Close to me” is another track that I fell in love with off “Standing on a beach”. It was the final single released off The Cure’s sixth album, “The head on the door”, whose title is taken from this very track’s lyrics. It is a total pop gem, replete with jaunty drum rhythm and handclaps, staccato high notes on the keys juxtaposed with the sustained organ chords, and all topped off with Smith’s breathy gasps and vocals. The song is an exercise in construction, each of these pieces added in layers through its three and a half minute length, until it just abruptly ends. It evokes building nervousness and a sense of longing and waiting and hoping, perhaps without real hope. And the video, directed by frequent collaborator, Tim Pope, only adds to the delirium. It shows the band members miming out the performance of the song within some Alice in Wonderland dreamt wardrobe at the edge of a cliff. By the end, the chaos brought about by Smith’s voodoo puppetry ministrations rocks the precariously placed wardrobe off the cliff and into the English Channel below. If you’ve never watched the video, I’d definitely recommend giving it a spin.

#1: Just like heaven (from “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me”, 1987)

“”Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream” she said. “The one that makes me laugh” she said, and threw her arms around my neck.” Those opening lines, they always make me want to dance. This is more than likely because I have danced to this song countless times. When I was living in the residences at York University in the mid-90s, my haunt of choice on Thursday night pub nights was the main campus pub, The Underground. This was because it was hosted by DJ Steven Rigby, who spun a wide range of alternative rock that kept the dance floor packed. I think “Just like heaven” might also have been his favourite Cure track because it was the one he played most often on those Thursday nights. And every time, I was there in the middle of the floor with a beer in hand, jumping and shuffling to that snappy, immediate drumming, that tumbling guitar riff that chimes beautifully between the verses and the misty synth washes, shrouding the proceedings like dry ice. It is yet another of Smith’s composition where the instruments are introduced in stages, each one showcased in its delicate beauty while he sings and reminisces about a trip to the south of England that he took with Mary Poole. The track glistens and sparkles with nostalgia and makes one wish they could live forever wrapped up in its dream-like pastoral melodies. Dancing, once again to well after last call.