The Specials : Stereotype
"It's time for 2-Tone bands to begin getting experimental. Some of the home-grown ska has started to become a cliche. We've got to start all over again."
-Jerry Dammers
On October 4, 1980 The Specials released the UK#5 More Specials, one of the most surprising albums of the year because the band had expanded its sound to include lounge music, easy listening and film scores. If you're put off by the new direction, you can blame it on the elevator music the band heard on their American tour, Said Dammers :
"On that tour in America, I was listening to music in the hotel bars and elevators. Vibraphone music in elevators. Obviously this was classed as rubbish. I don't know if it was my state of mind, because I was so zonked, but it struck me as a really weird, psychedelic music, which is now called lounge or exotica. It's been rehabilitated, but at the time, to say you actually liked that music was mad. It completely freaked out some of the band."
It also freaked out the fans. Guitarist Roddy Byers said the Specials "went from With the Beatles to Sgt. Pepper's without doing Rubber Soul."
While side one features some reggae and ska, side two is where things get strange, especially on "International Jet Set" which tells the nightmarish tale of a hellish plane journey over elevator music:
Spread the disease, from the south China sea/ To the beach hotel Malibu /Phone my girlfriend to ask her "How's her weekend?" /I say "Hi, Terry here", and she says "Terry who, the hell are you?"
Befuddled critics decided Dammers must have known what he was doing. NME critics ranked the album #32 for the year and future critics would say here is where you'll find the origins of trip-hop.
From Smash Hits:
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