Today's Specials

THOSE lucky enough to have tickets to see The Specials at Plymouth Pavilions can appropriately enough expect an incendiary show on Bonfire Night, November 5.

Having formed at the height of the recession in the Seventies, they return at the height of another, 30 years down the line.

And although the show is pretty much a nostalgia trip, their observations on youth culture are every bit as relevant, their lyrics on race and social politics still as poignant, as they were all those years ago.

It may seem strange, perhaps, that it's taken all this time for one of the most popular UK bands of all time to reconvene.

When they did and their reunion tour was announced in December last year, the entire tour – amounting to 45,000 tickets – was sold out in a hour, evidence indeed of the place the band holds in the hearts of the nation.

However, relations within the band had always been fraught, to put it mildly. While their sudden meteoric rise to fame saw them clock up five top 10 singles and two No 1s in the years between 79 and 81, helping to spawn the 2-Tone movement in the process, they split up at the very height of their success, allegedly in the dressing room of Top Of the Pops, when Ghost Town reached No 1.

Members of the band had always been resistant to a Specials reunion, but nothing they did subsequently as individuals – even the briefly successful Fun Boy Three – had ever matched up.

Over the years Terry Hall's feelings gradually softened and it was after witnessing the reunited Pixies live that he and Lynval Golding mooted a possible reunion.

Their first foray onto the live arena for 30 years happened at last year's Bestival, where they played unannounced. The response was overwhelming.

"It's obvious that when we're standing together there is a definite chemistry," said Terry Hall in a recent interview. "That's something I wanted again in my life."

Sadly the old niggles resurfaced before too long as Jerry Dammers, chief songwriter and keyboard player who was involved in the initial reunion process, quit, amid unsubstantiated claims that he had been kicked out of the band.

So it was down to the rest, which as well as Terry and Lynval includes Neville Staples, Roddy Radiation, Horace Panter and John Bradbury to fire up the Specials again… with spectacular results.

Reviews of sell out performances earlier this year have been glowing, their classic tracks, according to the Independent sounding "eerily relevant" to the current times and The Evening Standard hailing the band "spectacularly and life-affirmingly reborn".

Plymouth punters can look forward to an opportunity to witness, in a relatively small venue, what the Daily Telegraph recently hailed "one of the greatest live bands this country has ever produced".

Support comes from Pama International (see story, right) and at the time of going to press there were still a handful of newly-released tickets remaining for the show. Contact the Plymouth Pavilions box office on 0845 146 1460 for details.