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The Specials
Madness
The Selecter
Bournemouth
Sharp shirt, black 'n' white treaders, pinned-down collar and tie; The Ska Machine snow-balls into Bournemouth.
Home hint: if you want to revive something, root for the obscure and the chances are that to most people it'll sound Brand New. Home hint (2): a custom-made fan is a definite plus, preferably one capable of taking gargantuan leaps through space and time and arriving intact, in a different context, with scarce a hair out of place.
Thus has the mid-'60's Jamaican 'super-hooligan', The Rudy, spawned the seething, soaking, asphyxiating army of natty dressers who are at present sardined into the suppurating bowels of this converted bowling alley.
Tell me it all makes sense.
Thus too have the two-tones brought a tonic to the troops, the near-total wave of adulation left in their wake mainly resulting from their advantageous lack of a comparable yardstick. Flashbacks to their peer-groups are pointless; even if you remember the originals, they've mostly been re-vamped beyond recognition.
So the only way of gauging the respective worth of these bands is within the Ska Machine's own perspective, by opening up this self-contained, self-regulating (and perhaps imminently self-destructive) package, and laying out its contents side by side.
Between them, the three bands stretch to both ends of the ska spectrum: The Specials keep dead centre, see-sawing around a strict, brassy bluebeat, with The Selecter veering off to a reggae fringe and Madness keeping their wheels grinding against the curb of basic R&B.
The Selecter and Madness make an effective contrast. Within the ska context their two sounds are poles apart, The Selecter creating a rigid centre rhythm with its edges frenzied, frayed and coloured by a wavering ice-rink organ and 'big sound' twangy guitar, and Madness keeping their centre loose, fluid and flexible and their edges filed down with cheese-grater chords, sturdy Farfisa and reckless, raucous sax.
Madness have the edge, they also have the mobility. At some point in their set, it dawns on me that if this isn't Heaven, it has to be the place next door.
Square-jawed Suggs and his attendant skanker Chas Smash reckon much the same thing and treat us to some flailing choreography - a stop/start idiot routine for 'The Prince', and one of those three-in-a-line cake-walk numbers with the saxist in 'Madness'.
The Selecter (who open) are less adventurous but still a fearsome dance force. Their sound's so bass-heavy that when the dreadlocked Charlie busts a string mid-number, the mix all but disintegrates without him.
They deliver steam locomotive bluebeat jangling with angular chords, rattling with percussion and fronted by Gabs and the frenetic, wide-eyed Pauline who belt around like a couple of yo-yos wired to the mains.
Two numbers punch you right between the eyes, the single 'On Your Radio', with a disarming echo vocal from Pauline, and their suitably sinister reading of 'The James Bond Theme'.
For the rest, The Selecter merely keep your feet warm.
Same goes for The Specials who, compared with the last three times I've sampled their wares, come suspiciously close to going through the motions.
I watch them from stage left, wedged between bassist Sir Horace Gentleman and a dozen girls with bouffants who hear the opening chords to '(Dawning Of A) New Era' and go completely mental. The band fall into line, steaming up and down like a rack of well-oiled trumpet valves with the garishly gap-toothed Jerry Dammers leaping so high off his keyboard deck that it takes two roadies to stop his stack collapsing.
After the colours of the Madness set, 'It's Up To You', 'Concrete Jungle' and 'Doesn't Make It Alright' sound flat, drained and lifeless - as does vocalist Terry Hall, normally unpredictable but tonight obviously saving his strength for the remaining 38 dates.
Salvation is short and sweet in the form of the exuberant Rico (trombone) and the excellent Dick Cuthell (trumpet) adding a missing warmth and fullness and rounding off scarred edges into a rich, embracing wall of sound. Something The Specials usually achieve unassisted.
I'm left unmoved, maybe because - unlike Madness - their ever-tighter sense of discipline seems to be clouding their will to expand.
That tends to be the case with Skaville: a great place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
- Contributed by Sean Gaskin
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