Ska'd for Life: A Personal Journey with The Specials

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We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item to request a return. As bass player with the Specials, in his second-hand suit and pork pie hat, Horace Panter was a member of one of the most innovative and exciting bands to come snarling out of the punk era. Founded by Jerry Damners, their fusion of punk, reggae and ska created a new musical fashion, spearheaded by their own record label Two Tone. They stood for unity and racial harmony in a polarised society. They even got British men dancing again. Horace vividly describes his life before The Specials, the band's formation, their meteoric rise to the top of the charts, and their equally swift disintegration. We love songwriting and we love performing and we take that seriously while having fun doing it. What I’m trying to say is that we’re professional about what we do.” We’re happy to be light-hearted and to keep it fun but we are serious about our career,” said Silky.

There's something -particularly charged, too, about familiar songs sung by a familiar voice, even if it's the first time song and voice have met in public. Suggs's matter-of-fact staccato is unmistakable, and a number of the songs Madness essay are standards. There's Desmond Dekker's 'Israelites', a touchstone not badly damaged here by the Madness treatment. There's Bob Marley's 'So Much Trouble in the World', more consolatory than Marley's righteous original.We are planning to put out an album every year for the next ten years – then we’ll see how it goes from there.

Over the last thirty years I’ve read allot about The Specials and the Two Tone bands and although this doesn’t really add anything to the story it is great to hear it first hand from someone who was there rather than watching on, which I was doing myself. The stories reverberate with a freshness particularly in the parts of the book which were taken directly from the tour journal Horace kept throughout the American and Japanese tours which ultimately led to the break up of the band. The band plan to release their second album next year, with plans for an online fan club and a UK tour – hopefully with an Essex gig included – coming together. As I said, in my previous band we had a record deal that didn’t work out. You’re signing over your career to someone else and you are not in control.”We were both in bands on the Essex circuit, explained Silky, “he is a bit younger than me so they often supported us and we got on really well. One of the lessons they’ve learned is that the evolution of technology and the shifting patterns of making and receiving music mean more opportunities for bands like DOGP. Madness were my first musical love,” he said. “I remember when I was five my dad gave me a copy of Divine Madness in VHS and from that moment I just wanted to be Suggs! Lots of nice photos included tho not enough discussion of the clothes (yeah, yeah, he discusses why not but still!). It's also interesting because this came out like a year before they all reunited (sort of...) and he's very generous in his evaluations of everyone's contributions and pretty forgiving of everyone's various quirks and you do kiiiind of wonder whether he'd write some of this the same way now. Overall tho, it's a fun read and a neat look at one of my cat's favourite bands.

When both our bands imploded we got together. I wanted to do something more British and his songwriting has a real British style.” I was in my previous band for 13 years and it was a gruelling apprenticeship,” said Silky. “We had a record deal but it didn’t work out and we lost money at gigs. Fast forward five years, and a bevy of rising bands are busy stealing the tension, genial blokeishness and ska homages that Madness, the Specials et al traded in at the cusp of the Eighties. There's the Ordinary Boys, beloved by Morrissey, and a gang of their fans, the Ordinary Army, born well after Madness's heyday. There's Hard-Fi, who, arguably, owe a greater debt to the Specials than Madness. But Hard-Fi have proved once again that this particularly British double helix of cheer and unease, one shared by many of the home-grown bands of the early Eighties, makes for peculiarly successful pop music.The result is that he and bandmate Top Kat – another Essex boy, from Ongar – have developed a sound that’s classy, brassy, fun and frisky and has grown steadily since the formation of DOGP in 2016.