You can see the movie in its entirety here

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More Specials is a lot ska, but it also has other elements like lounge (not a fan: the song “Pearl’s Cafe” is not good), rockabilly and soul (am a fan: the track “Sock It to ’em J.B.” kicks). There’s even a touch of spaghetti western on the single “Stereotype” which hit #6 in the UK. The Specials released three other singles: the upbeat “Enjoy Yourself” (first recorded in 1949 by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians), “Rat Race” (on the US release, not the UK version) which went to #5 in the UK and to #89 on the US Dance chart, and “Do Nothing” (#4 UK).

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All the Rage, the band’s first LP, went to #26 in the US, propelled by their hit single “Tenderness” (#27 US, #95 UK); I loved this song back in ’84. It appeared in two iconic 80’s films: Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, giving it broad exposure though I do remember it getting heavy rotation on MTV. Mick Jones plays guitar on that track. General Public released three other singles from All the Rage: “General Public,” “Never You Done That” and “Hot You’re Cool.”

We saw Dave Wakeling play live most recently this past April at Turner Hall in Milwaukee as part of The (English) Beat (totally revamped of course, I’m pretty Wakeling was the only original member of the band playing). Besides Beat songs, they performed two songs from All The Rage, “Tenderness,” of course, and “Never You Done That.”

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Hectic is a quick listen, lasting around 10 minutes total. It’s extra-fast ska-jumpy, definitely rough around the edges with NO horns, just the standard rock guitar/bass/drums/vocal lineup. For me most ska records tend to sound all alike after a song a two so the infusion of some hardcore punk is refreshing. Punk takes center stage on the first track, “Junkie’s Runnin’ Dry” as well as on “Hoboken.” My favorite ska-forward song is “Healthy Body,” which has a lot of tempo changes and seems very Clash-inspired, down to singer Jesse Michaels’ vocal intonations. I also really like the guitar riff on “Yellin’ In My Ear.”

Our copy is not a first-run, which is probably for the best. According the Discogs listing of Hectic, the first pressing listed numbers on the back cover but “The numbers are not necessary consecutive. The number of copies in the first pressing is unknown. David Hayes [Lookout! Records co-owner] stamped multiple copies of this album as “0001” just to trick collectors.”

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The liner notes explain the impetus for this comp: in the early 80’s fear of nuclear power was at an all-time high with the Three Mile Island meltdown (1979) still fresh in people’s minds. My family lived about 25 miles from a nuclear power plant that was (still is) on the shore of Lake Michigan and I remember my parents fretting big time about our safety in the early 80’s.

“Nuclear Power: No single civil industry threatens our lives, and the lives of future generations, with such brutal finality as Nuclear Power.
It will have a deep and damaging effect on all of us. An enourmous, appalling expensive risk. Despite the soothing words of the nuclear industry, accidents will happen.
Everyday, the radioactive rubbish dump of lethal nuclear waste grows bigger – in spite of the fact that no one yet knows how to dispose of it with safety and certainty.
It is a deadly inheritance to leave our children and their children. Of course, everyone needs energy – now, and in the future. But heat from atom spliting will fail to provide the kind of secure source of energy and we all need because it is complex, over-centralised, and unreliable, and also creates the materials for any country to assemble an atomic bomb.
Meanwhile, it is diverting vast sums of money and scientific resources away from the only true long-term solutions to our energy needs; an energy conservation programme, coupled with the harnessing of the only abundant source of energy the world will always have – the sun.
Will it dawn on us?”
-Roger Deakin, Friends of the Earth.

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