Featuring Additional Rare Bonus Material, Non-Album Singles, Ep's & B-Sides, New Extensive Sleevenotes And Previously Unseen Chalkie Davies' Photos!

2 Tone Records/Warners Catalogue is pleased to release Special Editions of three exceptional, ground breaking albums by one of the most important British bands ever – The Specials. These reissues have been liaised and approved by the band's founder and main songwriter Jerry Dammers and have been remastered by Tim Debney at Fluid.

As well as the original albums, they include all the band's EPs, non-album singles and b-sides, the ‘Too Much Too Young EP’, ‘Rat Race’, ‘Ghost Town’ (full version), ‘Friday Night, Saturday Morning’ and ‘Why?’ (extended version); a rare, previously unreleased on CD, frenetic concert recorded for the BBC at the Paris Theatre in December 1979 plus John Peel BBC radio sessions and instrumentals of six tracks from ‘In The Studio’ mixed at the time, (which perfectly demonstrate the album's groundbre­aking experimentation).

All three Special Editions include new and extensive sleevenotes by Lois Wilson, as well as rare and previously unseen Chalkie Davies' photos of the band, some of which have been used to create variations on the albums' original cover photos.

Formed in Coventry in the mid-1970s, The Specials (formerly Coventry Automatics) was the idea of musician Jerry Dammers, who brought together an eclectic array of individuals to fulfill his vision of a multi-racial band, fusing the energy of punk with the legendary but, at the time, often overlooked, sound of Jamaican ska. This was a fusion which proved to be explosive. The seven individuals – Dammers (keyboards), Terry Hall (vocals), Neville Staples (vocals), Lynval Golding (rhythm guitar), Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers (lead guitar), ‘Sir’ Horace ‘Gentleman’ Panter (bass) and John Bradbury (drums), along with legendary Jamaican ska trombonist Rico Rodriguez and trumpeter Dick Cuthell – not only fully realised Dammers' vision, but their exuberant, uncompromising sound and ‘message’ music reached the top of the charts. The resulting popularity of the band and its music was considered by many, to have a hugely positive influence on race relations in late '70s/early '80s Britain, helping to create unity amongst disaffected youth.

In early 1981, the group re-entered the studio to record another non-album single, one that would eerily soundtrack that summer's widespread rioting and assure the group's place in music history. ‘Ghost Town’, (B/W ‘Friday Night, Saturday Morning’ and ‘Why?’) influenced the dystopian sounds which were to dominate the Bristol “trip hop” scene, and in turn pass into much British music since, up to and including dubstep. Capturing a mood of inner city anger and alienation in an uneasy amalgam of Eastern melody, skank reggae and heavy dub bass, with an inimitable and mournful trombone solo by Rico Rodriguez, the song reached no.1 in the charts, but sadly, after what should have been an occasion for celebration, Hall, Golding and Staple left to form the Fun Boy Three and Byers left to tour with his band the Tearjerkers.

The remaining members, Dammers, Bradbury and Panter, briefly toured backing Rico in Germany, then Dammers recruited guitarist John Shipley from The Swinging Cats, ex-Bodysnatcher Rhoda Dakar (who'd guested on ‘More Specials’) and lead vocalist Stan Campbell. The new line up set to work on the ‘In The Studio’ album, reverting to the band's original name of The Special AKA. Released in 1984, the album was a brave mix of bold and challenging music, with a strong political, social and moral conscience. The album made it into the Top 40, and while it might not have been a huge commercial success, it was, and still is, an astonishingly unique work: a haunting, claustrophobic mix of lounge, soul, reggae, jazz (foreseeing what would later in the decade become known as ‘acid jazz’) and Arabic rhythms, with uncompromising subject matter. It featured two brilliant singles: the joyous, yet serious rallying anthem for the then imprisoned South African ANC leader, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, and ‘What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend’, a rare outing for Dammers on vocals (later covered by the band's debut album producer, Elvis Costello). As time has gone by, the status of ‘In The Studio’ has grown, and today it is rightly viewed as a genuine lost classic.