Fact #162133
When:
Short story:
The Specials play at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, England, UK, Europe., supported by the Swinging Cats. The gig is filmed by director Joe Massot for the 2-Tone documentary movie Dance Craze.Full article:
Pauline Black (vocals, Selecter) : As I understand it, the idea started with Joe Massot, who was an American director who’d made things like the Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains The Same and the George Harrison Wonderwall film.
He’d seen Madness at a gig in America and was so taken with them that he wanted to make a film about them. Then his son pointed out to him that Madness were actually part of a bigger movement called 2-Tone. So he came to England and that’s when Jerry got involved.
Jerry Dammers (The Specials) : My idea was to reproduce the atmosphere of a 2-Tone concert in the cinema for the kids that were too young to go to the shows.
Horace ‘Sir Horace Gentleman’ Panter : (bassist, The Specials) : I remember the director, Joe Massot, big guy, curly hair, quite nervous, came up to Jerry’s flat in Coventry to pitch his concepts to us. We had all the bands crammed into Jerry’s front room, and he told us about this ground-breaking technique using the latest cameras on gyroscopic harnesses so the cameramen could be onstage with the bands and there’d be no flutter or wobble in the film.
Pauline Black : This was the start of steadycam technology and that seemed to be the main selling point of the film, because it meant you could show the audience from the band’s point of view for the first time.
Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers (guitarist, The Specials) : The only person who had any real involvement in it, apart from being filmed, was Jerry himself. It was Jerry’s baby, the group was his brainchild, and he had the final say, and by the time filming started we’d pretty much lost interest.
We came back from America and it had all gone very teeny orientated, and our political aspect seemed to be evaporating
Sir Horace Gentleman : The Beat, I think, were filmed in Philadelphia, where they were on tour with The Pretenders, but The Specials’ sequences were done at Liverpool Rotters and Leicester De Montfort Hall on the tour to promote our second album in September and October of 1980.
The atmosphere around the band at that time wasn’t good. We’d been on tour for a year and a half, sweaty pub gigs, no time off, too many drugs, foreign tours … everybody was getting very fractious. Jerry was also changing the musical direction, moving away from ska, so the band was virtually falling apart.
Neville Staple (vocalist, The Specials) : Jerry was getting into his muzak thing, but the film didn’t show that.
Sir Horace Gentleman : When they came to the gigs to do the filming with their gyroscopic cameras, one of the crew was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and we very firmly told him to change it to a Specials t-shirt.
There was a strange bit in the middle with Madness jumping around on some steps, which seemed to me to be totally out of keeping with the rest of the film, and I never understood what they did that.
Chris ‘Chrissy Boy’ Foreman (guitarist, Madness) : We just felt that there should be something more in the film than just live footage, so, for example, we got some ballet dancers in to do the Swan Lake sequence.
Pauline Black : The Selecter sequences were done in Leeds and Glasgow and it’s a shame you didn’t get to see the out-takes because this was at a time when people were still doing the punk gobbing thing of spitting at the bands. They’d been doing it for a few years by then, so some of them were very good at it, very accurate. During the filming at Leeds, Gaps, our other vocalist, got one full in the face and he picked up the mikestand and was about smack some skinhead in the head with it, so I jumped in and stopped him. But my act of kindness meant that I got my leg badly cut with the mikestand instead, so I spent the rest of the gig hopping around on one leg.
Neville Staple : The film concentrated so much on live filming that it didn’t show the atmosphere backstage, the friendship between the bands behind the scenes.
Pauline Black : People did criticise it because there were no interviews, no little insights into what the people were like. Let me put it this way – the image was of all these people in 2-Tone bands, black and white, living and working together in total harmony but, of course it wasn’t always like that. We were angry young people. That fight sequence during Too Much Pressure, which was actually filmed in a studio in Wembley, that was more like how we really behaved a lot of the time.
Pauline Black : It took about a year from the end of filming before it finally got released, by which time The Specials were coming apart, and two of our members had left, so everything had changed. Everybody was about ready to kill each other by then.
Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers : When they had the premiere in London we were invited but most of us didn’t go. We were all involved in solo projects by then, and there was so much bad feeling that going to the premiere was the last thing any of us wanted to do.
Sir Horace Gentleman : There was a rather naff launch party at the Sundown discotheque on Tottenham Court Road, which was hilarious because there were all these Fleet Street tabloid hacks who insisted on calling you by your nickname even though they’d just met you two minutes ago. I remember the Chrysalis press guy standing up and announcing that he had free albums to give away and his little stage was immediately invaded by hordes of 12 year old fans in Harringtons and plastic pork pie hats.
Sir Horace Gentleman : The film wasn’t exactly nominated for anything, but the soundtrack album was very successful, although The Specials and The Beat were the only ones who didn’t take the opportunity to doctor the live recordings. Listen to all those backing vocals on The Bodysnatchers tracks, for example.
Neville Staple : For me, the film was disappointing. Watching it, I didn’t think it had caught the excitement of all those bands as they were on stage. We always gave 100% onstage, and I didn’t think that came across.
Jerry Dammers : To me, seeing the completed film represented the exact moment of ska overkill and exhaustion, it was actually a bit boring. I knew it was time to find new directions.
To a certain extent, though, it did achieve what it set out to, because it let those kids see the shows although I was hoping for skanking in the aisles, which never happened, I don’t think. The film’s real value is now; it’s one of the very few visual records of the 2-Tone phenomenon.
(Source : not known)
Tweet this Fact
He’d seen Madness at a gig in America and was so taken with them that he wanted to make a film about them. Then his son pointed out to him that Madness were actually part of a bigger movement called 2-Tone. So he came to England and that’s when Jerry got involved.
Jerry Dammers (The Specials) : My idea was to reproduce the atmosphere of a 2-Tone concert in the cinema for the kids that were too young to go to the shows.
Horace ‘Sir Horace Gentleman’ Panter : (bassist, The Specials) : I remember the director, Joe Massot, big guy, curly hair, quite nervous, came up to Jerry’s flat in Coventry to pitch his concepts to us. We had all the bands crammed into Jerry’s front room, and he told us about this ground-breaking technique using the latest cameras on gyroscopic harnesses so the cameramen could be onstage with the bands and there’d be no flutter or wobble in the film.
Pauline Black : This was the start of steadycam technology and that seemed to be the main selling point of the film, because it meant you could show the audience from the band’s point of view for the first time.
Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers (guitarist, The Specials) : The only person who had any real involvement in it, apart from being filmed, was Jerry himself. It was Jerry’s baby, the group was his brainchild, and he had the final say, and by the time filming started we’d pretty much lost interest.
We came back from America and it had all gone very teeny orientated, and our political aspect seemed to be evaporating
Sir Horace Gentleman : The Beat, I think, were filmed in Philadelphia, where they were on tour with The Pretenders, but The Specials’ sequences were done at Liverpool Rotters and Leicester De Montfort Hall on the tour to promote our second album in September and October of 1980.
The atmosphere around the band at that time wasn’t good. We’d been on tour for a year and a half, sweaty pub gigs, no time off, too many drugs, foreign tours … everybody was getting very fractious. Jerry was also changing the musical direction, moving away from ska, so the band was virtually falling apart.
Neville Staple (vocalist, The Specials) : Jerry was getting into his muzak thing, but the film didn’t show that.
Sir Horace Gentleman : When they came to the gigs to do the filming with their gyroscopic cameras, one of the crew was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and we very firmly told him to change it to a Specials t-shirt.
There was a strange bit in the middle with Madness jumping around on some steps, which seemed to me to be totally out of keeping with the rest of the film, and I never understood what they did that.
Chris ‘Chrissy Boy’ Foreman (guitarist, Madness) : We just felt that there should be something more in the film than just live footage, so, for example, we got some ballet dancers in to do the Swan Lake sequence.
Pauline Black : The Selecter sequences were done in Leeds and Glasgow and it’s a shame you didn’t get to see the out-takes because this was at a time when people were still doing the punk gobbing thing of spitting at the bands. They’d been doing it for a few years by then, so some of them were very good at it, very accurate. During the filming at Leeds, Gaps, our other vocalist, got one full in the face and he picked up the mikestand and was about smack some skinhead in the head with it, so I jumped in and stopped him. But my act of kindness meant that I got my leg badly cut with the mikestand instead, so I spent the rest of the gig hopping around on one leg.
Neville Staple : The film concentrated so much on live filming that it didn’t show the atmosphere backstage, the friendship between the bands behind the scenes.
Pauline Black : People did criticise it because there were no interviews, no little insights into what the people were like. Let me put it this way – the image was of all these people in 2-Tone bands, black and white, living and working together in total harmony but, of course it wasn’t always like that. We were angry young people. That fight sequence during Too Much Pressure, which was actually filmed in a studio in Wembley, that was more like how we really behaved a lot of the time.
Pauline Black : It took about a year from the end of filming before it finally got released, by which time The Specials were coming apart, and two of our members had left, so everything had changed. Everybody was about ready to kill each other by then.
Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers : When they had the premiere in London we were invited but most of us didn’t go. We were all involved in solo projects by then, and there was so much bad feeling that going to the premiere was the last thing any of us wanted to do.
Sir Horace Gentleman : There was a rather naff launch party at the Sundown discotheque on Tottenham Court Road, which was hilarious because there were all these Fleet Street tabloid hacks who insisted on calling you by your nickname even though they’d just met you two minutes ago. I remember the Chrysalis press guy standing up and announcing that he had free albums to give away and his little stage was immediately invaded by hordes of 12 year old fans in Harringtons and plastic pork pie hats.
Sir Horace Gentleman : The film wasn’t exactly nominated for anything, but the soundtrack album was very successful, although The Specials and The Beat were the only ones who didn’t take the opportunity to doctor the live recordings. Listen to all those backing vocals on The Bodysnatchers tracks, for example.
Neville Staple : For me, the film was disappointing. Watching it, I didn’t think it had caught the excitement of all those bands as they were on stage. We always gave 100% onstage, and I didn’t think that came across.
Jerry Dammers : To me, seeing the completed film represented the exact moment of ska overkill and exhaustion, it was actually a bit boring. I knew it was time to find new directions.
To a certain extent, though, it did achieve what it set out to, because it let those kids see the shows although I was hoping for skanking in the aisles, which never happened, I don’t think. The film’s real value is now; it’s one of the very few visual records of the 2-Tone phenomenon.
(Source : not known)