The Specials, Little Hurricane

[TWO-TONE SKA] Fucking Reel Big Fish. If ska had never been revived in the ’90s as a shorts-wearing, garishly neon-colored, cornily horn-y puppet corpse of the Weekend at Bernie’s variety, then the bands of the music’s previous, much rougher revival a decade earlier wouldn’t have been retroactively stigmatized by a genre tag that makes most listeners blanch. Then maybe the Specials would get the respect they deserve. Back in 1980s England, the group was every bit as punk as the Sex Pistols or the Clash, only it communicated its frustrations through an interpretation of Jamaican dance music shaped by the concrete and industrial smoke of its first-world surroundings. Sure, true pop historians recognize the band’s greatness, but the group is reuniting in a world not yet fully recovered from the brief, Hawaiian-shirted tyranny of Third Wave ska. What’s more, conspicuously absent on this tour is ailing singer Neville Staple, the font of light and energy to co-frontman Terry Hall’s gray monotone, confirming the proceedings will be more drab than they should be.

Where: Roseland Theater
Phone: 224-2038
Address: 8 NW 6th Ave.
Website: www.doubletee.com/rose_schedule.shtml