Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation

Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation

Author: Daniel Rachel

Publisher: Akashic Books

Published: 2024-06-04

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1636141900

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The definitive and remarkable story of 2 Tone Records, featuring an introduction by Pauline Black —A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year —An Uncut Book of the Year —Long-Listed for the Penderyn Music Book Prize —A Louder Than War Book of the Year —A Blitzed Magazine Book of the Year In 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers in Britain, the US, and beyond, as albums by the Specials, the Selecter, Madness, the English Beat, and the Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born. 2 Tone was Black and white: a multiracial force of British and Caribbean musicians singing about social issues, racism, class, and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and fought against rightwing extremism. It was exuberant and eclectic: white youths learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae, crossed with a punk attitude, to create an original hybrid. The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, England, and masterminded by a middle-class art student, Jerry Dammers, who envisioned an English Motown. Dammers signed a slew of successful artists, and a number of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, infighting among the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to the inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination. Over the following years, Dammers built the label back up again, entering a new phase full of fresh signings and a beautiful end-piece finale in the activist hit song “(Free) Nelson Mandela.” Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.


Ska'd for Life

Ska'd for Life

Author: Horace Panter

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2009-01-30

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0330508210

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'Fascinating . . . a must-read' Mojo 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. In Ska'd for Life Horace takes the reader on a musical odyssey with the Specials from their early days on Coventry's punk circuit to chart storming success with singles like 'Too Much Too Young' and the eerily prescient 'Ghost Town', released as the race riots saw Toxteth and Brixton go up in flames. Written with wry humour, taking an affectionate look at a band whose sublime music remains influential today, this is a must for all Specials fans. 'I found myself laughing out loud whilst revisiting some long forgotten memories . . . It was a fantastic journey and I thank Horace for sharing it' Lynval Golding


Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930

Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930

Author: Deborah Epstein Nord

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0231137044

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Deborah Epstein Nord traces the nearly ubiquitous British preoccupation with Gypsies in imaginative works by John Clare, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, and D. H. Lawrence. She also exhumes lesser-known literary, ethnographic, and historical texts, exploring the fascinating histories of the nomadic writer George Borrow, the Gypsy Lore Society, Dora Yates, and other rarely examined figures and institutions. These textual representations are characterized by a tension between Gypsies as an alien, often despised "race" and the psychic or aesthetic desire to dissolve the boundary between English and Gypsy worlds. Nord suggests that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, romantic identification with Gypsies hardened into caricature and served to obscure the realities of Gypsy life and history. This phenomenon is reflected most famously in The Virgin and the Gipsy, in which D. H. Lawrence both exploits and criticizes the myth of Gypsies' unfettered sensuality, closeness to nature, and opposition to the oppressive strictures of modern life.


Walls Come Tumbling Down

Walls Come Tumbling Down

Author: Daniel Rachel

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2016-09-08

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 1447272706

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Walls Come Tumbling Down charts the pivotal period between 1976 and 1992 that saw politics and pop music come together for the first time in Britain's musical history; musicians and their fans suddenly became instigators of social change, and 'the political persuasion of musicians was as important as the songs they sang'. Through the voices of campaigners, musicians, artists and politicians, Daniel Rachel follows the rise and fall of three key movements of the time: Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone, and Red Wedge, revealing how they all shaped, and were shaped by, the music of a generation. Composed of interviews with over a hundred and fifty of the key players at the time, Walls Come Tumbling Down is a fascinating, polyphonic and authoritative account of those crucial sixteen years in Britain's history.


2 Tone - Before, During & After

2 Tone - Before, During & After

Author: Lee Morris

Publisher:

Published: 2020-11-07

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781912027552

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In 1979, 2 Tone Records was founded by Jerry Dammers, the founder and keyboard player in The Special AKA. He had a vision and wanted to create the British version of Motown, the similarities with his hometown of Coventry were already there. He'd already put his own band of black and white musicians together and they hit the charts with the release of Gangsters in 1979. 2 Tone then went on to sign and release records by other bands, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat, all of whom fused punk, ska and reggae and dragged it into the present. The record label had no fewer than 15 Top 40 singles and they continued the trend, signing The Swinging Cats, Rico and even released a single by Elvis Costello & The Attractions, or did they?As time moved on, the label branched out to accommodate the funk era and signed a number of non-ska bands with The Higsons, The Apollinaires, The Friday Club and JB's Allstars all releasing singles on the label in the 1980s. However, 2 Tone's light had faded and by 1986 it had been closed down permanently. The story of these particular bands has never been covered in great detail in print before, until now! 2 Tone: Before, During & After tells the story, before, during & after of each band that appeared on the label and also updates the story on each member with a full Where Are They Now? section, covering every single musician that ever appeared on the label. FEEDBACK SO FAR... "The story of 2 Tone Records is the stuff of legends, and in 2 Tone: Before, During & After, author Lee Morris tells the surprising stories behind every 2 Tone release. The 200-page mini-encyclopedia provides band bios, discographies and where-are-they-now profiles on every musician who ever appeared on the label. Based on primary source research (see the extensive bibliography) and personal interviews, the book is packed with things you didn't know about the label, the records and the musicians behind it all" Charles Benoit, Reggae Steady Ska "Lee Morris makes his mark with a fine book that documents all artists that appeared on the label, rather than just the more famous 'ska' bands. He also continues the post 2 Tone story of all bands involved and provides information on each person ever to appear on the label. 2020 has been a great year for 2 Tone with some important reissues on the label and this book compliments those releases and will no doubt become an essential purchase of fans of the label". 2-Tone.info "A Must read for all 2 Tone fans" - Do The Dog Skazine. "I appreciate the angle of covering beyond the well tread period of the label's run to the later acts (who deserve more love) and up to today" Kevin Feinberg "Excellent and very thorough" - Charlie Higson "I HIGHLY recommend it, a brilliantly researched analysis of 2 Tone Records" John Barrow


Before We Was We

Before We Was We

Author: Mike Barson

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0753553945

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New Foreword by Irvine Welsh. In Before We Was We Madness tell us how they became them. A story of seven originals, whose collective graft, energy and talent took them from the sweaty depths of the Hope and Anchor's basement to the Top of the Pops studio. In their own words they each look back on shared adventures. Playing music together, riding freight trains, spraying graffiti and stealing records. Walking in one another's footsteps by day and rising up through the city's exploding pub music scene by night. Before We Was We is irreverent, funny and full of character. Just like them.


Teenage Wasteland

Teenage Wasteland

Author: Donna Gaines

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-04-28

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780226278728

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Teenage Wasteland provides memorable portraits of "rock and roll kids" and shrewd analyses of their interests in heavy metal music and Satanism. A powerful indictment of the often manipulative media coverage of youth crises and so-called alternative programs designed to help "troubled" teens, Teenage Wasteland draws new conclusions and presents solid reasons to admire the resilience of suburbia's dead end kids. "A powerful book."—Samuel G. Freedman, New York Times Book Review "[Gaines] sheds light on a poorly understood world and raises compelling questions about what society might do to help this alienated group of young people."—Ann Grimes, Washington Post Book World "There is no comparable study of teenage suburban culture . . . and very few ethnographic inquiries written with anything like Gaines's native gusto or her luminous eye for detail."—Andrew Ross, Transition "An outstanding case study. . . . Gaines shows how teens engage in cultural production and how such social agency is affected by economic transformations and institutional interventions."—Richard Lachman, Contemporary Sociology "The best book on contemporary youth culture."—Rolling Stone


A Girl Stands at the Door

A Girl Stands at the Door

Author: Rachel Devlin

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1541616650

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A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools. In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. Highlighting the extraordinary bravery of young black women, this bold revisionist account illuminates today's ongoing struggles for equality.


Black by Design

Black by Design

Author: Pauline Black

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2011-07-14

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1847657621

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Born in 1953 to Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents, Pauline Black was subsequently adopted by a white, working class family in Romford. Never quite at home there, she escaped her small town background and discovered a different way of life - making music. Lead singer for platinum-selling band The Selecter, Pauline Black was the Queen of British Ska. The only woman in a movement dominated by men, she toured with The Specials, Madness, Dexy's Midnight Runners when they were at the top of the charts - and, sometimes, on their worst behaviour. From childhood to fame, from singing to acting and broadcasting, from adoption to her recent search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening story of music, race, family and roots.