The Specials
A good gig but not the classic I expected.
Specials, The Scenes and The Tones - UEA 30.10.14
Being a support playing to a very partisan crowd takes some guts. The Tones took the bull firmly by the horns, playing a set of energetic Jam-meets-Arctic Monkeys-and-Vaccines mod rock. Unfortunately, the songs have little personality and no originality. (5/10)
Competent and earnest, unexciting and dull, I am afraid that The Scenes’ mix of U2, Portishead, Massive Attack and post-rock guitars did nothing for me. (4/10)
If anybody other than The Specials had played a set like this, I'd have probably been delighted but my expectations were high, perhaps too high.
This wasn't bad. Any show that opens with the Ghost Town and includes the still sadly relevant Doesn’t Make It Alright, Night Klub, Do The Dog, Gangsters, Message To You, Rudy and Too Much Too Young simply can’t be anything less than good. Horace Panter, Lynval Golding and stand-in guitarist Steve Craddock pulled the shapes and covered the stage like younger men. However, for all the classics, the live show did, at times, veer towards jazz-inflected easy listening that, for me, blighted the recordings.
So, a good gig but not the classic I expected. I was very much in the minority, with most of the crowd ending up as sweaty messes after skanking for nigh-on two hours. (7.5/10)
Pavlis
