A nice bit of synchronicity happened upon me last week: after writing my piece on the Venture Bros, mentioning a character named after the bassist from the Specials, an extended bumming around town on my lunch break saw me happen upon the memoirs of the man also known as Horace Panter, and at a price that demanded purchase too.
Panter is a man who knows what the audience want: titled 'Ska'd For Life' and featuring our hero in his two-tone gear on the front, he skips over most of his childhood to the point we want to know the details - the formation and exploits of Coventry's finest musical exports. Having moved to Cov from Kettering to study art, meeting Jerry Dammers along the way, he plays in various small-time pub bands before gravitating towards the ska sound.
What comes across very well throughout is the speed at which things seemed to happen once the seven Specials were all in place. From debut single Gangsters hitting the top 10, to the debut album, first tour of America, first chart topping single followed by second album, the legendary Ghost Town hitting the top and the band splitting whizzes by in no time.
Panter comes across as an affable narrator, and points out early on that this is just his version of events, rather than a true history of the band. The core of the book is a reproduction of the diary he kept during a gruelling six week tour of the States in 1980: tempers fray, exhaustion sets in and all question just why they are doing what they are. It's not a great advertisement for being in a band, but makes for interesting reading.
Where 'Ska'd For Life' does fall down a tad is a lack of, for me, insight into the various personalities of many of his bandmates. Though conversations with Dammers are mentioned, no details are gone into. Yet Panter still manages to convey his own sadness at how the band gradually splintered and failed to explore their potential further (this was also written before their well-received comeback tour last year) and expresses his own wish for his old bandleader to write his own book.
If you pop along to your local Fopp, as I did, you may find 'Ska'd For Life' costing less than a pint of beer. Well worth checking for anyone with even only a casual interest in the Specials.
(In an additional bit of happy coincidence, on getting home later in the day I bought this book, whilst looking for something else, I found my Rude Boy/Beat Girl ska badge that I thought I'd lost ages ago. Great stuff)
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