Following the release of their eighth studio album Encore, last year to critical acclaim, the band comprising Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter, hit the road again.The genius of the Specials is that they are observers, not commentators and they know that pop music is influential, important and exhilarating. They are a band embedded in this country's DNA, and especially in the DNA of Coventry, City of Culture 2021.
It is impossible to envisage the musical landscape without them, from the startling, angular Gangsters in 1979, to their swan song, the epoch-making Ghost Town in 1981. They infuse ska with punk and homegrown political anxiety with wider issues.
The skill of re-contextualising what has gone before and writing new songs that fuse this heritage with all that is current. Throughout the decades the Special's influence has never gone away. And we need it."I'm aware our work has been out there for forty years and I'm so grateful for what we've done, I pinch myself sometimes," says Lynval.
"I can pat myself on the back now, and say 'Well done,' because that what my father says to me. As a band, making this record, it was the closest we'd ever been.""That's the thing with the Specials," says Horace.
"We are three very different people, but you put us together and we become the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Something remarkable happens."
Something remarkable will happen at the Ricoh Arena in 2021, when The Specials walk out onto the stage at the Ricoh Indoor Arena, Coventry on September 11th.
