Jerk Music Critic: The Best of the Specials

The Specials are special because over their brief existence they didn't really know what they wanted to be: are they ska? Are they soul? Are they reggae? Do they care? Not particularly, and that generally worked for a brief period until the band said a collective "sod it" after four years, three albums and lots of dry cleaning bills for their two-tone suits. (Ignoring, of course, the chaotic period of the Special AKA culminating in In The Studio, and the various later and only tangentially related reincarnations.) This CD/DVD collection is superior to their other compilations because it tries to take a good cross-section of their albums as well as their better known singles, so the completists will enjoy it particularly, though their best work wasn't ever released on any LP at the time ("Gangsters" and "Ghost Town" especially). In fact, with only three albums to choose from, maybe four if you count the live EP Too Much Too Young (solely represented here by the title track's infamous ode to contraception), this disc ends up regurgitating a fair bit of them and even includes their weaker moments (for me, the nadir is "Racist Friend," which shows cancel culture was just as much a thing in Thatcherian England). Jerry Dammers is no Paul Weller or even Joe Strummer, and his unsophisticated lyrical acumen undercuts his message (especially exemplified by "Doesn't Make It Alright" and "War Crimes," and to a lesser extent "Nelson Mandela" though you can't hate that beat), but the band's dogged willingness to adopt just about any musical style they thought they could jam to means pretty much everyone's going to find at least part of their collective works entertaining. Look out for my second favourite Specials track "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend" and the most inexplicable music video ever made to accompany it, which you can experience on the DVD in all of Dammers' leering gaptoothed extraterrestrial glory. I don't review DVDs here, but this one is noteworthy not only for featuring live footage ("On Video") but also that and several other music videos ("On Film") including several tracks that don't appear on the CD at all. American fans, do note the second disc is PAL; it's a good thing Blu-ray saved us from television standards with oppressive digital rights management instead. (Content: some adult themes.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.