Customer Reviews
Specials Kick Da Bucket - By: Ian Wood, Author of 'Here's 2 Absent Fathers', 01 May 2008 
When The Specials hit the number one spot for the second timein their short career with `Ghost Town' no one realised it was to be their swan song but within two months Terry Hall, Neville Staples & Lynval Golding quit to form Fun Boy Three leaving Jerry Dammers, John Bradbury, Horace Panter & Roddy Radiation to continue without them.
Reverting to the earlier name Special AKA their first project was to Back ex-Bodysnatchers Rhoda Dakar on her anti-rape song `The Boiler' which due to it's content was never going to sit easily at Radio One. Next up they recorded the single `Jungle Music' with ex-Skatalite trombonist Rico & acted as his backing band on his European tour.
On returning home they returned to the studio recruiting soul vocalist Stan Campbell to compliment Rhoda to record this album. It had a very difficult birth & by the time it was finished. Horace & Roddy had left the group to be replaced by Gary McManus & John Shipley respectively. By the time it was released Stan had also left & promoted hit single `Nelson Mandela' as a favour to the band.
As well as the classic anti-apartied single the album contained some great material notably `War Crimes', `Racist Friend' & `Alcohol'. The themes of most of these songs prevented air play & limited the success of the album. `Nelson Mandela' transcended the opposition to serious pop music by having a theme all descent people could relate to & consequently was the big hit it deserved to be.
The band couldn't capitalise on there own success & after follow up single `Girlfriend' failed to chart The Special AKA closed for business. Now some twenty four years later The Specials are coming out of retirement & we can only hope they too will venture into the studio.
Overdue a rerelease - By: Andy Millward, 26 Jan 2006 High time this album was rereleased by the record company. It might be a footnotein the history of music, the dying embers of the ska phenomenon of the early 80s, butin its own way In The Studio is a minor classic. It was well receivedin most quarters, but only scored 3/5in NME; sales were also disappointing, but to music lovers this was a treat.
First thing to note is that, Jerry Dammers apart, this is not the original Specials. However, many of the musicians & singers Dammers broughtin had been on the periphery of the 2-Tone revolution, & all were talented performersin their own right. Vocalists Rhoda Dakar & Egidio Newton emerge with particular credit.
Then, the material. The songs Dammers wrote for this album are less raw & more mature than much of the Specials early material - no less politically charged, but they express a wider palette of emotions & greater musical depth than anything that came before. None more so than the joyful Nelson Mandela, written when the great statesman was incarcerated by the South African government & still 7 years from a triumphant return. Despite the urgent, pleading message, the song conveys a message of hope that was rewardedin Mandela's subsequent release.
While not all songs are that powerful, they are all worth listening to: the quirky What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend, for example; the raw power of Break Down The Door; the poignant Alcohol, written perhaps from personal experience; & the challenging Racist Friend, urging listeners to ditch friends with racist attitudes. In fact, there is not a bad trackin sight - Dammers went out into other projects on a glorious high.
And in the end... - By: SoulStylist, 06 Apr 2002 By the mid-Eighties we'd grown out our hair a bit & traded Prince Buster for Astrid Gilberto. 2-Tone was long gone so we looked to The Style Council, Animal Night Life & Working Week for the new sounds. Dammers too was peddling the New Jazz movement with his re-vamped Special A.K.A . Hall, Staples & Golding were replaced with the always reliable Rhoda Dakar & a prissy soul singer named Stan Campbell. Jerry's new group were hard-Left & musically more progressive than their former incarnation.
Despite the presence of top-ten single Nelson Mandella, In The Studio was deemed a disappointment upon it's releasein '84. It has actually aged quite well. Dammers as usual was miles ahead with his use of lounge, afro-beat, northern soul & bohemian jazz. That trademark Dammers black humour is also there to alienate anyone who may have come to the album via the hit-single.
Brilliant stuff.
