Mr. Suave's Mod Mod World

In 1980 musical currents were steeped in punk, post-punk, power pop, and new wave. The Specials were riding high off the success of their debut album, and founder Jerry Dammers pushed the band to immediately record a follow-up, More Specials. But rather than continue the DIY punked up ska and reggae they had mastered on their first LP Dammers pushed for doing something entirely different, something new and contrary to the popular sounds of the era. In an interview in mid-1980 Dammers said: "It's time for 2-Tone bands to begin getting experimental. Some of the home-grown ska has started to become a cliche. We've got to start all over again." So he drove The Specials in hard left turn creating an album of easy listening, exotica, lounge music. And young mods like yours truly ate it up. We didn't realize we were cutting our teeth on lounge music and that it was training us up for the coming cocktail revolution of the 1990s. There's no doubt that Jerry Dammers trained mods to like lounge, exotica, tiki and ot