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Ska Music
 Twenty years ago Coventry was the epicentre of British music. No, really. British ska music - a rough, ready and thoroughly modern version of the Jamaican original - dominated the country's charts and dance floors, providing the first real music trend after the demise of punk.
Complete
Selection of Ska Music
The movement was sparked by the release - and instant success - of Gangsters, the debut single by The Special AKA (later simply The Specials) in the summer of 1979. The multi-racial septet from Coventry put the single out on their own 2-Tone label, complete with trademark chequered black and white sleeves and rude boy (and girl) logos, and changed the course of British popular
ska music. Well, for a couple of years at least.
It's a time fondly remembered by anyone who enjoyed the vibrant
ska music, and especially Coventrians, whose youngsters propelled the city into the media spotlight not only for being home to the nation's most popular sounds and bands, but for taking the lead in the fight against the racial tension that was building in a country gripped by economic recession.
'2-Tone is one of the best stories to come out of Coventry, full stop,' says Bob Eaton, current director of the city's Belgrade Theatre. 'When I first came to Coventry it was one of the few things I knew about the place - the 2-Tone movement, label and bands that had come out of the city.'
Ska Music - Full Line
In celebration of the fact - and the chance to give the city a theatrical work all of its own - Eaton has conceived and written Three Minute Heroes, a musical which tells the story of a fictional 2-Tone band during the height of the
ska music boom. Marketed as a story written for and about the people of Coventry, it features many of the hits from the period and seems tailor-made for the burgeoning
retro ska music crowd.
And given that it comes from the same stable as Return To The Forbidden Planet, there's even the useful coincidence that 2-Tone is now 20 years old - roughly the same time difference that existed between Planet and its 1960s source material when it first opened.
'Perhaps that's the gap you have to have,' laughs Eaton, before revealing that he's always related to 2-Tone music 'even though I was the wrong age at the time', and once he arrived in Coventry the more he heard about it, the more he wanted to hear about it. See also
ska punk, and pages relate to
ska music
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