Lovers of the roughest and most direct English ska, which is also known as two-tone or second wave of ska, are in luck. Along with the more high-profile Madness or The Specials, Bad Manners is among one of the five seminal groups of this movement born in the late 1970s in Margaret Thatcher's United Kingdom. In the heat of punk and new wave, several bands borrowed the Jamaican sounds and rhythms that were already part of the British musical underground and gave them a simpler and rawer touch. The formula worked: first it dazzled the most rebellious English youth and, later, it reached an international audience.
Their lovers are in luck, we said. And, always led by the charismatic and extravagant Buster Bloodvessel, the Londoners return to Spain to headline the Rude Cat Jamaican Sounds Festival in Barcelona, an event that always tries to pay tribute to the genres of the Caribbean island that have made such a fortune in Catalonia for at least three decades. This time, the main novelty is that the festival will have replicas in Madrid and Vitoria. Not in vain, the capital and the Basque Country are the other two great centers of love for Jamaican music on the Peninsula.
To talk about Bad Manners is to talk about its peculiar frontman, who is also the only original member who remains at the forefront. With an image more similar to that of a hooligan from his homeland than to that of a typical singer, his boldness – an image that exploded until he had to lose weight for health reasons –, his absurdly large tongue and his histrionic style on stage are, Without a doubt, the great trademark of a band that lives up to its name: its thing is not exactly elegance. Without releasing new material for decades, Bad Manners' great asset is nostalgia: songs like Lorraine, Special Brew, Lip up Fatty or Sally Brown, from their best years in the eighties, continue to be anthems that their followers sing with devotion. The festive and scoundrel character of the evening is assured.
Completing Saturday's lineup at Paral·lel 62 are the Americans The Bandulus and the Belgians The Utopians, two similar acts, which stand out for their revivalist character of the three great classic Jamaican genres: ska, rocksteady and reggae. Nothing better for a subculture that, yes, may be a minority and somewhat nostalgic, but whose greatest asset is having known how to maintain its authenticity in the current musical (and non-musical) times.
