Lovers of the rougher and more direct English ska, also known as two-tone or second wave ska, are in luck. Along with the more media-friendly Madness or The Specials, Bad Manners is one of the five seminal groups of this movement born at the end of the seventies in the United Kingdom of Margaret Thatcher. Under the cover 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 then it reached a global audience.
Their lovers are in luck, we said. And it is that, always led by the charismatic and extravagant Buster Bloodvessel, the Londoners return to Spain to headline the Rude Cat Jamaican Sounds Festival in Barcelona, a competition that always tries to honor the genres of the Caribbean island that have made so much fortune in Catalonia for at least three decades. This time, the main novelty is that the festival will have separate replicas in Madrid and Vitoria. Not without reason, the capital and Euskadi are the other two major centers of interest for Jamaican music in 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 foot of the canyon. With an image more similar to that of a hooligan from his land than that of a singer in use, his imposing volume – 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 mark of the home on the one hand that lives up to its name: its forte would not exactly be elegance. Without releasing new material for ages, Bad Manners' greatest asset is nostalgia: tracks like Lorraine, Special Brew, Lip up Fatty or Sally Brown, from their best years in the eighties, are still anthems that their fans sing along to devotion The festive and naughty nature of the evening is guaranteed.
Completing Saturday's line-up in the Parallel 62 room are the Americans The Bandulus and the Belgians The Utopians, two proposals of a similar style to each other, who stand out for their revivalist character of the three great classic Jamaican genres: ska, rocksteady and reggae. Nothing better for a subculture than yes, which may be a minority, but with the asset of having been able to maintain its authenticity in the musical (and non-musical) times that are going on today.
