Let Nobody Turn Us Around

In their early days, The Specials were protest song incarnate. Their very multicultural make-up was a confrontational statement to audiences infested with National Front thugs. Since their self-titled 1979 debut album, tracks tackling racism, war, unemployment and national decay helped make them one of the most vital and socially progressive bands of their age. Their 2019 reunion album ‘Encore’ pulled few punches too: Black Lives Matter, Windrush, racial integration and gang violence all came in for The Specials’ uniquely incisive treatment.

Waylaid by writers’ block and Covid, the Specials have been unable to make their planned Jamaican reggae follow-up to 2019’s Encore. So they’ve recorded some covers instead, shapeshifting through blues, folk, country and rock. It’s odd that most of the songs are American, when this band are so good at delineating a particularly British experience. And your definition of a protest song may be very different from theirs.

There was a moment in 1987, when a feisty and driven Joan Baez thought, "enough is enough." She rolled up her sleeves and accepted an offer from artist manager and label executive Danny Goldberg to join his latest start-up, Gold Castle, and start making records again. That decision led to three albums whose reappearance in 2017 should be cause for no small amount of rejoicing in Joan Baez circles, especially by those who might've been looking the other way (musically, most likely), or just missed them entirely the first time around. So quickly did they seem to come and go.

Much of the power of the civil rights movement came with its speeches, but the movement lived just as actively through music. Whether it was blues, folk, gospel, jazz, or R&B, and whether the artist was part of the cause or simply feeling the same yearnings, the music of the civil rights movement provided focus, unity, strength, and power. Time Life's three-disc box set, Let Freedom Sing! Music of the Civil Rights Movement, not only appeared at an auspicious moment in civil rights history – early 2009, when the United States inaugurated its first black president – but it easily ranks as the most thorough look at the music that came to be identified with civil rights.

The Past & Present label presents a new kind of psych-rock compilation: Mindrocker. With the vast amount of '60s garage and psych compilations that have appeared from around the world in the last few years, it's easy to understand why so many fans of the genre have felt overwhelmed by the deluge. There are, however, a select group of compilations that are widely regarded as genuine must-haves for collectors of '60s singles. Alongside Nuggets, Rubbles, Pebbles, Endless Journey, Chocolate Soup For Diabetics and the Perfumed Garden, Mindrocker stands out as a treasure trove of '60s U.S. psych and garage music. Widely applauded for its high sound quality and detailed liner notes, courtesy of Hans-Herman Pohle, Mindrocker is widely-regarded as the launching-point of many a U.S. psych collection as well as an affordable way to locate rare singles by bands which went on to record classic albums for major record companies.

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