Rudeboys Revisited: The Specials Reunion Tour October 2008

"Two Much Too Young", "Mirror in the Bathroom", " James Bond", who remembers the halycon days of ska in the late 70's and early 80's, when Doc Martens were the only shoes worth wearing, flat-tops the only hair-style and The Specials were the cream of the crop.

Well the Specials are gearing up for a massive reunion, 25 years after their heyday

Leader Terry Hall says he had "five years of reservations" about a reunion due to tensions in the band that are now resolved as members approach their fiftieth year

"We've been trying to do it for five years, but we solved those problems and hopefully got over them, seven 50-year-old men together in a room is not very pleasant, no matter who you are. But we're getting on great and that's all you can hope for, really."

"It's weird because we're all living all over the place, so it's difficult arranging to be in the same place at the same time, we're doing a block of rehearsals in June and then once we've done that, we'll see when we're ready."

"We're going to play just the first and second album, the first album probably in full and half of the second one. That's all we want to do -- just get together and play the songs once more."

They will play a series of theatre-sized venues in the U.K. around October.

"That's the kind of venue where we started, I don't like arena dates, at all. They're just soulless. The very nature of this band, we shouldn't go and play sit-down theatres. It would just be weird. I think we should carry on where we left off."

"It's feeling surprisingly fresh, purely because we haven't really played them for 25 years. I've played a few of those songs live since that point, but there was like an album-and-a-half that I haven't even thought about since 1981. I'm using lots of lyric sheets because I keep on getting words mixed up, although that's also down to old age."

Image: Courtesy 2Tone