“Wheels Out of Gear” ably documents a politically-charged musical era

book-cover-wheels-out-of-gearWhen I first started reading Dave Thompson‘s Wheels Out of Gear: 2-Tone, The Specials and a World In Flame, I was terribly afraid that Thompson would merely be offering a re-tread of George Martin’s The Two Tone Story. While that 1997 book is long out-of-print, it still stands as the defining history of the early ’80s ska label that made such an impact.

Nothing could be further from the case. While Martin’s book focused exclusively on the story of the label, Thompson takes a wider scope, using the tale of the storied 2-Tone label as the framework for a history of the era immediately preceding and followihng the British punk explosion. While the Sex Pistols and the Clash make an appearance, Wheels Out of Gear is the story of those who followed in their wake, taking the ethos of punk and applying it to a disparate sense of styles.
Continue reading