Coventry
Coventry appears in 2 Songsheets issues: Darkwave and Synth Goth and 2 Tone. 6 artists in the archive came from here, including Attrition, The Specials and The Selecter.
Scenes
Artists from Coventry
- Attrition
Martin Bowes has run Attrition out of Coventry since 1980, building four decades of work around a specific tension: his own gravelled voice set against operatic collaborators like Emese Arvai-Illes and Elisa Day.
- The Specials
The first stable lineup was seven strong: Terry Hall and Neville Staple on vocals, Jerry Dammers on keyboards, Lynval Golding and Roddy Radiation on guitars, Horace Panter on bass and John Bradbury on drums, with Rico Rodriguez and Dick Cuthell on horns.
- The Selecter
The Selecter began as the name on the B-side of "Gangsters".
- Fun Boy Three
Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding left the Specials in 1981 and pared the sound back as Fun Boy Three, at first working mostly with percussion and voices.
- The Special A.K.A.
After the 1981 split, Jerry Dammers kept the Specials' old alternative name for a shifting lineup built around John Bradbury, Dick Cuthell, the Swinging Cats' guitarist John Shipley and Rhoda Dakar, later joined by the singers Stan Campbell and Egidio Newton.
- The Swinging Cats
A ska-pop band from Coventry, the Swinging Cats released one single on 2 Tone in 1980, "Mantovani" backed with "Away".
