JERRY Dammers, leader, songwriter and troubled political conscience of The Specials, visits Cheltenham Jazz Festival on Friday with his Spatial AKA Orchestra.
"This'll only be our sixth gig," he said.
"It started out as an accident. I was DJ-ing at a film evening to do with space, and I thought that the film, which was about Russian cosmonauts, wasn't going to be enough for a whole evening's entertainment. So I decided to do a Sun Ra tribute band as well. Everybody really enjoyed it, so we've carried on developing it.
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"We do covers, mainly based on Sun Ra. He was a really out there spaced jazz guy. We also do covers of general 'outsider' music. It's quite accessible and quite rocky.
"Performing this has been really good fun. I haven't played live for years and years. It's improvised and quite free.
"When you're in a pop band on the road, you have to play the same thing night after night. With The Specials it started to get quite repetitive.
"The show's very visual as well. There's a lot of my sculptural type creatures on the stage. It's a bit Spinal Tap really," he said.
As The Specials songwriter, Jerry wrote about the preoccupations of post-punk youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He captured the spirit of the age, reaching number one in 1981 with Ghost Town just as the worst mainland rioting of the century broke out in Britain's cities and towns. An acrimonious band split followed. Jerry went on to have another Specials hit, Free Nelson Mandela, with a reformed line up. Ever since rumours have come and gone about the original Specials getting back together.
"It's a long way from being definite. There's still a lot of hurdles to overcome.
"I think it'd be alright if it was going to be good, but I'd hate it to be bad."
"Ultimately it has to be about the music. If it's about making money then that's the end of the road for me," he said. You always have to put the music first as far as I'm concerned.
Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA Orchestra play at The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham on Friday night, 7.30pm, £20. For further information call 01242 227979.
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