Apologies for the parade of Youtube clips, but I'm too busy/inert for anything more at the moment.

I don't dislike Lilly Allen, but when Alright Still first started getting reviewed in the states and people kept dropping The Specials as a clear influence, I didn't get it. Was it just because she was a white british kid making Jamaican-influenced music? Given the abscence of a two-tone politics in her work, wouldn't Madness have been the more appropriate referent? Anyway here's Allen doing the Specials' Prince Buster-soaked "Gangsters" with Terry Hall and Lynval Golding, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of said band. Hall looks and sounds pretty good, given that this (starts about 40 seconds in) was thirty years ago, and Allen is sufficiently reverential/deferential. I really don't have anything more interesting to say than that i think this is kinda cool.