Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story | Daniel Rachel

ust because you're a black boy, just because you're a white, it doesn't mean you've got to hate him, it doesn't mean you've got to fight'

Too Much, Too Young by Daniel Rachel tells the story of the Coventry-born record label 2-tone. It isn't an ordinary story, it isn't an ordinary label. 2-Tone was, and still is, one of the most important labels to have ever danced into the spotlight.

Born into a country in rapid economic decline and blighted by the rise of the fascist right (sound familiar?), 2-tone exploded into the spaces opened up by the punk earthquake. Mixing Caribbean ska with punk guitars and attitude, the bands of the label (The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat, and the Bodysnatchers, to name a few) took an anti-fascist, anti-racist stance, singing about social injustice, class struggle and gender battles in a manner everyone could dance to. This was black and white united, creating truly multi-racial music under the coolest label graphics to have ever graced a record sleeve.

This 500+ page history, is told through the voices that lived it, and the roster of principal characters takes in the band members, label heads, producers, photographers, tour managers and ... anyone else who mattered. It takes us through the labels early beginnings and the formation of The Specials through to the release of Free Nelson Mandela - and in-between, the records, the tours, the gigs, the hits, the break-ups, and the eventual falling apart.

It is the definitive history of 2-Tone and, as the blurb states 'the story of a label that for a brief, bright, burning moment, re-configured British Culture.'

Size: 164 x 243mm

Pages: 520

Publisher: White Rabbit