The great difference between Traditional Ska and that of the Two-Tone era is the influence of Punk: not simply in speeding-up the tempo, but unconsciously introducing the theme of alienation. In Traditional Ska, the artist and the listener inhabit the same universe, there is the possibility of communication and shared experience. In Two-Tone Ska, and the music of The Specials in particular, the world is a colder and lonelier place. That may have as much to do with an inherited memory within the music, of having formerly been a creation of the warm Caribbean, with its sense of community and togetherness, and of now inhabiting an alien land, full of cold attitudes and Thatcherism as well as stinking weather. "Blank Expression" is a novelty Christmas single with all its warmth and cheer hollowed out: the narrator leaves his street on foot, because the roads are impassable to traffic, and goes in search of conviviality; but all he finds in the bar he enters is a feeling of trepidation and of being unwanted, and the girl he tries to talk to looks back at him as if to a brick wall, "as if I were a, a total stranger". They must already be acquainted, but she shuts him out and refuses to interact. Back home, "all the, the lights are out", no welcome there.
The great difference between Traditional Ska and that of the Two-Tone era is the influence of Punk: not simply in speeding-up the tempo, but unconsciously introducing the theme of alienation. In Traditional Ska, the artist and the listener inhabit the same universe, there is the possibility of communication and shared experience. In Two-Tone Ska, and the music of The Specials in particular, the world is a colder and lonelier place. That may have as much to do with an inherited memory within the music, of having formerly been a creation of the warm Caribbean, with its sense of community and togetherness, and of now inhabiting an alien land, full of cold attitudes and Thatcherism as well as stinking weather. "Blank Expression" is a novelty Christmas single with all its warmth and cheer hollowed out: the narrator leaves his street on foot, because the roads are impassable to traffic, and goes in search of conviviality; but all he finds in the bar he enters is a feeling of trepidation and of being unwanted, and the girl he tries to talk to looks back at him as if to a brick wall, "as if I were a, a total stranger". They must already be acquainted, but she shuts him out and refuses to interact. Back home, "all the, the lights are out", no welcome there.