Capital Letters that is. They were a reggae band from Wolverhampton who I worked with 30 years ago. They had top rhythms and top tunes and they were big – usually 8 or more on stage. Their place in history was really only documented the other week on Radio 2 when during the excellent ‘Two Tone Story’ Jerry Dammers spoke of how he used to DJ at punk events and everyone danced so hard that they collapsed after an hour or two. He said that he started slipping some reggae into his set to give dancers a chance to slow down and it was one night whilst playing Capital Letters that he had the idea of a band mixing Punk and Reggae…….
Capital Letters enjoyed a John Peel session and sold a lot of 12″ of their classic “Smoking My Ganja” but went their separate ways in 82.
Capital Letters back in the day
I was lucky enough a couple of weeks ago to hear that they were getting back together and tracked them down. They invited me to a rehearsal room in Wolverhampton and they sounded even better than they had in ‘82 so after checking with our partners for the Nov 7th top night Mr Elephant Presents I invited them to play in Birmingham. If you are around Digbeth on Nov 7th pop in to The Rainbow as amongst some other truly great stuff you can hear British Reggae at its best.
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