THE NOT SO SPECIALS
“Ever hear of that band
Rage Against the Machine?
Yeah. Nothing like that.”
-The Not So Specials official Myspace page
Around the turn of the century, the New Hampshire underground was dominated by the more brutal offspring of punk rock. In Derry, hardcore band Transistor Transistor and screamo outfit Bravo Fucking Bravo were gaining national notoriety after having signed to Level Plane Records and Alone Records, respectively. Hollis’s Our Last Night was being courted by a number of upper-tier independent labels before signing to Epitaph. In Manchester, Cowboys Are Indians were making a name for themselves in basements and American Legion halls across the city. But elsewhere in Manchester, in the back room of Ted Herbert’s Music Mart, something was brewing.
The Not So Specials were born in 2004 in a back room of Ted Herbert’s where frontman Ryan Deziel had been taking guitar lessons. Having shown a desire to play ska-punk, his teacher encouraged him to get a few people together and start jamming. He would even let them use his room at Ted Hebert’s as a practice space.
The first incarnation of the band was a four-piece. Ryan played lead guitar and sang, his friend Steve Bass on trumpet, and his classmates Joe Lang and Taylor Gamache on bass and drums.
The still unnamed collective soon realized that they needed to round out their sound with a fuller horn section, so early in the summer of ’04 they recruited alto/tenor saxophonist Brian Campbell and trombone player Kim Ndombe, also classmates of Deziel. Later, when autumn blustered into New Hampshire, Gamache would leave the band and be permanently replaced by their high school jazz band’s percussionist, Brad Devereaux, and with him came their friend Chris McDonough on second saxophone.
Now a fully staffed band, they began to hold regular practices in their donated space at Ted Herbert’s. They first did what a lot of bands their age do and learned an arsenal of covers to get their act together as a unit. Their early set lists read like required listening for any rude boy: Reel Big Fish, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Less Than Jake, Catch 22, and early No Doubt were among the many influences they flexed their musical muscles over.
All they needed now was a name. After throwing several ideas around, it was decided that they would be known as the Not So Specials, a name suggested by punk rock institution Fat Mike in an interview with Campbell, as homage to British Two-Tone ska band The Specials.
After six months of practicing, Campbell booked the band’s first show at the venerable Sad Café, a safe, encouraging venue for growing bands, in Plaistow, NH on an all ska bill. As the Not So Specials began to tighten their sound and write original music, Lang left the band two weeks prior to their debut. Scrambling to find a replacement, they managed to find Mike Darby, a friend of a friend of theirs from high school. Armed with their covers and future original live staples “700 Dyslexic Spy” and “Jawbreaker,” the teens managed to turn heads during their opening spot at the Sad.
“We somehow managed to nab Darby…he learned our shit pretty quick,” Campbell recalls.
“Too bad he bailed pretty quick,” Deziel adds.
The Not So Specials’ line up woes weren’t over yet. After a fairly successful debut at the Sad and a decidedly less successful follow up the next night, misplaced as the opener in a hardcore punk show, Darby, Ndombe, Bass, and McDonough all left due to other commitments or just general discontent with the other members.
It seemed like it was the end of the Not So Specials, but in their death there was rebirth. As this forced hiatus began, Deziel, Campbell, and Devereaux wasted no time in recruiting members for a new band. After a month of searching, the ranks were filled by classmates Bill Baldoumas on bass, Matt Allen on trumpet, and Ben Sink on trombone. The new six piece dubbed themselves “Point Blank.”
“We thought we’d get a different name for a mostly different lineup,” Deziel explains. “We did a new website, made new logos…I think we even played our first show under the name.”
But things weren’t going easily for Point Blank. New logos laden with firearms and bullet holes caused their show fliers to get torn down around schools and other public places, and it simply was not catching on like “the Not So Specials” had begun to.
“Apparently Point Blank is a popular name,” Campbell jokes. “We began to weigh the idea of changing our name back.”
The deciding factor was when Campbell tried to book the new lineup back at the Sad Café.
“I was at the Sad for a Monty’s Fan Club show,” he continues, “and Linda [Owner and manager of the Sad Café] approached me about the name change. She strongly suggested we change it back even though only half the old lineup was still involved.”
“I think fans preferred our old name. And I don’t think any of us put up much of an argument when we seriously considered it,” says Deziel.
The decision became unanimous that the band would change their name back to The Not So Specials.
The new line up wrote and practiced furiously, nailing down an entire set of originals (And a couple new covers for special occasions and good measure) before the Not So Specials began to book shows again. It was in trying to book shows that the band would face their greatest challenges.
The New Hampshire independent music circuit was split into close knit factions. Punk rockers were most prevalent in the band’s home town of Manchester, the emo and hardcore scenes were more popular around the rest of southern New Hampshire, and ska had the seacoast. The Not So Specials’ resolve to not be pigeonholed into a scene got them on several mixed bill shows, but ultimately was what alienated them from their contemporaries the most.
“We had those three different scenes pulling us in all directions. Our failure to commit to one of them made each pissed off at us,” Campbell explains. “We obviously fell into the Northeast Ska scene for a while, Ryan’s ex-girlfriend Lily kept wanting to book us on NHBooking shows with area emo bands, and well…Manchester just hated us in general. We were never asked to play shows there, and the few times we were we just got shit on. A guy we went to high school with actually rounded up a bunch of our ex-members to try and form a band called ‘The Queen City Sound Machines’ whose sole purpose was to humiliate us. Thankfully that never got off the ground.
“We were just in the wrong place for ska.”
As shows became more and more scarce, band morale dropped significantly. The band played a great deal of their shows at the Sad and took any gig they could get otherwise. Coffeehouses, basements, fundraisers, and even the altar at a church, no show seemed to be too strange for The Not So Specials. In fact, their first paying gig was at a very Cramps-esque show in a hospital psych ward facilitated by Allen’s mother; they were paid two hundred dollars to entertain a crowd of mental patients.
“They all started dancing,” Campbell laughs. “But there was this one guy just standing there deep in thought. It looked like he was critiquing us very hard.”
As spirits continued to drop, the Not So Specials continued to write new material. In stark contrast to their earlier material about Inspector Clouseau-like secret agents and Grandmothers involved in espionage, Deziel began to write more matured, introspective lyrics. “Another bottle shatters on the barroom floor/Another broken face just like the night before/I take a swig of beer and/This shit is getting old/The lights are burning out and the air is getting cold” Deziel spits with his Tim Armstrong-esque croon over a dark, sultry horn line and a low, menacing guitar riff in “Playmate,” the lyrics a cry out from the weary six piece.
It’s in this stretch of writing that the Not So Specials would pen the crown jewel of their catalogue and a fan favorite for years to come—Hero. Hero begins with a simple jumping upstroke before Sink’s punchy trombone line breaks in, building up gradually to an all out ending. “Maybe there’ll be someone to lead us home…” Deziel optimistically wails during the fade out. Hero was just the thing the band needed to reenergize themselves.
“When we wrote Hero we had no idea it would catch on as much as it did,” confesses Campbell. “It pretty much gave us the confidence to write an album. But where most bands in the area were just straight up ska, we wanted to do something different.”
Between gigs, the band continued to write new material. As each song grew organically around Deziel’s lyrics, there was an incredible synthesis of influences. Using ska as a basic template, the band layered other sounds on top of it, including punk, jazz, blues, classical, and progressive rock. The Not So Specials also wrote a big dance number for the new album: the playfully named “Skanga,” which would inspire their fans to form a crowd wide conga line each time it was performed live.
The band named their creation “My Favorite Revolution”, indicative of their wide range of influences and their wishes to invoke change in the stagnant and bitterly divided New Hampshire underground. Drawing on a connection made from close friend Matt Vachon, of Year’s Best Lie fame, the Not So Specials recorded Revolution over a six month period beginning in January of 2006 at Key Recording Studio in Massachusetts, releasing it in mid-August of the same year.
My Favorite Revolution was the first proper Not So Specials release in two years of life as a band and the sum of all their songwriting talents, and to the uninitiated it may seem just another drop in a sea of Reel Big Fish clones. While the album does have its goofy, just for fun staples like “Undercover Grandma,” upon closer inspection one will find a band coping with teenage life, the pitfalls of love, and their struggle to survive in a scene that had all but ruined them.
My Favorite Revolution was a modest success, drawing the attention of a couple of very small independent labels around New England. The Not So Specials were offered a spot on Vermont’s Halogen Records and asked to contribute Hero to several area ska compilations.
Unfortunately, the attention couldn’t come at a worse time. The band was unable—and unwilling—to commit to anything. Having just graduated from high school the previous spring, Deziel and Campbell were college bound shortly after the release of My Favorite Revolution; Deziel went to the University of New Hampshire in Durham, and Campbell to Keene State College.
This put the band on a hiatus throughout most of the year, coming together sporadically for the occasional Sad Café show or a supporting gig elsewhere.
A year later Allen would leave, having lost interest in the band as he too began studies at UNH. He would never be permanently replaced.
“We know the end is imminent,” Campbell admits. “We’re gonna cut an EP, put out some more merch, play a few shows. We just want some tangible memories of the band before we call it quits.”
Written by Tim King
My Favorite Revolution On Sale for $8 at Shows!
Booking: Brian Campbell; .. Lagwagon X8, E-mail: thenotsospecials@yahoo.com
Merch: Ryan Deziel; ..Rhdeziel, E-mail: Rhdeziel@aol.com OR
Brian Campbell, .. LagwagonX8, E-mail: Lagwagonx8@yahoo.com
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