The Greatest Ivy Style Band of All Time

By Dan Covell

Earlier this year, Ivy Style posted my essay on the power of style on dress and contemporary music. That piece noted other previous contributors to this site who marked the many connections between Ivy Style and music, starting with jazz titans Chet Baker and Miles Davis, through Richard Press’s dalliances outfitting Frank Sinatra. Mr. Press noted that Sinatra left J. Press in 1969, and I relayed that this departure was symptomatic of what had been happening with the clothing choices of performers of popular music throughout the decade, a trend that would continue through the end of the next decade.

But the influences of Ivy Style would reemerge towards the end of the decade with the revival of ska in the U.K., and later, certain “new wave” acts in the U.S. and the U.K Some of the foundational performer of ska, the musical form that started in Jamaica as an offshoot of jazz and American R&B and served to influence the emergence of reggae, followed the lead of their American influences when putting together their stage looks, combining slim–cut suits, narrow ties, and V-neck and cardigan sweaters. Reggae left those sensibilities behind and embraced ‘70s rock fashion imbued with the aesthetic of the African diaspora. The birth of punk in the mid ‘70s produced practitioners who donned leather jackets and combat boots along with t-shirts and jeans torn and perforated to varying degrees of severity. But while punk grabbed most of the limelight at the time, a ska revival grew alongside it here and in the U.K.

The ska revival, which was infused with the ethos and timbres of punk, birthed such bands such as the Selecter, Madness and the Beat (known in the U.S. as the English Beat due to conflict issues with a domestic band with the same name), but the most celebrated practitioners were the Specials, one of my favorite acts of all-time, and who’s eponymous first album, released in the U.K. in October 1979, is unquestionably one of my top ten favorite albums of all time, and I enjoy listening to it today as much as I did when I first bought it. And for me, no small part of their allure was the band’s on-stage apparel: ensembles of slim-cut suits, narrow ties (and occasionally bow ties!), skinny brim hats and sunglasses, all in a pallet of mostly black, grey and white. I had never seen anything like it, and I have never forgotten it.

The power of the intersection of music and style became clear to me again last month when I learned that the radio station at my alma mater, Bowdoin College, was planning an open house during the upcoming reunion the last weekend in late May. I had worked at the radio station throughout my time at Bowdoin as a DJ and for the last three years as music director, save for a one-semester term abroad in London during the spring semester of my junior year, a location so chosen in part for my love for the music scene of the country and in part for the fact that I could speak no other language than English.

As soon as I saw the open house email and read that returning alums could actually get back on the air for a stint, I started thinking about my playlist and my in-between song patter. I was planning on being on campus already to do a book chat on my recently released history on the New England Small College Athletic Conference, so I planned to get the on the early side of the noon to 5 p.m. window and be ready to get behind the mic.

But what to play? These days, seemingly with the entire catalog of contemporary music just a tap or two away on our phone, how could one possibly come up with a handful of significant cuts so as not to hog the airwaves for the entire five hours (and believe me, I easily could have, especially after doing four years of one-a-week, three hours shows in the coveted Thursday 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. slot which I assigned to myself, and working as a classroom teacher and professor ever since, affording me ample opportunity to talk extemporaneously for one-hour shifts).

So the winnowing process began by scrolling through the music library on my phone. Obviously the songs had to be meaningful to me, and I felt the songs chosen had to somehow exemplify their importance to me and the music scene overall in that specific sliver of time from September of 1982 to May of 1986. I decided to focus on songs from bands I had discovered directly through discs (and that meant vinyl albums, EPs or singles) that had come in to the station during that time, and not on beloved bands I had known before or found since. So the Specials were out, as were most of the other ska acts might make it. But there were lots of other ska-adjacent acts to consider. Most were far more pop and rock than ska, and were closer to today’s K-Pop in their highly cultivated, somewhat preening approach to presentation. But many had a good looknonetheless, even if their music was a bit softer in hue and tone. The Scottish band Orange Juice came to mind first, who had theterrific 1983 single “Rip it Up” behind front man Edwyn Collins. Critics called them “neo acoustic” and “jangle pop” and the band was recognized later to have influenced other bands such as the Smiths and Haircut 100. Their look was a bit of a mishmash, one that could have easily been lifted out of a contemporary Todd Snyder catalog: Wayfarers, striped t-shirts, French boatneck jerseys, pastel suede jackets over linen shirts, lightweight leather coats matched with khakis. Smart but not exactly Ivy, it was a transition look of sorts, so the look was more like a Euro take on the neo-Ivy of J. Crew and RalphLauren that was hitting the streets (and clogging campus mailboxes with catalogues) in force at that point.

The Orange Juice cut would have been a solid choice, but when thinking about it, I was led to considering Haircut 100, a group formed near London in 1980. They were much bigger in the UK than in the U.S., notching four top-10 singles there in ’81 and ’82. Critics called them “new pop”, “new wave” (which most assuredly they weren’t, but that’s a track for another day), “jazz-funk” and “Brit funk.” The band’s signature sound was the combination of rhythm guitar and horns – and not just brass but sax and other woodwinds. These many years later following my graduation in 1986 have revealed a salient truth: The friends from those days with whom I continue to hold close were all radio geeks like me, and those with whom I’m most likely to connect today have a love of music similar to mine. Not necessarily the same type of music, but an interest and passion for the artform. As such, here are the thoughtful observations of my good friend and fellow Bowdoin radio geek Wes Adams, who offered this salutary homage to Haircut 100: “The Specials, English Beat, Madness and Haircut 100 all do horn sections the right way. Haircut were awesome alt pop tunesmiths.”

The band’s earliest iterations created by lead singer Nick Hayward – called “Boat Party”, “Rugby” and Captain Pennyworth” – were salient antecedents hinting at their future Ivy Style image. Their 1982 album “Pelican West” went platinum in the UK, and one of the most popular singles from it was “Favourite shirt (boy meets girl)” an upbeat ode to love’s first moments that closes with the lines “your favourite shirt is on the bed / Do a somersault in your head.” To me, they were always a bit foppish and foolish, but it was like they knew it and they were in on the joke. To that point, take a look at the “Pelican West” album cover (and who other than Jimmy Buffet calls their album “Pelican West,” especially for a bunch of kids from England?). It was “Brideshead Revisited” meets “A Flock of Seagulls.” White cable knit sweaters abounded, others with white polo shirts, some with loosely knotted ties, some in woolen knickers, others in khakis. The six band members lie face-up in a ragged circle, heads in the middle, some looking at the camera, others away from it in a contemplative revery, lounging in and on a large pile of autumn leaves. It’s the look the band reprised in most of their videos as well, and were MTV darlings for a brief time, in large part because of their look. Wesput it this way: “They were brilliant stylists with excellent sweaters.”

The band broke up only two years later, and reformed on and off again. When the band reunited for a tour in the summer of 2023, In an interview on a BBC morning talk show prior to the tour, Hayward – looking like a British Dana Carvey impersonating a soft-spoken Brad Pitt – told the hosts that “I think our country needs us … it needs a good sunburst of joy.” Bandmate Graham Jones said “music does transport you to your favorite times and your favorite places, but it also brings your forward. People we were in the charts with, their children are now listening to that music.” One of the show’s hosts opined that kids today listen to music from every different era (which I must say is no different from when I was a kid; the only difference was that there were just fewer eras to shuffle throughback then). To that, Hayward responded, “it’s like going to a vintage clothing store … you listen to it and it’s new to you. Soyou put on these clothes and it’s like, ‘Wow, this is amazing!’ I think people are drawn to that.”

Jones was right – music, like clothes, can transport one to a place of good feelings, and Hayward’s thrift store simile touched on something that we Ivy Stylers know well: What is old can be new, and can be as powerful as it ever was. Ultimately, I didn’t go with a Haircut 100 song during my four-song mini-show, opting instead for “Tell me when it’s over” by the Dream Syndicate, “Just like honey,” by the Jesus and Mary Chain,“Within your reach” by the Replacements, and “Corona” by the Minutemen. These were more indicative of where I was then than the Haircut 100, but that doesn’t diminish the band’s more-than-reasonable claim that it may be the greatest Ivy Style band of all time, both to hear and to see.