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The Specials: Stanford University, California

Mark Cooper, Record Mirror, 1 March 1980

THE SPECIALS' mini-tour of California has, predictably enough, been full of incident. Three sold-out nights at the Whisky in LA, the club all decorated in black and white, then up north for dates in San Francisco, Stanford and Santa Cruz. The debut performance in San Francisco at the new club The City turns out to be a non-event, the band don't play. The sound system is well below par and it's hard to get a nine-piece band on a tiny stage with a pillar in the middle. Bill Graham is obliged to quiet an angry crowd of new wavers outside the club and postpone the gig for three days later at the much larger Fox-Warfield Theatre.

Total word count of piece: 562

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