Before you blame this thing or that thing for the Aurora tragedy...

...remember that Charles Manson was "inspired" by a song about a roller coaster.

Like I did!!!

There are a lot of ska/two-tone songs that are fun. "One Step Beyond" from Madness comes to mind, but in my mind, the most fun from two-tone land is the Untouchables' "Free Yourself."

This particular video is not only notable in its own right, but it directly resulted in the Untouchables' recording contract. Marco on the Bass:

[T]hey invested an additional $7,000 to produce a video for the song 'Free Yourself' which started to generate television airplay. As a result the EP sold 40,000 copies and the video won the 1985 award for best independent video from Billboard Magazine....

Though the EP was selling and The UTs were getting great reviews, none of major record labels located on [Wilshire] Boulevard in Los Angeles were interested in signing the band....

"'Free Yourself' was a different story. We shot our first video to 'Free Yourself.' The song and video were really special. The video was very groundbreaking in it's usage of black and white imagery shifting into bright color and then back to B&W. It was produced by Tina Henry and John Lee and eventually won honors as Billboard Magazine's 1985 'Best Indy Video Of The Year'... 'Indy', as in: 'we weren't signed.'...nobody wanted to take a chance with us. Except Dave Robinson."

As in Dave Robinson of Stiff Records. The story continues:

"Dave had seen a copy of the Free Yourself video and apparently was fairly impressed. Without any notice, Robo flew from London to L.A. and suddenly shows up at our USC gig. After our performance, he comes backstage, is introduced and tells us he wants to sign us to Stiff. How do you spell flabbergasted? Because that's what we were."

Well, that was certainly $7,000 well spent.