The Fun Boy Three weren't as huge a stylistic leap from the Specials as was claimed -- the Specials' 1981 cover of "Maggie's Farm" was basically FB3's dry run, even if only Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staples knew it at the time -- but they were still one of the oddest pop acts to hit the UK charts in the early '80s. Mixing African rhythms, deadpan chanted lyrics and post-punk cynicism, their debut album was at times so just plain weird it seemed like a novelty record, but there's an undercurrent of desperation here that groups like Bananarama -- who many people don't remember were given their first big break when they performed the female vocals on the Fun Boy Three's "It Ain't What You Do" -- never quite got. It couldn't last, of course, and it didn't: Terry Hall pissed off to form the Colourfield after a second album, 1983's David Byrne-produced Waiting, which featured a mesmerizing cover of the Go-Go's hit "Our Lips Are Sealed," which Hall and his ex-girlfriend Jane Wiedlin had written a few years previous.

-Stewart Mason