Specials

Product Information

Linehan, Graham; Mathews, Arthur. Father Ted DVD Commentaries (Podcast). United Kingdom: Channel 4 . Retrieved 30 December 2013. a b c d Petridis, Alexis (8 March 2002). "Ska for the madding crowd". The Guardian. London, England . Retrieved 5 September 2013. Two-Tone Records (or 2 Tone Records ) was created in Coventry, UK in 1978 by Jerry Dammers who apart from being the songwriter and music director for bands ‘The Specials’ and ‘The Special A.K.A’ was also the Chief Executive of the label and responsible for signing artists such as Madness, The Selecter, The Beat and The Bodysnatchers.

On some US releases, the song "Gangsters" (Dammers, Cecil Campbell) appears between "Too Much Too Young" and "Little Bitch". In Australia and New Zealand, "Gangsters" was included between "Do the Dog" and "It's Up to You". Matrix / Runout (Side A, stamped / etched, variant 3): CHR TT 5003 A // 1 ▽ E C R S TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 1 1 5 CHR-TT 5003A1 √ANOS

The label started things off with the classic ‘Gangsters’ shortly followed by Madness’ ‘The Prince’ (a tribute to Prince Buster and the Jamaican Ska scene in general) and The Selecters’ ‘On My Radio’ Other classics which followed included ‘Too Much Too Young’ and The most famous 2 Tone release of them all; ‘Ghost Town’. Despite popular belief the single Ghost Town was not criticism of Racial tension on a national scale; mainly a broadside at the thuggery that existed within Coventry. Infact many of the Specials songs were about life in Coventry. 'Concrete Jungle', 'Dawning Of A New Era', 'Stereotypes' etc. Christgau, Robert (1990). "The Specials: The Specials". Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-73015-X . Retrieved 1 April 2015. Dammers grew up in The Midlands area of The UK during the late 1960s/early 70s and became influenced with the sounds of Jamaican Ska Music that was now being heard in the UK mainly as a direct result of the Government policy at that time which saw big cultural changes in the area as a whole due to the influx of immigration in cities such as Birmingham and Coventry. Virtually all the 2 Tone artists were from the area; the one exception being ‘Madness’ who are from North London.

Jones, Chris (10 October 2008). "The Specials The Specials Review". BBC Music . Retrieved 1 May 2012. Petridis, Alexis (January 2002). "Please Look After This Band". Mojo. No.98. London, England: EMAP. pp.72–82. The tour for the group's More Specials album in late 1980 had been a fraught experience: already tired from a long touring schedule and with several band members at odds with keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers over his decision to incorporate " muzak" keyboard sounds on the album, several of the gigs descended into audience violence. As they travelled around the country the band witnessed sights that summed up the depressed mood of a country gripped by recession. In 2002 Dammers told The Guardian, "You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down... We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong." [4] In March 1981, Jerry Dammers heard the reggae song "At the Club" by actor and singer Victor Romero Evans played on Roundtable, the singles review show on BBC Radio 1. Fascinated by the record's sound, Dammers telephoned the song's co-writer and producer John Collins a few days later, although as Dammers first phone call was in the middle of the night, Collins initially took it to be a joke. [12] [13] Following further conversations with Dammers, Collins travelled up from his home in London to meet the Specials at their rehearsal studio and agreed to produce their new single.

Trombonist Rico Rodriguez, who performed on many '50s and '60s Jamaican recordings before moving to London in 1962, played on the band's version of "A Message to You, Rudy", as he had on the original recording 15 years previously. Rodriguez's appearance on the album considerably added to the album's credentials. The song's sparse lyric alludes to urban decay, unemployment and violence in inner cities. [9] Jo-Ann Greene of Allmusic notes the lyric "only brush[es] on the causes for this apocalyptic vision — the closed down clubs, the numerous fights on the dancefloor, the spiraling unemployment, the anger building to explosive levels. But so embedded were these in the British psyche, that Dammers needed only a minimum of words to paint his picture." [10] The club referred to in the song was the Locarno (run by the Mecca Leisure Group and later renamed Tiffanys), a regular haunt of Neville Staple and Lynval Golding, [3] and which is also named as the club in "Friday Night, Saturday Morning", one of the songs on the B-side. The building which housed the club is now Coventry Central Library. [11] Recording [ edit ]

Kelly, Jon (2011) " The Specials: How Ghost Town defined an era", BBC, 17 June 2011. Retrieved 14 March 2015 In December 2021, a commemorative plaque was affixed to the house where the former Woodbine Street recording studio was located. The plaque mentions "Ghost Town" was recorded there. [24] Top Selling Albums of 1980 — The Official New Zealand Music Chart". Recorded Music New Zealand . Retrieved 29 January 2022. Ghost Town/Why?/Friday Night Saturday Morning". "Billboard". 8 August 1981. Archived from the original on 9 October 2012 . Retrieved 14 August 2011.The overall sense I wanted to convey was impending doom. There were weird, diminished chords: certain members of the band resented the song and wanted the simple chords they were used to playing on the first album. It's hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then "Ghost Town" came out of the blue. [3] Matrix / Runout (Side A, stamped / etched, variant 1): CHR TT 5003 A // 3 ▽ E C R S TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 1 1 1 3 CHR TT - 5003 A 3 √ANOS a b Panter, Horace (2008). Ska'd for Life. London, England: Pan Books. p.268. ISBN 978-0-330-44073-8. Jo-Ann Greene. "Ghost Town - The Specials | Listen, Appearances, Song Review". AllMusic . Retrieved 29 March 2014.