I see the BBC are celebrating the Specials “Ghost Town” from all those years ago when the wicked Thatcher ruled the land and oppressed the poor. I remember buying it as a child (!) but one wonders WHY the BBC choose to drool over those times now?
GHOST TOWN
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Fatcha!!!
I give in – is it Billy Bragg?
That Dammers is not welcome in their tired reunions says much about the comradely nature of the awful twotone stuff.
He wrote the songs didn`t he?-but is the Trotsky of the diversity nostalgia brand so beloved of the BBCs trenchcoats who never left Uni!Why would they?Every day is Rag Day!
Madness did well to get out early and leave it all to the po-faces like Pauline Black and the other Womans Hour trusties like Siouxie Sioux.
Hopelessly overrated pointless crap save for the wonderful “Ghost Town”-the perfect disco anthem as Father Ted revealed!
The Specials-in educational parlance…STILL very special to us all!
Only the BBC won`t get the joke that TwoTone was…Coventry near Glasto wasn`t it dear?…oh, Aldeburgh-my mistake!
Once upon a time I became briefly involved in a budding romance with a handsome cove who on the fateful occasion that he had to explain why he’d suddenlty started acting strange and coy, uttered the immortal words: “You’ve heard of the other woman”.
I groaned, uttering a strangled half wail, half laugh at the trite line, only to be trumped by the immediately blurted follow-up: She’s Susie’s sister.
Scratching my head while reeling from the sudden revelation of a third party at the party, so to speak, I tried in vain to think of any Susie we both knew before giving up and crying, “Susie? Who’s Susie? For God’s sake, who is this Susie?”
Susie, you know…Siouxsie Sioux.
Me: “Oh, that Susie! I see…” not seeing at all.
You had a narrow escape, Millie: no infamy would be beyond that sort of creature.
Perhaps they could do a feature on one of the Specials other hits, ‘Rat race’, the lyrics sum up the BBC/UAF/spoilt, self-righteous brat syndrome perfectly!
Yeah I was going to mention this in the Open thread.
So much about that time seems to be interpretation. You can hardly remember what actually happened for all the interpretation – a lot of it from the BBC. Just read quotes in this page like:
‘But, clearly, it expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many. “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers, has said’
I remember “Prince Charming” and “Don’t you want me”, though they don’t define the era. But I was young, and I didn’t live in Brixton at the time….
Quite true: For goodness sakes I have clearer memories of “Do The Hucklebuck” (*) than the dreary Terry and his dead-end chums.
Still, this is part of the great alternative universe of lefty history (aka “We wuz right !”) along with the idea that 1968 changed the world and that the 2000 US election was stolen.
(*) Though it’s possible that “Do The Hucklebuck” can be found on YouTube, there is no excuse for looking for it.
Oh, and where was the 30th anniversary retrospective for Joe Dolce and “Shaddap You Face” ?
Number One in eleven countries (some of them real ones). Has the rest of the world ever even heard of The Specials ? (Maybe Germany: lefty gloom-pop had quite a following there).
Didn’t make anybody feel suicidal. Except maybe Midge Ure.
Kept “Vienna” off No 1 in this country.
I bought it. And used to cycle home at breakneck speed from Thursday Cubs to enjoy its latest triumph on TOTP. And later rubbed that fact into the face of a pseudy classmate who bemoaned Ultravox’s greatest song being kept away from the top spot by the man who later recorded such seminal classicsas “Reggae Matilda” and “Crop Circles In My Marijuana”.
And here’s something a-speciala for you !
“Shaddup you face” and that concertina player. Was enthusiastically played this song by a friend in France who obviously approved of the joke 🙂
Back in the UK, I was taking piano lessons around then and suggested the (very open-minded) teacher might teach me how to play this fine piece of music.
He adopted a stern expression and refused. He taught me “Yesterday” instead
Funny post Do the Hucklebuck! 😀 😀
I’d never heard of Ghost Town and only dimly recall hearing of The Specials. I guess you had to be there or to have been listening to one of the numerous Beeboid radio stations that keep sprouting like mushrooms.
I’m just off to investigate Do the Hucklebuck! Sounds like more fun than grim town angst.
“Do The Hucklebuck” featured, among its many claims to not-so-greatness, a style of dancing that can best be described as “Timmy From South Park Is Repeatedly Struck By Lightning”. And that was the best bit.
It’s clearly too late for Millie-who-obviously-can’t-follow-instructions, but for the rest of you bods out in the ether: Do Not Seek It Out.
Ah Buggy, it’s too late for me too.
Whenever someone puts “there is no excuse for looking for it” I just can’t help looking for it – a bit like Homer Simpson when he sees the words ‘Leave this box empty’ at the bottom of a form & just has to write the word ‘OK’ in the space provided.
I will now apply the mind bleach.
Mind bleach doesn’t work. It’s been nigh on thirty years since my young self last saw this abomination, and I can visualise it as clearly I did at the time.
And I can say this, mark you, as somebody whose impeccable taste impelled him to buy “Runaway Boys” by the Stray Cats as a first record……..
I remember sitting in a West London pub in ’81 or ’82 singing Do the Hucklebuck – happy days. Still I did like Ghost Town as well; as I have asked before, why do the left have so much of the best music?
Yes indeedy!
That Mr Dolce and his ice cream van kept that fatuous piece of faux-art house crap off the top of the charts was a seminal moment in popular culture!
If only Bob Geldof had banged into Joe and not bloody Midge-no Live Aid, and the cascade of crap that ensued!
Joe eats out from his pizza van-Bob still dines off the backs of the poor!
No BBC analysis of this Dolce lolly stick in the bike wheel of history will be forthcoming…how many wheels on their bandwagon are still left?…maybe Joe knows!
Nicely put.
TBH I don’t think I’ve ever plumbed such a Marianas Trench depth of joy as I did when outlining my love of papa Joe’s oeuvre to the aforementioned 13 year old pseud. As if he seriously expected me to believe that at nine years old he was a fan of Ultravox rather that the man with a tape-recorder for a backing group !
A young temp at work sings ‘Shaddap You Face’ almost daily. Whenever she gets bored. Never heard her sing ‘Ghost Town’ though (which at the time I thought was about ghosts).
I’m really looking forward to the thirtieth anniversary in late August of ‘Japanese Boy’ by Aneka. It was my favourite song at the time. It spoke to me then about Japanese boys and the Japanese girls who sing about them. (Looking back now though, I’m not convinced she really was Japanese).
You too can re-live this classic here:
(I think Puccini was inspired to write ‘Madame Butterfly’ after seeing it on YouTube).
Former Specials singer Terry Hall later had a hit with The Fun Boy Three : “Our lips are sealed” – the BBC adopt that as their coverage of the conservative point of view on many, many issues.
Yes sir!
Never were a group of miseries more badly labelled as “The Fun Boy Three”…but Our lips Are Sealed is a great song-even by them!
Wondering if the BBCs agitprop revisionists will be incorporating Bananarama as the two fingers to Thatch they surely must have been? None of us saw this at the time-but Jeremy Vine did ,I daresay.
That I though they were talentless dopey types (Robert De Niro apart!) who made mediocrity pay for them and FBT probably means that I lack irony somewhere down the BBCs line of thought!
If they have one.
Terry Hall was brought up in a Jewish family, not relevant but interesting.
Doesn’t Anika live in Killin ? She’s certainly Scots.
And surely the REAL story of 1981 pop wasn’t a load of dullards maundering about things for their fellow-travellers, but rather the ultimate antidote to all that sort of thing.
Shaky !! Yess!
Number one for it seemed like forever with song after song that year
unlike the BBC-beloved drear-collective, and (apparently) 33 top-40 hits over the years. Which is pretty impressive.
So where is he, BBC ?
(According to wiki, an embryo Shaky was associated with the Young Communist League. The mind boggles at the thought of junior comrades debating the spread of red revolution and then getting on down to the likes of “Oh Julie !”, but there we are: a world of infinite possibilities indeed).
So we nearly had ‘Red Door’?!! =-O
“Re–ed door: what’s that secret you’re keeping?
“No secrets in Soviet Union ! You are lackey of running-dog discredited capitalist system ! No more to ask questions ! Gulag for you !“
“Former Specials singer Terry Hall later had a hit with The Fun Boy Three : “Our lips are sealed” – the BBC adopt that as their coverage of the conservative point of view on many, many issues.”
I was much too young to be politically aware at the time, but in retrospect the link up between “The Fun Boy Three” and Bananarama has to be one of the greatest “WTF ?” moments of musical, or indeed human, history.
Incidentally, Mrs Bug has just informed me that “I Am A Cider Drinker” by The Wurzels apparently kept “Silly Love Songs” by Wings away from No 1 in the appproved Dolce fashion. This is the sort of investigative programme the telly-tax should be funding, surely ? No need to fake the footage either !
Superb Buggy!
A fine weekend blog!
I feel like John Humphrys busking twaddle as it`s Saturday and the adults are away!
DV not gone to Tuscany I`m sure!
Now I hardly remember Japanes Boy-but Turning Japanese by the Vapors-now That`s what I call music!
‘Turning Japanese’ was a great song CJ, but Aneka – a Scottish folk singer got up as a geisha girl – that’s hard to beat!
I like this thread!! 😀
Ah Craig!
To see how the mighty Feargal has gone from lines such as the one you quote-to being some political spokesperson for licencing or something equally silly-now doesn`t that tell us that the grey man in suits can smother the multicoloured bird of paradise that young Sharkey used to be.
At the very least-he should have to sing his soundbites-then we`d do just as he says!
Maybe the Beeb should get their monkeys to sing their tropes if it`s going to annoy us…music turns the bourgeoisie into rebels does it not?
I like it, too, Craig. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much. 😀
“The lunatics are taking over the asylum”-maybe Terry and co were accurately portraying the resistane to MissisFatcha…but as for the lot they grew up with in the pink stripey pyjamas we see today?…nah!Mandelsons, Braggs etc…voices of sweet reason…all of them!