Petridis, Alexis (January 2002). "Please Look After This Band". Mojo. No.98. London, England: EMAP. pp.72–82. Ghost Town" is a song by the British two-tone band the Specials, released on 12 June 1981. [2] The song spent three weeks at number one and 11 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. The summer of 1981 saw riots in over 35 locations around the UK. [4] In response to the linking of the song to these events, singer Terry Hall said, "When we recorded 'Ghost Town', we were talking about [1980]'s riots in Bristol and Brixton. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence." [21] The song created resentment in Coventry where residents angrily rejected the characterisation of the city as a town in decline. [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 Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). Australian Chart Book. p.286. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.

I don't know what could've possibly happened to this band in just one year but the difference between their fantastic first, timeless self-titled album, and this massive waste of vinyl (which sounds like an '80s Las Vegas airport lounge act doing their most earnest Specials imitation) is so vast they really could've been recorded by two different groups. 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. Top Selling Albums of 1980 — The Official New Zealand Music Chart". Recorded Music New Zealand . Retrieved 29 January 2022. Barton, Laura (5 May 2009). "Barton's Britain: Coventry". The Guardian G2 Magazine. London, England. p.11 . Retrieved 5 September 2013. 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.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] Matrix / Runout (Side A, stamped / etched, variant 2): CHR TT 5003 A // 3 ▽ E C R S TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 1 1 5 CHR-TT 5003A3 √ANOS In 2022, it was included in the list "The story of NME in 70 (mostly) seminal songs" at number 19, for "Lacing ska and reggae with the amphetamine edge of new wave". Mark Beaumont praised the song and its "brooding evocation of Thatcher’s wasteland Britain". [25]

Christgau, Robert (1990). "The Specials: The Specials". Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-73015-X . Retrieved 1 April 2015. The only reasonable explanation is that they were obviously abducted by aliens for that entire year, during which they were likely replaced with clonedroids, which as everybody knows, can only mimic the more superficial human attributes. Talent and skill, not so much, as is quite apparent here in this case. 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".

The early label signings such as Madness and The Beat released just one record on 2 Tone before signing for Stiff Records and Go Feet respectively, however The Specials released a successful self-titled LP in 1979 and became the figureheads for 2 Tone Records and the UK Ska scene. The follow up ‘More Specials' was, at the time, considered disappointing but in truth had a hard task following up the first album and was possibly released too late - after the success of 2 Tone was beginning to recede. 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] 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. Walters, Barry (6 October 2005). "The Specials: The Specials". Rolling Stone. New York. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010 . Retrieved 1 September 2016.

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 ]

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. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, New South Wales, Australia: Australian Chart Book. ISBN 978-0-646-11917-5. In a retrospective review, AllMusic described the record as "a perfect moment in time captured on vinyl forever... It was an utter revelation—except for anyone who had seen the band on-stage, for the album was at its core a studio recording of their live set, and at times even masquerades as a gig". It felt the album captured the feeling of "Britain in late 1979, an unhappy island about to explode", and that "The Specials managed to distill all the anger, disenchantment, and bitterness of the day straight into their music". [3] In 2008, BBC Music agreed that the economic and political conditions of the day had heightened the record's impact, saying, "To understand the impact of this spearhead of the ska revival on early Thatcherite Britain you have to imagine something so left field and yet so apt occurring today. It was as if depression-era dustbowl ballads suddenly became hip again in this era of global economic meltdown. Hardly anyone would have predicted that a musical form so tied to its Afro-Caribbean heritage (as well as its less cool skinhead connections) could, almost overnight, become the trendiest thing across the nation". It concluded that The Specials "was a classic example of a band making an almost perfect first album, acting as both a mission statement (the rise of right wing groups opposed by the message of Two Tone equality) and as an alternative way to have fun without having to pogo or spit... The Specials remains a snapshot of a bleaker time, and a wrily comical antidote to political and cultural indifference anywhere". [16] However, Mojo 's David Hutcheon, reviewing the reissue, felt that " Specials doesn't feel quite as exciting as it did 23 years ago". [17]