Ghost Town - The Specials

The Specials - Ghost Town, one of the best songs ever written, the extended version with the horn solo is just magic. The initial reason it's on the list is not a nice one. Early 1980's, I would have been 9 (ish) sitting in the back of mum's Ford Cortina at the traffic lights outside the Odeon, Coventry were playing at home. The song was on the radio as I was watching two hooligans kicking the crap out of a chap who was on the floor in the middle of the road. It worried mum so much that when we got home she rang around the hospitals to see if she could find out if he was OK, she was too scared to get out of the car understandably.

CREDIT: Hummel, 2026
Coventry City F.C, 2019/2020 Third Kit.

Being nine I didn't understand the meaning of the song at that time, or that it was written about Coventry and by a band from Coventry, just thought is was a good tune. It was a time of high unemployment as also depicted in the UB40 song one in ten. No one had anything and the was social unease in the air.

But it invokes so many memories of that time and reminds me of my roots and where I came from. I picture walking through town, past the Dog and Trumpet, and grandma gripping my hand tightly as we walked past the punks, with their magnificent mohawks and painted leather jackets. And the skin heads wearing doc martins and Fred Perry polo shirts. She was way more nervous than I was, no way a punk would jeopardise that hair!

It reminds me of friends Gene, Paul and Anthony, we were tight back then. Always playing out and up to no good, catching the number 15 bus into town, just because.

Because of my parental situation, my brothers and I were ferrule, one of the things we would do is go to the train station and see how far we could get with a 2p platform ticket, most of the time it was to Birmingham New Street, one occasion we got to Leeds; we never did get caught.

It reminds me of a time we had nothing, didn't need or want anything and we were happy and before everything went pear shaped. Great times.

Question 6:

That's a tough one as music can't be lost, so I have to think about if it was not created in the first place. That puts me in a bit of a quandary, I would say it would have been music's loss, but how can you miss something that you would never have known about? It may have been that my life would be completely different, I may never have had an appreciation for music in the way that I do, a parallel version of me that is into many different things and has a different life.