URBAN BLIGHT AND MUSICAL SHITE

Was there a better UK Chart-topper in the 1980s than 'Ghost Town' by The Specials? Subtle brass, eery organ, Terry Hall's dead-pan vocals, a flugelhorn in there somewhere and that weird kind of wailing, a blissful, powerful three minutes and forty seconds. The producer was not Elvis Costello, who was at the controls for two of the band's albums, but John Collins. For more details, go to: http://2-tone.info/articles/john_collins.html for his account of the production and the always reliable Alex Petridis in The Guardian on what it all meant. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/mar/08/artsfeatures.popandrock for further details.

The song was recorded in Leamington Spa rather than Coventry, where there probably was not quite as much 'fighting on the dance floors'. But nevertheless, Ghost Town was a bit of a sociologist's dream, going to Number One in the week of Toxteth, Moss Side and all that.

But here I fear endeth the earnest essay on the power of music and its links to urban deprivation and insurrection. Looking at the chart line-up from the week in which Toxteth burned and you don't see many other singles kicking Thatcherism in the teeth and capturing the mood of a forgotten nation.


The rerelease of 'No Woman No Cry', coming after Bob Marley's demise, added much needed quality. Later in the summer there would be Stevie Wonder's joyous homage to Martin Luther King, 'Happy Birthday'. The latter was nearly wrecked for me by later being spun as a disco opener at the Tory conference in Brighton in honour of Thatcher's 63rd birthday. Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ.

But back to 1981. Other Motown legends joined Stevie in the summer hit parade. I was a teenage sucker for both Michael Jackson's sugary 'One Day in Your Life' and Smokey Robinson's 'Being With You', which hinted at former glories. Also rather lovely was Randy Crawford's 'You Might Need Somebody' and Abba's stern, 12-inch stomper, 'Lay All Your Love on Me'.

Grace Jones was lurking in the lower regions of the charts with 'Pull Up to the Bumper', whose lyrical ambiguity and sense of wicked adventure probably kept it off the Radio One playlist. I did not lose my virginity to that, or indeed (mercifully) to Aneka's 'Japanese Boy' or Shakin' Stevens cover of 'Green Door'. or 'Teddy Bear' by Red Sovine.

There was not much political in these offerings. I fear the tone was really being set by the likes of Duran Duran with 'Girls on Film', and the ever-execrable Spandau Ballet. The Kemp brothers later turned up on a Red Wedge bill to less than rapturous applause from the Labour Party faithful. But I don't think 1981's 'Chant Number One' had much to do with dole queue rage.

"A curious smell,an intangible crime
I'm washing my clothes,but the stain still grows
cover your eyes,the stain still shows".

This suggests either a New Romantic accident at the launderette or (God forbid) in the bathroom. Later the Spandaus take us into the West End:

"you go down Greek street
then it's underground
well it's Soho life
for this mobile knife"

Maybe they were looking for a nearby loo. Bar Italia, just around the corner in Frith Street, does the job nicely, but it's polite to have a four-quid cappucino after you've been.