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] Barton, Laura (5 May 2009). "Barton's Britain: Coventry". The Guardian G2 Magazine. London, England. p.11 . Retrieved 5 September 2013.

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. 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. Duran Duran Announces New Album, 'Danse Macabre' ". Spin. 30 August 2023 . Retrieved 30 August 2023.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. 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. Petridis, Alexis (January 2002). "Please Look After This Band". Mojo. No.98. London, England: EMAP. pp.72–82. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). Australian Chart Book. p.286. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. 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]

a b c d Petridis, Alexis (8 March 2002). "Ska for the madding crowd". The Guardian. London, England . Retrieved 5 September 2013. 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 ]

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Linehan, Graham; Mathews, Arthur. Father Ted DVD Commentaries (Podcast). United Kingdom: Channel 4 . Retrieved 30 December 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. 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". 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.