#terry hall rip

[ausetkmt]

and if you want to sing along -

"Ghost Town"

This town, is coming like a ghost town All the clubs have been closed down This place, is coming like a ghost town Bands won't play no more Too much fighting on the dance floor Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown This town, is coming like a ghost town Why must the youth fight against themselves? Government leaving the youth on the shelf This place, is coming like a ghost town No job to be found in this country Can't go on no more The people getting angry This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town

Riots have broken out around Britain.

Charles and Diana are about to marry.

And backstage at Top of The Pops, The Specials are falling apart.

In a few minutes they will perform their latest hit Ghost Town, which over the years, would come to be regarded as one of the greatest British singles of all time. It was a track which bottled the discord, racial tensions and societal breakdown happening in the UK that summer.

There had already been riots in Brixton that April, over the increased use of a new stop-and-search policy, the so-called sus law, which was named Operation Swamp. Police were said to have mounted a campaign of harassment against the black community in south London.

Brixton was the centre of clashes between members of the public and the police

Terry Hall is telling the band that he too has had enough. Worn down by touring, band infighting and struggling to deal with success, he wants out. It is too difficult to be singing about disharmony, while surrounded by it, both inside and outside The Specials.

"We knew it was going to end as we were recording it (Ghost Town)," Terry Hall told Front Row in 2019.

"It was bizarre. It took about eight months to record. I don't think there were more than two of us in the studio at any point. Those weren't good signs really. It finished up with me in a living room in Tottenham singing Ghost Town. It was all over the place. But it was a great way to bow out."

The song was written by the band's founding member Jerry Dammers, but it is also the track with which lead singer Terry Hall is most closely identified. Every TV and radio report about his death has centred on Ghost Town.

The single was simply one of the most timely releases in music history.

Terry Hall performing in Amsterdam earlier this year

"Talk about zeitgeist. That one song suddenly captured so much," remembered Specials fan and Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chada in the 2021 BBC Documentary 2 Tone: The Sound of Coventry.

"If there is one song Margaret Thatcher wishes never got released, it's probably Ghost Town," she added.

On 7 July 1981, Radio One announced that Ghost Town had replaced Michael Jackson's One Day In Your Life at the top of the charts.

That same day, newspaper front pages were full of reports about the first ever use of CS gas grenades by the police on mainland Britain, as they struggled to contain the Toxteth Riots. These were sparked by tensions between police and the local community in Liverpool.

By the end of the week more than 20 towns and cities including London, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Leeds and Luton had riots of their own. The Specials were providing the soundtrack.

Amy Winehouse and Terry Hall both attended the Q Awards in 2009

In 2 Tone: The Sound of Coventry, Dammers explained how the creation of the song started with him sitting at his home organ, trying different diminished chords and working out how wailing could substitute a chorus.

"I think I wrote the music first. I was working on that for ages. The lyrics I wrote on tour just seeing what was going down around the country. It was about the recession and three million people on the dole. It's about the police harassment and unemployment. It was like a perfect storm really."

For years there has been debate over whether or not Ghost Town is specifically about their hometown of Coventry. The decline of the car industry had turned a thriving post-war economy into a concrete jungle.

Shakin' Stevens' Green Door shot up the UK singles chart

Neville Staple from The Specials has stated he believes the song should be taken more generally: "In Coventry and all over England it painted the same picture. This town is coming like a ghost town."

Terry Hall's own understanding of Ghost Town changed over the last 40 years. In 1981, when speaking to the New York Times, he insisted: "We were talking about riots in Bristol and Brixton. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence."

But speaking on BBC Radio Five Live in 2019, he told Nihal Arthanayake: "We made a record about how we saw the north of Britain. People think it was about Coventry. It wasn't. It was about Glasgow and Liverpool and Newcastle. It was about the north."

Ghost Town has certainly had an after-life.

When Amy Winehouse joined The Specials on stage at the V Festival in 2009, it was Ghost Town that she wanted to sing.

In Father Ted, when the priests organised a disco and the DJ, Father "Spin Master" O'Dwyer only has one record that everyone has to dance to all night, the 7 inch on repeat is Ghost Town.

West End Girls

On Desert Island Discs, it's a recent favourite, having been picked four times in the last three years: by the charity worker Claire Horton, the Director of Tate Maria Balshaw, the foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill and the actor Rupert Everett, who called it "one of the great songs of the era".

And in 2020, The Guardian named it the second best number one single in the UK of all time, behind West End Girls by Pet Shop Boys, a song released four year later and not entirely dissimilar with the sense of urban decay which it creates.

Ghost Town is now considered to be an all-time classic, but its reign over the summer of 1981 came to an ignominious end. The day before 28 million people watched the wedding of the future King to Lady Diana Spencer, The Specials were dethroned.

The lunchtime unveiling of the charts revealed that rising 22 places to number one was none other than Shakin' Stevens with Green Door.

The band's era as chart-dominating stars had well and truly been slammed shut by Shaky. Within months, Hall had formed Fun Boy Three and The Specials in their original incarnation were over.

More than 40 years on Ghost Town stands as their defining work - the perfect coming together of pop and politics at exactly the right moment in history. It was that rarest of things, a song dealing with subjects found in The Economist while the band were on the cover of Smash Hits. Special indeed.

[kraftwerk113]

Life´s too short for weird music - Tagesempfehlung 20.12.2022

Fun Boy Three / The more I see (The less I believe)

Immer noch schwer in Worte zu fassen: der plötzliche unerwartete Tod von Terry Hall. Im Frühjahr 2023 sollte ein neues Album der The Specials eingespielt werden, nach den gelungenen Comeback-Alben Encore (2019) und Protest Songs (2021).

Heute möchte ich an The Fun Boy Three, das zweite musikalische Projekt von Terry Hall erinnern: nach dem Splitt von den Specials Ende 1981 gründen die Specials Bandmates Terry Hall, Neville Staples und Lynval Golding das Projekt The Fun Boy Three und spielten bis 1983 zwei bemerkenswerte Alben ein. Das in 1983 erschienene Waiting zählt für mich als Meilenstein britischer Popmusik der Eighties. Und mit dem bissigen The more I see (The less I believe) gelang Terry Hall und Co vielleicht das Meisterstück britischen Agit Pops. Und The more I see (The less I believe) traf in 1983 auch den Nerv des politische Establishments in London, was sich in einem Bannstrahl der BBC äußerte, die den Song wegen seiner extrem kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit der Nordirland-Politik nicht im Programm spielte.

Mit Terry Hall verlieren wir einen Musiker, der in den Eighties wie kaum ein zweiter das Leben in UK / Europa sozialkritisch hinterfragt hat. Ein großartiger Musiker, immer ein bisschen aus dem Rahme fallend aber gerade deshalb so wertvoll.

[sowhatifiliveinfukuoka]

Terry Hall (1959-2022)

Terry, the singer of the seminal 2-Tone band The Specials as well as a member of the Fun Boy Three and the Colourfield, has sadly passed away (this past week).

His dour lyrical prose brought light into the lives of those who felt the same way as he did and he has left us far too young.

RIP legend.

[rolypolydandy]

Terry Hall // 19.03.59 - 18.12.22

“Love music, hate racism,” he deadpans, mock-parroting a British music industry campaign slogan. “It’s not enough. Love music, fight racism. You have to fight it.”

The world's lost a good one tonight. Rest easy Terry ✊

[thepastprotracted]

RIP. Genius.

[garadinervi]

Terry Hall (1959-2022)

♥

[modbrother]

A terrible loss to all of us, way too young. RIP Terry Hall

[inthemoodforportnawak]

Terry Hall (1959-2022)

[owlsounds]

RIP Terry Hall, of The Specials

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Hello, I'm Terry, and I'm going to enjoy myself first

It's good to be wise when you're young

'cause you can only be young but the once

Enjoy yourself and have lots of fun

So glad and live life longer than you've ever done

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Never right, yes I know

Get wisdom, knowledge and understanding

These three, were given free by the maker

Go to school, learn the rules, don't be no faker

It's not wise for you to be a foot stool

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

[roguetelemetry]

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The Specials - A Message to You Rudy

[eye-you]

[idroveatank]

for Terry Hall 😔

[kraftwerk113]

Life´s too short for weird music - Tagesempfehlung 19.12.2022

The Specials / A message to you Rudi

So sad news today: einer der musikalischen Helden meiner Jugend weilt nicht mehr unter uns: Terry Hall – Sänger der Specials, der Fun Boy Three, The Colourfield und später Solointerpret. In 1979 war es in der musikalischen Diaspora Südwestdeutschland schwierig, sich als Jugendlicher abzugrenzen. Punk war eigentlich schon durch bzw. kam im Südwesten nie wirklich an. ProgRock / HardRock nicht zur Abgrenzung geeignet, da eigentlich massenkompatibel und die Charts? Gott bewahre aber Dschingis Khan, Boney M Exile uns Abba boten wenig Reibungsfläche um sich von den 30th Something und selbst von Gleichaltrigen abzugrenzen. Und dann schwappte Ende 1979 das UK Ska Revival vorsichtig nach Europa über. Und die Multi-Kulti Band The Specials aus Coventry bot mit ihrer Mixtur aus klassischem Ska, Punk und New Wave musikalisch eine Alternative, um sich abzugrenzen. Die Specials und in ihrem Gefolge Bands wie The Beat, The Selector oder Madness boten eine rohe, ungehobelte und punkige Spielart des traditionellen Jamaica Ska und es galt: love it, hate it it, but you can´t ignore it. Und im Zentrum der The Specials stand der schüchterne Sänger Terry Hall, der immer so ein bisschen Fehl am Platz wirkte und vermutlich gerade deshalb genau zur richtigen Zeit am richtigen Ort war. Das in 1979 veröffentlichte Untitled Debüt der The Specials war vermutlich eines der wichtigsten Alben meiner Pop-musikalischen Erziehung und öffnete mir die Augen für die die unbegenzten Möglichkeiten, die Popmusik bot und immer noch bietet.

Terry Hall ist nun im Alter von 63 Jahren nach kurzer schwerer Krebserkrankung gestorben. Traurig, aber voller Dankbarkeit möchte ich Ihnen heute den Song als Tagestip ans Herz legen, der mich wie kaum ein zweiter musikalisch „aufgegleist“ hat: A message to you Rudy.

[velmatv]

From Horace Panter, about the sudden illness and death of Terry Hall.

[busstop]

The Colourfield - Thinking of You

Farewell, dear Terry. Wherever you are now, enjoy yourself.