Thursday, April 27, 2006

MP3: The Specials - Ghost Town EP


One of my favourite items in my whole music collection is this 7" of The Specials Ghost Town on 2 Tone. Obviously the lead single is one of the greatest English singles of all time, writing, performance, production, everything is amazing. However i'd forgotten until recently how good the bsides are. I think they're actually available now on a reissue of the second Specials album, but they're still missing from my CD copy so I thought i'd stick them up. To this day The Specials are probably the only British Ska band, other than a bit of Madness when i'm half drunk, that I really and truly love. To me they just stand out by a mile compared to everything that was around them, and when you compare them to the bands of today that they've apparently influenced (like The *spit* Ordinary Boys), things get slightly depressing.

I don't really understand how The Ordinary Boys can claim to have been influenced by artists like Morrissey and The Specials when, if you listen to them, you quickly realise that they forgot the good songs, the clever lyrics, and the not sounding like complete twats. But anyway back to this single: Why is a great commentary on 70s racial politics in Britain, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has some nice social commentary on British nightlife that puts the likes of tut Arctic Monkeys to shame. Hope you like them. By the way i'm currently preparing the first episode of my new hourlong blogcast (you note I don't say podcast, being one of those who refuses to use the prefix or suffix 'pod' in any sentence), and as long as my workload doesn't shoot up too much, that should be prepared by the weekend. Enjoy.

The Specials - Ghost Town - MP3 2.54mb
The Specials - Why - MP3 2.06mb
The Specials - Friday Night And Saturday Morning - MP3 2.23mb

posted by Jamie Summers at 4:26 pm

2 Comments:

Blogger Chris Brown said...

Good choice!

'Ghost Town' is probably the first Number One I can remember, or at least have a specific memory of as a Number One.

Just so's you know, those tracks aren't on the reissue of the debut album, but you can find both 7" and 12" versions on a triple-disc called Stereo-Typical which I found cheap in an HMV sale a few weeks ago. The long versions are on that Specials Singles album too. And my brother says Coventry hasn't changed that much since.

6:57 pm, April 27, 2006  
Blogger coxon le woof said...

That line you wrote about the ordinary boys made me laugh out loud.

Never has a band been more aptly named.

9:09 pm, April 27, 2006  

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