#FBF: WITH AUSTERITY MEASURES AND THE PRESENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IN THE UK. I THOUGHT OF THIS CLASSIC CHUNE: The tour for the groups More Specials album in autumn 1980 had been a fraught experience: already tired from a long touring schedule and with several band members at odds with keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers over his decision to incorporate muzak keyboard sounds on the album, several of the gigs descended into audience violence. As they travelled around the country the band witnessed sights that summed up the depressed mood of a country gripped by recession. In 2002 Dammers told The Guardian, You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down... We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong. In an interview in 2011, Dammers explained how witnessing this event inspired his composition: 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. Its hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then Ghost Town came out of the blue. The songs sparse lyrics address urban decay, unemployment and violence in inner cities. Jo-Ann Greene of Allmusic notes that the lyrics only brush 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.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, 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. 1981 innit? No, it’s 2014! https://youtube/watch?v=HpYyqaSYLyw
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:51:05 +0000
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