Tag Archives: The Specials

Ball Hill calling to the faraway towns

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We took a trip to Coventry the other weekend and popped into the Coventry Music Museum/Two Tone Village in Ball Hill Village. We spotted the lesser spotted Ded Yampy fanzine wedged between two King singles (one of them was even signed!)

They don’t half love their tomatoes up there as at the Music Museum we spotted a couple of plants outside, we would have loved it even more if the variety was called two tone or something like that. They looked healthy enough as well.

Also walking up Albany Road later on almost opposite Jerry Dammer’s old flat we spotted a table of tomato plants with “Free. Please help yourselves!” We do like a sign saying that, did they mean we could take the table thing as well we wonder?

And the tune for tonight is sadly not from Coventry but from Iceland from Leik with Toy center at night and a lovely little tune it is too. One going out to our Coventry and Birmingham friends around this gardening globe of ours.

Conifers in Coventry

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We were suprised, saddened and shocked to hear of the passing of Terry Hall earlier this week. We really don’t know what to say about it as like lots of people, himself alongside The Specials were a part of our musical lives.

Rather than getting all maudlin about it, let’s raise a smile at something daft we found in a Mojo interview with him from a while back:

“I get obsessed with stuff. In the late ’90s I was trying to perfect conifer height, I remember that. I planted about 30 conifers, and I wanted them to all grow at the same level. You buy them, and they’re all 18 inches, and you plant them all at the same depth, feed and water them all the same, and some died and some went brown. Why? It really did my head in…”

Life and Gardening, two things that can do your head in. RIP Terry Hall.

Cloches over the Westway

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Um Bongo

I was rummaging through some boxes in the loft for some horticultural fleece the other day and found a cassette by a band called Bongo Joe featuring a cover of “Sympathy for the Devil” that I acquired many moons ago in 1983. The band featured a couple of members of St Alban’s legendary punks The Tea Set (Nick Egan and Nick Haeffner), samples of Florence Nightingale and Neville Chamberlain and backing vocals from one of Bananarama, a bonkers combination to say the least (more on the St Alban’s punk scene from that time here.) I then became misty eyed while I recalled how I think I might have obtained the tape. People who dislike punk nostalgia please look away from your screens now…

Cloche city rockers

In 1978 me and a mate decided to hitch-hike to Bury St Edmunds to see local heroes The Specials supporting The Clash. I haven’t much memory about the actual gig but I do remember coming out of it with my mate and being surrounded by an angry gang of hairy bikers (not those two chefs off the telly who I’d like to think would rather give you a pork pie recipe than a good kicking.) These lot were hell-bent on inflicting some damage on us, the largest and more leather-clad one out of them all screaming at the top of his voice  “You f-ing punks are dead,” nice! My 16 years of life flashed in front of me, then out of the blue a punk came to our rescue, grabbed both of us and whisked us away. The next minute we were in The Clash’s hotel room and I remember being very excited being there and seeing Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon dancing around to some mad dub coming out of their ghetto blaster (something off Joe Gibbs – Chapter 3 possibly?) I was very shocked as well (being a very naive 16 year old at the time) to see quite a few girls sitting outside in a line outside the band’s room later. Mary Whitehouse wouldn’t have been too happy about it.

After a short while in the hotel (the party being quite a tame affair by the way) we got a lift south from the punk who introduced himself as Nick Egan and told us about his band The Tea-Set, (their grafitti used to adorn a motorway bridge on the M1 around Hemel Hempstead, ever seen it?) We also found out that The Clash got their stage gear made for them by some nice little old ladies in North London, great eh? After our lift I kept in touch and I am sure it was Nick who sent it to us.

I’m now feeling very nostalgic, spiking up what hair I have around the sides like a post-punk Roger De Courcey and contemplating doing the punk kicking dance, even though I could only manage a minute or so these days! I’ve just thought wouldn’t it be great if the remaining members of The Clash (R.I.P. Joe Strummer) are now enjoying the delights of gardening in their older age…

Anyway, have a good old xmas holiday and remember it’s not long before those potatoes have to be chitted!