So, like I said, 1981 things weren't looking too good in the UK, and it all boiled over in April with major rioting in Brixton, which kicked off an explosive summer of street battles. By the time Mark and I arrived to spend our summer holidays with our grandparents, the nightly news was full of flying bricks and burning cars as rioting raged up and down the country. Handsworth, Toxteth, Southall, Moss Side were a long way from the idyllic country life of Waltham St. Lawrence, but my grandparents talked of nothing else. The rioting hit its peak in early July. Sypathetically, 'Ghost Town' hit number #1 on the UK singles chart on July 7th and stayed there for three weeks. Keep in mind that this was the era before MuchMusic and MTV. Music video was in its infancy, and, if you lived in England, everything stopped on Thursday night for Top of the Pops, the weekly chart show where with a countdown, live performances and awkward dancing. I remember seeing The Specials on TOTP that July. I was 14 years old, and I really wasn't sure what the hell was going on in England that summer, but I was absolutely convinced that 'Ghost Town' was going to give me a better idea than sitting in the country listening to my grandparents perspective on Britain's decay. I'm pretty sure this is the performance we saw. There's a bleak little video too.
Top of the Pops was cancelled by the BBC last year. They say it was because they couldn't compete with 24-hour music channels. I like to think it was because they went back and had a look at the archives and realized they hadn't done anything relevant since July 1981 and gave up out of self-disgust.
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