What are you listening to?

I see it's Jerry Dammers birthday today. In the early 1980's it seemed impossible to buy a copy of the NME or Melody Maker and not find an interview with Jerry inside it's pages. As a member of The Specials, and the brains behind 'Ghost Town', founder of 2 Tone records, and then he wrote 'Free Nelson Mandela', it's probably no  surprise that there was no getting away from Jerry in the early to mid 1980's. But being no particular fan of The Specials' (or Nelson Mandela come to that), I never actually knew much about him, other than he only had about two teeth....positioned like fangs in his top set. The other guy who you immediately think 'teeth' about at the time was Shane McGown of The Pogues ....well Jerry was the other one.

After many decades of relative obscurity, I think we can safely say no high profile comeback is on the cards. Jerry is 64 today.

We've probably all heard Ghost Town and Nelson Mandela on more than enough occasions. Here's a relatively obscure and inoffensive record produced by Jerry on his 2 Tone label back in 1985. Ideal for the daytime schedule of Radio 2 in 2019 I'd say.

I see our old friend Morrissey is under fire for his politics.

Posters taken down. Record shops refusing to stock his product.

I was shocked to see this is a reaction against his FAR RIGHT views.

Strange. Back in my day, railing against homophobia and cruelty to animals used to get you labelled as a bit of a lefty.

I assume Alpine Joe will be re-appraising the Smiths back-catalogue.

Maybe Hector will do him a special deal on a job lot.

Have you been on that Rum again? 

Retrieved from the attic of Alpine Towers earlier this afternoon. And with enough dust and damage to indicate it's been up there since the early 1990's. With no means of playing old cassette tapes, and while I'm waiting for the consignment of Smiths records to arrive from Hector, here's a final reminder before this drops into the black rubbish sack.

.........Yep, its that one from the advert - very rare to find it....lovely stuff.

Good way to start the day...