Important Gigs in My Life # 8 The Specials - 22nd April 2009 - Newcastle Carling Academy

You had to be there. I was. One of the best and certainly most important bands this country ever produced. On the first date of their reunion tour in 2009 after barely playing together for the best part of thirty years. On a gig which sold out like that.

How did I come to be there? I'm never fast enough off the blocks to get tickets for nights like this. I got a ticket from a mate at work who got a couple free through the radio station he DJ'd for in return for reviewing it. He offered his spare to me.

The build up to the band was hitting the stage was momentous. Neville Staples came into the audience and my mate, a stargazer if ever there was one, went over to him and got his picture taken with him.

There was row upon row of middle aged blokes and women from first time round done, up to the nines in their Two Tone gear and DM boots. The chant 'Rude Boys' started a good ten minutes before the band hit the stage and built and built. Then the curtains at the front of the stage lifted and there they were and they kicked into 'Do the Dog'.

They were there. All of them. All of them but Jerry Dammers who in many ways had been the main man first time round even if he was always crouched over his organ at the back of the stage.  But he'd refused to take part in this despite much cajoling because he didn't want to just go on and play the old songs as they'd played them before.

So they did so without him. And were blistering. Surely as good as they'd been in 1979, but this time without the NF trying to start fights in front of them, instead for an audience that was 100% behind them.

There were probably some dissenters who were there who would say that it wasn't the same without Dammers. But they would have been in a ridiculously small minority. Because for every one else it was a night that will remain in the memory forever.

They played the songs, all the ones you'd have expected them to. Terry Hall, Staples and Lynval Golding made as good a trio of frontmen as any band had ever had. Hall was his expected sarcastic semi-miserable self. Every band member made a contribution.

And underneath. The lyrics. Running like a manifesto of positivity and righteous energy on the rock hard rails of the tunes. Never bettered.

I went to see them again. They weren't the same. They keep touring and coming to Newcastle and playing at the Academy and every time they shed another member of two. But I saw them when they were six. Thanks Joe!