Exciting news for fans of The Specials. Not content having the band grace our cover this week, we are also offering readers an exclusive video in which we take the band on a magical history tour of locations from the video to their 1981 No.1 single, Ghost Town.
How can readers access this exclusive additional content – in which Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter revisit the passion, politics and pop video of the classic single, and talk about Encore, their first new album in 38 years? Simply by downloading the genARate app to a mobile phone, scanning pages of The Big Issue, and watching the magic happen. Hey presto, print and digital media in perfect harmony.
In the three-minute video, a clip of which is shown above, Hall explains why he was so keen to talk to The Big Issue.
“I get upset by the scale of homelessness. That is why I am sitting here today,” he says. “And I just can’t put two and two together when I see so much money going into buildings that are so unused. It is painfully sad.”
Everybody thinks that Ghost Town was written about their city
Panter, meanwhile, reflects on Ghost Town’s ascent up the charts while the country descended into violence.