The year, musically, was dominated by ska. I was surprised to see so many who don’t like it now, nor even back then. To my mind, it was lively, danceable, fun … were they ska’s three sins perhaps? One article listed some reasons why it was not universally liked:

1. You Hate the Fans

To generalize, ska fans are gregarious, carefree dorks who love playful, uptempo music. They like silly hats and plaid shirts and are frustratingly unpretentious.

2. You’ve Only Heard Third Wave

When you hear the word ska, I would suggest you ignore third wave altogether, despite there being many gems to be found therein and check out the UK’s 2 Tone scene from the ‘70s and ‘80s.

3. You Also Dislike 2 Tone

You don’t like the Specials, You don’t like Madness. You don’t like black and you don’t like white, at least not when they’re the only two colors on a record cover.

4. You Have No Soul

You probably don’t care for vintage soul or R&B either. It’s not your fault. I’ll stop now, I promise.

5. You Hate Silly Band Names

OK I can’t argue with that. Why is ska the only genre that inspires bands to incorporate the genre into their name?

JH: I could add a few to that:

• 1980 is a very inbetween year … for the young, that’s 46 years ago … think about that.
• For older people, it was a sort of nothing time … out with the 70s, about to become yuppy.
• The further things went on, the more dystopic, perverted, satanic. Ska is innocent fun.
• That’s precisely the criticism in “the day the music died”.

Further issues were that it came from nowhere … reggae plus horns, though the various influences are known … and it died just past the mid 80s, plenty of other genres around. Plus the black v white thing became nastier with time, not better. The genre is jaunty enough, but repetitive, eventually goes nowhere.

Me, myself, I? I was just about to lose my father and launch into my own family life … I just moved on from “music trends”, occasionally heard songs at a distance. It did not return until 1990 with rap, Betty Boo etc.

Lastly … that really is a long, long time ago, 1980. What about the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s? Phew.

There were other things, personally. I was living in London, there was a really good pub scene, there were all sorts of bands, I was wearing smoking jacket and bowler hat around (quiet at the back there), the vibe was fun.

One other thing … his outfit in the last song … the love of my life wore that colour scheme herself … quite liked it. We were a real special brew … and how.