I’m ready for a Special concert

He was wasted, smashed, as high as any amount of kites. Drunk, too, as it happened. ’’It’s my birthday today, and I’ve taken some acid!’’ he slurred from the stage, swaying in a non-existent breeze, wide-eyed as an owl.

I looked up at him from the second row, slightly nervous. If this guy stepped away from the support of his microphone stand, there was a distinct possibility he might fall on top of me. ’’It’s gonna be an interesting show,’’ he said, maintaining his reputation as British pop’s reigning King Of Deadpan, even while comprehensively out of his tree.

It was Edinburgh Playhouse in the early 1980s, and he was Terry Hall, former lead singer of The Specials and now lead singer of breakaway band, Fun Boy Three.

The Specials had already split when I moved to the UK, so I had coughed up serious loot to see the next best thing. It was not one of their better gigs, but funny as hell.

At various points, Hall forgot his lines, or went stiff with concentration as he wrestled with some sort of inner turbulence. Halfway through a heroically haphazard show, a woman from support band Dolly Mixture came onstage with a birthday cake.

Hall gazed at this collection of lurid icing and flickering candles with palpable wonder, as if he’d been handed a miniature psychedelic bonfire. Then he blew them out and launched into the best possible song for such a gig: The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum.

And now, 35 years later, I’ll be seeing Hall again, in my backyard.

Womad 2017 runs from March 17-19 in New Plymouth, with the lineup announced recently at an event at Government House in Wellington.

And there, amid assorted global music stars from Spain and Senegal, China and Capetown, Mali and Montreal, were a bunch of ageing rudeboys from Coventry in dusty pork-pie hats: The Specials.

Or at least, most of them. Original keyboardist Jerry Dammers wasn’t welcome when the notoriously fractious band reformed in 1993, and drummer John Bradbury died suddenly in unexplained circumstances last year.

But many key members remain, and that’s good enough for me. To say I am a fan is like saying the ocean is, you know … a little damp.

Produced by Elvis Costello, The Specials’ self-titled 1979 debut album is a stone-cold classic: the defining document of the shortlived UK ska revival scene, which also included The Beat, The Selector, Bad Manners, and Madness.

The Specials were the most compelling band to emerge from the British ‘‘2 Tone’’ scene: stylish and politicised inner-city reprobates who supercharged 1960s Jamaican ska with the raw energy of punk.

And so, I’ve got my ticket. I will be there, in a giant forest park in Taranaki, bellowing along to such immortal classics as Gangsters, Ghost Town, and Do The Dog.

Assuming no one has a head full of birthday LSD, it should be a ripper of a show.

At various points, Terry Hall forgot his lines, or went stiff with concentration as he wrestled with some sort of inner turbulence.