If you happened to be in Aylesbury on Friday evening, you may have wondered why the majority of men were strolling around in pork pie hats ... or why every other person was wearing Fred Perry, Harrington jackets or loafers ... or why The White Hart was overrun with a more mature clientele than usual ... weird, no?
Well, if you don't know why, you missed out, because The Specials, came back to town for the third time, since they played as a mere support act for The Clash in 1978.
That's right, they came to Aylesbury. You know the one; that little, grey town with a prison, where nothing interesting ever really happens ... However, it hasn't always been that way, and Friday night saw what is hopefully the first of many Friars gigs to come.
In 1969, local men and music fans, Robin Pike and David Stopps, launched a rock club called Friars in Aylesbury. I know ... a rock club ... in Aylesbury ... the best you have nowadays is Friday night karaoke at Stars. However, Aylesbury was once quite the music scene with names such as Black Sabbath, Genesis, David Bowie and The Jam to name just a few, taking to the Friars stage. The club enjoyed success for sixteen years and it was a great loss to the town when it closed in 1985.
Since then, the club celebrated it's 40th anniversary in 2009 and a year later, Paul Weller and The Buzzcocks took to the stage again, in sell out shows.
Without the Civic Centre, the later stage of Friars, there seemed little hope for any form of comeback, but the new Waterside theatre has seemingly breathed a sense of culture back into Aylesbury, offering a new chance for Friars, and I for one could not be more in support.
To many my age, the big names I just mentioned tragically won't mean anything. When I told friends how excited I was to be going to see The Specials with my Mum, it was met with sympathetic laughter and blank faces. To be fair, I do sometimes think I was born in the wrong decade, but then I have to question which decade I would have been born in, for my music collection consists of anything from the past fifty years.
I was probably one of the youngest members of the audience and friends of my Mum were sceptical as to why I was interested in a band that were active before I was even born. However, I have been privileged to have a diverse musical education from my parents over the years, and although The Specials were the soundtrack to their childhoods, they were indeed a part of mine also.
The Specials themselves played an amazing set. They were as good live as what I've seen and heard on TV over the years and their hour and a half set included all of the classics and a couple of new tracks as well as their encore.
One of the reasons I'm drawn to them is that their music is still so relevant to this day. They don't sing about love and breakups like every single song in the pop charts today; they sing about reality. Many of their songs take a political stance such as Do Nothing, or a social stance such as Ghost Town, but many explore youth, lifestyle and culture.
There is not one youth that doesn't go out on Friday night, and come home on Saturday morning.
There is not one person who doesn't stop and think they're wasting their time working for the rat race.
It's not just Rudy who's got a message that he needs to stop messing around and start thinking of his future.
Everyone can relate to at least one of their songs and that for me, is the ultimate signifier of a great band.
Their 2 Tone Ska sound just makes me want to dance (and that is saying something because I'm a pretty bad dancer) and it's refreshing to hear real instruments as opposed to synths and artificial backing tracks.
Music has always had a huge influence on fashion but the Specials 'Rude Boy' style is so distinct and so exclusive; you just don't find anything like that today. Everyone wants to be unique, but this style just added to the sense of unity. Forty-year-olds dressing as they did twenty years ago should have looked so wrong, but it never looked so right.
What struck me most about Friday night however was the sense of community. Community is something that is rare in Aylesbury. Sure there are the odd few areas which are closer than others but disappointingly, on the whole, everyone keeps themselves to themselves. I don't know whether it was the people I was with, but despite the age gap, I couldn't have felt more at home. Age became irrelevant as the venue was full of people who were united purely by a love of music and memories.
It was amazing just watching people. They bumped into people they hadn't seen for over twenty years and it was like something from that opening scene in Love Actually: embracing, handshaking, squeals of shock. It was truly amazing how people can lose touch, but reconnect so quickly. This made me happy, but also sad; sad that I can't imagine doing the same with people I've met in the last twenty years and sad that I can't imagine one single band of the 21st century that could bring together a community in such a way.
I love the advances in technology that have allowed music to be at our finger tips. The way I can type a few letters and I can see my favourite singers; the way that I can own my favourite songs without actually going into a shop; I love the sheer diversity and accessibility.
However, at what cost have we achieved all of this? We seem to have sacrificed something that sat at the heart of the music industry: the ability to bring people together.
If you wanted to go to a Friars gig, you queued up outside with hundreds of other people and you shared the experience. You didn't buy a ticket from the Internet, whilst in bed.
If you wanted to own the number one single that week, you waited until you'd saved enough pocket money to go to a record store and physically hold the record. You didn't buy it for £0.99 from iTunes or worse still, illegally download it at poor quality and with poor morals.
Music was a shared experience.
There's a kind of a warm, fuzzy, feeling, seeing such a big name in your hometown and this is what Aylesbury needs. It needs a music scene. It needs something for the youth. It needs something to unite the community again.
So thank you to Friars and the Waterside Theatre for putting on such a great show on Friday. I hope this can be the first of many to come.
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