The Specials bring back special memories

It's 1980, writes WolverhamptonCivic Hall's Jonn Penney. Well no it's not but I've just borrowed the Tardis, OK?

Right, it's 1980, I'm 12 years old and I've just finished my sausage, chips and peas whilst watching Spiderman on the new colour TV, having decided that Captain Pugwash is no longer floating my animation boat.

The peas were swimming in vinegar and the chips almost invisible beneath the sea of ketchup. I wipe my face and bid farewell to my dad and brother with a 'bye' and burst through the front door – almost straight through the glass that will very soon get shattered by a clumsy friend of my brother's in a drunken stupor (but that's another story!) . . . and I tear up the pavement as if it were Usain Bolt's sausage and chips that I'd just stolen and he's now hot on my tail.

I'm not running to the park, I'm not running to my mate's house, I'm not even running for a rendezvous with my first girlfriend (that was probably two years later). No. I'm running to Quarry Bank Community Centre, where tonight is Youth Club night and I get to flex my newly developed pogo muscles to VERY LOUD SKA!

Rebellion was not a concept I properly understood at this age – I didn't see my lot as an unhappy one and I'd suffered nothing for the lack of the then standard family unit of two parents and two kids under one roof. I was happy having several parental influences dotted around and just the dad in the home abode.

So when I heard 'Too Much, Too Young', and my legs hauled me to the dance floor along with all the other Harrington-clad and tripping-up-daddy's-massive-parka bunch, there was not an ounce of thought going on in my head, but still I know that the sensation WAS rebellion and somewhere in my rapidly-forming conscience I'd awakened a notion that all was not rosey for everyone in the world regardless of my ignorant bliss.

Who would have thought that rebellion would make you want to dance until you physically couldn't move another muscle? I'd saunter home after Youth Club absolutely spent, with just the buzz to carry me home.

You'll be surprised to learn that I'm probably not going to be pogoing this Tuesday or Wednesday (October 11 and 12, 2011), when The Specials play two sell-out gigs at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

I'm afraid the knees were a spent force long ago as a result of the indie rock pogo equivalent: the scissor-kick, but thousands of old school Rudies will no doubt make up for my failings and I wonder where those songs will transport them to while they do so. Back to a previous time of recession, youth unemployment, trade union activities and phenomenal creativity!

Yes, perhaps we can take heart at the sustained appeal of a band like The Specials. To be able to come back some 30 years after their peak and consistently fill 3,000-capacity venues like the Civic, must mean that they have some extraordinary link to their audience. Could it be hard times shared and endured and survived and celebrated through that one truly phenomenally human art – music?

Let's hope we'll be looking back in 30 years time to another time of great artistic bloom under the grey clouds that seem to be ever-present just now.

The Specials. Is there a name more apt?