ghost town bootleg

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when i was 16 my friend jake took me to one of my very first raves. i remember it clearly being one of the first times i had ever heard jungle on a sound system. this alone made it a memorable night and it had a big impact on me. but on the drive there and on the way home jake only had one cassette tape in his car which was “the singles collection” by the specials. there were a lot of ska bands in the the bay area at the time like “janitors against apartheid” and “the brownies” amongst others. i had already heard a lot of ska but this was the first time i had ever heard real english stuff. i remember totally loving it, i can still clearly see the streets of the neighborhood in san jose where i grew up in my mind, late at night, driving around and hearing “ghost town” for the first time, mixed up with the excitement and awe of just having hearing jungle and rave music pumping through a huge sound system.

i made the ghost town bootleg for fun one day, literally just for myself to play at a narco.hz session in the middle of last year (‘08). it was always my favorite specials tune. i knew there were other bootlegs of it out there, i knew it had been done, but i didn’t care - it was just for me and i did it for fun anyway. the night i was supposed to play at narco.hz i told some friends “hey guys i did a ghost town remix!” and they said “oh, great. another ghost town remix?”. i was so bummed by their reaction that i didn’t even play it that night!

a few months later i started sending it to a few people here and there, not really thinking much of it. one person i sent it to was rob smith aka rsd who cut it to dubplate and started playing it all over the place. some footage of him playing it in croatia ended up on youtube and someone started a thread about the tune on dubstepforum.com and this whole thing just sort of blew up. i was getting myspace messages nearly every day from big guys like skream and simon subdub asking for it. the people at war records (a highly regarded dubstep bootleg outfit) asked for it and a flipside which is where “late night blues bootleg” came from.

to make a very long story short, this tune got tossed around between no less than five record labels but it could never seem to find a release. the good folks at war gave it their best and i’m really grateful for all the effort they put into trying to get this record out - literally almost everything was done to try and get these tunes released. ultimately no pressing plants in the uk/eu were willing to take the risk to press the vinyl for fears of legal action taken by the mcps. this is why it has taken so long to for it to be released.  in the end i actually feel better about giving these tunes away for free rather than anyone really making any financial profit - they are bootlegs, the music was written by these amazing musicians. the work i did pales in comparison. but hey, dubstep dances go off for these tunes every time! so please enjoy, be kind, and rewind.