Photo by David Corio/Redferns Some shows really do change the direction of your life. The Specials at the Liverpool Royal Court in July 1981, mid-Toxteth Riots, was only the second gig I’d ever seen. I was a pasty, supremely feeble suburban 14-year-old who looked about 10. They were the authentic, politically incisive voice of the multiracial UK and their emblematic hit “Ghost Town” – TS Eliot’s The Waste Land for Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, complete with phantom dancehalls and spectral choirs – was either already at number one or about to get there. No shows are as exhilarating or as hard...