So I’m listening to a Terry Hall compilation, “Through The Years”, on the commute to work this morning. Now some of the track choices might be questionable (“Really Saying Something” over “T’Ain’t What You Do”, the studio version of “Too Much Too Young” rather than the live number 1 hit?), but it’s a perfectly decent single CD overview of the man and his surprisingly many musical guises (Specials, Fun Boy Three, Colour Field, solo work, even Terry, Blair & Anouschka.)

However, what’s this nestling at track number 7? Why, it’s The Special AKA’s “Free Nelson Mandela”, a fine track to be sure, but one in which Mr. Hall was, I might suggest, not even in the same hemisphere when it was recorded. I’m far from the world’s biggest Specials or Terry Hall fan, but surely anyone with even the remotest knowledge of the band would know about this, so how come the clown who compiled this album got the job in the first place?

Any other evidence that record companies don’t know their artists from a hole in the ground, or howlers from people who just ought to know better…?