Hold on, have Fun Boy Three just declared war on America?

 It was The Colourfield for me, really. 

I mean, it was everything; basically every single second, but The Colourfield is what I really go back to.

I wasn't a mod. Not at the time. I've always been slow to embrace the new in any movement and at 15 I was still in that arsey 'I know best, I'm not following the herd' mindset which so often stopped me appreciating greatness. So I railed against those in school who took on the parka. Mistake. 

That's the way I remember being. But at the same time... obviously Gangsters was brilliant; a massively exciting sound that arrived with literally no precedent. Obviously I know now that there were precedents but to me then it was so new. 

And Too Much Too Young was incredible and vital, A Message To You Rudy wonderful pop, the politics were mine and the attitude was unreal. And that was just from the first album of a band whose vocalist was only 4 years older than me. 

Ghost Town. Ghost Town is the sound of that actual week in the UK, the sound of the week it was released, the sound of how that week felt in  a way that I've only seen Prince capture (with Sign 'O' The Times) since. It was the sound of the riots about to occur, the sound of Britain about to burn, the sound of Thatcher destroying our youth. It hasn't aged, it still sounds like tomorrow.

Then they were gone. That version of The Specials. They'd return with possibly the most important political single ever released, a work that proved to be the most that music has ever genuinely changed the world. But with a different vocalist. Without that voice, that laconic, lazy, cynical, hopeful voice at the front.

Split up in the dressing room at Top Of The Pops apparently. The Christmas Top Of The Pops. Performing that anthem of a doomed nation in jolly Christmas jumpers if memory serves. (I can't find it, I may have imagined it.

And that was part of it. The look was part of it. Always part of it. That move from the original Two Tone look to something more fifties based, more timeless, the skinhead crop starting to grow out (and just wait until we hit the end of the Fun Boy Three, *that* is a haircut), a band that were growing up and out and apart, no longer pretending to hide their message in jollity, careening through late night early morning city centre desolation and pointing out to all of us that we were getting angry. That's how you go out.

Fun Boy Three were the pop act - Lunatics Taking Over The Asylum still pointing out that the world was truly broken, again in a jolly manner, It Ain't What you Do (It's The Way That You Do It) going further back for the covers and giving their mates Bananarama a leg up in the pop world.

But it's their going out that we need to talk about:

1983. Live on The Switch. (Always thought it was The Tube). The suits have gone, Terry's hair has gone full McCulloch but the desolation is still there. And they're playing The End. Terry Hall is covering The Doors. With a trombonist. Which is wonderful enough, but...

At the end of the song - which I believe in my heart is the last thing they ever did but may not be, it doesn't matter, symbolically it *is* - The Fun Boy Three, those jolly japesters with the nice pop songs set fire to the American flag. Live on TV, playing the ultimate paen to the disaster of Vietnam, the Fun Boy Three burn the Stars'n'Stripes. Which, last time I looked, was considered an act of war. 

Seriously, at 19, what more do you want from your pop stars?

And then it was The Colourfield. And, as we've established, it was The Colourfield for me. Their first Tube appearance? Might have been Whistle Test, we'll find out in a second. 

It was The Tube. God, how good's that clip. Watched that a million times. It was a revelation. Another revelation. A little bit psychedelic and laced with proper grown up pop. You get Sorry and The Colourfield, the first single. Then it's followed by the single Thinking Of You, which is obviously Bacharachian in its aim, classic. It's 1984, Terry Hall's been in the music business for five years, we trust everything he does and he's been in three classic outfits already. We believe these outfits to be classic, they've earned our belief, we trust them, we know that whatever he does will be quality.

It's the second album though. Deception. 1987, a gap that's nearly as long as his entire career and yet another reinvention. The psychedelia has gone, the Bacharach has gone; what's appeared in their place is polished eighties pop with an off-kilter, dark edge, as we'd expect and hope for. The Colourfield isn't a band any longer, it's a duo. It's not pretending. And it's mostly Terry. 

God, this album is gorgeous. This is the album I'll go back to forever: Monkey In Winter, Goodbye Sun Valley, Miss Texas 1967; it's an album of longing, of yearning, of heartbreak, and - as ever, as always - immaculate melody.

There is nobody that's ever sounded like Terry Hall - bored yet impassioned, relaxed but angry, always entirely uniquely himself. 

And there was more. So much more - Terry Blair and Anoushka with Missing, Vegas with Dave Stewart and the lovely Possessed (quick edit on that one, a review mentioned that despite the joy of the sound, Terry's vocal held familiar tones of "Oh, here come the bloody violins again" - Terry took that and used it for a lyric, Brilliant.)

And then there's the solo career:

The first album is good. It's the album that saw him tour with a band that included Les Pattinson, Chris Sharrock and Craig Gannon - if you're me then that's the supergroup you didn't realise you need. I saw them at The Duchess Of York in Leeds. I remember nothing about it other than the feeling of bliss.

The same feeling that I had when I finally saw The Specials at the Olympia in 2009. A room that bounced, a balcony that bounced to a possibly unsafe level, a thrill. An endless thrill. Life. Every moment.

There's more. Even more. There are the bits I'm missing through moments when I went missing from Terry's individual path.

The second solo album, I need to talk about the second solo album. That. I'll go back to that forever, same as I'll go back to the second Colourfield album forever. Me and second alums, it's definitely a thing.

The well known solo singles were on the first album - Forever J, Sense - but the second album is the one: a lesson in how to do Britpop from elder statesman; messrs Gannon and Sharrock are back, Nick Heyward's in there. It's joyous and, as ever, the choice of cover is impeccable:

He's been there since I was 15 years old. And then, suddenly, at 11.30 last night, he wasn't any longer. And it's awful. It's hit me hard this one, I've really felt it. Like I felt Scott Walker, like I felt Mark Hollis. Close to tears last night, close to tears writing this. But writing this feels like marking what Terry meant to me, and he meant a lot.

63. It's no bloody age. Trust me, as a bloke who'll turn 60 next year I know that 63 is no bloody age. As J said this morning, "These are our people."

These are our people, this is our generation, these are the people we just thought would always be there. The fact they may not be, the fact that Terry Hall isn't, is just horrible.

The work is still there, the work will always be there. It's bloody brilliant and we'll hear things we hadn't heard before (I only discovered All Kinds Of Everything Last Night) but we've lost him and he was unique.