The Coventry Music Museum recently voted the best Family Attraction and The Best Independent Venue, has just welcomed it's 10,000th guest.
Pete Drew had come to the museum to put a poster up for his Gristfest event, and ended up being presented with an iconic Chalkie Davies print, signed by The Specials and Museum entry for life! "It was mad". Said Peter. "I went over to promote my Gristfest event, then that happened. The print has all the Specials signatures on it's a pretty cool day".
Museum Director Pete Chambers said: "It's an amazing milestone reaching 10,0000 visitors..The reality is its everyone of those amazing visitors that have put us where we are. As well as our Sponsors supporters Heritage Lottery and of course our amazing team and board."
Two days before this milestone event, the museum finally opened it's display and tribute to Ska legend Rico Rodriguez MBE. Even better when you have Selecter founder, Neol Davies and Ska icon Dandy Livingstone to do the honours. Dandy, goes back a long way with the late great Rico, having produced many of Rico's early songs. Rico also played on Dandy's song " Rudy, A Message To You ",and twelve years later he played on the The Specials version too.
The display includes items owned by Rico, including one of the trombone mouthpieces he made so much magic on. Also on display is a black tunic with his name embroidered on it, Rico wore this stage costume when he supported Bob Marley on his Rastaman Vibrations tour of 1976. On hearing this one guest exclaimed "This has been in the presence of Bob Marley, he probably even touched it!" I guess he probably did, so an amazing artefact to have in the museum.