Every generation gets the music they deserve. As with politicians, it can be a blessing or a curse visited upon those growing up between the time of leaving junior school and the post teenage years and finding music either a godsend or hindrance to their lives. For those who just avoided the golden period of Progressive Rock and were not bothered with the happy go lucky feel of a three minute song that really didn’t have a message there was always Punk and Ska and one of the leading lights of the latter has to be the gracious lead vocalist of Ska favourites The Selecter, Pauline Black.
The Selecter are back in Liverpool on March 1st performing at the 02 Academy and after their last performance in the city when they supported Public Image Limited audiences can surely expect a night of great music and superb sounds.
Talking to Ms. Black is an honour, a musical treat and something that doesn’t come around all that often but as she and the band prepare to take The Too Much Pressure album out on tour in which they also celebrate their 35th anniversary I was able to catch up with the iconic vocalist and talk about the up-coming tour.
The album that you are touring with, did you ever think that you would be doing this seminal album again as a period piece?
Pauline: “We are calling it the Too Much Pressure Tour and we are doing the Too Much Pressure album but we are doing an extended encore of other songs from our second album Celebrate The Bullet and the two newest albums String Theory which was out in 2012 and the Made in Britain album which was put out in 2011. So I feel very much like The Selecter is looking at the past but also the future in those terms in coming to do this. We’ve got a 30th anniversary to celebrate so we cannot just rely on the past couple of years where we’ve been promoting those albums and other U.K. tours. It seems a fitting time to look back and say that’s where we started and look where we are now sort of thing.
There are a lot of parallels between 2014 and 1979 in terms of how people are retaining the information about multiculturalism these days as opposed to how we received the same information but it was very much like receiving it for the first time by the people of this country back in 1979. So we’ve been living that story for all of those years and what we are trying to say is that so how much has been changed and the best way to do that is to present the music and let people make up their own minds.
We do hope that people come along and have a really, really great time and the Too Much Pressure album means a lot to many people, they all came along to our early shows on the Two Tone Tour with The Specials and Madness and they would have heard the songs from the Too Much Pressure album for the first time and it may have been where they met their girlfriend or partner or maybe they are still with them, maybe they have families now and they’ve heard the music . So I think there’s a lot there to celebrate and I think that back in 1979 I didn’t know what I’d be doing in 35 years’ time.”
Obviously you are a very talented young woman and times have changed….
Pauline: “Thank you, you’re so kind! Life has changed and I feel that I’ve done a lot of things – T.V. and radio presenting, theatre, films and I’ve written a book and the music has been going on throughout all those years as well. We’re very firmly back on the music scene now and we did the Isle of Wight Festival and we went out to America three times last year and Australia and we went out with P.I.L. We came to Liverpool and we really, really enjoyed it and it and I think it reintroduced us to a lot of people who maybe had kind of forgotten about The Selecter really and that was absolutely wonderful because you can sort of sail along in this kind of bubble and it’s good to break out of that and reintroduce ourselves to other audiences, punk was around then and it’s still around now like John Lydon is. It really opened everything up and I’m really, really happy for that to have happened.”
Seeing you open up for P.I.L in Liverpool was quite a thrill, where you ever at odds with the punk movement?
Pauline: “No, not at all! Two Tone was very much about punk, reggae, I mean, reggae would not have been heard in this country if it wasn’t for people like John Lydon and the punk movement in general getting black and white people mixing on the punk scene. Reggae was well outside mainstream music and so was punk at that time so if you wanted to hear more alternative styles you had to go in that direction. The Clash really brought black and white people together and also The Anti-Nazi League and all those of gigs they played at. So when Two Tone came along, I feel that there was a whole section of British youth who’s ears were opened to these sounds and found other ways of looking at the world which the mainstream looked down on but I think they were quite blinkered in their attitudes particularly in music and I think it made for a really great scene and I feel that we’ve kind of between two years in 1979 and 1981 was when the beacon of Two Tone shone very brightly and in a way continues to do so to this day for anyone who’s lost in this hideous X Factor world.”
Two Tone’s music was so special, what do you think about some of the music that has this conveyor belt feel being churned out now?
Pauline: “I think it’s become too easy to knock X Factor and all those similar things, this type of music has always been there, ever since we got Radio One or Radio Caroline. Some of it’s really good, some of it is kind of mediocre, those sort of people have always been there and to a large extent, that’s how record companies make money with those people but the kind of people who want to tell a little bit more in their lyrics or maybe have a belief in what they say there is an alternative and that’s what Two Tone was very much a part of, even though we did cross over into the pop charts which was great. Back in 1979, The Selecter, The Specials and Madness were all in the top 10 at the same time and on Top Of The Pops, to my knowledge, that hasn’t really happened again since quite the same way I think.”
Are you looking forward to playing Liverpool, do you have any particular memories of the city?
Pauline: “I think it’s great! I’ve done a lot of things in Liverpool. Not only have I played music there but I’ve also been a play once at the Liverpool Playhouse – Blue Angel and they cast Marlene Detricht’s part as black and I played Lola Lola there and that was for two months and yes, I did have a great deal of fun up in Liverpool in the 1980’s so I’ve had a long association with Liverpool which has always been great.
The Selecter will be performing at the 02 Academy Liverpool on March 1st. Tickets are available from the Academy Box office on Hotham Street.
Ian D. Hall