The Selecter performing live at the Milton Keynes International Festival in Milton Keynes, 2016. Vocalists Pauline Black (second from left) and Arthur 'Gaps' Hendrickson (third from left) are original members.
The Selecter featured a diverse line-up, both in terms of race and gender, initially consisting of Arthur 'Gaps' Hendrickson and Pauline Black on lead vocals, Neol Davies and Compton Amanor on guitar, Desmond Brown on Hammond organ, Charley 'Aitch' Bembridge on drums, and Charley Anderson on bass. The band's name comes from the original "The Selecter" track, which appeared on the flip side of The Special AKA's "Gangsters" single in 1979, and was written by Neol Davies and John Bradbury, produced by Roger Lomas and featured Barry Jones on trombone.
The band were one of the most successful ska bands of the 2 tone era, notching up several top forty singles in the UK Singles Chart. Having co-released the first 2 tone ska single with the Specials, they were one of the founding acts of the movement. Though influential, the original lineup only remained together for a year, and even with replacement players the band continued until breaking up in 1982.
The Selecter reformed in 1991 with original members Neol Davies and Pauline Black, along with Bad Manners members Martin Stewart, Nick Welsh and Perry Melius. Davies left the band in 1993, but lead vocalist Black continued to perform and release music under the Selecter name until 2006.
By 2011, another version of the band featuring Neol Davies was touring separately. In June 2011 Black applied for, and won, the Selecter trademark and the right to use the name herself.[1] The reformed, Pauline Black-led line-up still tours and releases albums under the Selecter name, most recently releasing Human Algebra, the band's 16th studio album, in 2022.
History
In 1977, Neol Davies and John Bradbury (who later became a member of the Specials), with the trombone player Barry Jones, recorded a track in a recording session in 1977–78 that resulted in "Kingston Affair", which was produced by Coventry producer Roger Lomas. It was initially credited to 'The Selecters' and although the record was touted around the industry, there were no takers and it remained on the shelf until 1979, when it was released as "The Selecter" as a double a-side with the Special AKA's recording "Gangsters", the first 2 Tone Records single.[2] It was released in March 1979, reaching 6 in the UK Singles Chart.[3] The track was written by Davies and Bradbury.
After the success of the single, Davies put a band together to capitalise on the success of the single. He had recently been playing in Transposed Men with keyboard player Desmond Brown and Brown joined the band, along with bass player Charley Anderson, guitarist Compton Amanor, drummer Aitch Bembridge and vocalist Gaps Hendrickson. All the musicians had played on the local scene in Coventry for a number of years with bands such as The Ray King Soul Band, Hard Top 22 and others. The seven piece line-up for the original band was completed when Pauline Black was spotted by Davies. Davies offered Pauline an audition with the Selecter – she joined along with other members in July 1979.[4]
The new band released the singles "On My Radio", "Three Minute Hero" and "Missing Words", written by Davies. The Selecter's debut studio album, Too Much Pressure, was recorded at the end of 1979 and beginning of the new year, and was released in February 1980 by 2 Tone Records and Chrysalis Records. Anderson and Brown left the Selecter in 1980 to form the People.[4] Their replacements were James Mackie and Adam Williams.[4] Their second studio album, Celebrate the Bullet was released in February 1981 and the title track has a music video that aired on MTV's first day of broadcast[citation needed], before Black left the band to pursue a solo career. A short time after, unsuccessfully having tried Stan Campbell as the singer, the rest of the members disbanded. The Selecter were featured in the 2 Tone film documentary and on the live compilation album Dance Craze (1981).
Post break-up years
After the band split in 1982, Black pursued a career in theatre, television and film. From 1991 she led a reformed Selecter for 15 years releasing several new albums.[5] In 2006 she took a sabbatical from the Selecter, to write her memoirs Black by Design for publishing house Serpent's Tail. In 2009, she returned to the live arena, playing shows in the UK, Germany and South America guesting with various ska musicians and performing songs from the Selecter's first two studio albums. During her sabbatical, Black recorded a new 13-track solo album, Pigment of My Imagination, released in 2011.[citation needed] She later reformed the Selecter, this time with guest original lead singer Arthur "Gaps" Hendrickson, and in 2010 they played two shows at the Sinner's Day Festival at the Ethias Arena in Hasselt, Belgium, and at the Bloomsbury Ballroom in London.[citation needed]
Neol Davies penned all of the Selecter's hit singles. He started up his own home studio after the band disbanded in 1981 to write and record his own new songs, and he played a number of local shows in the Midlands while teaching guitar in local schools. Davies formed a new version of the Selecter in 1991 with Black leaving the band two years later. He started up a new outfit called Selecter Instrumental, mostly playing movie tunes in a ska style.[citation needed] In the early 1990s, he joined a reunited Specials in the studio, contributing rhythm guitar to sessions that would later be released as the cover albums Skinhead Girl (2000) and Conquering Ruler (2001). In 1998, he released his debut solo studio album Box of Blues, assisted by bass player Horace Panter of the Specials and drummer Anthony Harty, and the trio often performed at a number of blues concerts in the UK. He later recorded another solo studio album, Future Swamp (2002), with guests including Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones and Reef members Dominic Greensmith and Jason Knight. Both albums were released on Davies' own label, VoMatic Records.
Charley Anderson moved to Sweden during the 1990s where he performed, recorded and released material with the Skalatones. In 2009, Anderson returned to Coventry to play a charity concert at the Central Hall to promote his Ghetto Child project. Joining him on stage were guests from UB40, the Specials, the Selecter along with saxophonist Carlos Garnett.[6]
Charley 'Aitch' Bembridge has been involved with the All Skas, a ska band which performed in the Midlands. He also served as drummer in the Specials through their first reunion, both live and in the studio, from 1993 through to 1998.[citation needed] He rejoined Black and Hendrickson's version of the band in 2021.
Davies, Hendrickson, Anderson and Black were also involved with unveiling commemorative plaques for the 30th anniversary of 2 Tone on significant buildings associated with the record label in Coventry.[7]
Reunions
Black performing live with the Selecter in San Francisco, 2005
Davies and Black reunited towards the end of the 1980s, performing as a duo, with Davies on electric guitar and Black on vocals. The pair featured on an episode of a Jools Holland music show that was broadcast on European satellite television. Then, in 1990, after two guest spots with Bad Manners, and being genuinely surprised by the reception they received, Black and Davies reformed the Selecter with three members of Bad Manners, Martin Stewart, Nick Welsh and Perry Melius, in 1991.
After releasing a new version of "On My Radio", backed up with a new version of "The Selecter" and performing some tours, Davies departed the band in 1993.[5] From 1994 to 1996, another original member, Arthur 'Gaps' Hendrickson, performed with this line-up occasionally. They released several new albums, toured around the world and toured with No Doubt in 1997 in the US. 1998's politically-focused Cruel Britannia was critically acclaimed.[8] Black continued to record and perform as the Selecter up until 2006, and from 2010 to the present.
On 31 October 2010, Pauline Black and Arthur 'Gaps' Hendrickson played under the Selecter name to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the seminal debut studio album, Too Much Pressure (1980), by performing the whole album live at the Sinners Day Festival, Ethias Stadium, Hasselt, Belgium.[9] They also performed at the Bloomsbury Ballroom, London, in November 2010.[10] In her capacity as lead singer of the Selecter, Black featured prominently in BBC Four's Reggae Britannia series in February 2011 and the televised 'Reggae Britannia Concert' at the Barbican, London, alongside Ken Boothe, Neville Staple and Brinsley Forde of Aswad.[11]
The Selecter reunited once again when the band travelled over to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to play a show in the capital's annual Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.[12] This was followed by an extensive tour of the UK, Europe, and in October 2014, New Zealand and Australia.[13]
Barry Jones, Roger Lomas and Neol Davies reunited in Coventry, 2023
In October 2017, the band released a new studio album Daylight.
In 2022, the Selecter toured the UK performing their second studio album Celebrate the Bullet (1981) in its entirety.[16]
After a 2022 interview with 89-year-old Barry Jones in the 2 Tone - Before, During & After fanzine, Davies contacted Jones and, in May 2023, Davies, Jones and Lomas, the surviving musicians and producer to have been involved with the original "Kingston Affair" track, reunited in Coventry. The trio initially met up at Lomas' house and then made an appearance at The 2 Tone Village in the city. An in-depth article on the reunion was featured in the June 2023 edition of the fanzine, where Jones credited the fanzine with setting the whole thing in motion and also for giving him "a new lease of life".[citation needed]
Style
Music
The Selecter were "one of the key bands" of 2 tone music, the late 1970s and early 1980s genre that mixed ska with the energy of punk rock.[17] The band's debut album, Too Much Pressure (1980), exemplifies the band's 2 Tone sound, mixing ska, reggae and punk rock styles.[18] Adding influences from new wave music, the record's follow-up Celebrate the Bullet (1981) was broodier than its predecessor,[19] featuring a less intense, slower sound.[20] After reuniting in the 1990s, the band's third studio album The Happy Album (1994) saw a stylistic deviation; while keeping ska as its base, the record explored contemporary rhythms and influences from genres such as hip hop and flourishes of orchestral music, incorporating sampling while occasionally slowing down to a reggae tempo.[21] One critic said the record is "roughly parallel for the memory of 2- Tone what Big Audio Dynamite did for punk."[21]
The band scaled back somewhat with its follow-up album Pucker! in 1995, which displayed a new blend of ska with elements from new wave and power pop, as well as other atypical touches such as, on one song, pedal steel guitar.[21]Cruel Britainnia, the band's fifth studio album from 1998, was heralded as a return to the band's 2 tone sound, and The Trojan Songbook series of cover albums from the turn of the century were predominately in a reggae style.[22] The band also recorded several acoustic albums, namely Unplugged for the Rude Boy Generation (2002) and Requiem for a Black Soul (2004), which brought "ska into the fashionable acoustic field."[22] When the band reunited in the 2010s, they used ska and reggae rhythms on Made in Britain (2011)[18] and its follow-up String Theory (2013).
Lyrics
The band were among the few racially and sexually mixed 2 tone bands and Black's lyrics, in a similar vein to several other 2 tone bands, covered numerous social ills, including sexism and most prominently racism.[17] While Too Much Pressure (1980) featured politically conscious lyrics,[18]Celebrate the Bullet (1981) was darker and tenser, likewise featuring racial and social issues as themes while also concerning itself with "cold war paranoia and fear for the future."[23]The Happy Album (1994) was similarly "burdened by a social conscience,"[21] whereas the lyrics on Pucker! (1995) were generally more uncharacteristically sunny and lightweight.[21] With Made in Britain in 2011, the band "wanted to have a conversation basically about where The Selecter was at, where we were at in relation to 2 Tone."[24] The record largely addressed the advent of multiculturalism and the legacy of 2 tone's equality message in the 21st century.[25] For String Theory (2013), the band extended from these themes, observing how people "celebrate their differences more than they celebrate the things that unite us," and named the album in relation to the string theory being a metaphor for connection between humans.[26]
The Specials, also known as The Special AKA, were an English 2 tone and ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry. After some early changes, the first stable lineup of the group consisted of Terry Hall and Neville Staple on vocals, Jerry Dammers on keyboards, Lynval Golding and Roddy Radiation on guitars, Horace Panter on bass, John Bradbury on drums, and Dick Cuthell and Rico Rodriguez on horns. The band wore mod-style "1960s period rude boy outfits ". Their music combines the danceable rhythms of ska and rocksteady with the energy and attitude of punk. Lyrically, their work presented overt political and social commentary.
Two-tone or 2 tone, also known as ska-rock and ska revival, is a genre of British popular music of the late 1970s and early 1980s that fused traditional Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae music with elements of punk rock and new wave music. Its name derives from 2 Tone Records, a record label founded in 1979 by Jerry Dammers of the Specials, and references a desire to transcend and defuse racial tensions in Thatcher-era Britain: many two-tone groups, such as the Specials, the Selecter and the Beat, featured a mix of black, white, and multiracial people.
Jeremy David Hounsell Dammers GCOT is a British musician who was a founder, keyboard player and primary songwriter of the Coventry-based ska band the Specials and later the Spatial AKA Orchestra. Through his foundation of the record label Two Tone, his work blending political lyrics and punk with Jamaican music, and his incorporation of 1960s retro clothing, Dammers is a pivotal figure of the ska revival. He has also been acknowledged in his work for racial unity.
Roddy Radiation is an English musician who played lead guitar for The Specials, as well as many rockabilly bands such as the Bonediggers and the Tearjerkers. He wrote the Specials favourites "Concrete Jungle", "Rat Race" and "Hey, Little Rich Girl", later covered by Amy Winehouse. Currently, Byers leads The Skabilly Rebels, a band that mixes ska rhythms with rockabilly.
Neville Eugenton Staple, sometimes credited as Neville Staples, is a Jamaican-born English singer, known for his work with the 2 Tone ska band the Specials, the pop group Fun Boy Three, as well as with his own group, the Neville Staple Band. He also performed with Ranking Roger in the supergroup Special Beat.
The Beat are a British band formed in Birmingham, England, in 1978. Their music fuses Latin, ska, pop, soul, reggae and punk rock.
Horace Panter also known as Sir Horace Gentleman, is the bassist for the British 2 Tone ska band The Specials.
Too Much Pressure is the debut studio album by English 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter. After the band's official formation in 1979 in Coventry, following the release of a song entitled "The Selecter" by an unofficial incarnation of the band, the band's hit single "On My Radio" prompted their labels 2 Tone and Chrysalis to ask the band to record their debut album. Working with producer Errol Ross, the Selecter recorded the album at Horizon Studios over two months. The album contains original material, mostly composed by band founder and guitarist Neol Davies, as well as numerous ska and reggae cover versions, in a similar fashion to the Specials' debut album.
Celebrate the Bullet is the second studio album by English 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter, released on 27 February 1981 by Chrysalis Records after the band had left the 2 Tone label. The album was recorded with producer Roger Lomas, who plays bass on some songs, and frequently seeks a more slow, eclectic sound, with new wave influences. Band members Charley Anderson and Desmond Brown, uncomfortable with the new approach, left the band during production and after the release of 1980 single "The Whisper" to form the band the People. They were replaced by keyboardist, James Mackie, and bass player, Adam Williams. Ian Dury and the Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy played bass on the title-track and "Washed Up and Left for Dead".
Pucker! is the fourth album by English 2 Tone ska revival band The Selecter, released in 1995 on Dojo Music in the United Kingdom as, under the name Hairspray, on Triple X Records in the United States. Following the band's reinvented sound on their previous album, The Happy Album (1994), the band recorded Pucker! in 1995 with help from guitarist Paul Seacroft. Establishing a new direction, the album mostly sees the band establishing a "mild-mannered" version of its ska sound while incorporating elements from new wave and power pop, leading to an uncharacteristic "bizarre blend of elements" which stretched the band's horizons. The album's lyrics are also unusually sunny and lightweight.
Skinhead Girl is a cover album by The Specials Released in 2000. After a project backing ska legend Desmond Dekker on his 1993 album King of Kings, producer Roger Lomas brought the band back into the studio to record covers of popular Trojan Records songs. Band member Lynval Golding left two weeks before the sessions, and was replaced by former Selecter guitarist Neol Davies on rhythm guitar.
"On My Radio" is a song by English 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter, released as a single on 5 October 1979 by 2 Tone Records. It peaked at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart, remaining on the chart for nine weeks, and became their most successful single.
Belinda Magnus, better known as Pauline Black, is an English singer, actress and author.
The Rough Kutz are a third wave ska band from Stoke-on-Trent, England.
Neol Edward Davies is an English musician, composer and original member and founder of 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter.
"Three Minute Hero" is a song and single written by Neol Davies and performed by the English 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter. It is the opening track on side one of their debut studio album Too Much Pressure. Released in 1980, the song reached number 16 on the UK charts, staying there for six weeks.
"Gangsters" is the first single by the English ska group The Specials.
The Happy Album is the third studio album by British ska band The Selecter, and their first following their reformation in 1990, released in 1994 on Demon Music in the UK and Triple X in the US. Their first album of new material in thirteen years, The Happy Album follows their successful live reunion tour of 1991 and its respective live album document, Out in the Streets (1992). Founding member Neol Davies left the band after Out in the Streets while fellow original member Arthur "Gaps" Hendrickson rejoined the band. The new line-up recorded The Happy Album with production from Aswad guitarist Jimmy "Seyna" Haynes
Made in Britain is the twelfth studio album by English ska and 2 Tone band The Selecter, released in 2011 on Vocaphone Records, their first album for the label. After reforming in 2010, Made in Britain was conceived after a PR company requested lead vocalist Pauline Black record a new album with the Selecter to coincide with her autobiography Black by Design. Black took the idea to record new material with the band seriously. The album was written and recorded quickly with production from several of the band members, with the experience pleasing band members.
String Theory is the thirteenth studio album by English ska band The Selecter, released on Vocaphone Music in 2013. After the discussion of multiculturalism and the racial equality of 2 Tone music on the band's previous album Made in Britain (2011), String Theory built upon on and extends from those themes, addressing contemporary issues in the United Kingdom such as riots and racial issues, backing the music with ska and reggae rhythms. The band took influence from the string theory which suggests humans are made of the same particles, and how it can be a metaphor for a connection between all human beings.
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