The Selecter: fancy meeting you here. America needs 2 Tone right now. Thank you for bringing it!!!
Pauline Black, The Selecter, Sacramento, 2017
The Selecter are from Coventry, England: I'm from Syston, Leicester, England. In Northern California terms, that's like saying: you're from Auburn, just up I-80: I'm from Sacramento. Really, really close on the scale of things. Like global things. And yet... where did I see them live, for the very first time??? Yes. Right here. In Sacramento. At the Memorial Auditorium, where they performed as support for Dropkick Murphys and Rancid.
They had the crowd dancing. I don't know how many of Sacramento's American punk fans knew about The Selecter before Saturday night, but they sure do now.
The Selecter, Sacramento
The Selecter play happy-sounding, get-up-and-dance music, but it always has a political attitude. The Selecter, one of the first bands on the 2 Tone label; ska, punk, reggae, calypso, rock, all in a musical and racial blender, creating some of the most recognizable and memorable music to come out of the UK. A music scene to the backdrop of big social issues; austere government under Thatcher; strife and poverty and strikes... and some bloody good music.
If you want to know about the British punk/ska movement in which The Selecter and the 2 Tone record label, (and Coventry and the East and West Midlands) fits, here's a very interesting documentary, which includes an interview with Pauline Black. Many of these bands are still recording, still touring, and if you are in the USA and love the music but don't know where it came from, this is for you (love the quote from Dave Wakeling of the Beat, "... it was as though we had set up a mobile sociology class that just had music in the back, while we discussed race relations!":
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