Various incarnations of The Selecter have released live albums over their 38+ year existence (in particular, check out 1992's scorching Out On The Streets with Neol Davies, Pauline Black, Nick Welsh, and Martin Stewart--or 2015's positively amazing Access All Areas, which was recorded in 1980 with all of the original members of The Selecter--read our review of it here) and Live at the Roundhouse captures the current (and really great) iteration of the band in top form, performing stellar tracks from their last few albums (String Theory, Subculture, Daylight), as well as their old 2 Tone chart hits and fan favorites.
Live at the Roundhouse is a real treat to listen to and watch, as it was expertly recorded and videotaped in London on October 6, 2017 before a packed house during a co-headling tour of the UK with The Beat featuring Ranking Roger (they've also released an album/DVD from that night). The Selecter's live versions of "Frontline," "Breakdown," "Daylight," "Remember Me," "The Big Badoof," and "The Avengers Theme" (one of the best TV show themes of all time--and a terrific choice to cover) are of primary interest here, as the other cuts have been recorded live many times over the years. All, of course, sound fantastic. ("Breakdown" expresses outrage at the extrajudicial police killings in the US and UK of unarmed black people, which are a horrific symptom of entrenched racism, societal dysfunction, and purposeful neglect--and "Frontline" calls for everyone to disengage a bit from social media and reconnect with the world in order to take action against injustice; both are extraordinarily powerful and catchy protest songs for our increasingly troubled times.)
In addition to documenting the entire concert, the Live at the Roundhouse DVD features a nice, if a bit scattershot, interview with Pauline Black and Arthur "Gaps" Hendrickson that also manages to highlight their charming, decades-long friendship and easy rapport with each other (Pauline: "I'll always make music until I drop off my perch, I think." Gaps: "I'm in, oh yeah, I'm in. You know, I can't see me doing anything else. You know, here I am. I'm free!" Pauline: "We're too old to go back to our day jobs!").
Ever since this iteration of The Selecter with Pauline Black, Arthur "Gaps" Hendrickson, and (secret weapon) Neil Pyzer began releasing new music, starting with Made in Britain in 2011, each subsequent record has topped the last. Their most recent release, 2015's excellent Subculture (read our ridiculously in-depth review of it), has been surpassed by The Selecter's latest entry Daylight, which may be this band's best record yet.
As one would expect from a 2 Tone act, there are uncompromisingly political songs addressing social, economic, and racial injustice that stimulate one's mind, conscience, and body. The wildly catchy "Frontline" is critical of our smartphone/social media addicted society, where we have significantly more access to (dis)information and each other than ever before in the history of humanity, but actually seem to be increasingly disconnected, numb, and apathetic as a result ("My mind is full/my heart is empty...I need to believe/In something more/Than I wanna stay free"). "Frontline's" reference to the extrajudicial/racial police killing of Eric Garner makes it also a call for real-world, in-person protesting and organizing for justice and change--not Facebook posts that float without impact in the ether of cyberspace. "Taking Back Control" is a potent, fists-in-the-air call to action to counter the rise of ethno-nationalism and right-wing extremism in the UK in the wake of Brexit, while the "arc of history bends towards justice"-themed "Pass the Power" posits that it's long past time that it be given over to "the righteous side." There is great and uncommon empathy expressed in "Paved with Cold" (where the capitalist dream is a nightmare for many), which is sung from the point of view of a lonely homeless person simply trying to survive the winter in a cruel and heartless land ("Spikes where I want to sit...No money is my only crime"). Gaps takes the mic to sing about impending mortality on the Latin ska track "Remember Me" (half its lyrics are in Spanish) and to decry the futility and waste of never-ending war in "Mayhem" (which sounds like it has some Jackie Mittoo/Sound Dimension "Full Up" DNA embedded in there).
But not all is grim in The Selecter's world, Daylight also contains some phenomenally upbeat tunes. "Daylight" is a 1960s AM pop radio ska/soul gem (with Jools Holland on piano!) about the bliss of being in alive and in love. There's an incredibly sprightly and laid-back reggae groove in "Big Badoof," as Pauline and Gaps urge you to keep your chin up, no matter what comes your way. And perhaps the most extraordinary song on the album is "Things Fall Apart," a joyous, Highlife-tinged ska track about black self-empowerment and interdependence--in addition to being an unequivocal demand for equal rights ("I am the master/The master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul/I can make the centre hold...I'll be/Right here behind you/In whatever you do/I won't desert you...If you take/You'd better give me something back!"). "Things Fall Apart" is a reference to Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's novel of the same name about the pernicious effects of British colonialism from an African perspective--and the track's lyrics also relate to books by James Baldwin ("Go Tell It On The Mountain" and "I Am Not Your Negro," an unfinished book about Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.) and Alex Haley ("Roots"), all of which explore African-American identity, history, and experience in an horrifically racist nation.
Buoyed by an absolutely winning set of songs, this version of The Selecter has never sounded more relaxed and self-assured--Daylight is a triumph!
You can now pre-orderThe Selecter's new album Daylight (the fourth from this iteration of the band), which will be released on October 6, 2017 on CD, heavyweight vinyl, and digital download. As we previously noted, the band already has issued the first digital single off the record, "Frontline" (see the official music video below).
The quality control of The Selecter's recent albums has been undeniably high (see our review of Subculture), so my gut feeling (reinforced by the amazing "Frontline") is that this one will be a keeper, as well. (I've pre-ordered the vinyl, which will may be hard to find in the US...)
I recently brought along the Subculture CD for a long car trip, since I had many uninterrupted hours to listen to--and digest--this album. From the very first play, I was struck by how many strong, catchy, and pointedly political songs there are on Subculture (apart from two covers, all songs are credited to Black, Hendrickson, and Neil Pyzer--who plays sax, guitar, and keys; recorded and produced the album; and is a former member of post-punk band Spear of Destiny; it also should be noted that the great Prince Fatty did a stellar job of mixing everything). While The Selecter with Black and Hendrickson is clearly rooted in the sound, vision, and social consciousness of the original 2 Tone version of the band, their new songs aren't attempting to be a rehash or clever facsimile of the band's classic sound captured on Too Much Pressure (which, apart from several excellent vintage ska covers and two originals by Black, was very much shaped by Neol Davies' stellar songwriting). The better reference point is Celebrate the Bullet, where The Selecter's sound expanded to incorporate more elements of reggae and rock, as well as material from additional songwriters within the group (on Celebrate the Bullet, Davies wrote five of the tracks, Black composed three, Compton Amanor penned two, and Gaps one).
As the Banksy-like street art cover suggests, Subculture is about presenting the alternative viewpoint in contrast to whatever is being propagated in the mainstream. On one level, the album acknowledges (and celebrates!) ska music's dogged and less-than-glorious place in the pop culture hierarchy. But it also is very concerned with issues of political, social, and economic injustice. Many of the songs on Subculture are written from the point-of-view of the wronged and oppressed--groups of people whose interests are subordinate to those of the dominant society. Inspired by appalling incidents in both the UK and the US, "Breakdown," the most politically potent song on the album, posits that the relatively frequent unjustified police killings of mostly unarmed (and sometimes handcuffed) black boys, men, and women are a horrific symptom of entrenched racism, societal dysfunction, and purposeful neglect. The failure of government and institutions at all levels to successfully address long-standing issues afflicting disadvantaged communities of color--substandard schools and public services; job and housing discrimination; limited access to health care; grinding and inescapable poverty; crime/addiction; and much more--has created neighborhoods, towns, even entire cities, full of people that have been effectively abandoned/written off. They are "others" apart from the rest of society, who--as the conservative/Ayn Rand-ian narrative goes--through some moral failing/deficit are responsible for their own lot in life (the rich are all self-made men, who achieved great success without anyone else's help, right?)--and, as such, society isn't responsible for their well-being. (It probably doesn't help that the people in these poor communities of color don't have the power to influence or flat out rig the system for their own benefit.)
In these neighborhoods, cities, and towns, nothing functions as it should, including the law and those who are entrusted to enforce it.
"I know a place
Where after six it's shut down
Where police just a drive around
But people just go on with their lives
The same
Stranger beware
The taxicab won't take you there
And he will charge you double fare
He says that there is danger down there
There's going to be a breakdown
A cultural breakdown
A social breakdown
In the eyes of the law
There's going to be a breakdown
A cultural breakdown
A social breakdown
We've heard it all before
Young souls rebel
They need to make a quick buck
They don't rely on nobody's luck
But people just go on with their lives
The same
Out on the streets
People sending dangerous tweets
For five minutes of dubious fame
So, tell me who is to blame?"
After Pauline Black sings, "Some things are so wrong that nothing ever makes it right," Gaps Hendrickson recites a devastatingly long list of black boys, women, and men unjustifiably killed by police in the UK and USA, starting with Stephen Lawrence and ending with Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice (though there seems to be an ever-growing number of new names to add to this list...). "Breakdown" is a "Ghost Town" of sorts for the 21st century (it borrows just enough of "Ghost Town's" structure and snippets of its melody and horn lines to reinforce that notion) and like that iconic song, it reflects the great inequity, fractiousness, and despair of our times.
[I love how this song references "Out in the Streets," which Neol Davies states in the liner notes for Access All Areas was about being young and having nothing to do after the pubs closed at 11:00 pm: "You find yourself driving around the ring road and end up somewhere you wish you hadn't. It was a comment on failed nights out in a city like Coventry--out on the streets again."]
It's fitting that the striking "Karma" follows "Breakdown," as they're of a piece. "Karma" zeros in on individual people's bad decisions instead of society's, though the people in the song (a John and a prostitute, a neglected kid and his drug-addicted mother, an abused woman and her abuser, the rich few and host of impoverished people) are stuck inflicting pain and unhappiness on each other (trapped in the neighborhood, town, or city of "Breakdown"), in an unbroken circle of misery (refrain: "And the world spins around/What goes around, round, round/Always comes back one day").
Could it really be that the last ska song to decry the grossly festering Israeli/Palestinian conflict was The Special AKA's "War Crimes" in 1982? With its sly reference to the Biblical tower of Babel myth in Genesis (early in human history, God thought that humanity--which only had one common language--had too much freedom and power, and were full of hubris, so he created and imposed many different languages on human beings, so they couldn't communicate easily with each other) and its cheeky alliterative pun, The Selecter's "Babble On" (...Babylon) expresses great outrage that the situation in Israel still hasn't be resolved after all these decades (two state solution, anyone?)--and that civilians continue to die on both sides: "I don't care what you say/I don't care who you pray to/You're killing innocents/You're killing innocents/Who cares whose god is greater/If there is one creator?" The song also implies that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict serves as proxy war between Christian and Islamic states and interests, which isn't too far off the mark.
The amazing, upbeat, should-be-a-single "Hit the Ground Running" offers encouragement to someone trying to earn a living on UK's "zero-hour contracts" (employees enter an insane agreement where they are essentially on-call all the time for their employer, who can give them anywhere between zero and 40 hours a week of work--talk about rigging the system to one's complete advantage!), while enduring the needlessly punitive bedroom tax (people receiving housing benefits in public housing can see their rent support reduced if it is determined they have "spare bedrooms").
Not all on Subculture is about bleak, seemingly intractable crises! There are many tracks about friendship and love. "It Never Worked Out" is Gaps Hendrickson's fantastic, melancholy, and regretful tune about all that he might be missing after the demise of a romantic relationship:
"Love was out to get me
I didn't know that
Yes, she treated me bad
I should have seen that
Wasted good, good times
Having good times
I didn't know then
What I know now
Life goes on and on
And we were living it up
Down life's happy road
We were giving it up
Been to lots of places
That I never seen
I didn't know then
What I know now
'Cos it never worked out
Yes, it never worked out
Oh, what life could be
Something keeps haunting me
Things I don't understand
Things I don't do now"
"Box Fresh" recognizes the enduring friendship and musical partnership between Black and Hendrickson, while "Open Goal" is about a couple whose relationship has devolved to the point where the man takes the woman completely for granted. The Selecter's cover of Patti Smith's and Bruce Springsteen's defiant classic rock love song "Because the Night" is given a brisk and pretty successful ska revamp here.
And there are other songs of hope, joy, and resilience, like "Walk the Walk" (whose horn line briefly quotes Dandy Livingston's "A Message to You, Rudy"), "Still I Rise" (written in tribute to Maya Angelou and her poem of the same name about being unbreakable in the face of all manner of oppression), Gap's "Stone Cold Sober" (presumably about successfully taking it one day at a time) and his extraordinary cover of Mr. Foundation's rude boy anthem "See Them A Come" ("Wicked dem come/But we nah run/We have no gun/So we nah run/Look how you get up every day/Saying prayers to the devil, I say/Should be like Cassius Clay/Steadfast strong and never run away/Through the hustlings and jugglings/You have to make a stance").
All in all, The Selecter's Subculture is an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable record that should please both graying 2 Tone fans and fresh, new, soon-to-be devotees. Like Madness (who themselves keep releasing brilliant new albums every few years!), they deserve extra points for resisting the lure of relying on nostalgia and doing the hard work of making something great and new.
What They're Saying About My Book "The Duff Guide to 2 Tone"
“An essential read…Stephen's eye for detail is incredible and his love for 2 Tone oozes from each page.” — Kevin Flowerdew, Do the Dog Skazine
“Written with a personal touch and with great passion about the bands and releases while giving a lot of emphasis to the lyrics, Stephen’s book is a great guiding hand to navigating your way to some great new music.” — Peter Walsh, 2-Tone.info
“It's some of the finest Madness analysis I've ever read.” —Donald Trull, Stateside Madness
“Steve's own story would make a great book, but instead he's written The Duff Guide to 2 Tone, a 250+ page collection of 2 Tone-related pieces from his blog. There are reviews of original pieces, but the book's real purpose is to show how the 2 Tone sound and—more importantly its ideals—carry on today...Get this book right away!" — Charles Benoit, Reggae Steady Ska
"...Shafer has definitely not forgotten how socially conscious issues were at the root of Ska even from the beginning. He makes certain to thread the political issues that motivated the development of Ska throughout his narrative; painting a picture that took both the oppressive political environments and the often ecstatic musical content into account. And in that, he nails down for me what the enduring pull of Ska was to its many fans. Was there ever a more upbeat dance music that combined its boundless energy with a push for progressive social values and calling truth to power?" —Post-Punk Monk
"...[The Duff Guide to 2 Tone is a] chatty, informative and knowledgeable work, one that you can either sit down and read or use as a reference source..." —Nik Skeat, Scootering Magazine
"During the reading of the book it is dangerous to have a screen open next to you with Discogs. I have found lots of ‘new music’ via the stories in The Duff Guide to 2 Tone which I must have." -- Peter Vrakking, Blue Beat & Ska
In the mail today, I received the first copy of my new paperback book The Duff Guide to 2 Tone --and am thrilled to announce that it is now...
About Your Duff Guide
Steve Shafer/The Duff Guide to Ska For most of the 1990s, I was the promotions, marketing, production guy for Moon Records (RIP). It was one of the best jobs I ever had. Seriously, I miss it badly. During 1999/2000, I ran 7 Wonders of the World Music, the first digital download-only ska label that was too ahead of the curve for its own good (RIP).
I filmed and edited this Toasters video for $2,500, which made its debut on MTV's 120 Minutes. I also put together these compilations for Moon: the first three Skarmageddons; Ska United: A Global Ska Sampler; Skank Down Under; This Are Moon Ska I, II, and III; and Moonshot!
Here's an old interview with Adam Monkey from Read Magazine that covers my days at Moon and 7 Wonders. I also did a somewhat more recent interview with Read Junk.
I've been interviewed about ska music and Moon Records for The New York Times, Heather Augustyn's "Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation," Aaron Carnes' "In Defense of Ska," Kenneth Partridge's "Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing," and Marc Wasserman's "Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History" (I also wrote the introductory chapter "1985: The Year American Ska Broke" for Wasserman's book).
And I'm the author of "The Duff Guide to 2 Tone," which can be ordered from Amazon--and is available in the US from Jump Up Records, and in Europe from the 2 Tone Village Shop (Coventry, UK), Champion Sound Records (Hull, UK), Aggroshop (Nijmegen, Netherlands), and Copasetic Mailorder (Hamburg, Germany). Plus, my book was on sale in the museum shop for the "2 Tone: Lives & Legacies" exhibition (May 28 - September 12, 2021), curated by Simon Reynolds, Cory Barrett, Pete Chambers, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike and Daniel Rachel, at the Herbert Art Gallery Museum in Coventry, UK.
I'm now working on my next book, "Calling All the Rude Boys: The Duff Guide to The Toasters, 1981-1992," to be published in 2023.
If you have a ska or reggae release that you'd like me to consider reviewing, please send an e-mail to Steve at duffguidetoska@gmail.com. You should know that I am old school and prefer music in tangible formats (plus I might use your music when I DJ ska events). I'd also appreciate any news or tips you may have about bands.
All reviews and interviews posted on The Duff Guide to Ska are copyrighted and are the sole property of Steve Shafer. Please contact me for permission to reproduce anything on this blog.
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Check out The Duff Guide to Ska Video Channel for footage of ska bands in action in clubs around NYC, as well as unusual and rare ska videos from the 90s! Bands featured include The Toasters, The Bluebeats, The Forthrights, Across the Aisle, The Caroloregians, The Moon Invaders, The Rudie Crew, Tip the Van, Hey Stranger, Beat Brigade, Bigger Thomas, King Chango, The Scofflaws, UB40, The Hard Times, Jah Love and the Valentinians, The Shifters, Rudies Don't Care, Big Audio Dynamite, Stranger Cole and Patsy with Crazy Baldhead, Queen P of Ocean 11, King Hammond, The Snails, King Django, Doomsday! The Ultimate Tribute to Mephiskapheles Consisting of Former Members of Mephiskapheles, Destroy Babylon, The Frightnrs, The Pandemics, Los Skarroneros, The Bullbuckers, The Scofflaws, The Reggay Lords, The Copacetics, Rude Boy George, Dave Hillyard and the Rocksteady 7, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, The Specials, Roddy Radiation and Lynval Golding, The Ladrones, Chris Murray, Radio Riddler, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, Astro, and Mickey Virtue, Barbicide, The Twilights, Bim Skala Bim featuring John Bunkley (Gangster Fun), The Pomps, and more!
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