Stop your messing around

 

Pauline Black. It’s official. I’m in love. Saw The Selecter live for the first time last week. You might think it’s thirty+ years too late, but really, it’s not. This is one slick outfit. They brought the house down. Having spent a lot of time lately ranting about the absence of fictional female heroes on our movie screens, it was nice to see a real-life one strutting around on a stage. Pauline Black. The voice of 2-Tone. Cuts a dash in a fedora. And takes no crap: she changed her surname from Vickers to Black so that people would have to call her black.

And as I looked on, and listened, and danced and sang, and laughed along with the crowd, I couldn’t help but take a little trip down memory lane to where ska and reggae smashed up against punk and a healthy dose of working class irreverence and created a peculiarly British sound. And an oh so stylish look. (Perhaps a little of the very British mod found its way in too.) I really don’t go in for patriotism, I’m not full of rose tinted affection for a Blighty that never existed, but if there’s anything that could at least make me feel glad to have been born British, glad even to have been born in the 70s, it could just be this sound. And if there’s something that can make me believe that, in the end, the harder they come, the harder they’ll fall it might just be this sound.

Come reminisce with me:

 

Have a laugh at this hilarious video (I’ve only just noticed that this is all filmed around my manor. It’s not Coventry…) Be amazed, or horrified, or enraged at how relevant this track sounds today:

 

OK, so there’s a theme brewing. Insert name of your choice:

 

I’ll leave you with Too Much Pressure. You know what happens when there’s too much pressure, don’t you? Eventually something explodes…

 

All videos linked from YouTube. None are my work. Thanks to all who posted them there. 

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