In the early autumn of 1979, an offbeat, infectious and highly-energetic song could be regularly heard over the English airwaves. With its driving, Motown-style backbeat, choppy guitar, chunky Hammond organ and strange, call-and-response chorus (partly made up of an eerie female falsetto vocal line) On My Radio, the debut single by UK ska-revivalist seven-piece The Selecter, stood out from a lot of what was being heard elsewhere… on the radio.
With a beautiful irony, it also criticised the repetitive nature and commercial pop programming of the very medium it was being played on: ‘It’s just the same old show on my radio,’ sang uber-stylish vocalist Pauline Black.
Aside from mocking the tedium of daytime radio playlists, its lyrics tell a story from the perspective of a woman whose boyfriend chooses to ignore her because he is obsessed with listening to the ‘red radio’ that she bought him:
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He liked to dance to it down in the streets
He said he loved me but he loved the beat
Formed in Coventry in 1979, the Selecter were made up of Pauline Black (vocals), who became a style icon thanks to her rude boy look (she was rarely seen without a pork pie or trilby hat and sharp-tailored boys’ suit) – Neol Davies (guitars), Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson (vocals), Compton Amanor (guitars), Desmond Brown (Hammond organ), Charley Anderson (bass) and Charley ‘H’ Bembridge (drums).
Along with the Specials and Madness, the Selecter were one of the key acts in the 2 Tone ska revival scene, which began in the late ‘70s and took Britain by storm over the next two years. A blend of Jamaican rhythms with pop melodies, a little punk aggression and a working-class attitude, 2 Tone’s socially-aware lyrics and presentation was a celebration of multi-racial creative unity.
Fronted by a woman, and with six black members and one who was white (Davies) the Selecter were ahead of their time. Their music and those of the other 2 Tone artists, appealed to disenfranchised teenagers facing economic hardship. It served as a riposte to those seeking to funnel people’s ire at each other, as opposed to the real structural issues in society.
“With the advent of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, everything went into a slump. Young people were looking for an out and for a very brief time, that out was 2 Tone,” Pauline Black tells us. “We burned very brightly for a very short period of time, but look what came out of it. And then along came the New Romantics…”
The Selecter were born when Jerry Dammers of Coventry band the Specials found himself short of a B-side for their 1979 debut single, Gangsters. Dammers asked local musician, Davies, if he could use The Selecter – an instrumental track Davies had written and recorded the year before with drummer John Bradbury, who went on to join the Specials.
“It was a kind of reggae track that was originally called Kingston Affair, but it became The Selecter when it was on the reverse side of Gangsters,” explains Black.
“When the Specials ran out of money recording Gangsters, Jerry Dammers rang up Neol and said, ‘You know Kingston Affair? Why don’t you put an offbeat ska rhythm on it and call it The Selecter?
“We came together in a strange way”, Pauline continues. “I think The Selecter [the song] was the first 2 Tone track John Peel ever played and he thought it was by the Specials, but Neol phoned him up and said, ‘Hey, mate; that’s not the Specials – it’s us – The Selecter,’ but there was no ‘us’ – it was just him and John Bradbury, who played drums on it, and a guy called Barry Jones, who worked in the sweet shop down the road from me, who played a trombone through a flange on it.”
After the track gained attention as a double A-side with Gangsters, Davies decided to put together a real group called ‘The Selecter’.
“If the Specials hadn’t have run out of money the whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened,” says Black.
The Selecter’s debut single proper, On My Radio, went on to sell over 240,000 copies and become a Top Ten UK hit [number 8] following its release on 5 October 1979. An incredible start – but how did the band get to that point from such happenstance beginnings?
The track began as an Elvis Costello-inspired song written by Davies for his earlier band, The Transposed Men. Speaking to Uncut magazine in 2021, he recalled: “Writing it took a few weeks. I wouldn’t say I thought it would be a hit, but I thought it was different and that I’d done well. It felt more ‘me’ than earlier songs I’d written.
“We’d played On My Radio in my old band, The Transposed Men. I’d had a burst of songwriting activity in the winter of 1977 into 1978. I’d been very influenced by Elvis Costello, and it opened up a new way of writing. On My Radio, along with a couple of other songs in the Selecter catalogue, was written in that period. It didn’t come immediately; I spent weeks playing with the ideas and lyrics. The chorus was in quite a strange seven-beat cycle, and I was really intrigued by the way it worked.”
He added: “The verse is just two chords – very simple. I was playing it one day while a friend was in the flat, deep in conversation with my wife, and I noticed them both tapping their feet. I thought, ‘OK, that obviously works.’ I built the verse and lyrics around those two chords, and it flowed into another idea I’d been working on. Then the chorus line came out. The whole thing was really catchy. It represented a step forward in my songwriting.”
Unusually, the chorus has a 7/4 time signature rather than the more standard 4/4. There was something about this new idea, and it became part of the fledgling Selecter’s live set early on.
“Jerry Dammers had signed a deal with Chrysalis for the 2 Tone label, and he could give £1,000 to a band of his choice if they wanted to record on that label. Obviously, we did, so we got £1,000 and we were sent to the studio to record three tracks,” explains Black.
But when the band went into Horizon Studios in Coventry – a converted stable opposite the city’s station – with producer Roger Lomas to record the trio of songs, On My Radio wasn’t initially in the running. Lomas, however, recognised its hit potential after seeing them play it live shortly before the sessions. Amazed, Roger urged the band to record it.
“I heard them supporting The Ruts and one track stood out a mile: On My Radio,” Lomas told The Guardian. “But when we got in the studio, I asked them to run through their songs to warm up – and there was no sign of it. I said, ‘Where’s that great song you did the other night?’ They told me they didn’t want it as a single because it sounded ‘like a Eurovision entry’. There was a standoff. Eventually, I persuaded them to record three songs and let the record company choose the single. They instantly picked On My Radio.”
Says Black: “Chrysalis pricked up their ears and thought, ‘Oh, it’s got radio in the title and it’s quite up-tempo and radio-friendly – we can get that off and running.’”
Ironically, the anti-radio sentiment of the song (‘It’s just the same old show on my radio’) fell on deaf ears when it came to DJs and radio playlist programmers, who wholeheartedly embraced the track, seemingly oblivious to the criticism directed their way by the lyric.
“In those days, DJs were of the Smashie and Nicey variety – they never bothered to check the lyrics. It was the dream of every single band to be played on the radio, and we were no exception to that,” says Black. “It’s a strange little song – even for a ska song. It has a different kind of rhythm, it’s mixed up with other things, and it has a woman singing on it.”
We ask Black to share her memories of recording On My Radio at Horizon: “The studio was in an old goods yard, up these vertiginous stairs that you had to climb with a Hammond organ and a Leslie cabinet,” she recalls.
“It wasn’t ideal, but the Specials had recorded their first album there with Elvis Costello [as producer], so in Coventry at the time it was the place to go. All kinds of bands recorded there, including Mo-dettes and The Bodysnatchers. It was my first time in a studio, so I didn’t know what to expect or what on earth we were doing. It was strange, but Roger Lomas made it much easier. He was very down-to-earth and knew Neol well because they’d recorded together before. I enjoyed that first session.”
Using a 16-track setup, the band worked with Lomas, in-house engineer Kim Holmes and tape-op Moose to record the three songs over three days: Street Feeling, Too Much Pressure (later the title track of their debut album) and On My Radio. Working through the night, they arranged, recorded and mixed all three tracks.
“Everybody worked late in those days – you had to get people out of bed… It’s not like now – it was much more organic,” says Black.
Speaking to The Guardian, Lomas recalled: “Pauline had never been in a studio before but got the vocal right on the first take. I asked her to do it again anyway and she sang it identically, so I used one vocal in the right channel and the other in the left, which gave it a really unusual sound.”
Pauline tells us: “That was Roger’s schtick – the double track – and it gives it that weird kind of vibe. The song got played on Roundtable [BBC radio show] at the time and Kate Bush was the person who reviewed it. She was quite taken with it – she had Wuthering Heights out, with her singing [she does a wailing Kate Bush impression], ‘Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy…’ and there’s me singing (she sings), ‘On my radio.’ It must’ve been something in the air because Lena Lovich did it on Lucky Number too – we were all yodelling at that time.”
The falsetto chorus melody is supposedly similar to the song of a blackbird – although Pauline thinks that was some kind of subconscious influence: “Early on, I used to hear it when I was walking down the street and I’d think someone was taking the piss, because, occasionally, in Coventry, people would walk past me and sing On My Radio but, no, it was a blackbird singing on a rooftop,” says Black. “I don’t know whether things like that go in subliminally and then come out as a song.”
As well as being unusual compositionally, On My Radio is bursting with infectious energy, from its opening drum pattern, by Charley ‘H’ Bembridge, to its magnificent Hammond riffs and solo by Desmond Brown.
“There have been various iterations of The Selecter since the original band, but that drum intro is truly original,” Black tells us. “That’s all down to Charley ‘H’ Bembridge, who plays with us now – hardly anyone else can play it convincingly. We had a drummer, who shall remain nameless, who did an entire tour with us in the ‘90s, and I don’t think he got it correct once. We even had ‘Brad’ [John ‘Brad’ Bradbury] from the Specials play with us during a fallow time for them. He was a brilliant drummer, but he could only play in the style of the Specials, so he couldn’t nail it either. ‘H’ just sits down at his kit and off he goes.”
Even though On My Radio was a big hit and effectively launched The Selecter’s career, oddly, the band chose not to include the song on their debut album, Too Much Pressure, which was released in February 1980.
“It was completely stupid of us,” reflects Black. “Nowadays, nobody in their right mind would put out an album without the lead single on it, but only us… We were socially-aware, leftie and a little bit political… We thought all people should get value for money – they’d bought the single, so here’s the album. On My Radio and Too Much Pressure [the song] was a double A-side, but they [radio] chose to play On My Radio.”
Talking about the impact of On My Radio, Lomas told The Guardian: “As 2 Tone stormed the nation, I was asked to produce all these other ska bands: Bad Manners, The Bodysnatchers, and so on. I was always having to go along to Top of the Pops with them. I must have gone about 30 times. But I was a pop and rock man, really. I never much liked ska. On My Radio went on to sell over 240,000 copies. From the moment I heard it, I knew it was a hit.”
The day before The Selecter signed to Chrysalis / 2 Tone, they recorded their first Peel Session at Maida Vale. For the first time ever all their BBC recordings are now available together on a new album, At The BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979-1981, which is released in August this year, as a 3LP vinyl box set / 2CD and Blu-ray.
“It’s absolutely wonderful that anyone wants to hear it after 47 years and I’m eternally grateful,” says Black. “It’s great to dig these things out. When we first went to Maida Vale, we didn’t know what we were walking into. You had to walk through all these corridors to get to where John Peel did his sessions – he was our champion – but [in the other studios] there were conductors and people tuning up their violins and cellos, and us tramping through.
“People were looking at us and thinking, ‘God – the BBC’s gone downhill…’ In those days, they weren’t used to seeing people there who were involved with reggae and had black faces. It was probably fine if you were Marvin Gaye, but we were a step too far. And the smell of wacky baccy drifting outside was a step too far as well!”
The Blu-ray version of the new BBC compilation album includes the footage of the band’s debut Top of the Pops appearance from October 18, 1979, when they played On My Radio. So, how did Black cope with overnight fame from appearing on national TV? Did she embrace it?
“Kids used to come and knock on my door – my husband would answer it, and they’d say: ‘Is Pauline there?’ They also said: ‘We thought you would live in a castle because you’ve been on the telly,’” she says. “The two things didn’t equate – that you could be on Top of the Pops but still living in a house…”
On My Radio is still a big part of The Selecter’s current live shows – audiences expect to hear it. “It would be a bit churlish not to do it, wouldn’t it?” says Black. “I don’t have a problem with it and it’s a really good song – it’s weird and off its trolley, but it goes down anywhere, people love it and everybody knows it.”
A few years ago, the song oddly cropped up in a television advert for Virgin Money. “It’s been used a few times – but I can remember there being a pigeon dressed up in a pork pie hat…” says Black.
Surely it should’ve been a blackbird singing it?
“It should’ve been, but, hey, did anyone ask us? No.”
The Selecter’s At The BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979 – 1981 is released on Aug 28. For live dates visit the band’s official website.
