Pauline Black was seen singing Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs in Coventry folk clubs and recruited by a local reggae band. Then converted to ska and joined the Selecter - back on tour this summer and with a box-set of live recordings, ‘The Selecter at the BBC’. She looks back here at …

… their first gig with Madness for 47 years in Brighton – “very red fezzy!”

… her Sliding Doors moment supporting Bert Jansch

... discovering the Pioneers, Prince Buster and the Skatalites through white skinheads in Coventry

… the famous 2-Tone Brighton Beach photo of 1979 with the Specials and Madness

… “there were three looks for a black girl singer back then – Tina Turner, the I-Threes Earth Mother … or invent something new. So I invented the Rude Girl”

… seeing Pentangle playing the theme from ‘Take Three Girls’ in 1971 and then the MC5 and Arthur Brown with his “papier-mâché brain”

… training as a bio-chemist and radiographer – “there isn’t an orifice I haven’t inspected”

… the first Selecter gig – “flares, safari suits and me in pink spandex trousers like the girls from Chic”

.. how Jerry Dammers created the cartoon 2-Tone look and the night radio played the first single

… and “a black man with a gun and a stage invasion” on the BBC’s Pebble Mill.

Order copies of ‘The Selecter At The BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979-1981’ here: https://theselecter.lnk.to/AtTheBBC

Tickets here: https://theselecter.net/live-dates/

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