ICONIC ska band The Selecter are celebrating their 35th anniversary with an extensive UK tour, performing their seminal debut album ‘Too Much Pressure’ in its entirety.
 

Released on the legendary 2-Tone label – started by Jerry Dammers of the Specials - ‘Too Much Pressure’ was a Top 5 selling album featuring a host of timeless classics, including ‘Three Minute Hero’, ‘Missing Words’ and of course ‘Too Much Pressure’.
 

Frontwoman and ‘First Lady of Ska’ Pauline Black, said: “For our 35th anniversary we thought we’d go back to basics and do our debut album because we thought it would be good for us to see where we have come from and where we are now.
 

“Quite a few of the songs we haven’t done in a long time so you do look at them afresh and remember your younger self.
 

“Because it’s our first album, all of us were novices coming into the business and they were just songs to us – we didn’t expect that it was going to sell so many copies.”
 

Still as outspoken and politically articulate as ever, The Selecter are tied to, and proud of, their past, to the acknowledgement of 2-Tone and all that it meant to their fans and the wider music community.
 

The 2-Tone sound was developed in the late 1970s by young musicians in the West Midlands who had grown up listening 1960s Jamaican music and developed their own sound by fusing ska, reggae and rocksteady with elements of punk and new wave.
 

On why The Selecter has such an enduring appeal, Pauline credits their message of multiculturalism which, she says, ‘is just as relevant today – you only have to look at the news to see racism is still rife’.
 

“When the band started we all had tremendous energy and drive and we were all of a certain mind with regards to what was happening in this country.”
 

The show will also feature an extended encore of hits from their back catalogue, including timeless debut 1979 hit, ‘On My Radio’, up to this year’s critically acclaimed ‘String Theory’.
 

The Selecter play at The Brickyard, Carlisle, on March 28.