Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
No matter how many years go by, nothing ever really ever seems to change at all. No matter how hard you try to see the difference, time has not erased any of the anxiety or difficulties that affect ordinary lives.
However, sometimes you can’t have enough of Too Much Pressure though and with ever graceful Pauline Black and The Selecter making their way to Liverpool to celebrate the bands 35th anniversary, the pressure is absorbed, danced too, sang with great gusto and with an abandon that you would expect as perhaps arguably the greatest Ska band of the period rolled back the years and showed that class is always permanent.
When the band supported John Lydon’s P.I.L. in 2013, there were perhaps a few taken by surprise by the talent that oozed from the stage, the sheer joy of performance that rebounded off every wall that encases the music at the 02 Academy, just a few months on and the music has intensified, the band more eager, almost champing at the bit, to make sure all who attended were dancing to a beat that never gets old and always brings a smile to the face.
It doesn’t seem five minutes since The Selecter made their way out of the Midlands city of Coventry and bounded into the nation’s conscious but time has a habit of sneaking around unawares in the background, of making us forget that what made a country or a set of people and the suffering they endured somehow comes round once again. The Selecter though are survivors and the music has defied time with two well-placed fingers thrust up against establishment faces whilst gently whispering into the ears that all they need to do is let the music take them away, to listen and not to let the world descend into the chaos and bitterness that tore the country in half and threatens to once again.
As with all anniversaries, there has to be an element of a party atmosphere and the album Too Much Pressure provided that back drop with the album being played in its entirety. Too the audience inside the Academy, this was a night of bliss, the floorboards being scuffed and trampled upon to the point where some places you had to wonder just exactly would have worn anything but sensible shoes or trainers for the up tempo beat.
With tracks such as Three Minute Hero, They Make Me Mad, the brilliant Missing Words, Murder, Black and Blue and Monty Norman’s outstanding James Bond theme being the kind of treatment that you can only say it was a true honour to hear, there would have been nobody leaving the venue into the cold March air that wasn’t enthused by the night’s proceedings.
If you are going to party, then party hard, sweat like there is no tomorrow and above all go out with a smile upon your face, and that is exactly what the band did. The instruments worked overtime, Pauline Black looked as if time truly had stopped and the vision before the crowd was one a young woman giving tremendous attitude to a country that was in danger of becoming a cultural desert and tracks such as A Prince Amongst Men, Celebrate The Bullet and the classic On My Radio were greeted with a giant music hug by all.
There is only one way to finish a gig of such epic music proportions and with the tracks Too Much Pressure and 667 (The Neighbour of the Beast), the high got higher, the vibe that little more impressive and as the crowd battled their way out of the Academy and merged with the audience who had been in the other part of the venue, the broad smile on all The Selecter fan’s faces said it all, they had seen a true blockbuster in action.
A gig that you just had to be at!
Ian D. Hall