On My Radio – The Selecter (1979)

Description

Additional information about this, The Selecter vinyl art.

The Selecter – The Artist

The Selecter are a 2 Tone ska revival band from Coventry, England, formed in mid-1979. The Selecter featured a diverse line-up, both in terms of race and gender, initially consisting of Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson and Pauline Black on lead vocals, Neol Davies and Compton Amanor on guitar, Desmond Brown on Hammond organ, Charley ‘H’ Bembridge on drums, and Charley Anderson on bass. The band’s name is based on the term “selector”, which is a Jamaican word for disc jockey. The band were one of the most successful ska bands of the 2 Tone era, notching up several top forty singles in the British charts. Having co-released the first 2 Tone Ska single with The Specials, they are considered one of the founding acts of the movement. Though highly influential, the original lineup only remained together for a year, and even with replacement players the band only continued until breaking up in 1981.

On My Radio – The Song

‘On My Radio’ is  a song by English 2 tone ska revival band the Selecter, released as a single on 5 October 1979 by 2 Tone Records. It peaked at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart, remaining on the chart for nine weeks, and became their most successful single. “On My Radio” was originally written by Neol Davies whilst a member of another band, the Transposed Men, before the Selecter had been formed. “On My Radio” criticises radio as seen with the lyric “It’s just the same old show on my radio”, but also jokes at the expense of radio that the singer’s lover prefers to listen to the radio than to them.

The Vintage Portable Transistor Radio – The Shape

This record has been modelled into a vintage portable transistor radio. A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following the invention of the transistor in 1947—which revolutionised the field of consumer electronics by introducing small but powerful, convenient hand-held devices. The mass-market success of the smaller and cheaper radios, led to the transistor radio becoming the most popular electronic communication device of the 1960s and 1970s. Transistor radios are still commonly used as car radios. Billions of transistor radios are estimated to have been sold worldwide between the 1950s and 2012. The pocket size of transistor radios sparked a change in popular music listening habits, allowing people to listen to music anywhere they went. Beginning around 1980, however, cheap AM transistor radios were superseded initially by the boombox and the Sony Walkman, and later on by digitally-based devices with higher audio quality such as portable CD players, personal audio players, MP3 players and (eventually) by smartphones, many of which contain FM radios.[

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