Back in August Mary had picked up some tickets for The English Beat (along with a sweet Ryan Adams poster) for our one-year anniversary (the paper anniversary). At the time, October 10th seemed really far out. Now let’s fast forward to last Friday…
It’s true that Dave Wakeling is the only original member of the band on this tour, but that doesn’t mean the band he is playing with doesn’t know how to play some great 2 Tone Ska.
This was one of the most fun shows I have been to in a while for two reasons:
- The band was awesomely entertaining
- It gave Mary and me a glimpse of what a Saturday night out with a sitter at home is like
For the first part: If you aren’t a fan of the English Beat, I guarantee you still would have known at least half of the songs they played. And with all the energy Dave and the band were putting into the songs, you would have no idea that he had been playing some of them for nearly 30 years.
A big surprise of the night came when Dave brought out a guest on stage: Lynval Golding from the Specials (who now lives in Seattle).
Between the English Beat songs, the General Public songs, and the cover (of a cover) of a Specials song - the whole crowd was dancing and skanking for the entire two-hour set.
On to part two, the sitter at home section. Mirror in the Bathroom came out in 1980. Let’s say you were 20 years old - that would put you at 49 today. Fans at this show were in the range of 40 - 50. Did this stop them from drinking like they did back in the 80s when they saw the English Beat? Not at all. We evened witness a near 40-something fight and a wife on her husbands shoulders showing a little more skin than she probably wanted to.
To wrap this all up, here’s Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger as General Public:
