The {English}Beat Goes On

There's a great line in a Neds Atomic Dustbin song "Suave And Suffocated" that says "My childhood inspection is my record collection" which I'm sure most of us can attest to.
For me most of my early record collection was made up of 7'' & 12'' vinyl singles so retrospectivly I guess if and when I did go the extra mile and buy an album In must've really like that band.........
One such album that fell into that catagory was The Beat's 1980 freshman effort "I Just Can't Stop It",of all the Ska bands back then,The Beat,The Specials,Madness,Bad Manners and The Selecter the only album I owned was "I Just Can't Stop It" in amongst several singles.....maybe that's why The Beat remain a favourite band 34 years after first hearing them cover the Smokey Robinson classic "Tears Of A Clown" and giving me my first taste of Ska and Two Tone music.

When you watch Dave Wakeling perform  it's hard to believe he's been doing this for 35 years now,he still posesses the same passion for his music  now as when The Beat formed back in Birminghan in 1978,and The English Beat as they're known here since original members Ranking Roger and Everett Morton retain the rights to the name The Beat back in England are no strangers to playing live,I can almost guarantee The English Beat will tour year round on both sides of the Atlantic and are frequent visitors to Philadelphia.
Since this was a free show as part of the 80's Awesome Fest I knew we weren't getting a whole set from Dave and co but judging from set lists from previous shows on this leg of their current US tour we got a pretty close facsimile to what they've been performing recently.

It's funny how music can transport you back in time as I stood in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Eakins Oval on Friday nite The English Beat sung "Too Nice To Talk To and in the blink of an eye it felt like I'd been magically transported back to my old grade school where my church used hold school dances/discos back in the late 70's early 80's
"Too Nice To Talk To" felt like it should have been my theme tune,I could never work up the nerve to talk to the girls there unlike some 30 years later as I now possss the "gift of the gab" but that's not to say I have it all sussed out cos I don't,I've just learnt how to use the smoke and mirrors a lot better these days!!!