On Sunday night, April 16, The English Beat closed a warm spring weekend with a lively performance at Race Street Live in Holyoke, MA. Hailing all the way from Birmingham, England, frontman Dave Wakeling is the only original member left of what used to be known as The Beat, the iconic ska-soul-punk fusion band that defined the genre back in the 1980s. At 67 years old, Wakeling has been touring with a backup band of ska musicians in an effort to keep “the beat” alive and well. Holyoke was one among many stops on their current US tour.
“This is Massachusetts!” announced Antonee First Class mid-show, Wakeling’s right-hand-man and the band’s “toaster.” “Everybody in Massachusetts knows somebody Jamaican. Everybody’s got a Jamaican friend or Jamaican work buddy. I’ve got my cousins over in Springfield — Springfield knows what I’m talking about!”
The band took the stage at 8:30 p.m. without an opener, and the anticipation was enough to turn a crowd of fifty-somethings into giddy teenagers as if it were the 1980s all over again. The energy was cranked high as groups in the front chanted and clapped to lure the band onstage, some stomping their feet and drumming on the stage platform. When the lights finally dimmed, the lineup took the stage to a roar, composed of Wakeling on guitar, Antonee First Class on vocals, Mat Morrish on saxophone, Esetban Flores on keyboard,] and even Wakeling’s own daughter, Chloe, on backup vocals and maraca.
As the audience whipped out their phones to take pictures, Wakeling waved them down and said, “Oh, put ’em away. No, really … How about we take videos after the show?” The band then launched into a smooth, upbeat rendition of “Rough Rider” from their 1980 album “I Just Can’t Stop It.”
Despite originally forming in England in 1978, The Beat was not solely an English band. Ranking Roger, one of the original vocalists, introduced Jamaican “toasting” to their performances while Saxa, a Jamaican saxophonist, infused their sound with authentic ska instrumentals, mixing elements of Caribbean calypso and mento with American jazz and R&B. The band formed during a period of serious social upheaval in the UK, which contributed significantly to their punk influences and politically-minded lyrics. In the early 1980s, they toured with bands such as The Clash and The Police, and later on with David Bowie, R.E.M, Talking Heads and many more goliaths of rock.
“There definitely seems to be an older crowd tonight,” said one of the merch table staffers at the front of the venue. “These guys have been around forever.”
He was correct. I, eighteen, was among the youngest of the crowd there, apart from the one nine-year-old boy who stood front and center with his parents, gazing up at the stage in silent open-mouthed awe for the entirety of the show.
“You, young man,” said Antonee First Class in-between songs, kneeling at the front of the stage and talking to a young attendee. “Let me tell you something, kid … When I was about your age I used to listen to Dave and Roger, so tonight we’re in the same company. Give me a pound.”
They bumped fists, and the crowd cheered. It’s not often that kids get the chance to experience live music from the barricade, let alone live music that relies on audience interaction.
Even in a small warehouse-turned-music-venue like Race Street with a max capacity of 500, The Beat had the ability to make it feel ten times larger. Their setlist included familiar songs such as “Tenderness,” “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” and even a jaunty cover of The Staples Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.” Even songs I was unfamiliar with, I found myself dancing along. It was impossible not to, with Antonee First Class keeping the energy at a maximum the entire night, pinballing across the stage and encouraging the crowd to “Jump! Jump! Jump!”
Their best song of the evening, by far, was their performance of “Save it For Later”, a song originally written by Wakeling in his teenage years before joining the group. Due to the odd (and originally accidental) tuning of his guitar, the chords are entirely unique to Wakeling’s style. He’d been trying to replicate the tuning of John Martyn’s songs, a Scottish folk rock singer-songwriter, who used a classic blues tuning of DADGAD. By accident, Wakeling tuned the G string up to an A, and thus created the tuning pattern DADAAD. In a 2012 interview with AV Club, he recalled Pete Townshend of The Who calling him up to ask him how exactly to play the iconic song.
“I got a phone call at 11 in the morning, and somebody gave me the phone and said, “It’s Pete Townshend for you.” And I said, “Of course it is. He phones about this time every Saturday, doesn’t he?”
The band concluded with a powerful rendition of one of their most popular songs, “Mirror in the Bathroom”, that seamlessly captures the fusion of English 80s rock with Jamaican ska. Wakeling reminisced with the audience before his final exit, claiming that he didn’t remember much of the 80s anymore, but sometimes experienced flashbacks during shows like this.
“I’ve just gotten some,” he said as he fiddled with the tuning pegs of his Vox Teardrop guitar. “The first is the smell of clove cigarettes. How, even if you didn’t smoke them, your clothes always smelled like them when you came home. And even weirder, the next one: an unbridled sense of optimism for absolutely no reason.”
