Their name focused on rhythm, but short-changing the English Beat as a ska band is to ignore their essential, still deeply interesting complexities. Simply known as the Beat in their native U.K., this was a shooting star of a band that mixed ska and punk with calypso, reggae, 2-tone toasting, Motown, 1960s garage rock, samba, dance hall, world beat, and synthesized pop.
They released just three classic-era albums between 1980-82 in a memorable burst of inventiveness that couldn’t last, later splitting into two separate English Beat-branded units – one in the England led by the late Ranking Roger and another in U.S. fronted by Dave Wakeling. But not before becoming the basis for two other hit-making groups in General Public and Fine Young Cannibals.
Still, for a moment in time, the English Beat helped define the promise of a new decade – a period when the twin aesthetics of punk and DiY seemed to hail a new, rapidly broadening landscape of imagination. Much of that promise, of course, would become synthesized into the marketing machine of MTV, and the English Beat was simply too strange for that stylized corporate atmosphere.
The English Beat’s greatest stateside triumph remains their April 2, 1982 single “Save It For Later,” later regularly covered by Pete Townshend and the Who, as well as Pearl Jam. The song originally appeared on their era-closing Special Beat Service, a polyglot first-ever Top 40 album-length explosion of skanky retro-reggae, Byrdsy guitar jangles, dub-infused Caribbean riddums and new-wave cool. But this minor hit may be as far afield as the English Beat had ever been from their original angsty punk roots.
At the same time, though, it says something profound about the English Beat that even their closest brush with a bonafide mainstream breakthrough continued to incorporate these bizarrely effective moments of creativity – from this sloshing-through-molasses beat to a crazy-odd instrumentation: Wait, is that a viola? A honky-tonking saxophone? On MTV?
When the English Beat’s core members eventually reemerged in subsequent bands, much of that edgy sense of ingenuity and style had been drained out of things. Maybe it had to be, in order to complete those final few steps toward broad-based radio airplay: Wakeling and Roger scored a Top 40 U.S. hit for General Public with 1984’s “Tenderness”; David Steele and Andy Cox went one better in 1988, collecting consecutive chart-topping U.S. singles for Fine Young Cannibals with “She Drives Me Crazy” and “Good Thing.”
Before all of that, however, was this prime earlier example of fizzy weirdness. Save it for later.
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Saw English Beat open for the Clash once, at the Hollywood Palladium. It was a good showcase for the wide-ranging and “deeply interesting complexities” you mention. Definitely beyond ska or punk, made for vividly memorable performances from both groups.