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‘The Beat’ goes on at Turner Hall
Who said ska was dead?
By Dan Oberbruner
If anyone in attendance had ever wondered what the early ‘80s looked like in real life, the English Beat was there to answer. From the black-and-white checkered designs and artwork, to the clothes and instruments, one was almost sure that they had traveled back in time to 20 years ago.
If you walked through Turner Hall during the English Beat show on Sunday, Feb. 17 you would have noticed that the mean age of the crowd was not 14. They were, for the most part, a good 20 years older than your average college student.
The opening band, the Rx Bandits, took the stage and shared their unique music, more of a mixture of pop-punk and reggae than ska, with the crowd of middle-agers. The only brass instrument in the band at the time was a trombone and it was rarely used.
When the trombone player wasn’t tromboning, he was dancing around the stage, sliding up to the microphone for back up vocals, or pounding away on a second partial drum set.
The song arrangements were fairly complex for the genre, which made the compositions much more compelling. Also, the variety of musical influence provided for some contrast throughout the set, which ranged from full-throttle rock numbers and slow tempo reggae tunes.
If anyone in attendance had ever wondered what the early ‘80s looked like in real life, the English Beat was there to answer. From the black-and-white checkered designs and artwork, to the clothes and instruments, one was almost sure that they had traveled back in time to 20 years ago. After the English Beat took the stage and quickly played three of their most popular songs, “Best Friend/Stand Down Margaret,” “Hands Off…She’s Mine” and “I Confess,” their resident hype man assured us that we were in for a night of “skankroebics”.
The English Beat’s show was more than just another concert. During the performance front man Dave Wakeling commented several times about Sen. Barack Obama and his current run for the White House. “Gobama,” he proclaimed, later asking us (the American people) to return to “an America we can be proud of and the rest of the world can respect.” At another point the audience was asked to donate money to a charity called Smile Train, which helps children with cleft lip and palate in developing countries. Concertgoers could donate by throwing money onto the stage as they played.
In my short-by-comparison life, I have never, ever seen so many middle-aged people bobbing their heads so furiously before this show. As I walked back to my car, tired and cold, I found myself hoping that when I get a little older I will rock as hard as the English Beat fans do.
Just then, a guy in his mid-50s that I had seen at the concert came up to me and asked “Hey, were you at the show?” I nodded. “I saw them 20 years ago. It was way better then.”
Sean Quast contributed to this article.
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