If you ever wanted to catch a show with a truly diverse audience, try The English Beat. When this ska band performs, don't be surprised to see how the MILFs and their college-aged offspring, the usual 9:30 club hipster, a handful of mods and 30-something Beat heads swing their hips and skank elbow to elbow.
With a sold-out show at the 9:30 club Saturday, these two-tone '80s aficionados rocked the house with a message of love, peace and unity, and made a little time to talk shop with The Eagle afterwards.
The U.K. band gained notoriety in the United States when its song "March of the Swivelheads" (from their 1980 album "I Just Can't Stop It") was featured in the 1986 slacker movie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." The band broke up in 1983 and reformed in 2005. Since then, frontman Dave Wakeling, the blond Briton who traded Birmingham for California, has built a stronger U.S. fan base.
Wakeling is perfect for the job as an entertainer - a little bit mischievous and a whole lot charming. He jokes and asks the audience members if they want to hear "lewd" songs.
Offstage, after the almost two-and-a-half hour show, he maintains that certain British cheekiness not even years in sunny California have managed to tame.
Wakeling is now the only original member left, and it is curious to see that, 30 years later, younger people keep showing up at the Beat concerts. How does the MySpace generation - the barely legal-looking blonde shimmying in front of the stage - know about the band?
"Every 10 years, there is a new, interesting wave of ska, and now we're on the fourth wave," Wakeling said in an interview with The Eagle.
The English Beat was part of the second wave; No Doubt, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were the third wave. Now, ska has become an interesting and important music theme again, he said.
"So people come out and check me in the same way as I went out and checked [Jamaican ska and reggae artist] Desmond Dekker," he said. "I am now a legitimate 'Skadfather'!"
With '80s-themed flashback shows and movies with cult status, Wakeling said he felt "absolutely thrilled" with hearing his songs featured on TV.
"I've got the level of fame I am comfortable with," Wakeling said. "I don't have to act like I'm a celebrity. I can be a musician, I can be a spokesperson for the causes I am interested in. It's almost like, poor old Bono, he can't do a good turn - he's got to save a fucking continent every time!"
Ska and punk are notoriously socially conscious movements, so it is no surprise that Wakeling and his band focus on Smile Train, a nonprofit that provides free cleft surgery to poor children worldwide.
Having raised $30,000 for the charity, the Beat encourages their audiences to throw dollar bills onto the stage to raise more money.
"Smile Train reminded us that we are all one, that we can all make a difference and make it quite quickly if you move together," Wakeling said. "Apart from it being a no-brainer - Would you like to give a kid a new face for 250 bucks? - there is a deeper message that we are all in this together"
