MUSIC: You just can’t stop The Beat!

FOLLOWING two sold-out shows in 2017, their first in Ireland for 30 years, ‘The Beat starring Dave Wakeling’ are back this June.

One tempestuous weekend in March 1979 was not only the date of the Three Mile Island nuclear incident, but also, in Birmingham, England, the very first show by a nascent band known as The Beat.

Introduced as “the hottest thing since the Pennsylvania meltdown”, the band had a sense that the next few years could well be explosive.

The Beat hailed from a working class, industrial city and when they arrived on to the music scene in 1979, it was a time of social, political and musical upheaval.

Into this storm came The Beat, trying to calm the waters with their simple message of love and unity set to a great dance beat.

The Beat were all about inclusion, rather than exclusion, and this showed in their personnel and their music influences. The original band consisted of Dave Wakeling on vocals and guitar, Andy Cox on guitar, David Steele on bass, and Everett Morton on drums.

Later additions Ranking Roger and First Wave Ska legend Saxa (saxophone) completed the outfit. The band crossed over fluidly between soul, reggae, pop and punk, and from these disparate pieces they created an infectious dance rhythm.

Along with their contemporaries The Specials, The Selecter, and Madness, the band became an overnight sensation and one of the most popular and influential acts of the British Two-Tone Ska movement.

By Christmas of 1979, The Beat were riding high in the UK charts with their first single, a smoking remake of the classic Smokey Robinson tune ‘Tears of a Clown’. Over the course of the next five years The Beat toured relentlessly and released three studio albums: ‘I Just Can’t Stop It’, ‘Wh’appen’, and ‘Special Beat Service’.

The band toured the world with artists such as as David Bowie, The Police, REM, The Clash, The Talking Heads, The Pretenders, and The Specials, to name but a few.

Dave Wakeling once said that every great band only has three really good albums. And true to form, The Beat decided to call it quits after their third.

 Of course, that was not the last we would hear from the Beat boys.

That ember was nursed back into a roaring flame in February 2003, when a dream came true for many Beat fans as the band reunited for a UK tour, culminating in a sold-out command.