{"id":38794515,"date":"2007-05-25T14:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2007\/05\/the-english-bea.html"},"modified":"2013-04-05T06:01:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T06:01:36","slug":"200705the-english-bea-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2007\/05\/25\/200705the-english-bea-html\/","title":{"rendered":"The English Beat @ The Birchmere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>I confess I was a bit skeptical. After having recently watched VH1’s failed attempt<\/a> to reunite one of my favorite bands, The English Beat<\/a>, I knew that the bill being called ‘The English Beat’ tonight at the Birchmere<\/a> in Alexandria actually only included one original band member, lead singer Dave Wakeling. But I need not have worried. Although it would be great to see and hear the whole band together again, Dave and his band were perfectly capable of taking me on a nostalgic tour of my musical youth.<\/p>\n

I first heard The English Beat in a movie theater, watching a midnight showing of the 1981 Concert movie Dance Craze<\/a>. I remember the night, it was memorable both for the music it introduced me to, and for the fact it had us dancing in the theater aisles. Later, in 1982, I would see The Beat open for the Clash at the Hollywood Palladium, one of my best concert memories.<\/p>\n

So tonight at the Birchmere, with an intimate and appreciative crowd of about 550, it was a joy to again hear The Beat. And my buddy TJ stepped up big time as an impromptu roadie. After doing Tears of A Clown<\/em>, Dave told the audience that he’d broken a guitar string and that they were too cheap to have a roadie, so he asked if anyone in the audience could string a guitar. TJ raised his hand and got the job, earning Dave’s thanks and a dedication of Twist and Crawl<\/em> to him for his efforts.<\/p>\n

Here’s the set list…<\/p>\n

Whine & Grine \/ Stand Down Margaret
\nAckee 1-2-3
\nHands Off She’s Mine
\nBest Friend
\nDoors of Your Heart
\nTears of a Clown
\nI’ll Take You There
\nI Confess
\nTwist and Crawl
\nSole Salvation
\nRough Rider
\nTwo Swords (Dave shared a good tale of his brick-throwing youth before this one)
\nCan’t Get Used to Losing You
\nNever You Done That
\nTenderness
\nRanking Full Stop
\nMirror in the Bathroom
\nClick Click (noted as a point of pride as having been the fastest song in the movie Dance Craze)
\nSave It for Later
\nEncore<\/strong> – some appropriately picked encores…
\nEnd of the Party
\nJackpot – I’m sorry to say that I’m on my way, I won’t be back for many a day, so Goodbye Everybody!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confess I was a bit skeptical. After having recently watched VH1’s failed attempt to reunite one of my favorite bands, The English Beat, I knew that the bill being called ‘The English Beat’ tonight at the Birchmere in Alexandria actually only in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38794515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CMdZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354108,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794515\/revisions\/173354108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38794515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38794515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}