Hitting U.S. cities with The English Beat:

03/21 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
03/22 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
03/23 – Minneapolis, MN @ Uptown Theater Minneapolis
03/25 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Pabst Theater
03/26 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theater
03/27 – Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Center
03/29 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theater
03/30 – Akron, OH @ Goodyear Theater
04/01 – Boston, MA @ The Wilbur
04/02 – Derry, NH @ Tupelo Music Hall
04/03 – New Brunswick, NJ @ State Theatre New Jersey
04/05 – Patchogue, NY @ The Patchogue Theater
04/06 – Mashantucket, CT @ Foxwoods Resort Casino
04/07 – New York, NY @ Palladium Times Square
04/09 – Glenside, PA @ Keswick Theater
04/10 – Washington, DC @ Warner Theater
04/12 – Durham, NC @ DPAC
04/13 – Pelham, TN @ The Caverns
04/14 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
04/16 – Dallas, TX @ Majestic Theater
04/17 – San Antonio, TX @ Charlene McCombs Empire Theater
04/19 – New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore
04/20 – Houston, TX @ Bayou Music Center
04/21 – Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater
04/23 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Tower Theater
04/24 – Albuquerque, NM @ Revel
04/26 – Las Vegas, NV @ Event Lawn at Virgin Hotel Las Vegas
05/02 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theater
05/03 – Salem, OR @ Elsinore Theater
05/05 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Eccles Theater
05/06 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theater
05/08 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Pikes Peak Center
05/10 – Phoenix, AZ @ Celebrity Theater
05/11 – Pasadena, CA @ Cruel World Festival

The last time the Beat came to Austin they played the 300-capacity 3Ten next door to the 2500-capacity Moody Theater. I guess having Adam Ant along (he's the headliner, I presume?) is moving them back to the medium leagues.

If I haven't said it before here (or even if I have), then here it is: Adam's 2013 show at the Showbox remains the most fun show I've seen since moving to Seattle. And the Wakeling-led version of The English Beat has never let me down. (Last time I saw them, they headlined at the Showbox, with The Interrupters opening. That show was off the hook.) If you can catch this tour, I recommend it.

Skipping Portland to play in Salem! Might have considered it if they were playing in town. Oh well.

Ant was supposed to play this year's Cruel World Festival but was a no-show, for reasons unknown (to me.)

Next year's lineup was announced, for anyone in the LA are this May. Some real curious choices this year:

Tones on Tail (?!?, I guess since they've already performed as Bauhaus and Love & Rockets...)
Duran Duran
Interpol
Blondie
Simple Minds
Placebo
Soft Cell
Ministry (performing songs from “With Sympathy” and “Twitch” - dear lord why ? WHY?!?)
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Gary Numan (performing “The Pleasure Principle”)
Heaven 17
French Police (huh? Sting singing en français?)
The Mission UK
The Stranglers
General Public (but NOT The Beat)
Lol Tolhurst x Budgie (wonder what this is all about...)
The Alarm

and a number of actual youngsters as well.

The recent Lol Tolhurst + Budgie + Jackknife Lee album is pretty good. I guess Lee isn't interested in attending Cruel World, though if you go by the credits on the album, he provided the bulk of the instruments on it. And the vocals were mostly handled by guests like James Murphy, so I do wonder what Lol & Budgie have planned for live performances.

I quite like the Tolhurst/Budgie Curious Creatures podcast and also quite like the incidental music provided by Lee, so I'm pretty keen for a listen of that record.

Just saw a news story about Al Jourgenson (spelling probably incorrect) going to a show by With Sympathy, a Ministry tribute band that only covers the pre-industrial era and being shocked by how much he enjoyed it and by how into it the audience was. So apparently that caused him to decide maybe that stuff wasn't so bad and it might be interesting to revisit it.

I guess it took seeing another band doing his early stuff live to get him to decide to do it himself.

There's a live Ministry album, recorded in 1982, that sounds much more impressive than WITH SYMPATHY. If Jourgensen's version of synth-pop hadn't been polished so heavily in the studio and still retained its roots in post-punk, that period of the band could have a lot better.

My wife and I have tickets for the Durham show. When we saw it announced, our first thought was that DPAC seems like far too big a venue for this show. Still, I bet it's going to be fun. We saw the Wakeling led English Beat in the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro a few years ago and it was fantastic. Does anyone know if this is that version or the competing / alternate version?

Next is deciding whether we're travelling to Charlotte or to DC for the Echo and the Bunnymen tour!

Is there a competing version anymore, since Ranking Roger died? Before that, the two versions apparently co-existed amicably, with the Wakeling version handling North America and the Roger version covering the UK & Europe.

Anyhow, whether the alternate version exists anymore or not, if the show is in the U.S., it's Wakeling.

> Does anyone know if this is that version or the
> competing / alternate version?

I don't think there is a competing/alternate version anymore. The two versions of the Beat were led by Wakeling (whose group toured North America regularly) and Ranking Roger (whose band toured the UK and Europe). The two singers agreed to limit their touring/business to their respective sides of the Atlantic. With Roger's passing in 2019, the European version of the Beat closed up shop.

Wakeling moved to California some years ago and has been pretty relentlessly performing and touring around the US as “The English Beat,” even though, at least when I saw him a few years ago, it was pretty obvious that it was just Dave and a bunch of guys. No Jamaican to do the “toasting” parts, he did them himself. But other people here have said that he did have a Jamaican vocalist when they saw him, so he must have rotating lineups.

Now, at Cruel World, the English Beat isn’t being billed, it’s General Public. So Ranking Roger is back in the fold? Which would be a pretty neat trick.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2023 07:17AM by MrFab.

MrFab Wrote:
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> Now, at Cruel World, the English Beat isn’t being billed, it’s General Public. So Ranking Roger is
> back in the fold? Which would be a pretty neat trick.

Ranking Roger died in 2019, so it would be more than neat.

The occasions that I've seen the Wakeling-led band, they did include a couple of high-profile General Public songs in the set. But for Wakeling to call the band General Public? This late in the game? I'll leave that mystery to be solved by smarter people than me.

Most likely it's the same impulse as "We've done this thing as Bauhaus and Love & Rockets already, how's about Tones on Tail?"

At this point in time, anyone who hasn't seen the Beat yet has been willfully avoiding them. I think this tour will mark their 4th appearance in St. Louis since the beginning of 2022. Nobody plays effing St. Louis that often! Hell, Jay Farrar LIVES here and he's seen around town less than Dave Wakeling. (Not complaining by any stretch. It's always a great show.)

So the organizers likely told Dave "Hey. Can you do General Public this time, just to change things up?" Given that they probably get, what, five song sets on these sorts of things? - I'm sure Dave and band will do "Tenderness," "Never You Done That" and "Hot You're Cool," then toss in "Save It For Later" and "Tears of a Clown," call it General Public and be off the stage in 20 minutes.

I can't believe this tour is coming to both Denver AND Colorado Springs. I find it almost as hard to believe that they've scheduled a night off between the two shows. (Probably comes down to availability of venues.) Well, the musicians and crew alike should benefit from that night off; it isn't as though they'll have a long grueling drive between the two cities.

Since we're going to be in Colorado Springs that week, I asked my siblings if they'd like to go to the show. They both said yes! So I'll just have to find a buyer for my Seattle tickets. Shouldn't be too difficult.