#english beat

[gotankgo]

1980

[goodblacknews]

MUSIC MONDAY: "AfroPunk: Reggae Meets Punk" Playlist (LISTEN)

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest) While Reggae is a true import from Jamaica, it really gained a global footing in England. It and Punk both arose out of the economic depression and social inequality in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Many Reggae songs of the time like Bob Marley’s “Punky Reggae Party” and “Concrete Jungle” were overt…

[iamdangerace]

The Beat, Coventry, 1981.

[culturevulturette]

Mirror in the bathroom I just can't stop it Every Saturday you see me window shopping Find no interest in the racks and shelves Just a thousand reflections Of my own sweet self, self, self...

[thebowerypresents]

Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade Deliver at Brooklyn Steel

Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade – Brooklyn Steel – October 22, 2023

The Frog Brigade are the jam-band-iest of Les Claypool’s many thrilling projects. Or they’re a jammy band with a love of funk, prog, psychedelia and Frank Zappa that would be surfing the big waves out near the edges of sanity anyway but just so happen to get their marching orders from Claypool. (That is, not unlike all the musical projects the relentlessly quirky, generationally talented bassist puts his name on.) Either way — or, more likely, both — they’re a force, and what a treat to have them back, 20 years after their heyday and any semblance of regular touring — and in midseason form, to boot. 

At Brooklyn Steel on Sunday, the Frog Brigade were on the attack. As in most of the shows during this year’s reunion tour, this one housed a full, go-for-it, manic-jammy full reading of Pink Floyd’s Animals. But what came before and after the Floyd excursion over the course of two sets and nearly three hours was just as delectable. And maybe marching orders isn’t the right way to describe the Claypool effect on a band like this. Claypool himself would seem like the command-and-control boss of this outfit but in practice he’s more the chief creative officer, giving like-minded creators enough room to be their zany selves in the framework he’s created. 

This version of the Frog Brigade is assembled and plays like a Frankenstein’d version of the original — many of the same players, yes, from the heady days of ought-three, but also coconspirators from other Claypool bands like the Claypool Lennon Delirium (whose other namesake, Sean Lennon, now has the guitar chair for the Brigade). Sax sorcerer Eric “Skerik” Walton is here, and so is Mike Dillon, the percussion-and-vibes madman. Keys are handled by the prog-inclined Harry Waters (son of Roger), and Paolo Baldi, the Claypool regular and former skins-man for Cake, is on the drums. Together, as in all Claypool bands, they create a cauldron of sonics to which the listener and concertgoer aren’t so much witnesses as they are plunged in, the band driving up the intensity using aggressive, nudging rhythms, often sinister (but not untender) melodies, and free reign to, y’know, beat and blow shit up. This year’s repertoire overall is polyglot Claypool, and on Sunday, that meant plenty of Brigade cuts, but also tunes from Sausage (“Riddles Are Abound Tonight”), from the Holy Mackerel, from the Delirium (“Blood and Rockets”), and from the Bucket of Bernie Brains (a fizzy “Thai Noodles” in the encore), plus covers as varied as Prince Buster (“One Step Beyond”) and the English Beat (“Mirror in the Bathroom”).

The Pink Floyd stuff? Yeah, totally fun, as advertised. I could listen to Claypool and Co. pillage their way through “Sheep” for hours (and their “Dogs” is just as on point). But no matter what it is, these guys kick up a mighty groovy racket. Late in the second set came “Precipitation” (from the Holy Mackerel back pages), which built to a whirring, stab-syncopation solo-fest around its “Rain, rain, rain” refrain. “Hendershot,” another Claypool staple, had a bit of ragtime piano from Waters thrown in before it became a surf-rock adventure, Skerik’s sax screaming over it. The tale of “David Makalaster” (both parts!) had the band at a steady-rolling chant, pushing, pushing, pushing its stabbing rhythm.

There’s a tendency to call this music wacky but that kind of misses the musicality in it, especially when each of these songs gets a healthy work-through. The six of them don’t for a second lose the collective sonics — if you really listen closely, you hear them playing off one another with subtle asides, even when one of them is blasting away out in front of the jam. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Dana Distortion | distortionpix.com

[thevibefortoday]

The vibe for today is:

The English Beat - Mirror In the Bathroom

[mrbopst]

Divine performing in Nottingham, UK, December 1, 1982, by Fin Serck-Hanssen. Meanwhile, across the great oceans, the John Waters star and an inspiration to both Biscuit and Gary Floyd was in the discos, probably performing songs like “Born to be Cheap” and “Shoot your Shot.” For context, on the same night back in Texas, the Bangles and the English Beat were playing at Club Foot in Austin.

Pat Blashill

[mondoradiowmse]

[inventedworld]

What Happens When I Hear The English Beat

This is a story about autonomic physiology: mine.

But first, listen to this. (Well, actually listen to it after you read the blog, OK?)

I know, I know. It’s a boppy bit of disposable dance club groove, from the last century no less. Nothing to see here, right?

Hang on and give me a minute.

That song, Tears of a Clown, was written, perhaps unexpectedly, by Smoky Robinson, which may or may not matter much to the conversation. His version is okay, but in my estimation the song achieves its zenith in the version linked above. That one is by The English Beat. Why do I care so much about a clever bit of pop-inflected doggerel about a fella in a busted relationship trying to get back on track?

The English Beat plays a kind of pop music called “ska”. It’s got a rich history that influenced countless musicians in many genres, to say nothing of providing an un-sit-still-able rhythm for countless college parties. 

 I’m old enough to say that I was born in the last millennium, along with the song. Not quite an ancient crone yet, I’m nonetheless old enough to recall a different era for media, for music, and for social reactions to both.

It’s always a risk when a person who ought to know better reaches back to his or her adolescent musical preferences and tries to sound hip. It dangerously limns pretense, to say nothing of inadvertent comedy. It also perilously implies a desire to pursue time’s arrow backward. But music from everyone’s youth always holds a special sway. Sensations of all sorts are new in everyone’s  adolescence, no matter where or with whom you lived at the time, and the geologic pressure of successive years piling up fossilizes memory. Intense moments of sensual, visceral pleasure become reinforced with subsequent mental recollection, which is why we can conjure our teenage years in sparkling detail and cannot recall what we made for breakfast this morning.

The last twenty percent of the twentieth century still hadn’t fully delivered the emerging global economy, but in the final few decades the dawning golden light of change had started to crest the horizon. We could feel it coming. With the World Wide Web still a few years away, the fastest bridges among cultures remained music and movies and books. Music, of course, is the wellspring of youthful passion, and mixed with nascent political awareness propelled by an infectious beat, music can present an irresistible gravitational pull to millions around the world.

That takes us back to The English Beat. 

I grew up in a high school and a town that hardly knew much about history or geography. Musical tastes among my peers rarely left Top 40 playlists, and political and social awareness were not subjects worthy of any attention. 

That wasn’t true in my home (I’m deeply grateful to declare that it was a great place), which inevitably meant I didn’t always fit in when I went to school. My personal interests diverged from what was cool among peers, and I couldn’t wait to venture outward, to travel beyond. Occasionally I’d find a way to discover something that felt as if it had been smuggled in from enlightened, more worldly cognocenti. After being captured by The English Beat’s infectious, eponymous sound, I discovered they were also a multi-racial band slyly poking critique at the stratified British class structure, a socially conscious spoonful of sugar for the dance floor. In their song Stand Down Margaret, I remember mistakenly believing that title and repeated lyric was a plea for Margaret Thatcher to find a way to avoid war in the Falkland Islands. Ironically, that error could very well have been  an appropriate interpretation of the song, but the song turns out to have be broader in its goals.  In it, the lead singer Ranking Roger actual asks the Iron Lady to simply step down from power, claiming she was largely unmoved about the social circumstances of working class people, while simultaneously maintaining a belligerent cold war stance on the global stage.

The English Beat didn’t rack up a huge shelf of records, but Roger and the band’s other co-lead Dave Wakeling had a huge influence, not least of which was on me.

I’m a not collector of Beat memorabilia, nor some sort of discographic completist, or even a super-fan who’s followed them closely. But here in the 21st century, it’s inevitable: when summertime sets the calendar aglow with sun, and I encounter a tune from The English Beat, propelled by their irresistible rhythms fused with sprightly voices and a brassy back line, I’m transported as if by a musical madeleine. I’m young again, full of promise, full of hope. Without fail, even after just a few notes, I spontaneously want to believe there’s a shiny world of joy just beyond my reach, with creative, optimistic artists determined to get people to dance without abandoning a desire to influence the world well beyond the dance floor.

@michaelstarobin

facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

[kizzer55555]

DP x DC: The Most Dangerous Card Game

Ok so Danny has essentially claimed earth as his. And he is fully aware that there are constant threats to the planet. Now he can’t stop a threat that originates on earth (that’s something he’ll leave to the Justice league) but he can do something about outside threats. Doing some research on ancient spells, rituals, and artifacts, he cast a world wide barrier on the planet to protect it from hostile threats so they cannot enter. This will prevent another Pariah Dark incident. However, barriers like this come at a price. You see, there are two ways to make a barrier. Either make one powered up by your own energy and power (which would be constantly draining) or set up a barrier with rules. The way magic works is that nothing can be absolutely indestructible. It must have a weakness. The most powerful barriers weren’t the ones reinforced with layer after layer of protective charms and buffed up with power. Those could eventually be destroyed either by being overpowered, wearing them down, or by cutting off the original power source. No, the most powerful barriers were the ones with a deliberate weakness. A barrier indestructible except for one spot. A cage that can only be opened from the outside. Or that can only be passed with a key or by solving a riddle. So Danny chooses this type of barrier and does the necessary ritual and pours in enough power to make it. And he adds his condition for anyone to enter. 

Now the Justice league? Find out about the barrier when Trigon attempts to attack, they were preparing after he threatened what he would do once he got to earth. How he would destroy them. The Justice league tried to take the fight to him first but were utterly destroyed, so they retreated home to tend to their injuries, and fortify earth for one. Last. Stand. Only when Trigon makes his big entrance…he’s stopped.

The Justice league watch in awe as this thin see-through barrier with beautiful green swirls and speckled white lights like stars apears blocking Trigon and his army’s advance. The barrier looks so thin and fragile yet no matter how hard the warlord hits, none of his attacks can get through and neither can he damage said barrier. That’s when Constantine and Zatanna recognizes what this barrier is. Something only a powerful entity could create. For a moment, the league is filled with hope that Trigon can’t get through yet Constantine also explains that it’s not impenetrable. And clearly Trigon knows this too for he calls out a challenge. 

And that’s when, in a flash of light, a tiny glowing teenager appears. He looked absolutly minuscule compared to Trigon and yet practically glowed with power (this isn’t a King Danny AU though).

And that is when the conditions for passing the barrier are revealed. And the Justice realize that the only thing stopping Trigon and his army from decimating earth. The only way he can get through….is by beating this glowing teenager in a card game. 

Not just any card game though. The most convoluted game Sam, Danny, and Tucker invented themselves. It’s like the infinite realms version of magic the gathering, combined with Pokémon, and chess. And Danny is the master. So sit down Trigon and let’s play.

(The most intense card game of the Justice league’s life).

After Danny wins, this happens a few more times with outer word beings and possibly even demons attempting to invade earth, yet none have been able to beat the mysterious teenager in a card game. Constantine might even take a crack at it and try to figure out how to play. He’s really bad though. Every time this happens, the Justice league worry that this might be the time the teenager looses. Yet every time, he wins (even if only barely). 

Meanwhile, Danny, Sam, and Tucker have gotten addicted to the game and play it almost daily. Some teachers might seem them playing the game are are like ‘awww how cute’ not realizing this game is literally saving the world. Jazz is just happy they aren’t spending as much time on their screens playing Doomed.

[cringefail-clown]

comfort

a birthday gift for @borzoilover69 !!! happy borth dude, your dirkjakes bring me so much joy <3

[haronson]

[blacjaq1]

[certifiedlucifersimp]

Lucifer: Violence isn't the answer.

MC: You’re right.

Lucifer: *sighs in relief*

Mc: Violence is the question.

Lucifer: What?

MC, bolting away: And the answer is yes.

Lucifer, running after them: NO-

(Belphegor and Satan are coming to help you)