Visqueen, Throw Me the Statue, Little Cuts (Crocodile) Visqueen traffics in a highly pleasurable blend of hard-crunching melodic guitar rock—imagine a woman with the voice of an angel and a Cheap Trick fixation hijacking the Fastbacks (whose Kim Warnick once played in the band) to re-create the Muffs' cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" and you'll hear Visqueen. What makes the band...
Remember singing along to this at the end of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (I have a big spot for that 90s movie… Heckerling she of Fast Times at Ridgemont High which later spawned many a John Hughes teenage 1980s angst film…But Heckerling, in my opinion, was better). Ah yes, Tenderness by General Public (The Beat split up and [...]
This is how the history of Dave Wakeling goes: The English Beat, General Public, solo career, then back to General Public, and then to bring it nicely full circle, back to the English Beat once more, which is where he currently resides. Granted, the current incarnation of the band that’s touring North America at the moment [...]
2-TONE legends The Beat are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their first ever live show with a comprehensive national tour, which arrives in Manchester this Friday March 20).
I went to the most excellent ska concert. Seriously. Two different 2Tone bands: Bad Manners, starring Buster Bloodvessle, and The English Beat (actually touring under that name, and not as The Beat - no Ranking Roger, who's touring as the Beat in the U.K., but it was fronted by Dave Wakeling, so color me happy!). Bad Manners had a few hits back in the day (particularly in the U.K., where some of their...
If you're still recovering from December 31, there's no need to worry about having to do it all over again. The Chinese New Year celebration for the Year of the Ox -- which begins on [Monday] January 26, 2009...
Hard to believe that it's been 30 years since Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling first formed The Beat and exposed the disaffected youth of England to the sound of ska. Those were the days when, because of an American band already possessing the name, the band was forced to call itself The Englis...
Personnel-wise, this isn't the same Beat you knew and loved--and danced manically to--back in the '80s. There's just one original member, Dave Wakeling (guitar/vocals), who formed General Public with co-frontman Ranking Roger when the Beat fell apart in 1983 (guitar/bass duo Andy Cox and David Steel...
The season is filled with all sorts of highbrow entertainment -- Oscar-bait movies and holiday classical concerts -- but that doesn't mean you can't give yourself the gift of lowbrow fun.
On her myspace page Leila lists her influences as "life...noise...stuff." I'd just add "beats" to that list for a quick summation of her sound. These tracks her label has generously offered for your downloading pleasure demonstrate Leila's controlled cacophony as she gathers audio odds and ends, samples of this horn and that vocal clip, and masterfully stitches the sounds together...
WIMBLEDON, England - A match involving Marat Safin is always worth watching. He's liable to moon the crowd, smash several rackets, or dominate the world's best player, as he did against Pete Sampras in the 2000 U.S. Open final.
A match involving Marat Safin is always worth watching. He's liable to moon the crowd, smash several rackets or dominate the world's best player, as he did against Pete Sampras in the 2000 U.S. Open final.
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