US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 2: The English Beat

Next up for the 1982 US Festival is a set by the English Beat. (In Britain, they were simply known as "The Beat.")

By the time the English Beat started their set, the crowd had grown to an estimated 130,000 people. 

Dave Wakeling, one of the band's two lead singers, later recalled how their set began. "We could see this huge mass of people with three sets of PAs going off into the distance and then a hill, and people on them, and they were really far away. I'd never seen that many people in one place. My knees were shaking. So for the first couple songs I had to lock my legs to stop them from knocking."

Wakeling also had some later comments about Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak funding the festival as a whole. "It was an interesting gesture for the time. Of all the Apple folk, Wozniak did the thing that made you go, 'Wow.' However, it’s not that difficult to do something fantastic if you’re willing to lose $20 million." (In actual fact, Wozniak didn't lost $20 on the 1982 festival though he might have lost that much on both the 1982 and 1983 festivals combined. But the amount of the loss has never been publicly revealed.)

The band had trouble with the considerable dust though, like most bands at the festival. Blockhead, the band's keyboardist, later said, "We finally got the crowd clapping along and dancing during one song, and we thought it was great. Then we saw the dust cloud heading toward us. And there I was, wearing contacts." At times, bands were hard to see clearly, due to all the dust.

Very little from either US Festival has been officially released so far, but the English Beat is a partial exception. In 2012, the official album "The English Beat: Live at the US Festival, '82 & '83" was released. But as you can guess from the title, it's a combination of both their sets into one album. None of the songs are repeated. So what I've done is combine sources. I used the official source as much as possible, then filled in whatever was missing with an audience bootleg. It so happens the first few songs are from the bootleg, but the vast majority of the rest are from the official source. I think only the songs "Ranking Full Stop," "Big Shot," "Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret," "Spar wid Me," and "Jackpot" are from the bootleg. I also rearranged the song order some, since the album had some out of order.

I did my best to improve the sound quality of the bootlegged songs, removing crowd noise during the songs (but not the applause at the ends), and boosting the lead vocals some. However, the sound quality of the officially released material is still noticeably better.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track numbering resumes where the numbering of the previous album left off, in case you want to hear all the sets from the first day of the festival together without pause.

025 talk (English Beat)
026 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
027 Big Shot (English Beat)
028 talk (English Beat)
029 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
030 talk (English Beat)
031 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
032 talk (English Beat)
033 I Confess (English Beat)
034 talk (English Beat)
035 Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
036 talk (English Beat)
037 Sugar and Stress (English Beat)
038 Spar wid Me (English Beat)
039 talk (English Beat)
040 Two Swords (English Beat)
041 talk (English Beat)
042 Hands Off... She's Mine (English Beat)
043 talk (English Beat)
044 Save It for Later (English Beat)
045 talk (English Beat)
046 Too Nice to Talk To (English Beat)
047 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
048 talk (English Beat)
049 Jackpot (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467869/VA-1982USFstvlDay0102TEnglshBet_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WW1mFcJL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/a2Nx6F0xfcjqw71/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Ranking Roger is closest to the camera. Dave Wakeling is second closest. I used the Krea AI program to improve the low-res image a bit.

US Festival '83, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 5-28-1983 - Day 1, Part 5: The English Beat

The fifth album on the first day of the 1983 US Festival is by the band the English Beat.

I've been really lucky in putting together the albums for this festival, because I was able to find a decent amount of music with worthy sound quality for all the acts on the third day. (The last day, with its country focus, was a different story, as I will explain later.) In most cases, I was able to find video of the sets and then convert them to audio. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be such a video for the English Beat set. But luckily, part of this set was officially released as part of the album "Live! At the US Festival '82 & '83." However, half of the album consisted of selected songs from the band's performance at the 1982 US Festival, and the other half was selections of what the band played at the 1983 US Festival. 

By the way, the English Beat were one of only two acts to perform at both the 1982 and 1983 US Festivals. (The other was Oingo Boingo, though Stevie Nicks performed as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1982 and as a solo artist in 1983.) This was almost the last concert before the original version of the band broke up. I could only find mention of one more, in July 1983. The original line up only did a few shows together after that, in the 1990s and 2000s.

On top of that, I was able to find one more song, "Save It for Later." This came from a radio broadcast of highlights from the festival by the Westwood One radio network, so that one is still unreleased. Other than that, I found a set list showing the missing songs:

Mirror in the Bathroom
Doors of Your Heart
Two Swords
I Confess
Too Nice to Talk To
Twist and Crawl

If anyone can find the rest of this set, let me know and I'll add it in. What is included is mostly the second half of the set, with "Jackpot" being the last song played.

By the way, here's an interesting story from Spin Magazine told by English Beat lead singer Dave Wakeling about their experience at the US Festival, relating to the fact that A Flock of Seagulls was due to perform just after them:

"Something happened during the Flock of Seagulls [preparing for their] show that some of them weren't happy with, and voices got raised. And it kind of went on and got louder in Liverpool accents – it was like listening to the Beatles fight. We were about to go on stage soon, so we already had enough butterflies coming on. The last thing we needed was the sound of the Beatles arguing on the other side of the screen. And one member of [the English Beat] – I won’t say who it was – thought it was actually a solid wall as opposed to a free-standing screen. So he kicked it and said, 'Shut up, you flock of fucking haircuts!,' thinking that he was just being insulting and that would get it off his chest. But at that point, the whole screen started falling and it hit the floor loudly. Then it was like West Side Story." (Wakeling laughed, referring to scenes in "West Side Story" where rival gangs faced each other.)

He continued, "We're all facing up on each other. Most of us were really embarrassed, and a couple from the other side who wanted to fight anyway were willing to try and make something out of it. But better senses prevailed, and we were ushered away and they were ushered to the other end, and the screen was put back up and reality was restored. We went on stage with extra verve."

This album is 33 minutes long.

059 talk (English Beat)
060 Save It for Later (English Beat)
061 talk (English Beat)
062 Jeanette (English Beat)
063 Spar wid Me (English Beat)
064 talk (English Beat)
065 Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
066 talk (English Beat)
067 Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
068 talk (English Beat)
069 Ackee 1 2 3 (English Beat)
070 talk (English Beat)
071 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
072 talk (English Beat)
073 Jackpot (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17012984/VA-1983USFstvlDay0105TEnglshBet_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ybwhnnce

The album cover shows the band's two lead singers, Ranking Roger (left) and Dave Wakeling (right) at this exact concert.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-26-1982, Part 1: The English Beat

This is the first act of the second day of the three-day long 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival. This time, it's the English Beat.

The English Beat only stayed together long enough for three studio albums. They had just released the third one, "Special Beat Service," a couple of months prior to this concert. So, naturally, they played a lot of songs from that.

I believe this is the shortest set of the entire festival. It's possible there are other songs that didn't get recorded. Or it could just be a short and sweet set, I don't know.

I already posted a 1982 concert from the band, a BBC one. It's pretty similar, so I suppose this isn't that necessary. But of course I'm including it since it's part of the festival.

This album is 41 minutes long.

Note that I've restarted the song numbering from one, and the part number of the album goes back to one, because this is the first set of the second day. I'll do the same with the start of the third day.

01 talk (English Beat)
02 Hands Off... She's Mine (English Beat)
03 Big Shot (English Beat)
04 talk (English Beat)
05 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
06 talk (English Beat)
07 Save It for Later (English Beat)
08 talk (English Beat)
09 Too Nice to Talk To (English Beat)
10 talk (English Beat)
11 I Confess (English Beat)
12 talk (English Beat)
13 Spar wid Me (English Beat)
14 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
15 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
16 talk (English Beat)
17 Jackpot (English Beat)
18 talk (English Beat)
19 The Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
20 talk (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16410996/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-26-1982Prt01EnglshBet_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LVpLVuyL

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, there's a twist, because it's actually two photos put together. On the left, with guitar, is Dave Wakeling, and the right is Ranking Roger. I started with a picture that had both of them standing in these exact positions, but Wakeling didn't look good. I happened to have another photo from the concert of just him, probably taken just moments before or after the other photo, judging from the lighting and such. So I took out Wakeling from the original and replaced him with the one from the other photo.

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: BBC College Concert, Hammersmith Palais, London, Britain, 10-3-1982

I thought I was done with the English Beat and the BBC. But I recently came across this short concert they did for the BBC, so here you go.

This concert took place the same week the band released their third and last studio album, "Special Beat Service," so it has a few songs from that. But the songs are pretty much evenly split between their three albums, making this a good live best of collection.

As usual with the BBC, the sound quality is excellent. The only editing I had to do was remove some BBC DJ talking between songs a couple of times.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Big Shot (English Beat)
02 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
03 talk (English Beat)
04 Jeanette (English Beat)
05 talk (English Beat)
06 I Confess (English Beat)
07 Spar Wid Me (English Beat)
08 talk (English Beat)
09 Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
10 Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
11 Drowning (English Beat)
12 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
13 Walk Away (English Beat)
14 talk (English Beat)
15 Save It for Later (English Beat)
16 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
17 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112218/TEnglishB_1982c_BBSessionsVolume3CollegeConcert__10-3-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from an appearance on the US TV show "American Bandstand" near the end of 1982. Only five of the seven band members are pictured.

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1982-1983)

Recently, I posted an album of the English Beat at the BBC. (Or, for those in Britain, just the Beat.) Here's the second and final volume. 

The first volume was really easy to make. It consisted entirely of BBC performances taken from album bonus tracks. This album has a lot of that. Specifically, six of the eleven songs are BBC performances from more album bonus tracks. But I felt those weren't enough to give an adequate picture, because the band only did one BBC session in the 1982/1983 time frame. So I've added in some live songs that I feel are important songs for the band. Most of these also come from album bonus tracks. There were a few more I could have included, but I didn't do that to avoid duplication of some songs. 

The only song here that isn't sourced from a bonus track is the last one, "Ackee 1 2 3." Personally, that's my favorite deep cut of theirs. Between this BBC volume and the first one, you basically get an excellent double album greatest hits collection. I wanted to make sure that song was included too. But since I couldn't find a bonus track version, I ended up using a version from a rare but officially released album of the band playing at the US Festival in 1983. However, with this and the other live songs here, it's hard to tell they're live versions, except sometimes for some applause at the end.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
02 I Confess (English Beat)
03 Spar Wid Me (English Beat)
04 She's Going (English Beat)
05 Save It for Later (English Beat)
06 Sole Salvation (English Beat)
07 Pato and Roger a Go Talk (English Beat)
08 End of the Party (English Beat)
09 Best Friend (English Beat)
10 Get-a-Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
11 Ackee 1 2 3 (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112200/TEnglishB_1982b-1983_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is a promotional photo of the band, I think from 1983.

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1979-1980)

I recently posted a stray tracks album for the English Beat. I'm following that up with two albums of their BBC sessions. Here's the first one. (And, as I mentioned before, I understand they're just called the "Beat" in Britain, but I'm an American, where they're called the "English Beat," so that's what I call them.

This is a very straight-forward album. The band put out an album in 1980 ("I Just Can't Stop It") and another one in 1981 ("Wha'ppen.") Decades later, each of those albums were released with lots of bonus tracks, and those included the complete BBC sessions from those time periods. So this is just a collection of those particular bonus tracks.

One interesting thing though is that the first five songs come from a John Peel BBC session when the band was just starting out. They had a meteoric rise, from forming their band to having hit singles and a hit album in just nine months. I read an interview with lead singer Dave Wakeling where he said the John Peel session was touch and go, because the band had just written most of the songs and hadn't done them in the studio yet, and they had to rise to the occasion to remember the chord changes and so forth. But the results sound fine to me.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
02 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
03 Click Click (English Beat)
04 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
05 Big Shot (English Beat)
06 Hands Off... She's Mine (English Beat)
07 Rough Rider (English Beat)
08 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
09 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
10 Too Nice to Talk To (English Beat)
11 New Psychedelic Rockers (English Beat)
12 Monkey Murders (English Beat)
13 Walk Away (English Beat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kwW93Zie

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/INIn6ydEq9LUwhb/file

I had a hard time finding good photos of the band from 1979 or 1980. So in the end I decided to use the cover to their single "Mirror in the Bathroom." I cropped out the outer edges where the name of the single was included, and added in some text of my own.

The English Beat - Hit It - Non-Album Tracks (1980-1983)

The English Beat put out three solid albums in the early 1980s. My only "issue" is that they didn't do more. They broke up way too early. For a long time, I didn't think there was enough non-album material for a stray tracks album. But I recently found a few more songs, enough for a single such album.

By the way, I realize that in Britain, they're known just as the Beat. To make things even more confusing, in Australia, they're known as the British Beat. But I'm born and raised in the United States, so I know them as the English Beat. Maybe it's just that I'm biased, but I think it's a more clarifying name, since Paul Collins also had a band called the Beat.

Anyway, this is the usual motley bunch of bonus tracks, A- and B-sides to singles, and live tracks. Six of the songs are B-sides, actually. "Pussy Price" is a cover, but they later wrote their own words to it and turned it into their own song "Ranking Full Stop." Still, I figure this is different enough to merit inclusion.

By the way, this does not include the song "Too Nice to Talk To." That originally was the A-side of a single in 1981. But it was soon added as the opening track to their 1981 album "Wha'ppen," and nearly everyone who has that album has that on it, so I figure it isn't needed here. For the same reason, I didn't include "Tears of a Clown" or "Ranking Full Stop." Originally, those were single releases only, but they were added to the 1980 album "I Just Can't Stop It" before long.

I wasn't quite sure what to do about the song "Stand Down Margaret." It's a great song, in my opinion, with a great anti-Margaret Thatcher message. But the version of it on "I Just Can't Stop It" was less than ideal, in my opinion. It was part of a medley with "Whine and Grine," so it's really only half a song. There is a nice version released as a B-side, and I've included that here as the second song. But it's a dub version, which means a lot of the lyrics aren't sung on it. I found another version they did on a TV as a stand alone song instead of part of a medley, as usual. That had all the lyrics, but the sound quality wasn't as perfect as the B-side version. In the end, I decided both versions had their charms, so I included both.

Most of the songs here are originals. I think the only ones that aren't are "Pussy Price," as mentioned above, and "Night and Day," a version of the classic Cole Porter song. I investigated the band, and it seems they almost never played songs in concert that they didn't record in the studio.

In my opinion, the band didn't leave a big discography behind, but virtually everything they did was solid, including their rare tracks. I think this album is good enough to stand along side their three studio albums.

01 Pussy Price (English Beat)
02 Stand Down Margaret [Dub Version] (English Beat)
03 Psychedelic Rockers (English Beat)
04 Hit It [Auto Erotic] (English Beat)
05 Which Side of the Bed (English Beat)
06 What's Your Best Thing (English Beat)
07 March of the Swivel Heads [Instrumental] (English Beat)
09 Cool Entertainer (English Beat)
10 Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
11 It Makes Me Rock (English Beat)
12 Night and Day (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112197/TEnglishB_1980-1983_HitIt_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 1982 publicity photo.