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.