The English Beat plays old music for new audiences

The English Beat

Diesel Club Lounge

Nov. 13, 7 p.m.

412-431-8800

+21––

For a band… The English Beat

Diesel Club Lounge

Nov. 13, 7 p.m.

412-431-8800

+21––

For a band that got its start in the 1970s, y shows no signs of slowing down.

The band plays a lot of new songs on its 30th anniversary tour, but the old hits, such as Mirror in the Bathroom, continue to be favorites among young and old audiences alike.

When frontman Dave Wakeling plays songs he wrote 30 years ago he tries to “stay in the moment” by connecting the audience with a shared sense of nostalgia.

“From the audience’s point of view, a song that you wrote 30 years ago had an important function in their life and they have all their memories wrapped up in it, too,” he said.

He formed the group in Birmingham, England, in 1979, creating music that mixed ska, rock and soul that broke down age, class and race barriers and still continues to embrace a variety of audiences.

However, Friday at Diesel the band will make an exception to this non-inclusiveness.

The show is 21 and older because Wakeling claimed the band’s traditionally older fan base can “get a bit sick of teenagers crowd surfing because they can’t dance.” “Sometimes we do some shows so that old folks can enjoy themselves,” Wakeling said.

But the band hasn’t shied away from reaching out to new, younger fans either. This summer it toured with ska-punk band Reel Big Fish.

Wakeling was thrilled to connect with young fans but was a bit disappointed when they hadn’t heard of the band. But by the end of the tour, Wakeling said, one fan summed it up perfectly: “Excuse me, sir, I never heard of ya’ll but ya’ll’s awesome!”

Wakeling hopes to do more all-ages shows in the future.

“I like open shows because you might see somebody who’s 60 and you might see someone 16, and they’re dancing the same dance at the same tempo,” he said, “But they’re not embarrassed to be in each other’s company.”

The band has blended differences together since its beginning.

In the 1970s, Wakeling described his music as a “punky-reggae party,” influenced by the upbeat ska and reggae music from Jamaica that drifted overseas to be played before British soccer games.

But Wakeling wasn’t quite ready to be boxed into one genre.

“We were trying to hybrid and mix up all of our favorite music,” he said. “And make a dance beat that was irresistible regardless of age or color or any other demarcation that could be used as a division.”

The fusion of beats successfully combated the black-and-white divisions in British society.

Dancing at clubs on weekends made it easier for different races to get along in day-to-day affairs throughout rest of the week.

“We were trying to bring people together to dance on common ground,” Wakeling said. “It worked fantastic.”

With shocking unemployment numbers, a recession on the brink of a depression and the looming threat of nuclear attack, 1970s Britain was not so different from the United States today.

Many fans call Wakeling “Skastradamus,” a play on words of the reputed prophet Nostradamus, because of the eerie similarities between his older songs and modern times.

For instance, a line in the song “I Am Your Flag,” originally about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, could easily be applied to U.S. involvement in the Middle East today: “I ran into Afghanistan/Dying to become a man/Well, I am your flag.”

Despite his prophetic lyrical abilities, a lot has changed in the production and distribution of music since Wakeling started the band.

In the 1970s, recording a song was a long and tedious process.

After collaborating with DJ duo The Thievery Corporation, Wakeling was astounded to see the producer “snatch the best bits of what everybody played and with fingers working faster than you can see … all of a sudden you are listening to this piece of music … it’s like the greatest hits of what you’ve played in the last 16 minutes.”

The band plans on releasing these remixes as well as some new songs at the end of the year.

Wakeling is considering selling demos or EPs at live shows or putting out a full-length album, but most of all he just wants to find the best way to bring music directly to the listeners, something that he says was hard to come by through the “corrupt” and “dishonest” music industry of his heyday.

Although he makes a living off album sales, he doesn’t necessarily disagree with illegal downloading.

“My suggestion to people [who download music] is, ‘Why don’t you send some money to Greenpeace or Amnesty International?’” he said. “That way there’s some decent karma going on about this.”