Just Hold My Hand While I Come to a Decision on it

Last night a couple of friends and I ventured to Skully's to see The English Beat. In all my time here, it was my first visit to this venue. We went in, one of my friends immediately sold one of her two extra tickets then we went to the stage and a stop to the smoking area - where I took this picture of a drum box.



After they had their nicotine, we proceeded to stand in front of the stage for the next hour and waited for the place to get crowded. It did not. My friend sold her other extra ticket!

Got this picture of Dave Wakeling's guitars. Hey that one on the left is the same as in the "Save it for Later' video!



At just before eight the band took the stage and proceeded to put a great groove on for almost two hours. It was a very impressive display of chattiness by Wakeling. He took a few minor digs at Margaret Thatcher, talked about how generous the young people of London were in looting presents for the royal wedding and extolled the virtues of coconut water. He clearly enjoying being there and the rest of the band showed great enthusiasm for the material.

Directly in front of us was an eight year old girl with her parents. It was her second time seeing the band and Wakeling kept looking down at her and smiling. At one point he and the Ranking Roger substitute gave her water to keep her hydrated and at the end of the night he even bent down and handed her his guitar pick. Very sweet man.



There were no other members of the old band with Wakeling but they played well together. Not a phoned in performance among the sextet. As you see, I managed to get some crappy pictures off the iPod Touch camera. It's been awhile since I've been that close to the stage for a show. I liked the venue more than I thought and have a snippet of I Confess posted to youtube. It has an excess of bass drum. I'm not going to embed it because it's not a great quality clip, but you can see it here if you want.



There was no opening act and at just before ten the band called it a night. They did just about every English Beat song you'd want (save for Soul Salvation) and even threw in Tenderness. A fine set. He shook a few hands, signed my friend's CD cover, with my pen. There's a picture on Facebook of me handing Dave Wakeling a pen, famous!

After the show my friends needed one more smoke so we went to the backstage smoking area. Wakeling came out and talked to some fans and I got to simply shake his hand and say thank you. Again, he is quite genuine. The show exceeded all expectations.