English Beat

Tonight @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 8 p.m.

Apr. 12, 2009

midnight

It’s an unwritten rule that if a band exists on- and off-again long enough without making any new music, eventually that band will splinter off into two bands touring under the same name. At least the Beat, the popular-’80s ska band, were well positioned for the split, since the group had two vocalists: Dave Wakeling, the Brit-pop frontman, and Ranking Roger, the rastafied crooner. Wakeling now fronts the American version of the Beat, called the English Beat, which continues to tour the nostalgia circuit, much to the delight of young ska fans, while Roger has carried the Beat torch in the U.K. Relations between the two factions remain icy, though Wakeling insists the door is always open for a full reunion.

Comments (10)

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Is it no wonder Doyle and his buddies are gone! H...

Is it no wonder Doyle and his buddies are gone! He sees only what is in front of him and has no vision.

Anonymous more than 13 years ago

Tragic moment = the election of Doyle...

Tragic moment = the election of Doyle

Anonymous more than 13 years ago

I hate to keep pointing out the elephant in the ro...

I hate to keep pointing out the elephant in the room, but Wisconsin has got to get unstuck from the race issue before we can move on with ANYTHING. Why else would these things have taken place, if it weren't for that "blighted area" known as northside of Milwaukee?
You all refuse to talk about the real problem. You will not ever want to build any form of transportation, whether high-speed trains for rich or suburb commutter trains for middle-class workers, not even more roads for suburban sprawl, unless you are assured that segregation (neighborhoods, schools, and jobs) will be restored, and the flow of tax dollars to the 'hood are cut off. You won't even let jobs happen there!
The Republican "Party of No" is more like "Let's get the Black man out of the White house, then we can talk". The race card is in the game, but nobody will dare show it.
You all remember Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower? He was the "reluctant politician" president, the one who never ran for or held any elected office before he ran for president. He did it because of his experience as general in WWII, for he saw the building Soviet threat that America was all too ready to politically ignore, the other candidates wanted "isolation". Everything he did was from a strategic military perspective.
Dwight's 1919 experience trying to take a military convoy across the US 48, combined with his observations of Germany's Autobahn from his time in beating down the Nazi's prompted him to build the Interstate highway system. Quick way to move the troops and tanks if need be. Have you ever noticed the long straight stretches with no powerlines or bridges overhead? Perfect for emergency runways should the airports be bombed by the soviets. Too many backup runways for anyone to seriously think they can easily cripple our air force.
Ike also got the space race going, response to Sputnik. Strategically got it to appear as nothing more than scientific research, eventually becoming NASA, but the goal was to get spy satellites over Russia, U2's weren't going to be usable forever.
Military man Ike even built the nukes, because he saw that it was cheaper at the time than keeping a large conventional military force, he was not about keeping defense spending high.
Republican President Eisenhower, the man who ended the "New Deal" that you all know Obama pushed us back to, was a man who thought of himself as quite religious, being the one who put the reference to God into the Pledge of Allegience, and onto our money.
Plus... here's the race card... Brown v. Board of Education happened under Ike's watch. He saw integration... aka standing together as a united people, as critical to national security. He saw that Communists around the world were using racial discrimination in the U.S. as a point of propaganda attack. So he integrated Washington DC schools... the day before the Brown v Board of Ed decision. Ike was also the man who proposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed them into law. And he was the one who called in the Arkansas guard for the "Little Rock Nine".
Kind of funny actions for a Republican, a Christian, and an anti-New Deal man, don't you think? Got to think of the long term!

Anonymous more than 13 years ago

@WaukeshaGuy: We also hate it when you keep pointi...

@WaukeshaGuy: We also hate it when you keep pointing out the elephant in the room. Here's a news flash- the elephant is in your head. You are the one who can't get "unstuck" from the race issue. One can define racism as being unable to get "unstuck" from the race issue. It is difficult to believe that you took the time to go back to Eisenhower, 1919, and the space race to make some sort of (incomprehensible) point, but there it is- in black and white!! Save your ramblings for the street corner, or try to stay on topic.
By the way, I live in one of the near suburbs because I liked the houses, the area, and the commute time. Guess what- not one but two (gasp) black families live on my block. They come to block parties, have a beer in my backyard (scandalous) and are pretty much exactly the same as everyone else on the block. I even bought a wreath from one of their kids, can you believe it? The high speed train had nothing to do with race, and in fact, it was Scott Walker who repeatedly suggested that we spend money on buses, rather than any form of rail.

Anonymous more than 13 years ago

Interresting that you should bring up Eisenhower a...

Interresting that you should bring up Eisenhower and the interstate highways. At first Wisconsin didn't want much to do with the interstates. Eventually when it did choose to get involved it actually cost the taxpayers of Wisconsin a lot more money than it would have if they had got in right away.
Seems that we will never learn from history.

Anonymous more than 13 years ago

I don't think rail is the way to go except in dens...

I don't think rail is the way to go except in densly populated areas. The planes won. Rail is not modern. Especially low speed rail under 110 mph. Gov. Walker won the election on this issue. He knows there will be no magic money paying the tab. Nobody wants to see empty train cars going back and forth to Madison. When you can fly to Minneapolis round trip for $150, why pay more for a slow train? California - now they could probably use rail upgrades between San Diego and San Francisco. So the jobs can be created there. People interested in opting into the rail industry can move there. Funny, I just read about a 2 mile extention of a subway in NYC will cost $5 billion. Imagine what it would really cost to build a train to Madison?