red lights


basement tapes	concert reviews	cd reviews	interviews	ticket swap	music news

Closing the generational gap

The English Beat / Fishbone
Turner Hall
Milwaukee, WI
March 3, 2010

The English Beat

Fishbone

The English Beat

Story and photos by Matt Schwenke

While the pairing of 2 Tone ska band The English Beat, who recorded just three albums over a five-year span before breaking up in 1983, and the alternative ska band Fishbone, who briefly rose from the L.A. underground scene to mainstream popularity in the mid-90s, seemed to be ska glory on paper, the two side-by-side in a live setting at Turner Hall, however, wasn't nearly as cohesive, even though both bands turned in quality sets.

After an opening set by Outlaw Nation, Fishbone would take the stage and command a raucous scene near the front of the stage. Despite having a lawsuit filed against him just weeks before for allegedly breaking bones in a stage diving incident with a fan, frontman Angelo Moore kept to his legacy by jumping into the crowd a couple of times, singing with the crowd and inviting fans to fill the stage for a song. The pure energy behind a Fishbone live show is simply incredible, and tunes like "Party at Ground Zero" and "Bonin' In the Boneyard " were charged with so much energy that any act would be hard-pressed to follow.

As a somewhat noticeable divide in the audience formed (a slightly older crowd shifted to the front after the slightly younger Fishbone audience dispersed about the venue), the English Beat stayed true to their own simpler form of music and followed Fishbone as more of an after-party affair with frontman Dave Wakeling the friendly local telling stories at the end of the bar. Not that the English Beat were without energy, as in "Can't Get Used to Losing You," which Wakeling said was written about his liver, or "Hands Off She's Mine," but with a decidedly calmer theme throughout their tunes, they came off as sleepy or at least very relaxed by comparison.

Despite the challenges in combining two bands in one show with very distinct differences in energy and fanbase, sticking to their own sound seemed to garner new fans on both sides of the generational gap.