Concert Review: The English Beat, Johnny D's, Somerville, January 4

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The English Beat are better than you remember. Off the top of yourhead, you can only recall "Mirror in the Bathroom" and their cool logo.But they have more songs that make you go, "Oh, yeah, this isreally good," than you realized. And they can get a party going on acold Tuesday night in January like nobody's business.

"How Can You Stand There?" was the unofficial theme song for the night.It was probably about political apathy, but it applied to the audienceat a more literal level to the few hold-outs in the audience. Most ofthe sold-out crowd at Johnny D's was on their feet and dancing. Evenpeople with seats at tables on the edges of the crowded room were upand moving. Dave Wakeling could taunt someone up front for standingstill with arms folded only because it was a rarity. Even moreimpressive about "How Can You Stand There?" is that it was a new song,not yet recorded, but it fit in so easily with their repertoire of hitsthat the audience never slowed down.

And the major and minor hits kept coming: "Hands Off She's Mine," "IConfess," "Best Friend," "Twist and Crawl," "Save It For Later" (Seewhat I said about more good songs than you remember?) They brought outthe covers that they put their own stamp on, "Tears of a Clown," "Can'tGet Used to Losing You" and "I'll Take You There." Guitarist and singerDave Wakeling is the only original member still with the band; thecurrent keyboard player probably wasn't even born when the RankingRoger was bobbing around in videos in the early days of MTV. But theline-up in tight, ably delivering the material that made the band theepitome of the early '80s ska revival.

No, the evening wasn't perfect. While it was impressive that theyplayed more than two hours, the energy in the room sagged at around the1 hour 45 mark; they could have trimmed a few songs and still kept theaudience more than satisfied. And it's hard to fully endorse a group soclearly trading on nostalgia. But it's also hard to fault a band thatgenerates so much fun.