A Gen X Love Letter to the English Beat article @ All About Jazz

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” data-original-title title>The English Beat, devoted or casual, may be somewhat disappointed Soul Salvation is not the thorough history the ska-pop band deserves. But as the subtitle states, A Gen X Love Letter is more accurately the story of one rabid music fan’s coming of age in the late Seventies and early Eighties when the group flourished as one of, but not the only prominent practitioners of so-called Two-tone sound (see also The Specials and the Selecter).

In truth, however, the book works most effectively as a blueprint for a music lover’s rabid devotion to a favorite artist. In that sense, Soul Salvation is an archetypal tale into which any artist’s name(s) might be plugged: a narrative based upon

The Beatles

band / ensemble / orchestra

” data-original-title title>The Beatles, the

Allman Brothers Band

band / ensemble / orchestra

” data-original-title title>Allman Brothers Band ,

U2

band / ensemble / orchestra
b.1976

” data-original-title title>U2 or Foo Fighters would sustain itself equally efficiently. And such a storyline might well be devoid of the overabundance of personal information Marc Wasserman includes.

To be fair, the author makes mostly smooth transitions from interludes based on his own life experience and those depicting the timeline of the English Beat. Largely through excerpts from previously-published interviews with band members and journalists, the story of the ensemble’s rise to fame unfolds coincidentally with Wasserman’s adolescence and in that sense too, his evolution is every man and woman’s passage into maturity.

What most clearly distinguishes the tome, however, is its very focus on the third album of the septet Special Beat Service (Go Feet, 1982). And that perspective is ultimately the downfall of the writing: rife with breathless hyperbole, especially in a track-by-track breakdown of this third Beat studio album, the lack of healthy detachment from the subject renders Wasserman the definition of a fanboy. Little wonder he thus distorts the historical influence of his favorite record: works of artists he suggests owe a debt to the English Beat—Elvis Costello and the Jam, to name just two—actually predate the 1982 album.

From the very introduction of the book, the writer is as eager to explain his allegiance to the band (and this record) as he is to detail the trials and travails of his early life. But in regaling the reader with tales of growing up in a fractured family and beset by school bullies and serious health issues, the author/musician comes off as more than a little self-absorbed: how different is he from the rest of us?

To be fair, in the process of perusing these two hundred eight-four pages, anyone deeply fascinated by the greatest of all the arts, particularly in its pop forms, may see themself in Wasserman. But as he eventually recounts emerging from his shell toward the home stretch of Soul Salvation (its title a play on the name of an English Beat song), the homogeneity of his experiences correlates to that of the LP that is the object of his fascination.

Special Beat Service is the most conventional of the outfit’s actual total of four studio albums. And that’s even in comparison to Here We Go Love (Here We Go Records, 2018): released some thirty-five years after the original personnel parted ways on acrimonious terms, the album radiates more of the ensemble’s wry and discerning persona than the longplayer to which Wasserman is devoted.

Kudos to the writer for the breezy, ingratiating tone of the prose. As such, Soul Salvation lends itself to a complete reading, in its entirety, in a single day. In that respect, it’s simple to overlook the editing issues that allow some misspellings (including in the back cover blurb) and the touchpoints of profundity to which Wasserman alludes (Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun”?).

The man might have fashioned a compelling tale of persistence and perseverance had he correlated the wider arc of his life to the whole of the English Beat’s existence. But except for passing mention, he mostly overlooks the later (multiple) iterations of the group—(General Public, Fine Young Cannibals and two different Beat amalgamations in more recent years—while also providing only fleeting reference to his adult reality. In doing so, he gives short shrift to his later years (and the emotional growth therein) as well as the legacy of musicians who deserve much better..

Fortunately, the English Beat is otherwise well served with the box set The Complete Beat (Shout Factory, 2012). This assiduously annotated and comprehensive four-CD collection of studio and concert content is in stark contrast to the scant array of photos in this Gen X Love Letter; added in the home stretch as if an afterthought, the inclusions of these images recall nothing so much as a family photo album rather than a serious historical document.

Nonetheless, if a music devotee rabid or otherwise is moved to rediscover the eccentric British eclectics’ oeuvre in the wake of reading this (too) narrowly circumscribed effort, then Marc Wasserman will have done at least some justice to his heroes.

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