Starring English Beat, old people
Written By:
Directed By:
Studio: Music Video Distribution
Buy on Amazon.com link

I didn’t know English Beat were coming out with a DVD, so I was ecstatic when this arrived in my mailbox. I love 2 tone, and love the Beat! I didn’t even know the English Beat were still playing concerts. I knew Dave Wakeling was but not under the Beat name. Or I just forgot they were playing shows on and off. Hey, I never claimed to be the all knowing and powerful ska website master! Haha. But in any case, they filmed a concert in February 2003 at the Royal Festival Hall in London and it’s a really good! Lots of songs to skank around your living room to.

The first thing I noticed was the video quality because it was great! It’s in widescreen and looks like a concert movie. Some music DVDs just look like glorified bootlegs but I’m impressed with this video quality. The band played for awhile and rolled out 20 songs from their albums. The Beat opened up with “Ranking Full Stop” and then went into a few songs from the album “I Just Can’t Stop It.” Songs like “Rough Rider,” “Noise in This World” and “Hans Off She’s Mine.” They played a lot of the classics songs like “Save it For Later,” “Mirror in the Bathroom,” and “Too Nice to Talk To.” Those are my favorites from the band but they also played others than I enjoy like: “Two Swords,” “Best Friend,” “Doors of your Heart,” and “Click Click.” The one thing I noticed with their live performance was a lot of the songs sounded a lot slower, more in a reggae style. Which I’m fine with it but I think I like their studio songs better. I’m like that with most bands though. I prefer studio over live tracks. They still played a lot of their fast ska songs, which got all the aging rudeboys in the crowd dancing. It looked like there was no one under 40 in the crowd haha. I was kind of disappointed in that they didn’t play too many songs from the album “Special Beat Service,” which is my favorite album of theirs. I love songs like “Jeanette,” “Sole Salvation,” and “Sugar & Stress.” I thought it was cool to see Saxa still blowing away on his Sax, because his sax playing is amazing! Ranking Roger and Dave can still sing great too! I still want to see English Beat next time they are playing over here in the States. I think I might have missed the boat this summer because I’m pretty sure they did tour over here in June. Oh well, I’m sure they will be back.

If you love the Beat, then this is definitely something to buy because the DVD is kick ass! There’s no extras or anything like that but it’s worthwhile just for the concert alone.

Features:
Song Titles: Ranking Full Stop, Rough Rider, Noise In This World, Hands Off She’s Mine, Doors Of Your Heart, Too Nice To Talk To, Tears Of A Clown, Twist And Crawl, Spar Wid Me, Two Swords, Big Shot, Get A Job, Stand Down Margaret, Mirror In The Bathroom, Stranger On The Shore, Save It For Later, Click Click, Can’t Get Used To Losing You, Best Friend, Jackpot

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 CC

Video:
Widescreen 4:3 – Color

Subtitles:

Favorite Scenes: Ranking Full Stop, Noise in the World, Too Nice to Talk To, Doors of your Heart, Two Swords, Mirror in the Bathroom, Save it for Later, Best Friend
Rating: NR
Running Time: 125 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: