SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)
By:
December 12, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… ska records! PLAYLIST HERE. Series edited by Josh Glenn.
Not really ska, of course. Structurally it’s barely even ska-adjacent — no jumpy-umpy upbeat, no chops of guitar or stabbed keyboard, no jittery cheap-speed used-to-be-a-skinhead feeling. Also: there are strings. So what can we say about ‘Save It For Later’? Maybe that it’s ska-enabled. There’s just something sort of aerated and elastic in the performance of this rather straightforward groove, as if the players are quite gently exploring it for pockets of rhythmic interest. (For contrast listen to Pearl Jam doing it, stomping it flat like a Neil Young song, and you’ll hear what I mean.)
It’s the Beat’s most beautiful song and one of their oddest, melodically open-hearted but with encrypted sexual-sounding vaguely menacing lyrics, and making use of a strange tuning: DADAAD. (Pete Townshend was famously stumped by this when he first tried to cover the song, and called the Beat’s Dave Wakeling — the song’s composer — for help.) The first chime of those weirdly plangent chords is its signature and probably its hook: the ear is caught instantly.
I remember being mesmerized, watching the Beat on TV, by dancer/co-frontman/spiritcatcher Ranking Roger — the muscular way he claimed space, skanking with arms flung wide, and his appearance of floating always two inches above the stage. For ‘Save It For Later’ Roger would move — he couldn’t not move — but with a delicate levity, bobbing up and down and chastely trembling his tambourine. Behind him were the two guitar dudes, future Fine Young Cannibals, doing their angry rubbery man-dancing, and next to him was Dave Wakeling, big-voiced as Paul Weller, enjoying his funny chords, primping slightly in his pop moment. So lovely.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lucy Sante on Margarita’s WOMAN COME | Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE | Susannah Breslin on The [English] Beat’s MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM | Carl Wilson on Prince Buster / Madness’s ONE STEP BEYOND | Carlo Rotella on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET | Rani Som on The Bodysnatchers’ EASY LIFE | David Cantwell on Desmond Dekker’s 007 (SHANTY TOWN) | Francesca Royster on Joya Landis’ ANGEL OF THE MORNING | Mimi Lipson on Folkes Brothers’ OH CAROLINA | Alix Lambert on The Specials’ TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG | Marc Weidenbaum on Dandy Livingstone’s RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU | Heather Quinlan on Fishbone’s MA & PA | Will Hermes on The [English] Beat’s WHINE & GRINE / STAND DOWN MARGARET | Peter Doyle on The Skatalites’ GUNS OF NAVARONE | James Parker on The [English] Beat’s SAVE IT FOR LATER | Brian Berger on The Upsetters’ RETURN OF DJANGO | Annie Zaleski on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ SOME DAY I SUPPOSE | Deborah Wassertzug on The Bodysnatchers’ TOO EXPERIENCED | Dan Reines on The Untouchables’ I SPY FOR THE FBI | PLUS: AL Deakin on SKANKING FOR YOUR LIFE.
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