SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (EXTRA)
By:
December 29, 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.
THE BEAT | HAMMERSMITH PALAIS, LONDON | OCTOBER 3, 1982
In the early ’80s sitcom The Young Ones, Rik Mayall played a posh-boy radical whose unworldliness was demonstrated by his preening vision of a post-revolutionary Britain in which “all the punks and rastas and skinheads dance together.” This satire on proto-wokeness was born of a time when wearing loafers and sta prest could provoke a kicking from those who’d progressed to Italian sportswear, and part of its humour came from a sense that such things seemed as inevitable as the British weather.
My laughter at Rik’s dream was always a little half-hearted. In the same year that The Young Ones debuted on British TV, I went with some mates to see The Beat at Hammersmith Palais and we danced for almost two hours in a multi-racial crowd that contained not just punks, rastas and skinheads but assorted soul girls, rude boys, casuals and probably some other subcultural groups I’ve now forgotten. It was Rik’s utopia right there on a West London dancefloor and it remains one of the most joyfully ecstatic nights of my life. I was fifteen years old.
The gig was a late, last gasp of the original 2 Tone movement, but it contained all the abandon-in-unity for which it has since been eulogised. The Beat’s sound was particularly well suited to soothing ethnic and subcultural division, less punky and confrontational than The Specials and without Madness’s hooligan affiliations. They were powered by Dave Wakeling’s full voiced croon, Ranking Roger’s euphoric toasting and — crucially — David Steele’s sinuous and insistent bass, capable of simultaneously channelling Robbie Shakespeare, ’60s samba and The Ruts. I can feel it at the bottom of my spine when I recall the evening.
Love and unity hadn’t obviously been on the agenda earlier on when Roddy Frame, lead singer of support band Aztec Camera, was treated to a barrage of abuse and the occasional chucked can of lager for daring to present himself to post-punk London in a tasselled cowboy jacket. But when the opening chords of “Big Shot” chugged across our heads, the entire crowd erupted into as close an approximation of skanking as was possible when crammed in shoulder to shoulder, and didn’t cease until the last note of the encore, “Rough Rider.”
Over the years my friends and I have often remarked that we danced through that evening like our lives depended on it. The cliché is kind of accurate: in the face of ascendant Thatcherism with its racialised policing and parochial divisiveness, the lives we aspired to as young people in the UK did to some extent depend on it. It was an unselfconscious display of racial unity only a year after the Brixton riots and although we didn’t see it that way at the time, we did step out into the street wondering how the world could remain the same after the experience. I suppose that for me, it didn’t.
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.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!