Sep 04 2024 22 mins
Welcome back to the Ska Boom podcast! This season is called Soul Salvation and its the companion to my new book “Soul Salvation – A Gen X Love Letter To The English Beat."
Through the book and this podcast I’m telling the story of the Special Beat Service album which embodies both the brilliance and the bittersweet end of the English Beat whose songs served as a soundtrack for thousands of Gen Xers like me.
The book and this podcast is my tribute to the band’s final, triumphant act – which initially was largely overlooked – and how their music and the love of a young woman changed me forever.
This week’s episode is all about Special Beat, the 2 Tone ska super group formed in the early 90s to tap into the growing popularity of ska in America. The genesis of Special Beat was a one-off show by a band called The International Beat featuring Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger that electrified an audience of 10,000 ska crazy kids at an Earth Day celebration in Berkeley, CA in the Spring of 1990. It's my opinion that the band was responsible for kicking off the explosion of 3rd wave American ska of the 90s.
My new book Soul Salvation : A Gen X Love Letter To The English Beat is now available from DiWulf.com and from Amazon globally.
The music clips included in this podcast fall under the “Fair Use Doctrine” as defined by Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The law allows for use of music clips for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.