ABCs of My Vinyl Collection (Letter E, Part 8)

Back in November, one day after the catastrophic election, to be exact, I featured the soundtrack to 'Dance Craze,' an album chock full of gems from ska's second wave. I purposely focused on minor acts like Bad Manners and the Bodysnatchers because I knew the rest of the bands on the album would get their own day in this series. That brings us to the English Beat. My apologies to the rest of the world for "the Donald" and the fact that we here in America call the Beat the English Beat (in that order). It was all to avoid the confusion of having a terrific power-pop band called the Beat here on our shores... Los Angeles to be exact. I don't like them as much as Dave, Roger and the rest, but they are worth a listen.

My vinyl section for the English Beat is nothing special. I have the three studio albums and a couple of singles. Even that sparse collection became obsolete when I invested in the five-disc 'The Complete Beat' box set when it came out in 2012, but I hung on to the wax anyway. I bought the box for the two discs of bonus material that included extended versions, remixes and dub mixes, as well as all three Peel Sessions and a live performance. I had some of that material on vinyl, and that's what we'll listen to today. Here is the "Jeanette" 12" in all of its scratchy glory. Not a big deal to you folks on the other side of the pond, but I only have a couple of pieces of vinyl with the Go-Feet Records imprint, and this is one of them. The English Beat were on I.R.S. over here. The B-side is an extra-long instrumental version of "Rotating Head" made famous on 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.'

"Jeanette" (Extended)
"March of the Swivel Heads" (Extended)

Linear Tracking Lives turns 8 today. I want to thank everyone who has stopped by over the years. I have always said I'll quit doing this when it starts to feel like work. I'm still having fun, and it's because of you. Until tomorrow, then...