English Beat of my heart

I’ve read fellow music writers (including some of my colleagues) write about the feeling of hearing a musical legend or infatuation play a certain favorite song, and feeling so content with the experience that they knew if they died on the way home they’d die happy. I’ve never really had that feeling before, either in earnest or in jest, but now I think I know what they mean.

Sunday night I covered The English Beat for The Houston Press, or more specifically, Dave Wakeling performing English Beat songs with a bunch of people who weren’t originally in The Beat. But no matter. He still sounded exactly like he did in 1980, he was saucy and snarky on stage, and it was a very, very good time. I’m kind of sad the photog apparently didn’t get any good photos of Wakeling so I could show you the enormous beer belly he’s now sporting.

As I say in the review, they only had three studio albums, and they played almost 20 songs, so they had plenty of room for all their hits. About halfway through the show they played “Save It For Later,” a timeless pop song with a crazy catchy opening hook, and for some reason I was unexpectedly moved by hearing that song live and in person.

Unexpectedly moved.

I can’t figure out why, either. It’s not exactly one of my all-time favorite songs, and it’s not an especially emotional song either. I wasn’t even ALIVE when The Beat recorded that song. Something ethereal just happened. Maybe I was thinking how lucky I’ve been these last six months to get to write about what I love, or how happy I was CLH was there with me instead of staying at home since he had to work early the next morning. Or maybe it was something else, I don’t know, but for the first time at a show I literally thought to myself, okay, we can go home now. I can die happy.

It’s just that I love music so very, very much.