The Beat (1979)
MCV Rating: 4.0/$$$
How did these guys not make it big. Strong tuneful forceful power pop.
‘Rock N Roll Girl,’ the opener should have been a Top Tenner.
‘Don’t Wait Up’ should have melted into teen turntables all over the early 90s.
This was a cross between early Beach Boys and the Cars.
Every song is a mini-power pop anthem with boys singing simplistically about girls coming and going from their lives.
Depth? None.
But framed in sharp tasty guitar chords, they had a formula that had a good beat and you could dance to it. Timing? 1979 was dominated by a slice of power pop in its own right: My Sharona by the Knack. Arguably weaker than ‘Don’t Wait Up,’ which got nowhere near the success of Sharona. They also had some name fight with the English Beat, AKA as the Beat, which played in a ska-band.The Beat had some affiliation with the Plimsouls and Peter Case, which I will get to when their lettesr comes up, like the draft.
Who knows why this egregious over looking occurred. I remember I first received the 7″ promo single for ‘Don’t Wait Up’ in a magazine. Can’t find that yet, but not much later got the full length album on vinyl. Probably from Wuxtry. Probably for a couple bucks.
Counting my 678 vinyl records down before I die of brain disease.