Song of the Day 3/28: The (English) Beat, “Stand Down Margaret”

British pop lost another voice this week when Ranking Roger of the English Beat died of cancer at just 56 years old. The Beat was at the forefront of England’s ska revival, and Roger Charlery’s island-flavored vocals were at the forefront of the Beat.

Roger was just 16 and drumming for a band called the Dum Dum Boys that played its first gig opening for the Beat. He became a fan of the band and began crashing the stage at their gigs to grab the microphone and start “toasting,” the Jamaican forerunner of rapping. The band loved it and asked him to join. They went on to release three albums filled with songs that mixed ska and rock to popular acclaim. Many of their songs contained social commentary, none more pointedly than their call for PM Margaret Thatcher to resign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K6YWX4OL0o

After the Beat disbanded in 1983, Roger and Beat co-frontman Dave Wakeling formed General Public before going their separate ways. Both fronted various alignments of the Beat in the years since, Roger in the UK and Wakeling in the US. Wakeling now lives in California, where he told an interviewer a few years ago, “I have a nose tuned to the smell of the death of an empire, and I smell it now.”