I saw The English Beat at a club in Orange County, CA on Saturday.
I wasn't a real big ska fan in the 80's, but always liked this band. That said, I didn't realize I knew so many of their songs. I guess it was because it was background music for me in my college years and nothing I ever owned or played intentionally.
I mentioned the location because if any of you have seen the Bravo reality program "Real Housewives of Orange County," then you know exactly what the audience looked like--MILFs and cougars. During "Tenderness," one 48-ish bottle blond got up on stage and started dancing...that lead to a jealous stampede of botox, silicone, and peroxide rushing the stage. There must have been 40 women up there (plus two guys and one tranny). I've never seen so many bottle blondes in one place. I thought the stage would collapse.
Save It For Later moment: During the stampede, one drunk mom fell on me. As she flailed about trying to right herself, her boobs were flopping all over me. Yeah. I looked up at her and she started rubbing her hands through my hair. I guess she had just read about ecstasy in RedBook the week before and learned that's what the kids do at raves these days. My friends made fun of me for the rest of the night and said the look on my face was worth the price of admission.
The day of the show, my friends and I were trying to coordinate dinner and figure out what time to get to the show. There were two opening bands--one from OC (on their world tour all the way from Dana Point) and some other band called Sabrina Lentini & Roses for Chelsea. I figured the Chelsea reference was either to the English football team or the London bourough. Boy was I wrong. While we took our sweet time to get to the club because we didn't really need to see the openers, we got there just as Sabrina and her band hit the stage. She was 10 years old and the rest of the band was middle school/high school age. We had to endure her pitchy, off-key singing and Little Miss Sunshine grinding on stage for an hour. I'm still trying to figure out what the booking agent of that club was thinking..."We have a legendary English ska band with a fan base stretching back 30 years...let's book some little girl who is trying desperately to be noticed by Disney!" Bad thing: She actually did an encore. Worse thing: Her closer was the Beatles Come Together. Ick.
