The ska-revival bands that emerged in England a couple of years ago started with scant raw material compared with their British Invasion forebears in the mid-Sixties. Both movements reworked black music in a new context, but the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, et al., dramatized the main story line (American blues and soul), while the Specials, the Selecter, the English Beat and others...

The English Beat make night music: wild and threatening, sexy and sharp. Five kids from England (two black, three white), triggered by a wicked Jamaican sax player of indeterminate age, these musicians play with the intensity of the truly possessed. Like the Specials (on whose Two Tone label they first recorded), the English Beat are part of the ska revival that's taken British rock & roll one...