Showcase - Dave Wakeling
Who They Are
Dave Wakeling is a highly talented and influential musician known worldwide. He is best known for his work as the "frontman" and songwriter for the bands, "The English Beat" and "General Public".
Hailing from working-class Birmingham, England. The (English) Beat entered the music scene in 1979. The six member band consisted of Dave Wakeling (vocals & guitar), David Steele (bass), Andy Cox (guitar), Everett Morton (drums), Saxa (saxophone) and Ranking Roger (vocals). The band managed to fuse all of their respective musical influences - soul, reggae, pop and punk - into a unique sound that was highly danceable. Along with contemporaries such as The Specials, The Selecter and Madness, The Beat became one of the most popular and influential bands of the British Ska movement.
Over the course of the three albums, The Beat acheived great success in their home country, charting several singles into the top 10. Although the band was never able to duplicate their UK chart success in America, they did find a solid base of young fans eager to dance to the band's hypnotic rhythms. Their constant touring with bands such as The Clash and The Police helped to boost their popularity. In 1983, after the release of their third album, "Special Beat Service", the band broke up due to artistic differences.
It was at that point that Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger recuited Stoker (drums) and Mickey Billingham (keyboards) of Dexy's Midnight Runners and Horace Panter (bass) of The Specials and formed General Public. Their first album "...All The Rage" included a guest appearance by former Clash guitarist Mick Jones. After the fantastic success of "...All The Rage", the band spent two years writing and recording their follow-up. Although "Hand to Mouth" did not fare as well as the first album, it did spawn two singles, "Too Much or Nothing" and "Come Again".
What We Did
Working with Dave's "right-hand man" Louis Kahn (Sir Lou), we created the davewakeling.com website. The site boasts database-driven dynamic functionality written in ColdFusion facilitiating ease of maintenance and updates.
Upon release of the English Beat's best of album entitled "Beat This", we worked to create the website promoting the album.
