Bad Manners – Don’t Knock The Bald Heads: Live In Concert

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Concert: C+

 

 

How about a nine-man neo-Ska band called Bad Manners?  Though not widely known in the United States, they were a huge hit back in 1980 in their native England.  With lead singer Buster Blood Vessel, they cut their earliest hit albums with the Magnet label (recently absorbed by Warner Bros.) and MCA even tried to break them in the states back then.  Don’t Knock The Bald Heads: Live In Concert offers the band a quarter century later, as wild as ever, reminding one of the band Madness hyped up on who knows what.

 

The songs here from this Secret Films DVD release includes many (if not all) of their hits including:

 

1)     In The Mood

2)     Echo 4 + 2

3)     This Is Ska

4)     My Girl Lollipop

5)     Fatty Fatty

6)     Black Night

7)     Feel Like Jumping

8)     Walking In The Sunshine

9)     Skaville, U.K.

10)  King Ska-Fa

11)  Pipeline

12)  Red River Ska

13)  Too Good To Be True (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)

14)  Just A Feeling

15)  You Fat Bastard

16)  Skinhead Girl

17)  El Pussycat

18)  Ne-Ne Na-Na Na-Na Nu-Nu

19)  Don’t You Be Angry

20)  Woolly Bully

21)  Special Brew

22)  Don’t Knock The Bald Heads

23)  England Football Medley: Tom Hark, March Of The Mods, The Great Escape, Come On Eileen

24)  Lip Up Fatty

25)  Can Can

 

 

From the titles alone, you can see this is a serious party band with some kind of crazy edge and this concert continues that tradition.  Fans will miss some of their variations on motion picture themes not included and hits like Buona Sera, Special Brew, Lorraine and Got No Briefs, but the concert shows that they have plenty of life left.  That is even if it is not brain surgery music and runs about an hour.

 

The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is lacking in detail and depth, but the color is not bad.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surround are good mixes, but the 5.1 fares a bit better.  This is not the greatest audio recording, but it is not the worse either.  The only extras are an amusing, informative interview with Mr. Vessel that runs about 28 minutes long and an amusing Soundcheck piece that runs about 9 minutes long.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo