VIA PRESS RELEASE | Musician, podcaster, and author Marc Wasserman’s second book Soul Salvation: A Gen-X Love Letter To The English Beat is now available. Published by DiWulf Publishing House, the book is part Gen-X memoir about his experiences growing up in the early ’80s and part English Beat oral history and takes a detailed and loving look at the making of, response to, and profound influence of their third album Special Beat Service. The book features extensively researched interviews, stories and anecdotes about the band’s beloved third album Special Beat Service from band members, record company executives, music critics and notable fans.
Featuring a foreword by I.R.S Records President Jay Boberg, who signed the band with the goal of breaking them in America, Soul Salvation is the very first book of its kind to explore the English Beat’s unique story and the band’s massive influence on a generation of American music fans like Wasserman and Gen-X musicians like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, as well as leading songwriters like Elvis Costello and Pete Townshend.
Amazingly, Special Beat Service remains an album many critics name check, but haven’t really considered, even retrospectively. The fact is that the album features several iconic songs of the era, (e.g., “Save It For Later,” “I Confess,” and “Sole Salvation”) which are among the earliest examples of a nascent, early ’80s indie rock sound just beginning to find its footing.
Wasserman details how Special Beat Service was an experimental swan song of an album that combined pop, ska, reggae, punk, soul, new wave, and Latin music into twelve unique, stand-alone songs created by a band that was growing exhausted from the grind of trying to break America.
And while grappling with the drudgery of constant touring, band members were confronted with a hard truth: they weren’t sure they wanted to be in a band with each other anymore. Wasserman details the ambivalence that may have contributed to Special Beat Service’s go-for-broke sound, making it one of the most overlooked albums of the early ‘80s.
Soul Salvation is Wasserman’s second book with DiWulf, following the publication in 2021 of the groundbreaking Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral which documented the unwritten history of American ska and reggae. Wasserman is a musician who founded Bigger Thomas—the first ska band from New Jersey in the late ’80s. He later co- founded the new wave ska band Rude Boy George and now performs with the reggae soul band The Phensic.
