The English Beat bring 2-Tone to Menlo Park's Guild Theatre in March

Dave Wakeling's band plays the Peninsula's century-old movie house turned concert hall on Friday, March 19.

There's a specific joy in watching a seated room give up on sitting. Ska does that to people, and come spring it'll do it on Santa Cruz Avenue: The English Beat play The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park on Friday, March 19, 2027, with the show starting at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale through OpenDate following the Oct. 27 announcement.

The Guild holds about 500, which makes this one of the more intimate ways to see a band whose songs have been filling dance floors for more than four decades. Weekend nights at a room this size don't tend to linger, so if you want in, don't sleep on it.

The man at the center of it is Dave Wakeling, who, as the Napa Valley Register put it, hails from working-class Birmingham, England. His band came out of the 2-Tone movement, and in Britain it goes by The Beat featuring Dave Wakeling. The band has spent this fall at home: a 21-date UK tour called *Dance Crazed Too*, with stops including Middlesbrough Town Hall in October. So the band that turns up in Menlo Park in March has been playing these songs to rooms full of people who grew up on them.

The Bay Area has been a regular stop. CBS San Francisco has covered Wakeling bringing the band back to Felton Music Hall and Old Princeton Landing and to Berkeley's Cornerstone, and the band has also been part of the Retro Futura Tour of '80s alt heroes in Saratoga. The Guild, though, is new territory for the band, and it might be the best-sounding stop of the lot.

A 1926 movie house, saved from the wrecking-ball fate of most single screens, now built for exactly this kind of night.

The room's story is worth knowing. It opened in 1926 as the Menlo Theatre and ran for 93 years as one of the last single-screen movie houses on the Peninsula before closing in 2019. The Peninsula Arts Guild, a nonprofit Menlo Park resident Drew Dunlevie founded in 2017, took it on, and after a $35 million conversion it reopened as a concert venue in 2022. The rebuild included a Meyer Sound system, and the room has spent its centennial year running a special concert series. It will mark five years as a music venue this coming February, so the English Beat show lands just weeks after that milestone.

For Peninsula and South Bay fans, that combination is hard to beat: a band that made its name on dance music, a sound system designed for clarity, and a room small enough that the back row isn't far from the stage.

Dig out the checkerboard, if you still have it. On March 19, the Guild's seats will be for decoration.

Sources: The English Beat, March 19, 2027 – OpenDate (app.opendate.io); Dave Wakeling of the English Beat talks about life, music – Napa Valley Register (napavalleyregister.com); The Beat – Dance Crazed Too UK Tour – Middlesbrough Box Office (boxoffice.middlesbrough.gov.uk); The bEAT announce Dance Crazed Too – University of Sheffield performance venues (performancevenues.group.shef.ac.uk); British ska great brings the English Beat back to Bay Area – CBS San Francisco (cbsnews.com); British ska great brings the English Beat back to Berkeley – CBS San Francisco (cbsnews.com); Retro Futura Tour brings 80's alt rock heroes to Saratoga – CBS San Francisco (cbsnews.com); Renovated Guild Theatre brings live music to downtown Menlo Park – Local News Matters (localnewsmatters.org); Guild Theatre – Cinema Treasures (cinematreasures.org); Meyer Sound heads up the audio at reinvented Guild Theater – ProSoundWeb (prosoundweb.com); The Guild's centennial concert series – RWC Pulse (rwcpulse.com); The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park turns 100 – Nob Hill Gazette (nobhillgazette.com)