One day in the summer of 1977, I was minding my own business, searching through the racks at Probe Records, a place far more cool and intimidating than I ever was, when this strange song Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll was played. Not once, not twice, but on repeat for at least half an hour.
Probe was well known for having Pete Burns and Pete Wylie working there, sneering at customers' choice of purchase, but I'm not sure either were there that day. However, it was my introduction to Ian Dury.
He was never a punk, more of a music-hall artiste with punk sensibilities, wise enough to ensure that he had the tightest possible band of musicians to set his words to music. This album seemed to soundtrack my first year at university, always on somebody's turntable or played in bars, and I'm sure I was pretty much word perfect in most of these songs. I will have picked the CD up cheap and second hand somewhere, but I've no idea where.
Wake Up And Make Love To Me is a fine intro, and the instrumentation makes clear this ain't punk. It's an energetic risque yet tender song, a great start. Then into Sweet Gene Vincent, starting as a ballad for Dury's teenage hero before waking up to a rock'n'roll conclusion. I'm Partial To Your Abracadabra, a simple tale of lust and double entendre isn't one of the more memorable songs on the album, then My Old Man, a slow and lovely tribute to Dury senior. The music-hall vibe really ramps up with Billericay Dickie, a filthy misogynist's tale, which, I hope, aims to present Dickie as a grotesque, as is Clevor Trever, who follows. If I Was With A Woman takes the misogyny a level further, and you're never quite sure if the narrator is a figure of disdain, or Dury himself. Then the glorious Blockheads - a track I already had on tape from a Peel session - a lovely shouty rant about Essex Man (or is that my prejudices showing?) followed by the expletive laden opening of Plaistow Patricia (an intro forgotten too many times in polite company), which carries on the energy from Blockheads, as does Blackmail Man, an angry thrash of Cockney rhyming slang, almost a punk song!
And it's been a really enjoyable re-visit to this album, even if I'm now wincing far more at some of the attitudes towards women than I did as a teenager.
4* - it's still a great album, with lyrics that make you laugh and cringe simultaneously, all backed by fine musicians
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