Before I started this project I did glance at another blog that was doing the same thing – I haven’t gone back since I started because I don’t want my thoughts to be influenced by anybody else. I bring this up because this album at the time was the latest one for that particular blog, and one of my aims was to at least make it this far.
The Blockheads were a band that I saw live, albeit without Dury since it was after he’d died. His replacement, Derek “The Draw” Hussey did make for a pretty good alternative, capturing some of the Essex swagger of Dury. For me the stand-out was the bass player Norman Watt-Roy, a man giving it his all until he was utterly drenched in sweat and making me realise just how funky a lot of the big hits are.
Watt-Roy is on good form for this album, but not all of the tracks are funky. Some, especially a trio towards the end (Blockheads, Plaistow Patricia, and Blackmail Man) are a lot harder-edged and punky, and it’s drummer Charley Charles and guitarist/keyboardist Chaz Jankel that come to the fore here, as well as Dury’s emphatic vocals.
Dury’s not the first British performer to sing in his own regional accent – once they’d got out of R&B covers The Beatles started sounding more Liverpudlian, and The Kinks cover some of the same kind of ground as Dury, but Dury is unafraid to not only sing in his Essex accent but to base many of the songs around Essex and East London characters. I went and checked, and the masters of the cockney knees-up, Chaz and Dave, started around about this time, but their big hits were not until 1979. So Dury was there first.
Often the characters in Dury's songs are portrayed sympathetically, even if they themselves are grotesques. The Jack-the-lad womaniser Billericay Dickie boasts of his conquests but there’s a certain sadness and desperation to him. The dim-witted Clever Trevor is portrayed as a loveable oaf, with Dury giving some great verbal patter in the lyrics.
“Just 'cos I ain't never had no nothing worth having never ever never, ever
You ain't got no call not to think I wouldn't fall into thinking that I ain't too ... clever”
You ain't got no call not to think I wouldn't fall into thinking that I ain't too ... clever”
The character in Plaistow Patricia is portrayed less sympathetically, mother of “lawless brats from council flats”, and the Blockheads of the song of the same title are people that “They've got womanly breasts under pale mauve vests, shoes like dead pigs' noses. Cornflake packet jacket, catalogue trousers, a mouth what never closes”
Meanwhile, Dury paints an affectionate portrait of his own father in My Old Man, a working class man who nevertheless takes pride in himself
“My old man was fairly handsome
He smoked too many cigs
Lived in one room in Victoria
He was tidy in his digs
Had to have an operation
When his ulcer got too big”
He smoked too many cigs
Lived in one room in Victoria
He was tidy in his digs
Had to have an operation
When his ulcer got too big”
There’s a much greater feel of authenticity to Dury’s lyrics compared to The Kinks. When they create a character, it’s more often like a sneering caricature, but then it’s arguably the Davies Brothers laughing at the pretensions of the snobs (e.g. Dedicated Follower Of Fashion) than punching down at the poor. The world has changed a lot between the time The Kinks were recording Arthur, and this album, but also to an extent the working classes have got left behind, and this album captures that sense of the older generation (like Dury Senior) taking pride in being a bus driver versus the likes of the Blockheads who splash their money on fake Rolex watches, “premature ejaculation” cars, and whose “shapeless haircuts don't enhance their ghastly patterned shirts”.
Luckily, the music matches the lyrics, a glorious mix of funk, punk, music hall, and rock and roll
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