Just been listening to his greatest hits,Reasons to be cheerful(Best of).At the time I did not really appreciate his genius and humour.But right now I just realised what a talent he was!Some amazing stuff on this double cd!

Yes. Seem the band on numerous occasions over the years with both Ian
& Derek the Draw on the mic.

What's not to love?

Yeah, good music and ian was a lovely guy and great performer. sad he is no longer with us. Loved their music.
Jeroen

Great vibes

A fan of both Ian and Baxter.

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stargroover
Just been listening to his greatest hits,Reasons to be cheerful(Best of).At the time I did not really appreciate his genius and humour.But right now I just realised what a talent he was!Some amazing stuff on this double cd!

Yes, yes, yes......I thought his first two albums were unique works of genius......his 3rd, Laughter, was also unique but which I also loved, esp. @#$%& ing Ada but probably an acquired taste.....his later stuff, a bit weak...BUT live, he was out of this world........the rhythms were unbelievable

For live, check, Ian Dury And The Blockheads: Hold On To Your Structure [DVD] Live at the Hammersmith Odeon 1985 .... ... [www.ebay.co.uk]

I saw Led Zep & the New Barbarians at Knebworth on Saturday 11.8.1979 and Ian Dury at the Odeon the next day.......

I enjoyed the NBs a lot (Led Zep were a bit cold for my liking) but Ian Dury's show was just a sumptuous banquet of music.......superb night, superb memories esp as we were 10 minutes late and got let in for nothing (we were just passing prior to hitching down the M4 to Wales) when we came out, got a lift almost straight away, 200 miles all the way home..................



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-05-15 15:31 by EddieByword.

There ain't half been some clever bastards!

Here I stand with a doughnut for a brain.........

Yes I'm a fan. Great character Ian Dury! One of a kind!

Great witty lyrics no great lyricist really, love his lyrics. I wanne be straight, Trevor Clever, etc Last but not least : The Blockheads are a great band! Very musical one of my favorites as a collective band in fact.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-05-16 19:47 by barbabang.

I saw him and the band at the Roxy in LA in the later '70's. He opened for Jimmy Cliff. An odd paring I thought. Dury was enjoyable. Cliff was extraordinary and put on one of the most memorable shows I ever attended. The next table over was Ron Wood and Jo. After Dury's set Wood went back stage presumably for a visit. He (Wood) looked like he was having a good time.

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pmk251
I saw him and the band at the Roxy in LA in the later '70's. He opened for Jimmy Cliff. An odd paring I thought. Dury was enjoyable. Cliff was extraordinary and put on one of the most memorable shows I ever attended. The next table over was Ron Wood and Jo. After Dury's set Wood went back stage presumably for a visit. He (Wood) looked like he was having a good time.

He played (or sung) with Ron & Bill Wyman in Bill's all star AIMS band in 1988...........ex show....

[www.ebay.co.uk]

Tracklisting:

Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hind: There’s A Place
Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hind: Windows Of The World
Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hind: Days
Chris Rea: Nothing’s Happening By The Sea
Chris Rea: Steel River
Chris Rea: It’s All Gone
Chris Rea: September Blue
The All-Star Band: Tallahassee Lassie (Vocals: Ian Dury)
The All-Star Band: Baby Come Back (Vocals: Eddie Grant)
The All-Star Band: Lucille (Vocals: Ian Dury)
The All-Star Band: Baby Please Don’t Go (Vocals: Chris Rea)
The All-Star Band: Johnny B. Goode (Vocals: Ian Dury)
The All-Star Band: It’s All Over Now (Vocals: Ronnie Wood, Ian Dury, Terence Trent D’arby)
The All-Star Band: Honky-Tonk Women (Vocals: Ronnie Wood, Terence Trent D’arby)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-05-15 20:59 by EddieByword.

I saw Ian and the Blockheads a couple of times in the late '70s. Great band, a guaranteed good night out. Ian's unique perspective on life resulted in some wonderful songs.
Must admit I had no idea the band were still playing. I knew Norman was playing in Wilko Johnson's band but I didn't realize his steady gig with the Blockheads was ongoing.

Great band. Chaz Jankel wrote Ai Non Corrida too, which Quincy Jones recorded.

However, Plaistow Patricia and Billericay Dickie are great characters. Nobody writes about the likes of these, but Ian Dury did.

Yes I'm a fan. I saw Ian Dury and the Blockheads at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in the early 80's. They were a great band and he was a wonderful character and a great guy. Love him and his band wish he was still with us.

Have a few albums

Thanks for the comments everyone!Wish I had seen him live.
Will check out some of his earlier albums and the gig he did with the All star band.
My journey to work will be made more enjoyable by listening to this sadly missed legend.

Any Ian Dury fans out there?

Not anymore ... They're all too old for drugs now days ....



ROCKMAN

Ian's music means a lot to me even after all these years. His lyrics, many based on his own experiences of a sometimes difficult life, were unique . I still play his music a lot.

At one time he was flavour of the month in UK and his voice suffered from too much live work and recording. I remember a live broadcast where he struggled to sing and was fed up with sections of the audience who obviously there on a free ticket. At the end he thanked his fans and said to the freeloaders 'go home and collect somebody else now please'.

I think his last tv performance was on Later with Jools Holland where Ian was so ill he had to sit on a stool to perform and was obviously using an autocue. Jools comment that Ian should be the next poet laureate was a nice compliment but think how he would have shaken up the establishment if he had been given that gig around the time of New Boots and Panties.

Take a minute lo look up the lyrics of F*****g Ada for one if the best examples of his writing.

Miss you Ian, think of you lots

Well, it's hard not to love "Rhythm stick" and "Sex & Drugs & Rock n roll". I don't know the rest of his music that well, but I probably should.

One of the tracks on the Best of album is "Pam's moods",which is a great track ,originally doe by Kilburn and the High roads.I am going to check out the two albums they released in the mid seventies.

Shane MacGowan & Blockheads - Plaistow Patricia

Sweet!

Shane MacGowan & Blockheads - Plaistow Patricia .......I still have not heard the Ian Dury version yet.This version certainly made me wide awake this morning.I particularly liked the sax running through the song,and the back up vocals of Kirsty M. I presume.
Has Shane MacGowan done quite a bit of work with the Blockheads?

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stargroover
Shane MacGowan & Blockheads - Plaistow Patricia .......I still have not heard the Ian Dury version yet.This version certainly made me wide awake this morning.I particularly liked the sax running through the song,and the back up vocals of Kirsty M. I presume.
Has Shane MacGowan done quite a bit of work with the Blockheads?

It's off this album.....

[www.youtube.com]

Re-recordings of the classic album New Boots and Panties by contemporary artists backed by the Blockheads

0:00 Wake Up And Make Love With Me - Sinead O'Connor
5:00 Sweet Gene Vincent - Robbie Williams
9:08 I'm Partial To Your Abracadabra - Paul McCartney
12:39 My Old Man - Madness
15:53 Billericay Dickie - Billy Bragg & The Blokes
20:36 Clevor Trevor - Wreckless Eric
26:52 If I Was With A Woman - Cerys Mattews
30:26 Blockheads - Grant Nicholas
34:35 Plaistow Patricia - Shane McGowan
38:38 Blackmail Man - Keith Allen

I liked/recommend Wreckless Eric on this...........

Thanks for that information

Never saw him live, but a big fan of his album, Lord Upminster.

Favorite tune has to be Spasticus Autisticus, a classic!

Saw him and the Blockheads 40 years ago when they were warming up for Lou Reed on the Street Hassle tour in Passaic, NJ. An interesting evening.

Was Ian considered mostly a novelty act, or did he have a more serious reputation as a satiric singer-songwriter? He was one of the Stiff Records stable, which had some slightly odd folks such as Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, and Rachel Sweet. It was also the same timeframe as Jilted John.

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marianna
Was Ian considered mostly a novelty act, or did he have a more serious reputation as a satiric singer-songwriter? He was one of the Stiff Records stable, which had some slightly odd folks such as Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, and Rachel Sweet. It was also the same timeframe as Jilted John.

For those that knew about him (other than just knowing his name for one or two songs - Rhythm stick and Sex, drugs, Rock 'n' roll) he wasn't thought of as a novelty but rather, a unique, self made genre - brilliant lyricist/poet extraordinaire - with fantastic rhythms to boot - although he did eventually confess to 'nicking' the bass line for Sex......

Listening to Ornette Coleman's, "Ramblin'." You'll find Charlie Haden's bass solo in Ian Dury's "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll"... .

Chas Jankel, Dury's writing partner, wrote.....

“I was in his flat one day, and there was this album playing. Ian went off to make a couple of cups of coffee, and left the record playing. Then I heard it – the riff he’d come up with (For Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll) – right there in the bass line. Ian came back in with the coffee, and a cheeky grin on his face, watching as the realisation dawned on me.”
The album in question was 1960’s Change Of The Century by innovative jazz man Ornette Coleman. The particular song was called Ramblin’.

“I know Ian actually made a point of contacting the bassist on that track, Charlie Haden, and coming clean about how he’d ‘borrowed’ his part. But Charlie admitted too that he himself had lifted it from a French Creole song, so it seemed that the riff had been passed down the years.”

And he wrote about really unusual stuff.

Dury caught polio when he was a kid and was sent to a home for severely mentally and physically deformed children. he wore a caliper all his life.

From that he wrote Spasticus autisticus. Originally he wanted UNICEF to use it for their Year of the disabled in 1981 - they refused.

However, move on 30 odd years, in 2012, Spasticus autisticus was performed live on television and broadcast worldwide during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Paralympics, by Orbital and members of the Graeae Theatre Company.

They was also Dance of the screamers - about disabled kids - ie. One line from it...."it's hard to be a hero, handsome when you've had your helmet cracked".


And.....don't forget the largely ignored but imo largely underated, Poo Poo in The prawn (understood in the Uk to be the sea)..

I took a sudden notion
To go down to the ocean
I'd got my sun-tan lotion
My flippers and my mask

In proper distribution
Of fully-formed ablutions
Formed an ocean of pollution
In which I dare don't bask

Some turds were teeny-tiny
And some were big and shiny
But they all @#$%& up the briney
In which I dipped my toe

If you go swimming in the shite-us
You'll get worse than dermatitis
From the sea of grey detritus
Where the sewage ebbs and flows

There's no respite
From the cess-pit
No shelter from the pong,
The poor old ocean
Is full of motion
Where the hell did we go wrong?

Like a lamb off to the slaughter
Poured myself some water
I failed to spot I'd caughta
Little creature in my cup

I was well and truly bollowed
From the fires of hell that followed
T'was the cup of life I'd swallowed
And it almost did me up

Something coming
Through the plumbing
That should not be there at all,
The glass is brimming
And things are swimming
And quite frankly, I'm appalled

I was a very hungry fella
I defrosted my paella
Came down with Salmonella
Three weeks intensive care

They failed to send technicians in
To check the air-conditioning
Which was unfortunately transmissioning
A case of Legionnaires

There's a malaise
In the mayonnaise
There's a poo-poo in the prawn
Where we missed them
In the system
Little germs are being born
There's no respite
From the cess-pit
There's no shelter from the pong
Where the hell did we go wrong?

All accompanied by brilliant full music.

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ab
Saw him and the Blockheads 40 years ago when they were warming up for Lou Reed on the Street Hassle tour in Passaic, NJ. An interesting evening.

OMG, I'll bet it was interesting. Imagine walking into the venue a little late during "Dance of the Screamers".

I have on a cassette and LP (still in in factory shrink wrap) Do It Yourself.

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matxil
Well, it's hard not to love "Rhythm stick" and "Sex & Drugs & Rock n roll". I don't know the rest of his music that well, but I probably should.

Yes, "Hit me..." was a part of my childhood, visiting Scotland and hearing the radio. Not commonly heard in the US though.