Ian Dury & the Blockheads Archives

This post is entirely the fault of Arthur@AmeriNZ. He wrote a piece called A reason to be cheerful, about the bipartisan effort in the New Zealand Parliament to work for LGBTI rights. He knew FULL WELL that the title would make me think of the song Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 by Ian Dury and The Blockheads [LISTEN].

That put in my mind another Ian Dury and the Blockheads song, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. It was a big hit in much of the world: #1 in the UK, #2 in Australia, #3 in Ireland and New Zealand, and top 20 in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

Apparently, it didn’t chart in the United States, but I heard it, and “Cheerful,” often on my favorite radio station in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WQBK-FM, Q104.

My good college friend Lynn HATED the song, I suspect, because the song title or lyrics were suggestive. But rock and roll has always been about sex, and I always preferred the euphemistic (“Roll with Me, Henry”) to the direct.

Moreover, I loved the song on several other levels. It’s danceable as all get out, thanks in no small part to a bass line played by Norman Watt-Roy.

The rhyme of the lyrics fascinated me. There is a device in poetry that commends a rhyme that isn’t spelled similarly; don’t recall what it’s called, but even without reading the lyrics, one can “see” the word endings, and I loved the pairing of: “rhythm stick” with “ich liebe dich” or “fantastique” or “Ist es nicht”; “Borneo” with “of Bordeaux”; “From Bombay to Santa Fe.”

From Song Facts:

It is well known that the Ian Dury song… was inspired by his disability; Dury was born in Harrow in May 1942… and contracted polio when he was seven years old. Although…Dury was not confined to a wheelchair, his body was still deformed by the disease, and he used a walking stick for the rest of his life. According to biographer Richard Balls, the line “It’s nice to be a lunatic” was probably inspired by a caustic remark from a lecturer in his days at Walthamstow Art College.

Dury gave the completed lyrics to his songwriting partner Chas (Chaz) Jankel in the autumn of 1978; the song has…an innovative saxophone solo by Davey Payne – who actually played two saxophones at once!

Released on the Stiff label November 23, 1978 and backed by “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards”, it went on to sell a million copies…

Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57.

Listen to Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick HERE or HERE.

I’ve enjoyed seeing composer Steven Sondheim, lyricist for West Side Story, A Funny Thing happened on the Way to the Forum, and many, many other musicals, a couple of times on television recently, promoting his book “Finishing the Hat: Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes.” I’ve ordered the book if only for the lyrics themselves, and what he’ll have to say about them. I enjoyed hearing about the strong tutelage of family friend Oscar Hammerstein. He has appeared on Stephen Colbert‘s program and on The Newshour on PBS. Part of the latter interview is here:
JEFFREY BROWN: And the greatest focus is on words that rhyme…He uses an old rhyming dictionary and a 1946 edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus.”
STEPHEN SONDHEIM: A rhyme draws the ear’s attention to the word. So, you don’t make the least important word in the line the rhyme word. So, you have to — and also a rhyme can take something that is not too strong and make it much stronger…
BROWN: And…he believes words that are spelled differently, but sound alike, such as rougher and suffer, engage the listener more than those spelled similarly, rougher and tougher.
SONDHEIM: I think we see words on — as if they’re on paper, sometimes when you hear them. I don’t mean it’s an absolutely conscious thing, but I’m absolutely convinced that people essentially see what they’re hearing.
BROWN: Yes. So, I’m hearing rougher and suffer rhyme…then I quickly think…
SONDHEIM: And that’s a surprise… I have got a rhyme in “Passion,” colonel, and journal. Now, you look at them on paper, they seem to have no relation to each other at all. So, when you rhyme them, it’s, ooh, you know? It’s — it — I really may be wrong about this. It’s just something that has struck me over the years.

So what lyrics immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY, come to mind? Hit Me with your Rhythm stick by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, a staple on my favorite radio station of the late 1970s, Q104.
Specifically:
In the wilds of Borneo And the vineyards of Bordeaux
Eskimo, Arapaho, move their body to and fro

But also the foreign language rhymes:
Hit me with your rhythm stick/Je t’adore, ich liebe dich
Hit me with your rhythm stick/Das ist gut, c’est fantastique
Here are a couple of recordings HERE with some misspellings, and an odd ending and HERE, after an ad.

Jaquandor found this nifty cartoon that explains climate change.

Eddie shares this Go Go’s video. Eddie notes that Belinda Carlisle’s memoir states their repertoire was limited to the songs on the first album in
their early touring days. This confirms my recollection that when I saw them at JB Scott’s in Albany in 1981, or late 1980, around the time of their 1st album, they played every song on the album plus one non-album B-side.

The Playing For Change Foundation’s new Song Around the World – John Lennon’s “Imagine”

The Twilight Zone Marathon is on again. The December 31 lineup has been posted at syfy.com. But the Marathon will be interrupted for two hours that evening by one of those dopey wrestling shows.

How cats lap up milk, in slow motion

Painting Like Jackson Pollock

I’m afraid I cannot condone this abuse of perfectly good coconut creme pies. Well, maybe for a good cause.

STAN LEE is on their side! Spidey an agent of the Illuminati? Say it ain’t so, Stan! Say it ain’t so! Especially now that you’re 88, as Johnny Bacardi notes.

I mourn the loss of Matt Staccone, SBDC advisor, at the age of 55.

A friend of mine came across this eBay sale of ‘Two Decades of Comics’ fanzine booklet from March 1981; “Fantastic Brian Bolland cover art featuring Brother Power The Geek, Nightshade & Indian? looking at book with characters heads flying out: Storm, Man-Thing, Sgt Rock, Cain, The Demon, Howard The Duck, Metamorpho, The Spectre etc.
Very scarce – Book comprehensively views A-Z of comic book titles with fan-art – notably: Dave Hornsby “The Creeper” art 1pg, Nik Neocleous “Deathlok” art 1pg, Kev F Sutherland “Iron Jaw” art 1pg, Steve Whitaker “Red Wolf” art 1pg, Steve Lowther “The Werewolf” art 1pg, Eagle Awards 1976-1979 Results feature 4pg.” And boy, did that cover look familiar. As it turns out, FantaCo published it as an inside cover in our Chronicles Annual. That Annual was based on that same magazine.