Chaos/Confusion: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Chaos

Ian Dury and many others: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Chaos
[purchase]

Aaah, synergy! Over at Cover Me, I have a piece about early Stiff Records artist Wreckless Eric, featuring covers of his most famous song, “Whole Wide World” (although maybe not so famous, because my wife claims never to have heard the song before reading my post). In the course of that article, I mentioned the “Live Stiffs” tour from 1977 which featured Wreckless Eric and other Stiff artists of the era. (I’ve written about the tour here, too.)

Originally, the plan was for all of the acts to rotate in the running order, but it soon became clear that the clear choice for ending the show was Ian Dury & the Blockheads, and the obvious choice for the encore would be their anthem, “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll,” which would include the other members of the tour.

The version that appeared on the Life Stiffs album was titled “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Chaos,” because, well, it pretty much devolves into chaos. The song begins with Dury introducing the performers while the band vamps, before he yells out “Cut out the fucking spitting,” presumably to the audience, but it might have been to his fellow musicians, I guess. He brings on a few more people, apparently calling for more cables, before saying, “OK, we’ll bring a few more out in a minute, we’re going to start the fucking thing.”

Dury starts singing the song, occasionally ceding lead vocals to others. At one point, he yells out “Nick Lowe, Nick Lowe,” presumably because the Basher came on stage, but another singer, maybe Wreckless Eric, echoes it, as if it was a call and response lyric. (Sort of reminds me of one of my favorite moments from Life of Brian). Dury then changes the lyrics to replace the phrase “cake of liberty” with “cake of Wreckless Eric,” before a wailing sax solo by Davey Payne. At which point, the song turns into a jam, with the singers basically chanting the title, before a big finish.

There were probably 4 drummers, a bunch of guitarists and singers, one sax player, and some keyboard and bass players, all packed on what is likely a small club stage. In a word, it was probably chaos. And probably an enormous amount of fun, except for the fucking spitting.

The song was, not surprisingly, popular, when I was at WPRB in the late 1970s-early 80s. One Saturday morning, my parents were driving down to Princeton to go to the football game, so I arranged to be on the air so that they could hear me. Being the cheeky lad that I was, I made sure that “S&D&R&R” was played, and I wished that all my listeners would partake in the titular items. My father never let me forget that.

RIGHT: FATE'S RIGHT HAND/Rodney Crowell

Couldn't resist. Or at least I think I couldn't, but maybe not. Fate. Kismet. Call it what you will, it's all pre-destined, yeah? Maybe.

In keeping with my last posting, I thought I would again follow on the dextrous direction that began with red and was followed by the devil. In truth, I am not sure of what fate's right hand, or indeed left, might mean, or how they may differ, unless the former is the butter side up, the latter, butter side down. Indeed, is luck the same as fate? Is fate the same as luck? I am uncertain whether this metaphysical troubled Rodney Crowell much when writing the song. It just sorta sounds good, the lyric then being one of those stream of consciousness lists like Reasons to be Cheerful (right hand) or We Didn't Start the Fire (left hand), the words as important for their order and sound as their meaning, yet entirely also dependent thereupon. Clever, if confusing.

Rodney Crowell feels to have been around forever in my musical lifetime, first as the callow youth alongside Emmylou Harris in her Hot Band, writing the knock-out (and album stand-out) side one closer, Till' I Gain Control Again, on Elite Hotel. That was back in 1975, and he has kept on keeping on. Marrying into country royalty, becoming husband to Roseanne, daughter of Johnny, Cash in 1979, until 1992, will have done no harm either, but he was already successfully penning material for a range of significant other artists, including Bob Seger, as well as a roster of more typical country performers. Having had limited success with his solo records, he effectively put his career on hold to helm her own, writing much of the material and producing. In the 80's he hit his own paydirt, with a run of records that cemented his reputation. 1988's Diamonds and Dirt managed 5 (country) number ones alone. Here's one of 'em.

However, for me it is his later trio of recordings, starting with The Houston Kid, in 2001, that hold the strongest appeal. Biographical in style, I strongly commend these three, with Fate's Right Hand, containing the eponymous song of this piece, and The Outsider making up the triad, now commonly referred to as the Houston trilogy. This period of his life also produced his book, the commendable and likewise autobiographical Chinaberry Sidewalks: a Memoir, covering the same somewhat tumultuous childhood as do the songs. Wonderful stuff. Here's a song:

Into the last decade he has again teamed up with Emmylou Harris, producing a brace of duet albums and going on tour with her, still managing other output as well. This years Close Ties reveals him now to be an elder statesman, performing alongside ex-wife Cash and Sheryl Crow, amongst others. I have seen him twice within the last five years, once with Emmylou, and once as a featured singer with the celebrated Transatlantic Sessions, the show that brings together the best of scots/irish with american musicians, held every year over here in the UK. On both occasions he shone, the grittier counterpoint to Emmylou at the one, and an altogether americana tour de force at the other.

A final word, lest all this talk of country be off-putting. This isn't and never has been any saccharine "& western": his genre has always been in those slightly rougher roadhouses, where rockabilly meets western swing, leaving always room for a weeping steel barroom ballad, ahead of another rousing rocker. I'd like to shake his hand. Right hand.

Choose Rodney!

FATHER: NEVER ANY GOOD/Martin Simpson

I guess many of us tired old bloggers are at the time of life where we are beginning to evaluate/re-evaluate our fathers, as so touchingly displayed in J. David's piece below. I lost my own pa nearly 30 years ago, his memory now more benign presence than black hole, but this is neither about me nor him, being more an opportunity to, possibly, introduce, a name less well known than I would like, one Martin Simpson.
For me, as a UK based folkie, his name has always been bubbling under my surface tensions, a perennial on the listings pages over decades, cropping up in good company yet never quite as celebrated as the company kept: he has appeared with June Tabor and been a member of the Albion (Country/Dance) Band on occasion. His style is an interesting hybrid of an english tradition, albeit with odd tunings, spun with a delta blues bottleneck bravadaccio, honed from years resident in the U.S., styles that are seldom played alongside each other. And devoutly acoustic, no mean hand also on banjo. However, in recent years, into his 4th decade of recordings, he has hit a purple patch of masterful solo records and a slew of collaborations within which he has seemed the patrician guiding focus. Awards and accolades have tumbled around him in swathes, his admirers including one Richard Thompson, who has said:  “I am a big fan of Martin's playing. Perhaps the highest praise I could give is to say that he never stops getting better!” Here they are playing together.

But what has this to do with fatherhood? Time for the song:

I just love the apparent disparagement of the lyric, the way the narrative catalogues the shortcomings, perhaps being the voices of criticism the boy Martin heard of his father in childhood, the sums thereof unwittingly combining to produce an adorable image of a wonderful father, hang the husband, breadwinner stuff, just a lovely and loved man who adored his son. OK, perhaps a rose tinted memoir, but one that effortlessly has me welling up even just thinking about the song. Live in concert it has a particular poignancy, as Simpson describes how he, as the son of an older father, his father being over 50 when he was born, himself became a first time father in his 50s. The hope he can be the same to his son exudes from every pore of his being. And maybe the song is right. Why is it that the workplace statistics of a man are so more highly celebrated than the more ethereal family persona? The list of giants of politics, business and, yes, even the arts are littered with distant figures from their  neglected progeny and worse, cruel and insensitive parenting almost de rigeur for the self-made man.

There are other songs by others that touch on similar territory. Some perhaps even written with the insight of having not been themselves the father they reminisce so fondly of. To all intents and purposes, Ian Dury seems not to have been an easy man but his song to his father hits a similar vein:

Isn't it the truth, as we get older, abetted by those annoying and increasing similarities in the mirror, far from hoping we won't become our fathers, as teenagers, in time, inevitably, we do.

Buy the studio version of 'Never Any Good' and hope your own sons will think so kindly.