Do It Yourself

As punk rock morphed into post-punk and new wave at the end of the 1970s, disco remained the shaping force of the Top 40. It was to attract some highly surprising converts. While ABBA’s Voulez-Vous embraced the post-Saturday Night Fever dancefloor revival, so did the album that was kept off the No.1 spot. On his previous album, New Boots And Panties!!, Ian Dury’s music had been a maverick mix of pub rock, punk and ye olde music hall. Those traits remained intact on Do It Yourself, their bizarre follow-up, yet tracks like Don’t Ask Me threw lop-sided disco shapes beneath lines like “’Ere I stand, with a doughnut for a brain.” The album was big fun and The Blockheads remained unlikely to be mistaken for Shalamar: Cockney imprecations such as “Spread your chickens” and “What the Dickens?” (Inbetweenies) and “Fill a Durex full of water!” (Mischief) made sure of that. “Shitters are a wank!” grunted Dury, on Uneasy Sunny Day Hotsy-Totsy. Dury remains to this day a complete one-off voice in the history of UK music, which at once seems massively of the time yet also retains a timeless essence. From the infectious pub-rock funk of Waiting For Your Taxi to the unmistakable and quintessentially English strut of Quiet, it’s all good stuff. Dury always operated a strict policy of not including singles on his albums, but this edition does and captures a vital period in Ian Dury’s remarkable career. Do It Yourself is a tremendous celebration of one of the most downright curious albums ever to scale the giddy heights of No.2 in the UK albums chart.

New Boots and Panties!!

Ian Dury's primary appeal lies in his lyrics, which are remarkably clever sketches of British life delivered with a wry wit. Since Dury's accent is thick and his language dense with local slang, much of these pleasures aren't discernible to casual listeners, leaving the music to stand on its own merits. On his debut album with The Blockheads, New Boots and Panties!!, Dury's music is at its best, and even that is a bizarrely uneven fusion of pub rock, punk rock, and disco. Still, Dury's off-kilter charm and irrepressible energy make the album gel, with the disco pulse of "Wake Up and Make Love With Me" making perfect sense next to the gentle tribute "Sweet Gene Vincent," the roaring punk of "Blockheads," and the revamped music hall of "Billericay Dickie" and "My Old Man."

Repertoire's 1996 CD reissue adds five essential bonus tracks -- "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll," "Razzle in My Pocket," "You're More Than Fair," "England's Glory," "What a Waste" -- that nearly make the disc an essential Ian Dury best-of.