#68, October 18, 2005
Historical Notes (1)
Dance of the
Screamers
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide,
Call me Deacon Blues.
-- Steely Dan
John
Dos Passos remembered the American intellectual Randolph Bourne as “a tiny
twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak/hopping along the grimy old brick and
brownstone streets still left in downtown New York” during the years of World
War I.[1]
For Dos Passos, it seemed as if Bourne’s slightly hunched appearance could
explain his caustic pen, the manner in which he was able to prick the Wilsonian
claims of a war “to make the world safe for democracy” and other rants about a
“war to end all wars”, and proclaim, against the grain of Progressive doctrine,
that “War is the Health of the State.”
Whether or not Bourne’s alienation from Progressivism could be explained
by his physical appearance is certainly debatable. But, the idea of a Mr. Hyde stalking the streets of
Using
a frequent device of the social critic, Dos Passos was also searching for an
absolute “other” who might help project onto his readers things that they might
wish they could find there. Here,
we have Bourne’s feelings of alienation, perhaps persecution, arising from his
disfigurement leading to the possibility of purification, not just for the individual
but for society. Thus, Bourne takes
on the beauty and the mantle of an outcast, a John Merrick (better known as the
Elephant Man), made beautiful, not in spite of, but because of his
disfigurement.
In
some ways, punk rock was a recent cultural equivalent of this political
trope. Placed in opposition to the
sounds of 1970s pop music, from psychedelic to funk and disco, all descendents
in a way of the 1960s counter-culture, punk represented a comment hurled at
this counterculture and the societies which had now commercialized it, and which
were now proceeding to undermine the sense of possibility for adolescents. “Nothing you can do that can’t be done”
was a reality for youth both in the United States and in Europe throughout the
late 1970s and early 1980s; and now you wouldn’t even get employment and a
decent wage packet so that you could consume your way into oblivion. Carter, Callaghan, Reagan, Thatcher
– who cared a damn about you?
If
“black is beautiful” represented an inversion of accepted aesthetic values,
opening the doors to great creativity in the late 1960s and early 70s, it was
still a conformity to notions of beauty, and so suspect in the new youth
culture. Now, to reach out to the
new disinherited, to capture their sound in music, the artist needed to make a
discordant, tuneless noise – the self-mutilated hurling an insult at a
crowd of pogo dancing, mouth-frothing followers. Ugliness would be worshipped, nevertheless acquiring its own
aesthetic, which in turn would provide great potential for commercialization.
This would be the world of “Clockwork Orange,” Beethoven’s Fifth replaced with
musical extrapolations from Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” As the Clash would sing, “phony
Beatlemania [had] bitten the dust.”
Ian
Dury was the master of this new form, the person who took it to its highest
stage without descending into the thoroughly commercial genre of “new wave”
(following in the wake of The Police and Blondie). Dury had both the physical
attributes to gain entry into the punk world without trying, and the intelligence
to theorize his way through the morass of invective into the land of
humor. Here’s how he is described
in a tribute written after his death from cancer in March of 2000:
Rock & roll has always been populated by fringe
figures, cult artists that managed to develop a fanatical following because of
their outsized quirks, but few cult rockers have ever been quite as weird, or
beloved, as Ian Dury. As the leader of the underappreciated and ill-fated
pub-rockers Kilburn & the High Roads, Dury cut a striking figure – he
remained handicapped from a childhood bout with polio, yet stalked the stage
with dynamic charisma, spitting out music-hall numbers and rockers in his thick
Cockney accent.[2]
Dury, then, gained an entre into
this world of punk, not for what he said, but for what he embodied and
physically represented. If the
downwardly mobile youth felt alienated, then Dury could relate, at least in his
manner, a sense of that sense of being the outcast.
But anyone who has heard a single song of
Dury’s will know that the content of the songs went beyond such
sentiments. While the Sex Pistols
and Stiff Little Fingers seemed content to wallow in their hatred of bourgeois
society, Dury always tried to provide some place to channel that anger. While
these other bands were anarchists because they ended up with nothing to say
beyond their invective, Dury was anarchic and ultimately positive, always
desirous of finding “reasons to be cheerful.”
Dury’s work brought together
many different genres from music hall to pub rock. In a way, he was the antithesis of punk in that he
celebrated those who had come before, while most punks were denouncing any
connection with predecessors.
While they seemed to be fighting an Oedepal war with their fathers, he
was trying to understand and come to terms with “his old man.” With this in mind, we can perhaps
highlight two aspects of his music, which we will treat chronologically, but
which overlapped in many ways, the story telling and the theoretical
statement. If this is a dichotomy
that we might recognize in the marriage of McCartney’s aesthetic and that of
Lennon, then this is because they too had been bringing together some of the
same musical genres to make music that represented the youth of their day.
After his spell with the pub-rock band,
Kilburn and the High Roads, Dury joined the independent record label Stiff in
1977. His first album with the
label, “New Boots and Panties,” revolved primarily around songs telling stories
about individuals and sexual exploits, “My old Man” and “Plastow Patricia”
representing the former, “Wake up and Make Love” representing the latter. Again, while it was hard not to be
incorporated into the punk movement at this time, the sentiments here were unique:
For example, the music hall beginning to Billericay Dicky:
Good
Evening.
I’m from
in case you couldn’t tell.
My given name is Dicky,
I come from Billericay,
and I’m doing
very well.
Altogether too positive for punk. Even Trevor, who “wasn’t ain’t not all
that clever,” seemed to be surviving, even thriving, in his world of double and
triple negatives.
All the stories in New Boots, reminiscent
of Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”, skirted the fringes of bourgeois culture and spoke
of those who could merely look over the fence at others who had inherited the
perquisites of modern society.
There would always be some “blockhead” with some beef who was left out
and who would be “pissing in your swimming pool.” And, as in Aqualung, Dury
takes a long hard look at what men who have nothing think about women. It’s not a pretty sight, and it was too
easy to assume that Dury himself fell into this trap, although it wasn’t
warranted.
Theory was not Dury’s strong suit on this
album. The singles that he wrote
at about the same time, which were included on later versions of the album,
seemed to reach to the level of statements, but they were pretty basic, like:
Sex
and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll
Is
all my brain and body need.
And, for the 1970s that
wasn’t half as revolutionary or out of step as it would seem today in the face
of AIDS and the on-going wars on drugs.
Or there was the B side of the single, “What a waste,” in which Dury
seemed to depart from the New Boots narratives, reaching for something
more.
If “New Boots” is
McCartney, then “Do it Yourself”, released in 1979, is Lennon. Embedded in the title is Dury’s advice
to the disenchanted (and the veritable slogan of punk). Here he is not
describing the culture and the styles of the working class; he is saying what
they should do about their predicament.
You ain’t getting nothing from anybody else – do it yourself.
None of the titles refers
to a person, and none of the songs describes an individual. They all represent commentaries on the
condition the Blockhead finds himself (or herself) in. “Inbetweenies” places the blockhead
between worlds, sexual and social, “in-between the lines,” and in a world
(“Vanity Fair with a capital V”) without much meaning. “Quiet” tells the arrogant to shut up:
“Your highness, your worship, you silly pompous cuss;” or, “Honest, really
– Lies!” “Don’t Ask
Me” lets the listener know that when Dury himself starts pontificating he too
is suspect (“Here I stand with a donut for a brain”). You’ve got to do it yourself, remember. But here Dury harks back to New Boots
and the blockhead’s location: “I’m a crumb and I’m in your lemonade.”
By the second side of the
album we are getting into terrain that is more critical of bourgeois society. In “This is What we Find”, banned by
the BBC, Dury comments on the predicaments of people from Mrs Walker’s husband
who was “jubblified with only half a stork,” to Tom Green of Turnham Green, and
“home improvement expert, Harold Hill,” who “came home to find another
gentleman’s kippers in the grill”.
But amidst all the despair you can only come back to the humor of the
situation – “a sense of humor is required.” After all,
This is
what we find --
they must
have had a funny time
upon the
Golden Hind.
And then, after quoting
from the last lines of “Vanity Fair” (“which of us is happy in this life”),
Dury passes comment on the whole progressive project:
The
hope that springs eternal
springs
right up your behind.
Can’t say much more than
that really.
A switch in beat and Dury
is proclaiming the need to contest everything – “bank rob the banks,
withhold the rent.” Interestingly,
though, the refrain from this song, “It’s time that the ladies kept quiet,” is
thoroughly repudiated – “no it isn’t, don’t be daft.” Any fears that
Dury’s alienation in “New Boots,” with all its reference to sex in the back of
a Cortina, would end in Lennon-like misogyny is dispelled here. But, this is only the beginning of
Dury’s assault on bourgeois society.
The very next song “Mischief” proclaims the need to do everything from
breaking windows to nicking laundry in the dark. Some of these things are a bit more than “the laugh” Dury
suggests, and as a prescription for change its pretty psychotic, but it
certainly expresses the alienation of Barry, whose “tiny mind is scarred.” The song ends, with Dury repeating
again and again, “I’m sorry I done it,” until he reaches a scream that suggests
anything but regret.
And this scream takes us
directly, without a break, into “Dance of the Screamers,” which, for me at
least, represents the highest stage of punk:
So I’m
screaming this to you
From the
last place in the queue
I really
think you’d like me
Given half
the chance,
And since
we ain’t got that
I’ll be
your screamers
Dance
Some of us
are ugly, angel,
Some of us
only small.
Some of us
are useless, sailor,
Haven’t
got the wear-with-all.
We never
speak our minds, my love,
We ain’t
got nothing to discuss.
Some of us
witty, lover,
Comes from
facing up to facts.
It’s hard
to be a hero, handsome
When
you’ve had your helmet cracked
Some of us
are stupid, sister,
Some of us
are very shy.
Some of us
get nervous, chicken,
when you
look us in the eye.
We’re ever
so pathetic. Well,
you know
what we try too hard.
Some of us
were born like this,
While
others got it by the yard.
And there it is. We can feel, in our liberal way, that
we are being inclusive as we extend the benefits of our society, our
prosperity, our “sivilization”, as we make friends with some of the
outcast. But there’s always
someone who’s in that last place in the queue.
After laying out the
condition of the screamer, Ian Dury had nowhere really to go from here,
theoretically at least. He had
spoken of the disgruntled, the disinherited, the outcasts. They were there and they weren’t going
away; the dance would go on – Vanity unfair. But in departing from the music-hall narratives and sticking
his neck out, even in this limited fashion, Dury was restricting himself artistically. After “Do it Yourself,” there wasn’t
much to discuss, you just do it yourself – which was the ultimate punk
sentiment. Okey-Dokey.