Back on this day 25 years ago............SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3rd 1977
1977
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 IAN DURY from Kennington, London releases his groundbreaking debut 45 'Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll' on an unsuspecting world today, thus creating his own catch-phrase and entry into the modern day language. Check out these two hilarious but spot on reviews.
 "It's part of the language
now and I don't get any credit for it, which pisses me right off."
lan Dury, 1998
IAN DURY 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' (STIFF).
HERE'S AN enigma: a title that's passed into common parlance but which was never a hit; a tribute to rock'n'roll built on a jazz riff; a catch-phrase taken to celebrate dumb hedonism but behind which lie lyrics of restraint and wit. At 35 (McCartney's age) in 1977, lan Dury was no young punk, but embodied the era's gritty, outsider spirit. His first single for Stiff, and the first fruit of his collaboration with Chas Jankel, Sex & Drugs was as much a sly comment on the music biz as a call to party. Built on a lick hijacked from Ornette Coleman's Ramblin', it gently refuted grey conformism, celebrated personal tailoring and proferred "a small slice of the cake of liberty". It added up to an instant, and widely ignored, masterpiece and served notice of Dury's rebirth from pub-rocker to people's poet. (NS - Mojo Mag October 2001)
Chart peak: none Writers: lan Dury, Chas Jankel
Producer: 'Nobody' Personnel: lan Dury (vcs), Chas Jankel (gtr, kybs), Charley Charles (drs), Norman
IAN DURY
Sex & Drugs & Rock 'N' Roll' (Stiff)
This ex-pub-rock luminaire deserves infinitely more credit for the late '70s renaissance of rock culture than all those arterio-sclerotic lard-belly "Grand-pappy of punk" specimens that the gutter rock press has offered up for instant deity.He was one of the prophets most responsible for kicking our music out of the tax haven rock-Tsar syndrome and restoring it to the rightful acne-ravaged owners in the sweaty subterranean depths while also possessing the suss to realise that fashion is there to be LED, not followed. He and no other was the instigator of safety pin chic, wearing the objects in his lugholes when Richard Hell was still wearing them in his Mothercare diapers. The geezer's music boasted a total Anglo-consciousness somewhat akin to a vicious Syd Barrett, and 1976 finally rolled around apres Dury le deluge. And while the majority of punk bands are getting pecky layers of flab around their souls as they get used to having a Press Officer tickling their anus from dawn to dusk after making their cross on that six-figure recording contract, Dury's still sharp and sleazy. If the youngsters can't keep up the pace without terminal bland-out then TOO BAD. lan Dury has created a Juke Box Classic around youth cultures' Holy Trinity that would be a Universal Number One if Eddie Cochran hadn't died in vain and if our national media wasn't controlled by joyless reactionary loonies.It's possibly the ultimate statement in narcissistic, hedonistic London Mod Omnipotence over stunning purity of funk, inducing immediate addiction that intensifies over the subsequent grooves where Our Kid gets understandably choked with emotion as he gets measured up for his new custom-made mohair so he can look like a real Tasty Geezer when he goes in search of the night.The B side is 'Razzle In My Pocket', about getting nicked tea-leafing in the South Street Romford Shopping Arcade out there in Essex Overspill.,It proves conclusively that Dury is writing the soundtrack for this generation, which thankfully ain't really got sweet FA to do with being Blank.- (Tony Parsons - September 3rd 1977)
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