393. Ian Dury - New Boots And Panties!! (1977)















Track Listing

1. Wake Up And Make Love With Me
2. Sweet Gene Vincent
3. I'm Partial To Your Abracadabra
4. My Old Man
5. Billericay Dickie
6. Clevor Trever
7. If I Was With A Woman
8. Blockheads
9. Plaistow Patricia
10. Blackmail Man

Review

This is one of those albums that most people will be split between loving it and hating it. I kind of like it, but my wife finds it lecherous. And so it is, but I like lecherous, she just doesn't like to imagine sex with Ian Dury. It might also have something to do with his accent and the whole music hall influence. It does make it sound at times like a Carry On film.

Still I think Dury is a bit smarter than that, his lyrics are pretty amazingly written, even if they irk you, that was probably his objective. This is one of the mos British of albums on the list, probably side by side with The Kinks in its Britishness. All the references, the cockney rhyming slang, the imagery. It is all from this green and pleasant land. But it is not green or pleasant in his view.

Dury old up a mirror to the ugliest side of this country, which really is more representative than crap about cottages and sheep and men in Bowler hats. Much like the US is more like a Spike Lee film than Pleasantville. The music is also interesting here, getting progressively harder as it goes on with the last three songs quite squarely in the punk field. This was more an album that I found interesting than something I'd like to hear again very often, but it is recommended for at least a listen through, with special attention to the lyrics.

Track Highlights

1. Billericay Dickie
2. Clevor Trever
3. Plaistow Patricia
4. Wake Up And Make Love With Me

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:
New Boots And Panties!! was released on September 30 1977, following the release of Dury's iconic single Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll. The single was not a commercial success and nor was it included on the album's original press (Dury expressed a strong desire for singles not to be included on the album and as such the song and its b-side were omitted). This did not affect people's reaction to the album however (at the time it was not as uncommon to produce 'stand alone singles' as it is today) and was given rave reviews not only in the music press, but in broadsheet newspapers' art columns and other highbrow publications: Robin Denselow, for instance, reviewed it for The Guardian (October 11, 1977). The album did not enter the top of the British charts but it did go platinum, and its (much softer) follow-up album Do It Yourself would reach number 2.

In 2000 Q magazine placed it at number 66 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.

Billericay Dickie: