Ian Dury

Nottingstonegate?

Warhamptonwick?

oh wait

I was listening to this live recording of a show by Bill Nelson's Red Noise from 1979, and at one point Nelson's talking to the audience about music he doesn't like and says something like "something really boring like... Ian Dury" - which made me kind of sad! of all of the people he could have picked as examples of boring music, and he picks Ian Dury :(

Wow, US Spotify's got a lot of Dury, incl. some I've never heard of. US CD-wise, Rhino's version of the excellent comp Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll might be the most findable I suppose the ace Juke Box Dury might be around over here too, though have never seen it as a domestic release.

never have

Upminster

Serkis is good but there's just something a little too rough about his Essexisms (which was kind of a deliberate persona for Dury anyway, raised in comfortable Harrow) - there's none of the sweetness of Dury in his singing voice. There's a world of difference between Reasons To Be Cheerful Part "FREE" (Serkis), and Part "THREE" (Dury). Pretty decent film though.

― Michael Jones, Sunday, 10 January 2010 11:05 (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeahhhh...... (It was on last night)

I dunno, Andy Serkis did a good job, just .. it .. wasn't.. close enough? The firsttime I saw it, I did wonder if Robbie Williams would have made a better visual resemblance, but then again he's not a trained actor so probably wouldn't have been as good.

One scene gets close to Ian: the return to the disabled boarding school where he talks to the kids, I remember this as a verbatim recreation of what actually happened, (was it on Nationwide or something?). Maybe there wasn't enough of Ian being charming, offsetting the 'mad disabled bloke' which he is most of the time in the film.

Still, this was more about Baxter than Ian, really, wasn't it?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/31/baxter-dury-everything-was-about-dad-it-was-the-only-way-he-knew-how-to-survive

I guess there are some Baxter Dury threads but they seem to be super-short.

At the heart of Chaise Longue is an unlikely trio living in belligerent harmony – dad, son and the Sulphate Strangler. They shared a flat in west London by the banks of the Thames; part of a block renowned for its arty squatters, which Ian dubbed Catshit Mansions. They drank together, took drugs together, smashed crockery together, rowed and made up together when Baxter was still in his mid-teens.

The squatted Catshit Mansions were famously sited in Kennington - looking onto the Oval Cricket ground, rather than the banks of the Thames. This seems to be conflated two periods of Ian Dury's life: the earlier struggling years in Kennington where he lived with Denise Roudette and the later post fame years in Chiswick (I think).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ova26J0BcDs

aw shit, thanks for the heads up!

That whole sequence of him in the pool was beautiful. Also talking to the kids at that school, that was lovely

Yeah, remember this one well. One example as to why the S&D&R&R movie didn't work for me : they re-create that school scene in the movie and it's not as good.