Christ on a bike - Dexy's are reforming!!!

there's a thread!

dun dun dur

Eileen To Come Again

Do Dexy's have a "defending the indefensible" or "why in the name of all that is holy does anyone like them?" thread yet? Because I really, seriously fail to "get" them.

I don't like them either, but I don't care because I really, really want Kevin Rowland to succeed after so many years of dissolution and humiliation.

It seems to me that Kevin Rowland dug his own hole, so I'm quite happy to leave him there. Can anyone (other than Doomie) dissuade me of this conviction? I really do want to know what the fuss is about.

Didn't spot that one Steve. Should've searched a bit more thoroughly but I'm too overcome with excitement.

why not me? still smarting from the last time i convinced you to join that cult of the sun-worshippers, kate?

a) the voice
b) kevin rowlands is the archetype of soul of the eighties generation soaking up all music and regenerating it through is addled-dexys-brain.

Because you and I listen to music for very different reasons, and very different things appeal to you and I, Doomie. I would respond to your arguments with a "Yes, but you would think that because you are Doomie!" rather than being able to understand or comprehend the real reasoning behind them.

His voice drives me nuts. I hate that throaty "soul" 80s voice unless combined with extremely slick synthpop (which is how I get my head around Simon LeBon and Julian Cope).

Kate, come on, I hate his voice too but he deserves a huge break. Phoenix archetype in rock and all that.

sigh. we are all geirs. we are his children. we are hear to make a better day in his absence.

"He deserves a break" = his music is good or worthy or worthwhile, how?

I'm not going to give someone a break because they've been "hard done by" or whatever if their music doesn't appeal to me. That's stupid non-logic.

We are the geir, we are the his children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
so let's start giving each other the time of day
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our geir's life
It's true we'll make a better ilxor
Just you and me

that goes out to kate! thankyouf*ckyouverymuch! and with that i'm off to lunch!

Good golly, Kate, you're a hard woman. Hard but fair.

I'm not being rude, Doomie. Ach, honestly. I'd say the same thing to Nickalicious (who, curiously, turned up in my dream last night) if he tried to explain to me.

kate, you missed out on a brilliant career as the condescending high school guidance counsellor...

Or, at least, a dominatrix.

same thing.

How do you know I've never been a dominatrix?

Go on, then, Doomie. Explain the appeal of Kevin Rowland to me in terms that I can understand. Or else I'll spank you with my paddle.

nah.

You just like to whinge, don't you? And I thought I had a persecution complex.

not whinging just don't want to. it's not the most appealling thing in the world right now. see, i would rather eat my apple and email friends.

God, you're passive aggressive. I think it's just because there is no way that you could ever justify the continued artistic existence of Kevin Rowland, so you've just admited defeat and given up and taken your ball home. Enjoy.

Because he's _human_, Kate. And if you prick him, does he not bleed?

Who's human? Kevin Rowland? Sheesh, well, Dave Matthews is human too and I'm not giving his music another chance!

Doomie? Nah, we established years ago he was a web-bot. ;-)

But Dave Matthews is _winning_ Kate. And Kevin's been losing for years. Ye cannae kick a man when he's down.

You can if he sucked to start with. Then I kick with glee.

OK, I will rephrase. Instead of saying "anyone except Doomie..." I will say "explain the appeal of KR to me without using the word 'soul' or appealing to ideas of twisted lunatic genius or referring to drugs or fetishising the 60s." If you can do that, then I will give him another chance. I promise.

no, not passive agressive, you just take a subject, like the discussion of dexys and make it personal. to which i just respond with either: a) eh?? b) not appealing.

Ok, here we go (deep breath). He's appealing because:

1. He's deeply vulnerable
2. He loves music
3. He spent years in the wilderness, then McGee gave him a break, and he was so happy, but it all went pear shaped.
4. He wore a dress, remember
5. He...well...he... sorry, I'm getting distracted. My lesbian flatmate just came out of the shower naked.

Yes, that dress.

I've never forgiven him that dress. Or the sight of him in suspenders forty foot tall on monitors and rimming a dancer.

::shudders::

My god, it was horrible. I need therapy!

As a friend and I were saying last night, once Kevin mentioned Van Morrison, everyone was like, "Christ! Of course! Van Morrison!!! I know ALL ALONG that he was aping VAN FUCKING MORRISON!!" And then it became the one thing that absolutely HAD to be mentioned in every article about them.

Until...the dress.

my beauty is mecurial genius. the dress is mecurial genius. kevin is mecurial genius.

Au contraire: My Beauty is one-part mercurial genius, one part horribly misguided, and one part horrible, horrible transvestism. There can be no confusion about that last part.

Rimming dancers is not mercurial genius. Sorry.

to visually open yourself up to ridicule and then record an album of nervous breakdown songs to accompany your first step into the public eye is, and will always be, mercurial genius.

Yes, but I believe "rimming dancers" doesn't meet those criteria. What exactly was that story, Kate? I was too busy rimming my own dancers over here in the US to catch that one...

People who have nervous breakdowns in public deserve what they get. I am SOOO sick of this myth that madness always = genius.

Well, Kate, in doom-e's defense, I would argue that at least a few of the songs on that record, "The Greatest Love of All" and "Rag Doll" in particular, are pretty worthy of the genius-tag. Rimming one's dancers, however, though I don't know the context of the rimmings, doesn't seem to fall under the same category...

Once more: "rimmings"

has kate even heard the album in question?

He writes really good songs and records them like no one else would've recorded them.

But you can't trust my opinion because I think he has a beautiful voice. Like, one of the most beautiful voices.

I thought the appeal of Kevin Rowland is his total inhuman (as in he is superhuman) idea of humanity. He's almost just too human ("like a man, but MORE SO").

His voice sounds like its turned inside out. That is, I know how hard it is to sing just like that (because I've a pretty keen Rowland voice when I bother to flex) and it requires that you sing not from the stomach or from the front of your mouth (ie with your tongue) but with the whole unrestricted joy of your throat. All those histrionic chants and tail-offs. His voice is a thing of majesty. He's also extremely good at non-irritating vocal-tics (the repeated fluster of 'burn it up, burn it up, burn it up') in a similar way to Van Morrison. Like he's being consumed by spirit(s) through and through when he's singing. When young children run, the flailing straggle of their limbs, it's almost as if they're trying to shake them off. I get this feeling with Rowland (and Morrison) - this compulsion to rid themself of something.

Granted, I've only heard the first album (I fished it out yesterday) and the brass on Young Souls sounds extremely brilliantly synthetic. It's so 'perfect' and precise, rises so high and comes in lush unstoppable waves.

It's the most beautiful music, Kate.

The Continuum of Weirdness - Weird to Aggressively Normal

Kevin Rowland : Jon Tickle : Gaby Roslin : John Major : Lee from BB2.

I gotta say...I never really "got" Kevin Rowland (and had many if not all of the issues Kate has with him: I found the 'soul' posturing unconvincing if not unbearable and the vox unforgivably whingy) until I heard "Don't Stand Me Down." Which, for whatever reasons (including some I suppose Kate would find insufficient) is completely brill, just unbearably poignant and completely hilarious like the kind of record Van Morrison could have made, had he been given the right drugs and had he *ever* had a sense of humor, thirty years ago. It's just ridiculous, from the one which wholesale appropriates "Werewolves of London" with a blatancy that would put even Spacemen 3 to shame (and yet somehow *doesn't* suck) to the one which begins with a full two minutes of mumbling and winds up on another planet thirteen minutes later, it's a phenomenal record, and one that needs no defending from the likes of me. So, buy it or don't, Kate, but I'm afraid they ain't in the least deserving of censure...

Too-rye-loo-rye-yay!

Oh, yeaaaaaaa!

Stating the obvious.

cozen, if I understand you right, then perhaps you should go pick up 'don't stand me down' soon. I've never heard any of their other albums, just some isolated songs, but this one is clearly special. I think you'd be pleased.

I wish the mumbling m specktor mentions would show up more often elsewhere on the record (kind of like the 'joke' at the end of the first song), but if it did I probably wouldn't want it as much.

i just 'got' him by enjoying (in my case) the first two Dexys' records and their fantastic packaging (the ridiculous style/band uniform changes on display for each, the lyrics re-printed oddly but workably)

and the whole dexys' 'stance' presented a sensible intelligent alternative to what seemed to be breaking down into punk street thuggery

i think he was a very accomplished songwriter, and i hope he still is

why do his media-attention-grabbing antics irk people to the extent that the music is dismissed ? the 'stance'/pachaging and the music _are_ intertwined, ok, but there's a certain cunning to it all, isn't there ?

he seems to be a "i'm gonna get undet your skin" sort of a guy, so i know lot's of people who in discussion of dexys/ Rowlands will say "yeah, but Kevin Rowlands is a wanker", whereas i think that's just part of the meet-punk-with-its-own-agressive-terms charm of his projects, so i'm inclined to just say, "yeah, but [those dexys' project thingeys,] they're very intelligent and musically enjoyable p.r. rock demonstrations of force"

to me he's one of the few people who's created something intelligent and musical and positive, and so to use his definition all-round-soulful, out of the punk storm-in-the-tee-pee

And of course, there was the dress.

I think the problem I've had with the cursory listenings I've given to Don't Stand Me Down (haring up the M1 from ATP last summer) was that it seemed too stately. Too refined. Where my ears working?

might be. but if I thought something like that before, it either went away or become something positive quickly.

dexys hm the press hated them,wich to me was great if nme said it was crap it must have been good,coz they were shity rock fans and old hippys with no style and slaged off anything to do with mod or soul,kevin roland is the real thing, long live dexys

Dexys are my all time favourite band and the music they made is the most precious to me in my collection. I've often been an amused by-stander watching the press and public getting into the subject and this discussion thread is a microcosm of everything that's made the press in the last 24 years. People who like to talk about stuff they don't get (why?), people who admit to attempting to judge music by giving it cursory listens in the car (Don't Stand Me Down is not a car record, try listening to it at home), normally reasonable people giving vent to their tendencies to homophobia (I mean we got over pop stars wearing dresses in the 70s when Bowie did it, didn't we? Well, didn't we?) - this list is not exhaustive, I think you know that.

The thing is, Rowland and Dexys never postured anything. They really did mean it. An overused cliche in music but in this case it is the truth. The passion and soul really was there. The musicians that appeared in Dexys still, to this day, use the words soul, passion, pure, to describe the music that they made. They do this without embarrassment, without superficiality, they look you right in the eye when they talk. Pete Williams, the original bass player on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels, told a TV documentary 20 years later that he still felt the same way about the music he'd made in Dexys.

Rowland has always tried to make the most beautiful, precious music he could. Whether that be in his pre-Dexys punk band Killjoys or now as 2 new tracks are to appear on the forthcoming 'Best Of'. He tried so hard it really did fuck him up. This is a fact, not a legend. There is something tragic in the Rowland story but I like and admire that, despite everything, he stills tries his hardest to make the most beautiful music that he can. This is no lazy, superficial musician.

For so long now we've had no or little music from Rowland or Dexys. One album in 17 years, a few stolen demos leaked out. They are back now and already the superficial judgements have begun. I, for one, truly believe that we're in for some precious, beautiful music. I'll be at some of the concerts too. They are playing a 20 date tour. Moving around the country from Aberdeen to Plymouth. For all I know Kev may be lifting his dress, showing you his lunchbox while singing as song that goes 'It's my manhood, It's just my manhood', that'll get the homophobes going. I for one will be laughing a deep hearty joyous laugh. Kev's back!! Dexys are back!!

Apparently Kevin Rowland was on Danny Baker's Radio London show last week, there's a RealAudio stream of the interview here. The Bake praised him to the skies and Kev sounded totally stoked about the upcoming gigs, I'm gutted that I won't be able to catch them live.