PB5239
1980
Dexys Midnight Runners' first album, a humid soul tangle, was brought to the limelight by the number 1 hit Geno. The second album, all that soul but with celtic folk sounds woven in, had it happen with the bigger hit Come On Eileen.
Then there was a huge wait before Don't Stand Me Down, a third album released with no flagship single and had them sat in corporate suits on the cover. It bombed. Yet it is every bit the equal of the first two, and in many respects excels them. A true lost classic.
To me, the giant on there is This Is What She's Like, one of the most extraordinary and brilliant love songs I've ever heard. A twelve minute epic, the lyric is a conversation, one party asking what 'she' is like and the other trying to explain. But he does it with non-verbal phonetics as words fail him.
Before that, he tries by listing a lot of disparate, curiously specific things that she's not. All those things that annoy, the things that denote people who are clueless and hopeless at root, things that make you want to give up on people, things that 'she' is such a refreshing change from.
Well you know how the English upper classes are thick and ignorant?
You know the newly wealthy peasants with their home bars and hi-fis?
People who describe nice things as wonderful.
And, first on the list, the kind of people that put creases in their old Levi's.
Imagine the level of tosserliness required to do it to the extent that your jeans have a discernible lightening down those creases. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Salford Jets.
I find it heard to believe the crease could be lightened by mere ironing. What did they do, delicately paint down their kecks with a bleachy cotton bud?
The EP pictured is a 1979 collection of I Want To Hold Your Handish beaty pop, with an arrow logo and a couple of skinny ties to cash in on the waning mod revival.
Fed Up of Stalybridge had the main letter in last Thursday's Manchester Evening News. They complained young people had abused them in the street.
Such hostility to strangers is, they assert, getting 'increasingly common'. 'Have people always displayed such an aggressive "watchoo lookin at?" attitude?'
To answer that question let us welcome back Greater Manchester's all-time most negligible band. Ladies and gentlemen, once again I give you the Salford Jets.
The year after the EP they released a single of breathtakingly brainless, affected spilt-pintery. Scraping into the charts at number 72, Who You Looking At? features two verses and a chorus of cod-punk twaddle. They even drift into that Estuary English accent so essential for pseudo-punk.
Who you looking at
When you're walking down the street?
Who you looking at?
You better not be looking at me
I said who you looking at?
Who you looking at?
Who you looking at?
It better not be me
Fractionally redeemed by a brief tasty organ break, nonetheless it's one of the most ludicrous, risible records ever manufactured.
download Who You Looking At (3.1MB MP3)
7 comments:
dont stand me down...
i was recently back in the uk going through my albums - and thought about bringing this back to NY... i remember buying it, playing it once to never listen to it again , i was 17 at the time. but thinking ill get back to that. I was at the time obsessed with searching for the young soul rebel - to the point of wearing boxing boots, a donky jacket and wool cap.
I still cant bring myself to listento it even after it being listed in the you should etc etc lists. still not ready for the disapointment it could bring. I still think its a great album title. but on your call, maybe i will ...
Really, do it. If you get Too Rye Aye as well, and the earnest, high-aiming vision Rowland had, then I can't see how the album could fail you. It's certainly something of a sprawl, but not at all flabby. Really, do it.
ok it shall return with my on my next trip. along with too rye aye ( my brothers ) ...
its funny how the records you never play can have such lasting memories as the ones you dont stop playing.
Ah, fantastically awful...
I saw Kevin Rowland at the Reading Festival when he was in his man-dress phase. He was bottled. It was a righteous bottling. Wasn't "My Beauty" one of the lowest selling albums ever? Alan McGee said it sold less than 500 copies.
To be fair, my jeans used to end up with white "creases" on them just from my mom ironing them each week.
I thought they looked horrible & used to drive her mad asking for a new pair. Only now do I realise that there was no way she could afford to get me another pair as she budgeted her limited cash for when such items actually fell to pieces !
Lucy,
whilst your mum's poverty may well not have been your (or her) fault, her terrible lapse in taste that led to her putting creases down the front of jeans is not something to forgive.
also, she could've saved money by not ironing jeans at all.
No justification there, sorry.
Great to hear the salford jets are gigging again . Just listened to "who you looking at " - Great sound . Fantastic site !!
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