anyone remember the matchboxes ( the UK had a famous matchbox with the Englands Glory moniker and image)
Here’s a rarely-seen clip of Ian Dury and Kilburn and the High Roads performing ‘England’s Glory’ for the London Weekend Show with Janet Street Porter, in 1975. The show covered the burgeoning punk scene at the time. The clip is from the 2010 documentary Ian Dury: Rare and Unseen, which includes excellent footage of Ian, the Kilburns, and the Blockheads.
FULL CLIP (roun’ the ear'ole) heeyah!
Go on you know you want to!
Why you can sing along at home!
This one's for Julie, who we love I love her almost as I do Alma But we don't do Alma no more It's called 'England's Glory'. if you want to sing Please sing
There are jewels in the crown of England's glory And every jewel shines a thousand ways
Frankie Howerd, Noel Coward and garden gnomes Frankie Vaughan, Kenneth Horne, Sherlock Holmes Monty, Biggles and Old King Cole In the pink or on the dole Oliver Twist and Long John Silver Captain Cook and Nelly Dean Enid Blyton, Gilbert Harding Malcolm Sargent, Graham Greene (Graham Greene)
All the jewels in the crown of England's glory Too numerous to mention, but a few And every one could tell a different story And show old England's Glory something new
Nice bit of kipper and Jack the Ripper and Upton Park Maxy Miller, Gracie, Cilla,Petula Clark, Winkles, Woodbines, Walnut Whips Vera Lynn and Stafford Cripps Lady Chatterley, Muffin the Mule Winston Churchill, Robin Hood Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell Beecham's powders, Yorkshire pud (Yorkshire pud)
Billy Bunter, Jane Austen Reg Hampton, George Formby Billy Fury, Little Titch Uncle Mac, Mr. Pastry and all Uncle Mac, Mr. Pastry and all
Alright England? G'wan England Oh England
All the jewels in the crown of England's glory Too numerous to mention, but a few And every one could tell a different story And show old England's glory something new
Somerset Maugham, Top Of The Form with the Boys' Brigade
Mortimer Wheeler, Christine Keeler and the Board of Trade
Henry Cooper, Wakey Wakey, England's Labour Standard Vanguard, spotted dick, England's workers England's glory
Right, so, complicated question here: when you belong to a marginalised community, how should you feel about campaigns to assist you?
On the one hand, it should be great. After all, you know exactly how many people just do not give the slightest of shits about making your life better. What’s more, you know exactly how many people actively want to make it worse. Through no decision of your own, you’ve ended up in this strata of society where everything is so much harder for you than it is for other people. The vast majority of people cannot or will not understand that you just can’t bootstrap yourself out of it, so anything that raises awareness about your situation must be a help, right?
Well, no. Most of the time, these campaigns are put forth by people who really believe they understand what life is like for marginalised people, but in practice, they don’t. They may be well-meaning (a distressing amount of the time they’re actually not), but they don’t actually engage with what life is like for marginalised people in any meaningful way and end up just being deeply patronising. This is doubly the case when these campaigns are directed towards disabled people.
People really do seem to believe that people with disabilities are essentially children, no matter their age or experience. No less a figure than Ian Dury felt exactly this way in 1981 when the United Nations declared that 1981 would be “the international year of disabled persons” and reached out to him to be one of the faces of the campaign. Dury had contracted polio at the age of seven. A condition which atrophied the muscles of his left arm and leg, necessitating metal callipers on both of them for support for the rest of his life.
How did Ian Dury respond to this request?
By 1981, his successful music career with The Blockheads had made him one of the highest-profile disabled people in the UK. Thus, when Dury initially turned down the UN’s offer to front this campaign, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. Pushing and pushing, no matter how many times Dury explained that not only was he not interested, but he had no time for the campaign as a whole. Finding its very concept patronising at best and outright demeaning at worst.
Eventually, his frustration with the project got so all-encompassing that he had no other option than to turn his ire into music. At the time, he was working on his second solo record, Lord Upminster, and the song he poured his anger into became that record’s lead single. It’s name? ‘Spasticus Autisticus’. One wonders just how many people were scandalised by this record at the UN when it came out, because the BBC and even Dury’s own record label had kittens about it.
Despite the song being a plea for understanding, the use of words that Ian Dury himself had been labelled with his whole life made the song unacceptable, and it was banned from radio play by the BBC. Even if it hadn’t been, the chances of it becoming a radio hit were slim as Dury’s label all but refused to promote it. This tanked the album as well, and Dury’s chances of hitting the big time were kneecapped, despite already having a number one single to his name.
Dury would have the last laugh, though, with the song becoming one of his most beloved songs, and it was even performed at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. A sight that Ian Dury would have found absolutely hilarious in hindsight.
Hey Kostas our brother in modern music from Greece has done it again and dedicated a set to yours truly!!!
THE GUVNOR!
"This post is dedicated to my Brother Blog: "Blog Nobody Reads". I suppose you like very much Ian Dury, Andy, my Rock friend from England."
Oh, you’re not wrong there my fellow friend in music!
Ian Robins Dury (12 May 1942 – 27 March 2000)
New Boots and Panties 40th Anniversary edition, Do It Yourself and Laughter
I should say I dedicate this posting to my old friend Brian Love who designed the cover for the ‘Laughter’ album who we lost recently and he was an extraordinary man, polymath, collector, designer, Graphic Design Tutor (at Kingston School of Art) and contemporary of Ian’s and Sir Peter Blake’s. He curated a few exhibitions at Oxford Museum of Modern Art (Aerial Dropped Propaganda of the Second World War!) which were extraordinary. His publications on the history of Baord Games are amongst my prized possessions. He was unerringly kind, gracious, friendly and affectionate to all fellow art travellers. A true gentleman and adored by many not least his fantastic wife Christine and son Mark
Someone posted this lovely article from The Guardian’s Harriet Gibsone on Facebook so I nicked it like a copy of Razzle magazine . . . . . .
Baxter Dury as a 5-year-old alongside his dad Ian Dury in a '77 shot by Chris Gabrin taken near their house in front of the Axford Clothing store in Vauxhall, London, and used for the cover of Ian Dury's debut album 'New Boots and Panties!!' and again in 2023 as captured by Pål Hansen and edited in a 2001 reworking of the original photo by Sir Peter Blake.
Baxter Dury: "There’s a fair bit of mythology generated around the shot because Dad was a bullshitter, and consequently so am I, but the recollection I have of that day is that he said: “I’m getting my picture taken. Come along with me.” Being bored, I went. I walked into the shot and said: “Can we go now?” There were four frames taken, and he decided it would become the album cover. That was that.
We would have been pretty impoverished at the time. Dad made no money from music at this point (...) I have amazing memories of my childhood, but we were on the breadline. Dad lived in London, near the Oval, in a council flat that didn’t have a toilet, so you had to use a local bar. He used to cut my hair back then. But after New Boots and Panties!! came out, there was a boom period when all the royalties came in and we behaved like there was an endless stream of money. Dad devoured the cash and at one point he lived in the Montcalm hotel. Jemima and I would get dropped off at the entrance and the concierge would freak out at the unwashed, feral kids running through their premises. We’d end up ordering loads of club sandwiches in Dad’s room. It was pure decadence.
...I was mostly brought up by my mum who was artistic but gentle and conventional. She wasn’t in a pot-smoking fraternity like Dad was. He got up at 12 in the afternoon; she got up at a normal hour. But when I was about 13 I moved in with Dad. He was in a chaotic state of mind, one career had drawn to a halt, and he wasn’t in the healthiest state. I exploited that to do what I wanted.
...My son and I now live in the flat Dad bought in west London. When we moved in, our neighbours, who’ve been there for decades, were like: “Oh my God, no! They’re returning!” I was like: “No, wait! We’re different!”
'Oi Oi! Ian reciting Charles Mingus from the epic track - ‘Freedom’.
Interesting to note that Ian changes the word "thigh" to "fire" here - We have all listened again and again' . . . it’s definitely “fire”!
This mule ain't from Moscow This mule ain't from the South But this mule's had some learnin' Mostly mouth-to-mouth This mule could be called stubborn and lazy But in a clever sorta way, this mule could be workin’ Waitin' and learnin' and plannin' For a sacred kind of day A day when burnin' sticks and crosses is not mere child's play But a madman in his most incandescent bloom Whose lover's soul is imperfection and is most lustrous groom So stand fast, young old mule Soothe in contemplation That burning whole and aching thigh Your stubbornness is ever-living And cool anxiety is about to die
[Charles Mingus]
Though somehow Ian makes it sound positively Shakespearean!
So if you stuck with me this far after the George Baker Selection!? You deserve to know this!
Ian Dury and The Blockheads
Rock Goes To College
Queens University Belfast 1979
Go on click on it anyway!
IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS – BLOCKHEADS
On this date in 1979, IAN DURY & THE BLOCK HEADS played Queen’s University, Belfast, (February 3rd, 1979).
Filmed on the 14th December 1978 for the BBC series ‘Rock Goes To College’, the concert was televised three weeks later and featured a set that included a brilliant and epic version of BLOCKHEADS.
Perhaps the punkiest of Panties’ tracks, Blockheads was a shouty rocker in which a gruff-throated Dury fired shots at a litany of lowlifes, miscreants and office workers out on the razz. The conclusion was classic Dury: that in one way or another we’re all blockheads too.
