Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll
I recently saw Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll (2010), the biopic of Ian Dury. It stars Andy Serkis (best known as the motion capture specialist who gave us Gollum) as Dury. It’s a great performance and at times I actually thought Serkis was Dury, and it was hard to tell if it was Serkis singing or an actual Dury recording. I’d forgotten how important Dury’s music had been to be in my teens and early twenties but hearing Wake Up and Make Love With Me and Rhythm Stick again brought it all back. I saw him play the Hammersmith Odeon (late Seventies, early Eighties?) and it was the best concert I think I’ve ever been to – the entire audience singing along to Billericay Dickie like it was a Victorian music hall. Ian Dury and the Blockheads had a unique sound – a slick, professional backing band with an amazing bass player (Norman Watt-Roy) and saxophonist (Davey Payne), combined with Dury’s shouty, croaky, unrefined, comedic/menacing vocals. That music, those lyrics (Don’t care what you tell us, you’re old and fat and jealous), and those bass lines, ran through my head virtually 24/7 back then. It was a shock to realize how quickly and completely we can forget something that was once so important to us and we loved so much. Thanks to the film I’m determined to reconnect with Dury’s music after a hiatus of some twenty years – there are some losses, thankfully, which we can rectify. In the deserts of Sudan/And the gardens of Japan/From Milan to Yucatan/Every woman, every man…
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