IN THE VANGUARD OF THE OLD WAVE SINCE 1981

IAN DURY AND THE BLOCKHEADS
Laughter
[Stiff/Epic 36998]

"Sing boom-de-boom, sing twiddle-deedee, invite the Germans home to teal" goes "Dance of the Crackpots", one of the bent anthems that percolate and punch in threatening nonsense from Ian Dury and the Blockhead's masterful new album, Laughter. There's no mistake in placing Dury and company in the line of English rock eccentrics, but where Arthur Brown consumed himself in his one hit, "Fire", the Kinks make pale cartoons ("Superman" and "Gallon of Gas") of the pointed satire of songs like "Lola" and "Well Respected Man" from their glory days, and Roy Wood (Move), creator of such greats as "(Really want to do) The Brontosaurus" and "Hello Suzy" languishes in obscurity, Ian Dury pushes the art of daft cleverness toward new strengths of power and cunning.

He's got something in him of Joe Orton, the gay playwright of the British 60s who was murdered with a hammer after giving us "Entertaining Mr. Sloane," etc. Orton used to deface library books by clipping out pictures of phalluses and placing them over reproductions of the Mona Lisa's face, and Dury's trick of bending clichés, intoning mock-seriously over solid funk, achieves the same sort of madman's wit - he breaks up the ordinary world and allows us to see it fresh. He takes risks, and manages to create a stronger, more reckless, more human freedom than that of the B52's camp '60s Dada or Pere Ubu's brave bombast that too often overspills into a brilliant nothing.

There is violence in "Laughter", but Dury, like any bitter humorist from Swift to Lenny Bruce, uses the cruel power of his humor toward a tough cathartic illumination. "It's a crazy world", he asserts, but give in to it and, as David Johansen (no stranger to seamy insightfulness - see "Trash" on the Doll's first LP) would say, "Let's just dance". And the listener can, because the Blockhead's are a tight, tough, skillful band; a kind of mainly white Parliament sparking their hard sexy funk with whistles, birdy synthesizers and spoken nonsense introductions like the cast of Marat/Sade let loose in a circus disco. It's the same kind of mayhem as in Clockwork Orange, with the droogies out for ultraviolent sport - a cartoon of wickedness that must be accepted in a spirit of frightening but admitted fun.

Dury's got a clown's voice that could've matched some fake pompous drunk's in a Chaplin film and he has the looks to match. Crippled, a near dwarf with a little Bertol Brecht haircut, he stares at us with the intensity of jean Genet on those Grove Press paperbacks, but Dury looks always about to smirk - the holy fool gone naughty, drinking the altar wine. Davey Payne, his right hand man, is a dead ringer for the young Samuel Beckett and the look of the band is an extension of this - as if the whole crew had just awakened from a rummy night at the Metro station.

Another line from "Dance of the Crackpots", "Rosemary Clooney to jerry Lee Looney, from Debussy to Thelonious Monk/It's the modern art of the human heart to shape all things to funk", sums up the album's musical style. And funk is the perfect medium for this message with its solid beat that can be weighted with all kinds of crazy freight yet still come forth catchy.

Some of that crazy freight includes a propulsive number that allows Dury to announce, "I am an actual train!", a song cautioning against overindulgence in "Uncoolohol", and a tribute to Jimi Hendrix that, like Dury's ode to Gene Vincent on his first LP, is a song for everyone who tries, who takes chances. In it, Dury, in a customary mix of tough/tender, states the world situation thus: "Is it fair, we ask ourselves, as we get our headaches, bad backs, complaints/ Is it fair, my little ones . . ./ Oh, no, it fucking ain't."

Laughter is an album of 11 songs that reminds us, "It's time we escaped again, my son." For keep in mind - “The wise young crackpot knows no fear."

-Paul Evans