Consumer Guide Album

Ian Dury & the Blockheads: Do It Yourself [Stiff/Epic, 1979]
Dury's idiomatic literacy is a continuing pleasure, but only on "Quiet" (to his kids) and maybe "This Is What We Find" (comedic-philosophical) is it enough, because the music tries too bleeding hard to be ingratiating. The man is supposed to be too English for us colonials, but I feel a lot more at home with the musichall rock of New Boots and Panties!! than with the fusoid pop internationalism of Chaz Jankel's arrangements here--jazz per Ramsey Lewis, reggae per Byron Lee, disco per Arthur Murray. B