Another song, another memory. Two memories to be exact, one true and the other false. What's true is that 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' was the first single I ever went into a shop by myself and handed over my own money to buy. So that makes this a landmark of sorts, the popping of my record buying cherry. The false memory is that I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that this was number one at the tail end of 1979 rather than the start as I was listening to it around Christmastime, but as it was released in November 1978, it means I actually bought it before it was number one, which makes me all the cooler I think.Why did I buy this? Well I was caught up in the mystery of it all, from that splendidly cryptic Barney Bubbles sleeve (so good I thought you should see both sides) to the evocative travelogue that pours from Dury's mouth. What helped my interest too is the genuine edge of rebellion that buying it engendered. Up until then, mine and my parents taste in music usually ran on the same rail - I only ever really listened to whatever they played and they liked 'Grease' as much as I did (in fact, they took me to see the film when it came out). My father, however, was no fan of Dury's and his headshaking comment of 'I'll bloody hit him in a minute' after watching this on Top Of The Pops generated a frission of friction between us, the first time I realised there could be a difference between what my parents liked and what I did.*
But away from all that, the reasons I liked 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' in 1979 are basically the same reasons I still like it today. Again, it's the mystery - Dury presents an almost uncrackable code of a lyric in a free flow of onomatopœia rhymes and scattershot imagery that recall Dylan at his best (though I know that last comparison will turn off as many people as it will turn on). As a lyricist, Dury was always at his best when he had characters to work with and a setting to put them in but on 'Rhythm Stick' he doesn't; the song (or rather the song's subject matter) itself is the character - that is, the universal pleasures of music and dancing.
It's a perfect convergence that keeps the song moving ever onward in a fluid wave of rhythm that's ideal dancing fodder for anyone made of rubber, with a chorus that, as if to stress the all embracingness of the tune, on each repetition includes a different line starting in French and answering itself in German. Clever yes, but not too clever clever 'by half', and it's subsumed into a groove fed by Norman Watt Roy's spider walk of a bassline so completely that you barely register it until it's passed. Play that funky music white boys.
What this means is that 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' is perhaps unique in Dury's output in that an understanding of English is not required to appreciate what he's trying to say. And that's because, with an already crack backing band in 'the Blockheads', Dury's vocal becomes just another instrument in the mix with the lyrics playing out as further notes varied in tone and stress - just compare the shift in emphasis on "In the wilds of Borneo, and the vineyards of Bordeaux" for evidence of Dury's loving embouchure of the syllables almost in the manner of a jazz scat singer until he breaks into almost Peter Brötzmann free form squawking ("HIT ME!!!") on the outro.
In short, a wonderful single and a wonderful number one.
* Not that I turned into an angry young man overnight - I can remember hiding the single at home in case someone noted that the B side was called 'There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards'. And you needn't look any further for a classic example of Dury's mastery of English when he had a solid subject to bounce off:
"Einstein can't be classed as witless.
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of split-em-ness,
Frighten everybody shitless."
No comments:
Post a Comment