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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sly, Saucy English Popster an All-Time Charmer, November 23, 1998
Blending elements of sly English music-hall badinage, Noel Coward wit and wordplay, warm jazz, and disco rhythms into a genre entirely and irresistibly his own, veteran 1970s pub-rocker Ian Dury was the most endearing musician to ever charm his way straight through your funny bone - and into your heart. Whether singing of the public embarrassment resulting from his youthful theft of a men's stroke magazine from a newsagent ("Razzle in My Pocket [A True Story]"), the demands of a morning hard-on ("Wake Up and Make Love With Me"), and the comic possibilities lurking just beneath the surface of history's creative geniuses ("There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards"), or rapping his way through the infectious dance beats of "Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3," Dury had an unerring sense that not only could being naughty be great good fun, as well as an opportunity for verbal ingenuity - it could also get you on your feet and moving when enlisted with just the right dash of insouciant style. Favorite lyrics (from "Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3"): "`Einshtein' can't be classed as witless/He said atoms are the littlest/When you do the bit o' split'liss/You frighten everybody shitless...There ain't half been some clever bastards (Chorus: "Lucky Peters, Lucky Peters")/There ain't half been some clever bas-tards...`Van Goff' did some eyeball pleazahs/He musta bean a pencil squeezah/He didn't do the Mona Leezhah/That was an Italian geezah!...There ain't half been some clever bastards..." I envy the uninitiated - you're about to wonder where Ian and his Blockheads have been all your life, while discovering your own latest "Reason to Be Cheerful (Pt. 3)." "Clever bastards," indeed!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly Missed, August 17, 2007
This review is from: Reasons to Be Cheerful-the Best of Ian Dury (Audio CD)
This is the Ian Dury compilation to buy if you haven't got all the original albums. All the brilliant singles are here, along with the best of the album tracks together with some wonderful bonus material (such as the Kilburn & the High Roads stuff).
Dury was a marvellously witty and perceptive lyric writer, and whilst his distinctive cockney drawl was hardly a great singing voice, it marked him as someone who was doing something completely different from everybody else. The Blockheads of course were also a great band, and again this marked Ian Dury out from the rest of the punk/new wave movement.
This is a fabulous complilation, and at the moment its very cheap for a double CD. It'll cost you more to download all these tracks (legally that is!).
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Americans- you don't know what you're missing!!!, April 17, 2008
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Reasons to Be Cheerful-the Best of Ian Dury (Audio CD)
Ian Dury was a very popular item when i still lived in London over 20yrs ago. He half-talks his way through songs, backed by a hot funky-type band (with sax)So you get to hear the reasoning from his BIG deep wise heart, cynacism and the humour cockneys are re-known for. American's may find a poetry of its own in the distinctive cockney dialect.This man went through a crucible at one time as he was crippled by polio as a child (though not in a wheel-chair.) As quoted on the album, he was once asked if he felt he had missed out on life being a cripple. "Only a few buses" he said.Powerful music and not commercialised in the least.
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