Reelin’ In The Years 40: Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3

Ian Dury was another who partly surfed the punk wave, but did so with added humour and wit. The lyric to Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, as well as being a showcase for uncommon rhyming, contrives to be both meaningless and profound at the same time while still carrying a strong undertone of sleaze but the song is perhaps too well known for use here.

Reasons to choose this instead? Dury mentions Wee Willie Harris.

Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3

Then there’s What a Waste, with its immortal line, “I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station,” a perfect iambic heptameter – as are several others in the song. Sublime.

Ian Dury and the Blockheads: What A Waste

There’s a pretty muddy sounding video of the band playing What a Waste, live on Revolver – introduced by the incomparable Peter Cook.

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