New Boots and Panties!!

It's like someone's uncle from Essex stole the karaoke mic for a half hour and slowly got drunker and drunker while preforming. This at no point was an enjoyable listen. 1/5

The Good: We get new boots!
The Bad: You need to walk them in…
The Ugly: You picturing me wearing panties… what???

Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll, it’s good for the soul!
I remember being a little kid and singing the first part of the song, and not understanding the meaning behind it. Same goes for Rhythm Stick, which I found on an anniversary version of this album, but not the original…

The two afore mentioned songs brought me back to my pre-teen years, the rest of the album, on second listen, made me reflect on all the years after, and that was not what I would have expected when I listened to the first song on this album.

Ian Dury not an easy life lived.
Ian Dury with words had a gift.
Ian Dury bound to repeat again.
Ian Dury found his dad the same.

I will be listening to this album several times again. Not because the songs are the greatest, nor Ian’s voice, nor the production value.
I will be listening to this album because it is so damn creative and stirs up emotions, and that’s what good music should do.

4 1/2* which I’d like to bump to 5, but my conscience will not let me...

Utterly utterly wonderfully fun, groovy, punky... just everything I ever didn't know I wanted to hear! :) Top notch!

It started out so funky and immediately lost me when he started singing. WTF are these lyrics?

I bet it was certified platinum only because it was "edgy" and "raunchy" like how the Bloodhound Gang was in the early 00s. This is super british humor.

2*: gets a +1 because of instrumentals. Actually, fuck it, 1*, the tracks got generic after a while. The last handful of tracks I had to just skip toward the end because it was just belligerent noise. Again, total garbage I didn't need before dying.

Really enjoyed this one!

Terrible voice, but the songs were just so enjoyable you just kind of forget about it. Funny in parts, very entertaining. Some great guitar in there too

I can see why this has a lot of low reviews - this was probably baffling to non-Brits lol

4 ⭐️

Very funny and obscene. I really like the funky bass lines, which add a lot of variety and interest to the more pub rock side of it.

Ian Dury, are you a real act or a joke? I'm not sure. But I'm here for the fun.

The second half of the album is a little stronger than the first half with some more interesting songs.

It's not high art, but it's funny and fun. It gets knocked a few stars just because it's not something I'll listen to often (Except for Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, that song is great.)

Can very much understand all the Marmite comments. Definitely some fantastic funk / post-punk music here, all sung by a plumber who's suddenly found fame on TikTok by saying English things to an American audience. The lyrics might as well be "water bottle, Marmite, crumpets" etc.

I know plenty of people who love Drury for his gritty urban poet lyrics, but it never quite did it for me. 2 stars, but a bonus one for "sex & drugs & rock and roll" because that absolutely works beautifuly as a track.

1.54

Aika epätasainen teos. Joistain jutuista tykkäsin mut kokonaisuus ontuu.

I really like his voice and style, how East-End it is in the delivery and content. I understand that won’t translate so well to other markets, but I dig it. Right from the off this is upbeat and a bit quirky and interesting. I love how mad and overblown some tracks are, like Blockheads, with the shouting and mad synths.

3.5 rounded down.

One of those artists who annoyed me at the time, but I regret not listening to sooner. He had such a unique take, a tough life with a big heart.

Ian Dury is a funny man with funny lyrics, such as on the final 2 tracks. His voice isn't conventionally pretty, but this half talking half singing voice works well for the songs. Album just seems to fly by, but its a really fun listen if not a very conventionally beautiful album.

I’m at a 4, but for a while, I think I was honestly pretty close to a 5.

It’s just a very, very British album. I’ve seen enough Taskmaster over the course of the past 3 and a half years to find a charm in this sort of thing, though. People are giving this 1’s and 2’s, and I genuinely don’t hear it at all – maybe if you really fucking hate his vocals and his British-isms, but at that point, you’re sort of just not having any fun at all.

I thought the instrumentation here was pretty good – great variance of styles, switching around from Disco tones, to straight rock, to punk rock, a bit of pop, and it blends itself together in a pretty sincere way. The lyricism is the part that’ll split this album in two, but for my money’s worth, it reminded me a whole lot of “Thank Goodness You’re Here!” – that extremely British indie game that’s making great headway for YouTubers in need of a cozy comedy game.

Yes, sometimes, the insults go a bit too far (namely Blockheads, where it gets just a bit too mean spirited, & Blackmail Man, where he gets so into character he starts using actual slurs), but for the most part, a lot of this just strikes me as extremely British banter that hits a certain comedy niche that was probably prevalent to pubgoers & the Monty Python crowd at the time.

I dunno, I just had a lot of fun with it. It’s charming, it’s well-written (save for those two tracks), and it’s very melodically and compositionally sound. The instrumentals are great, his vocals have a fun flow that switches to whatever the soundscape calls for, and when this album hits its stride, it feels about as confident as any other album of its era, despite how goofy it is, straight from the title and beyond. I liked it, sue me. I’m fine giving it a 4.

Nah, how can I purge this from my Spotify history? I'm afraid its altered my algorithm is a sinister way.

This album is “A couple of pints with the lads at the pub” the album. The band is solid, the singer is pretty bad. It’s hilarious, it’s misogynistic, and most importantly it’s entertaining. Is it the best album on this list? God no! But I’m glad I listened to it. Sex And Drugs And Rock & Roll is a classic. Favorite songs were Sweet Gene Vincent, Billericay Dickie, Blockheads, and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.

I like this album

A cracker of a debut, from a real one-off of an artist. Doesn't have his two biggest songs, but still packed full of stories and interesting musical ideas.
The song "my old man" is especially touching.

Lyrics are goofy and nonsensical as hell but the music tho... that bass line slaps

I feel like this project is a little too heavily skewed to old music. Out of 270 albums, I’ve gotten 78 albums from the 70s (the most of any decade) and 46 from the 50s/60s - nearly half - and only 10 from the 2010s.

Now, I do not, as a rule, like old music from the 70s and before. There are outliers, to be sure, and it's always fun when I discover the occasional BB King, or David Bowie, or Nick Drake. This album is not that. From the first song, it almost sounds like parody. Like a British comedian's version of what American disco sounds like. It's awful, is what I'm saying. It gets better after that...which is to say that while it still sounds like a British comedian's version of American music, it doesn't sound like disco anymore. So...better? It still sucks though. Bad.

It's embarrassingly bad. I can only think of a few albums worse than this. Country music, shit like Gene Clark, Gram Parsons and The Byrds which claims to be rock music but is really country music in disguise, and Throbbing Gristle. That's it. This album is *that* bad. It's irredeemable.