Music

Not sure it's "a stonker". A few good tracks and a few weak. "The last men on the moon" is a really great track.

 

Interestingly that's not one of my favourite tracks! I much prefer "If something's gonna kill me..." and "This Song" with Stuart 'Psycho' Pierce in the video. There are a couple of weaker tracks, but no weak ones. So it IS a stonker!

 

Yes This Song is good but we’ve already discussed that after Moose posted it to start this debate about the stranglers !
Not that keen on “if something’s gonna kill me” but “last men on the moon” is seriously good once it warms up.

 

I do like the variety, inventiveness and quirkiness throughout the album, together with the trademark Stranglers menace in good supply. The last two tracks, White Stallion and Breathe, are also impressive.

 

At some point I'll listen to something recorded after 1979, in the meantime I'll have to put up with this...

 

You are Jeremy Clarkson and that explains a lot.

 

If Rory Gallagher's solo on that track was a women it would be a whore

 

I have regular 'discussions' with Mrs Willis over music from the 70s (my era) vs the 80s (hers). I win.
I shall add the often forgotten Rory Gallagher to my body of evidence.

 

Well, the best period is 77-84...

 

I'm really not getting into this, but that doesn't include early Bowie for a start.

 

Rightly so, Roxy Music trump Bowie.

Admittedly my time period only includes late Roxy.

 

Probably not....

 

Late Roxy Music trump Bowie?...I could've understood early Roxy, maybe..

 

Early was what I meant. Late Roxy are superb too but hardly the same sort of artist as Bowie so impossible to compare.

 

Wrong,

 

Not, but still.

 

Can't compare Bowie with Roxy at any stage.

 

Stop trying to “out cool” each other. You all bought showaddywaddy and the Glitter Band at the time, and you know it. Just like I did.

 

Christ, that’s insane m8.

 

They were for the 'teenies', not us serious 16-year-olds.

 

Do the Stranglers still include their timeless ballad 'I feel like a wog' in their live sets, or has it not aged well?

 

MIB would know for sure but I don't think that track, or indeed the free track T1TS, aged well at the time they were issued.

 

Oh, I don't know. Still sounds good to me

 

There’s an interesting page on it here, including Jet Black’s response that the song was intended as an anti-racist song. Someone further down likes it to John Lennon’s Woman is the N****r of World in intention. It wasn’t uncommon for artists in the 70s and 80s to use such shocking language.

On the whole, imo it’s not a song that works well and is best binned. It’s not a song enlightening or helping anyone. If there is a message it doesn’t fall on the racist. But sometimes music will offend.

http://stranglers-ratter.blogspot.com/2011/03/lyrical-controversy.html

 

OK, i'll be frank. I have never really "got" Bowie. Just doesn't really do anything for me, whatever stage of his career we are talking.

 

Never too late.

 

Well, where do I start? At the beginning?

I mean, I don't mind the Scary Monsters stuff but it never struck a chord with me in the same way that it did for others of my era (who then went back to earlier Bowie). I always quite liked 'Sound and Vision' but that was about it.

 

Similar in some respects to the way Johnny Speight always insisted Alf Garnett mocked the attitudes of the time. Not many people saw it like that though and chuckled along with him rather than at him.

 

Yes, that’s the danger.

Fark me, you couldn’t put Alf Garnett on these days. Working class, racist Tory, marxism, unions, feminism etc etc. The internet would literally explode.

 

It's popped up from time to time in their set lists but not for a few years. Whilst you could say they were ahead of the times in putting an anti-racist message in a 'punk' song, it was definitely clumsy (designed to shock?) and as you suggest, hasn't aged well with that word in the title as well as the lyrics. Its inclusion has been debated on the fans forum, with most saying its OK, although I'm not so comfortable with it. However it's not actually that good a song either in comparison with the rest of their mostly sublime output from the late 70s.

Other 'now considered a bit dodgy' tracks from the same album are ''Bring On The Nubiles' (recently on the setlist) and the final track 'School Mam', both ostensibly about teenage sex (or perhaps even sex with teenagers?) with questionable lyrics. When played live, the latter was often accompanied by Hugh Cornwell masturbating his throat and spitting in the air as the song 'climaxed'. Good family fun all round!

NSFW!

 

What about 'Love Thy Neighbour' then? White, Labour supporting working-class union man can't cope with an upwardly mobile Tory-supporting black couple moving in next door. Two or three series of them racially abusing each other for comedy purposes! It was usually the white bloke who was the fall guy, but even so....

 

We like what we like.

 

Start with 'Hunky Dory' then onto 'Ziggy Stardust' and listen to 'Aladdin Sane' to understand why he needed the transition to 'Sound & Vision'. Your comments on late Roxy may explain why that is your favourite Bowie album. Maybe it all depends if your earliest exposure to his music was his earlier albums...