— Ronnie Gurr
As I suggested previously, there didn't appear to be a lot of quality material vying for the 1980 Christmas number one. There were a fair share of big names (the now-sadly deceased John Lennon being the biggest of them all) but few were offering their best work. Yet, here we are just two weeks away from the big day and the singles review page in Smash Hits is teeming with quality. Sure, The Police's "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" is as rubbish as ever and I will never comprehend the appeal of Adam & The Ants — even if "Ant Music" is one of their better efforts — but there are some excellent, if relatively minor, singles on offer as well.
XTC were coming off a year that should have broken them big but their creative momentum was such that the seemingly tossed off "Take This Town" from the Times Square film soundtrack is nevertheless quite wonderful. The Clash's "The Call Up" was largely ignored by record buyers and is generally forgotten today but it ought to be ranked in the top flight of their singles. Dexys Midnight Runners were already moving on from their Searching for the Young Soul Rebels album with the brand new release "Keep It Part Two (Inferiority Part One)", which Kevin Rowland must have known was destined to be a chart longshot despite being as good as anything they'd done up to that point. Ronnie Gurr puts all seasonal releases together in a mass round up which give short shrift to Kate Bush's lovely "December Will Be Magic Again", which probably should have performed much better than it did. And then there was yet more fresh product from one of the leading groups of 1980 who were only just hitting their peak.
The Specials had only emerged as a national concern in 1979 with the brilliant "Gangsters" and they went on a run of unbeatable singles — "A Message to You Rudy"/"Nite Club", The Special AKA Live!, "Rat Race", "Stereotype". With The Specials and More Specials being similarly outstanding albums, with some fine B-sides to boot, there wasn't a better group in Britain during their two year prime. A flash in the pan they may have been but, as a certain wise old songsmith once said, it's better to burn out than fade away. (They left the fading away to their second incarnation following the departures of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple six months later) Their fans would have become accustomed to their exceptionally high standards by this point and "Do Nothing" didn't let them down.
Like most Smash Hits reviewers of the time, Ronnie Gurr doesn't specify a Single of the Fortnight and I had assumed that this latest single from The Specials was is his pick of the litter here, and not just because it would certainly have been my choice. "Great Reginald Dixon sound from Jerry Dammers and more exemplary trombone etchings from Rico," Gurr coos. "A truly excellent single". High praise to edge it above Adam Ant ("Pretty irresistible actually"), XTC ("...a great single") and The Clash ("In which The Clash prove that they really are the failure creeps you suspected all along": he likes this record, right?) and that was good enough for me. Then, I happened to read the entire singles page and discovered that he likes it when whiny Canadians take a giant piss all over their competitors. Classy indeed.
I often think of Neil Young as the ultimate example of an artist who only does slow songs. Of course, he has recorded countless faster-paced rockers over his lengthy career but are the bulk of them any good? (I've heard plenty of them in my time but I can't think of a single one that managed to make any kind of impression on me) Certainly it's not the louder material that makes me think of the so-called Godfather of Grunge. I associate Young with "Expecting to Fly", "After the Goldrush", "Helpless", "Heart of Gold", "Old Man", "Like a Hurricane", "Harvest Moon" and "Philadelphia" and I can give or take the faster and the harder stuff — even the updated country waltz stuff.
That's not to say that "Hawks and Doves" is poor. It's well made and he has one of those backing bands that everyone describes as "crack". As is typical, Neil Young doesn't exactly bowl you over with his vocal prowess but he does sound more self-assured and even a bit playful here. And there's a message about accepting people in there somewhere. The US had just elected Ronald Regan into the White House so it was timely to have a blue-collar anthem that tried to reach out across the aisle. (It could easily find a home in our current climate as well with all that culture war nonsense)
But after a week of listening, I still haven't warmed fully to it nor has it gotten on my nerves to any real extent. It doesn't enhance my appreciation for Young not does it lower my opinion of him. I never need to hear "Hawks and Doves" again nor will I actively try to avoid it. He did some good country-ish recordings in his day (I'd take the decidedly more mellow Comes a Time over the roughhouse country rock of the Hawks & Doves album) often because gentler styles tended to bring out his more reflective side. This is why the "ballads" tend to stand out and why they're the numbers I'll keep revisiting.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Steely Dan: "Hey Nineteen"
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were in their early thirties when Steely Dan's seventh album Gaucho came out. They had previously been on an album-a-year streak from 1972's Can't Buy a Thrill to 1977's Aja but this one took a lot longer to finish. As a result, the duo may well have still been in their twenties when they composed this paean to midlife crisis. The Dan of old would have been happy to make "Hey Nineteen" into an amusing romp but there's real loneliness and desperation. How many fifty-year-old men have left their wives for a pretty young thing only to realise that they, too, got nothing in common. The surprisingly poignant "the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian" section could be about being all alone but even if "Nineteen" is present, it seems likely that this gentleman feels much more of a connection with his selection of narcotics than any human company. Another classic Steely Dan single — and the closest competition for The Specials.
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