Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 352 - Dexys Midnight Runners

The Very Best of - Dexys Midnight Runners

Mercury

Released May 1991

UK Chart #12

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I can remember first seeing Dexys Midnight Runners at The Marquee prior to their getting a massive #1 hit with only their second single Geno and thinking that they were surely going to be a band to be reckoned with, such was the quality of their sound. I loved the first bunch of singles that they did and their Debut Album, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels is just fantastic. 

But whilst I continued to check out their singles from time to time I can't say I was overly fussed with many of the albums and their image change as well. They kind of went from this rather cool looking band dressed in jeans and Donkey jackets to a bunch of scruffy urchins in dungarees who looked like they had just worked a few back to back shifts on a farm somewhere! Not that I have anything against people who work on farms mind!

I think the Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile) single was probably the last one that I bought (and I still love hearing that song today). 

So, when this album, The Very Best of Dexys Midnight Runners appeared back in 1991, 5 years after the demise of the band, I purchased a copy mainly for the early singles as I had lost those records over time moving around.

Whilst still not overly keen on the Too-Ray-Ay stuff I still get a blast of nostalgia hearing the likes of Dance Stance, Geno, Breaking Down The Walls of Heartache, and There, There, My Dear and that generally leads me to go and dig out that great Debut Album again.

One of the things I was not happy with regarding the album (and it's a pet peve in a way) was that the album was not in chronological order, which personally I think all Greatest Hits or Very Best Of's should be!

Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!

Rewind: Dexys Midnight Runners (1980)

Searching For The Young Soul Rebels - Dexys Midnight Runners

Parlophone

Produced by Pete Wingfield

Released 11th July 1980

UK Chart #6

For some strange reason in the middle of the last night I awoke and in my head was the opening bars of the Dexys Midnight Runners single There, There, My Dear. Why this particular song was buzzing around my mind at 2.30am I have no idea but it did make me go and dig out Searching For The Young Soul Rebels album today and give it a blast.

Listening afresh to this album I remembered that whilst I like a fair bit of Dexys stuff it was their very beginnings that I liked the best. I saw them at The Marquee in Wardour Street a few times before Geno became a massive #1 hit for them. Dance Stance, their debut was brilliant as well, though they re-recorded it as Burn It Down for the album.

I really loved the horn section in the band as it was a reminder of some of those great horn sections that appeared on the brilliant Stax/Volt records from days past.

1980 Peel Session

Originally Broadcast 13th March 1980

Repeated 5th May 1980 

01. The Horse

02. Tell Me When My Light Turns Green

03. Geno

04. Breakin' Down The Walls of Heartache

Their second single Geno of course ended up going to #1 but personally I loved the B-Side - Breakin' Down The Walls of Heartache - which the label actually wanted as the A-Side. The old 1968 Johnny and The Bandwagon single sounds so great  by Dexys.

And so to the song I awoke in the middle of the night to:

 There, There, My Dear

Released June 1980

UK Charts #7

I'm still stumped why this was there in my head but hey, it's a good excuse to dig out a great Debut Album and play it again!

45RPM: #36 Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile) - Dexy's Midnight Runners(1982)

When Kevin Rowlands and Kevin "Al" Archer "stepped aside" from The Killjoys there was absolutely no telling what they would do next. Kevin Rowlands immeresed himself in Vintage Soul Music and so was born Dexy's Midnight Runners in 1978.

Their first single Dance Stance was released on Indie Label Oddball Records in 1979 and crept to #40 in the UK Singles Chart. I got to see them at The Marquee not long after that single was released and they were really impressive, a fantastic brass section as well. It was not long after when they got signed to EMI that they stood their ground on the release of their first single. EMI wanted the cover Breakin' Down The Walls of Heartache but the band were insisting on Geno, which the label thought was a mere B-Side! The band also refused to allow for a Double A-Sided Single and so on March 15th Geno was released and slowly climbed up the chart to reach #1 in May 3rd.

By the time Plan B was released in 1981, their fifth single, the band were in dispute with EMI. After the release Liars A To E the band had undertaken a very, very different image and direction musically.

Rowland then recruited fiddle players Helen O'Hara (from Archer's new group, the Blue Ox Babes), Steve Brennan and Roger MacDuff, known collectively as "The Emerald Express". With the addition of new bass player Giorgio Kilkenny, this line-up recorded Too-Rye-Ay in 1982, a hybrid of soul and Celtic folk, the new sound accompanied by a new look, with the band attired in dungarees, scarves, leather waistcoats, and what was described as "a generally scruffy right-off-the-farm look", or "a raggle-taggle mixture of gypsy, rural Irish and Steinbeck Okie". Rowland said of the new image: "These are my best clothes. Again it just feels right for the music. Everybody else is dressing up sort of straight-laced and pretty down-to-earth and we come in wearing these and it's like, y'know here we are, a bit of hoedowning is even possible".

The first single, The Celtic Soul Brothers, reached number 45 on the UK charts but the follow-up, Come On Eileen, became a Number One hit not only in the UK, but also in the United States, where it peaked at #1 in April 1983 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The follow-up Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile), a cover of a Van Morrison tune, also reached the top 5 in the UK singles chart. The band sang this song on the UK comedy The Young Ones. When the band performed this single on the BBC TV music show Top of the Pops, instead of a picture of Jackie Wilson, the American soul singer, the band performed in front of a photo of Jocky Wilson, the Scottish darts player.

A-Side

 Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)

B-Sides on 12"

T.S.O.P.

Let's Make This Precious.

Mercury Records

Produced by Kevin Roland, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley

UK Chart #5

Dexys Midnight Runners - Shepherds Bush Empire 8th May 2012