Released: July 1980

Released On: EMI



It’s the spring of 1980 and hurtling up the A40 in a non-descript white van are Dexys Midnight Runners. Kevin Rowland and co have taken a hostage and made their demands clear. The hostage, the master tapes of their debut album Searching For The Young Soul Rebels, has been stolen from the clutches of the bands label EMI and with the police in pursuit, the band make a break for Birmingham. Reaching their pre-arranged safe house (Kevin parents) they set about fighting their employers over what they view as unpaid wages and overdue respect. Unlike most stories, the little man actually won. The ransom was paid and the record released, a debut album that few could hope to better.
 
Last month sees the 30th anniversary and reissue of that album. Now complete with the compulsory second disk, full with b-sides, demos and peel sessions. It’s an album that doesn’t need it, especially the three separate cracks at Johnny Johnson’s 'Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache'. What it does do is serve as testament to what an album can be, when the fire in the belly matches the brains in the head.
 
In 1978 Kevin Rowland told friend and guitarist Kevin Archer “I’m going to do what I really want to do: form a great group. We’ll wear great clothes and make soulful music.” Like all truly great band Dexys got it right from the shoes up, they were a gang both sartorially and mentally. They mixed their impoverish surroundings with Scorsese’s Mean Streets, to produce the imposing image of woolly hats, donkey jackets, dockers boots and a ‘fuck you’ attitude all of their own. Setting themselves apart from the competition continued in the dealings with the media. A flat refusal to talk to the press was adopted and instead they would communicate via the advertising space of the very magazines they refuted. Each week the NME were forced to run manifestos of Dexys intent, outlining their beliefs in the poetic prose of Kevin Rowland.      
 
With the crackle of a transistor radio the album begins, searching the stations the listens hears snippets of the specials, deep purple and the pistols before the impassion plea of Rowland to ‘Big’ Jimi to ‘burn it down, for gods sake burn it down.’ The song (a sonically redefined former single 'Dance Stance') is a comment on the condescending anti-Irish sentiment that Rowland was exposed to in 70’s Birmingham. In defence of his mothers homeland Rowland lists Irish literary figures’ from Oscar Wilde to George Bernard Shaw. To hammer the point home the horn section, led by 6ft plus Glaswegian 'Big' Jimi Paterson, spray staccato brass punches, leaving the listen in no doubt of the bands power and belief.
 
The albums darkest lyrics can be found on ‘Tell Me When My Light Turns Green’ where Rowland recounts his previous 23 years of being ‘spat on and shat on.’ Its the confession of a manic depressive whose ‘boozing and losing’ has brought him to his knees, the rhythm once again driven by the brass section, providing the power needed to rescue the song from becoming to emotive on its own luck. The song that broke the album was ‘Geno,’ a letter of thanks for the night where a young Kevin Rowland went to see soul singer Geno Washington and the Ram Jam band.  The energy that emanates from these 3:31 minutes would induce involuntary foot stomps from the coldest of hearts. Although it went on to become a mill stone round the necks of its creators the song brought the band onto the T.V screens of the nation, when it reached number one in May of that year. It’s the point where their influences of punk and new wave most successfully weave with the soul music that ran through the spine of the band.

The pinnacle of the album is reserved for 'There There my Dear,' a rousing affirmation of their belief and contempt for their musical contemparies:  ‘I’d only waste three minutes of my valuable life on your insincerity.’ The relentlessness and all consuming pace of the song never lets up and the band set themselves up as vigilantes of truth claiming ‘the only way to change things is to shoot men who arrange things.’ It is a blazing close to an album which never wavers in it is mission: 'Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision.'
 
30 years on the album stands up amongst any you care to mention. It’s unflinching in its dedication to provide lessons for the listener in soul, politics and emotion. The sheer force of its intensity proved too much for even the band itself, catapulting them into the mainstream and ultimately breaking them apart. In various incarnations Dexys would go on to varying degrees of success, but never again would the fires in their bellies burn the same.
          

Posted In Classic Albums, Nov 16 2010. Words - Chris Barrett