The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories
| The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories | ||||
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| Studio album by Ian Dury | ||||
| Released | 1992 | |||
| Recorded | 1991, 1992 | |||
| Genre | Power Pop, Pop Rock | |||
| Length | 47:06 | |||
| Label | Demon | |||
| Ian Dury chronology | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories is the 7th solo album by Ian Dury. Despite being recorded after the successful live reunion of Ian Dury and The Blockheads, inspired by the death of their drummer Charley Charles, the album is not a Blockheads record. All of the band, however, except bassist Norman Watt-Roy, appear on the album.
The album has its origins in a 1991 Irish film After Midnight when asked to produce music for the film Dury recruited Blockhead Mick Gallagher and Music Students member Merlin Rhys-Jones. Two songs "O'Donegal" and "Quick Quick Slow" along with another "Bye Bye Dublin" were written around this time, and least the latter two were recorded in Shepherd's Bush, London] along with incidental music for the film.
Dury's in-studio behavior had become notably better than during the 1980s and would steadily improve. One notable drink-fueled event, however, while recording the album, on the Mile End Road, London (owned by the brother of Madness keyboard player Mike Barson), is re-accounted often by Gallagher and Rhys-Jones. Dury, drunk on Budweiser became furious, allegedly after a technician named Frasier erased Gallagher's keyboard part for "Quick Quick Slow", and threatened to burn the studio down. When he wouldn't calm down, the police were called and after spitting at them and calling them 'homosexuals', Dury was arrested.
Bus Driver's Prayer is almost always considered a 'return to form' for Dury as a lyricist, and is considered as such by both Dury biographies Ian Dury & The Blockheads: Song by Song and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Life of Ian Dury. The most commonly quoted songs to illustrate this are "Poor Joey" and "Poo-Poo in the Prawn".
Was a very hungry fella
I defrosted my Paella
Came down with Salmonella
Three weeks intensive care
They failed to send technicians in
To check the air conditioning
Which was unfortunately transmissioning
A case of Legionnaire's
Demon Records were unhappy with the final album and hardly promoted it, despite favorable reviews including in the March 1993 issue of Vox where it was awarded six out of ten stars. Mick Gallagher continues to praise the album as one of his favorites, and noted in Song by Song that it was the album by which he personally mourned Dury, following the singer's death in 2000. The album has received criticism, however, for its the use of a drum machine.
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Wikipedia