"New Boots And Panties!!" : Ian Dury's best album

In England, punk's first wave was a heady period of one- chord wonders and two-minute heroes. It was a time for great singles, if not always great albums. Notable exceptions included The Clash’s first, Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, and this.

New Boots And Panties!! was like nothing else, then or now—a wild and raw, pithy, lewd, funny, cruel, and brilliantly coarse work of not-quite-punk in a sort of twisted British music hall tradition. Dury had a genius for words, cockney rhyming slang picked up or invented: "I had a love affair with Nina in the back of my Cortina/A seasoned up hyena could not have been more obscener/ She took me to the cleaners and other misdemeanors/ But I got right up between her rum and her Ribena" {from "Billericay Dickie"). Most reissues of this album now include the trademark Dury anthem "Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll."

At 35 Dury fitted in with punk just fine. He took no crap and he had grown up tough. Crippled by polio aged seven, he had no choice. Toward the end of his life, after being diagnosed with cancer ("I mustn’t grumble, I've had a good crack"), he devoted much of his time to charitable causes.

The cover photo, incidentally, was taken outside the long-closed Axfords clothing store in Victoria, London. Standing next to Dury is his son Baxter who, at his father's wake in 2000, performed "My Old Man," which was originally written by Dury about his father. Ending with the line, "All the best mate from your son" it was an appropriately poignant moment in memory of a truly unique man.