A mere one post on Chas and Dave was never enough for any self-respecting blog, but it's so sad that this second love letter to the Peacock / Hodges songwriting gold standard and the Burt beat factory has had to wait until after Dave Peacock quit the band to mark the formal end of the C n' D production line.
Here's the comp that we cobbled together in tribute.
1. "One Fing N' Annuvver". Title track of their first album proper, a typical tale of family dysfunction with Chas's throaty tones of woe ("I carry the can / 'cos my old man / ain't bothered a damn") offset by upbeat brass arrangements of the sort that Elbow would kill for, were they not such thoroughly nice people.
2. "The Sideboard Song". Or, to give it its full title, "The Sideboard Song (Got My Beer In the Sideboard Here)". One of the greatest British singles of all time, one which invented Sham 69, Madness and Britpop / cockney Blur, amongst many others. Mick Burt strikes up a steady rhythm on the skins before the joanna weaves her usual magic and the boys narrate a tale of a riven, disfigured household from the point of view of its uncomprehending paterfamilias.
3. "Rabbit". Another hit, top ten at that, remembered for its freestyle scat chorus as well as for provoking feminist rile with its description of a henpecked suitor. Whereas the original recording of this was slow and jazz-lounge funky, with Dave's bass grindingly low, the single version rattles through at punk velocity, stopping dead at 2'15 (as many of their songs did!) to leave you very much wanting more.
4. "Gertcha". The hits rain down: this, according to Chas on the Abbey Road sessions, was the first ever punk single, and he's probably right. Again, the original version ("Woortcha") was mid-paced, deliberate, dimly funky: but by the time the Rockney hit factory was ratcheting up the chart-troublers, it had become "Gertcha": another frenetic, piano-driven joyride about a family man driven to distraction by life's daily vicissitudes. When they appeared on Top Of The Pops, the BBC (round about the same time they were giving Gang Of Four grief for "At Home He's A Tourist's lyrics) forced them to remove the references in the chorus to that well-known term of abuse, "cowson". But really, it's only half the song without them.
5. "Love And Days Gone By". A change of gear: if you want proof of how ahead of their time Chas and Dave were, check this ballad, which would have fitted snugly on the most recent Orchids album.
6. "Edmonton Green". A pearler, the best track on their "Rockney" album of '77. Another slowie, it trades "Love and Days'" faint hints of MOR for lush, warm rhythms and the soothing Hodges baritone. A simply beautiful tale of one man's memories of his local community (and, as such, a companion piece to "One Fing n' Annuvver"'s magisterial opener, "Ponders End Allotments Club").
7. "Poor Old Mr. Woogie". For every hit, there's one that should have been, but unaccountably wasn't. Over decades, Chas and Dave were pretty much unsurpassed at rattling piano-led rock n'roll, as Hodges admirers from Jerry Lee Lewis to Jack Clement would testify, and no C&D collection can be complete without this, their lament for the disco craze ("Mr Boogie") having seemingly left Mr Woogie behind to face an uncertain future in penury (actually, this might explain why it didn't sell enough copies). A record fashioned with love, and it shows.
8. "Turn That Noise Down". Frivolous ? A little. But with its early-80s sub-Shakatak / Level 42 vibe giving Dave a chance to show Mark King who his daddy was, this song about (yet another) put-upon dad being narked by ungrateful offspring ("You call that music ?... I can't stand that 'orrible row") is mucho entertaining, as well as musically nifty.
9. "I Am A Rocker". Self-explanatory: another uptempo back-to-my-roots belter. Eschewing "hippy hippy tunes" (just as they would later blast the er, de-woogieing of boogie-woogie), C&D show how pub rock could - should - have taken over the world, given half a chance and a fair wind.
10. "Ballad Of The Rich". Lummee. Another classic, kinda mournful, well-rounded song from "One Fing..." (a set which could, in an admittedly narrow field, officially be the best ever non-classical, pre-Pistols album). You're certainly unlikely to find more sweetly-plucked strings this side of your favourite adagios.
11. "Margate". Relentlessly territorial, as ever (Margate was London by the seaside, so "you can keep your Costa Brava") and still concentrating on songs about the family rather than boy / girl dead-ends, the accordion-garnished "Margate" (pronounced authentically to rhyme with "target") would later be co-opted as the theme tune for Only Fools and Horses' "Jolly Boys Outing", replacing the seminal "behave yerself, Grandad" reference with "behave yerself, Uncle Albert".
12. "In Sickness And In Health". Whereas this one was an original BBC TV theme tune commission, for Johnny Speight's sequel to "'Til Death Do Us Part". Slightly dumbed down by its Wedding March segues, this is musically more end-of-the-pier, bangers n' mash fare, but again the lyrics remind you that no-one does *true* (warts-and-all) romance more tellingly than Chas & Dave.
13. "I Wish I Could Write A Love Song". Oh, but you can. Interesting fact: when Tears for Fears wrote "Mad World", later to be liltingly caressed by the Snowdrops and then soundly smothered by Gary Jules, they were thinking of the fact that Chas and Dave could release a song like this as a single and that it wouldn't even graze the top 75. This kitchen sink gem, which invented Billy Bragg, is 100% *love*: stripped down, awkward, Chas's tribute to his wife that hits all the right buttons for useless romantics like us.
14. "London Girls". Potentially cloying, hopelessly old-fashioned, from the days when even "parochial" records cast their nets wider than Bow E3 (or Barnet, if you believe Wiley's Skepta dis). But try as we might we can't shake our soft spot for the trio's tribute to the ladies of London who, we are reminded, easily out-lovely "Deutscher girls, or girls from California".
15. "Flying". Hardly their only gorgeous instrumental, but we had to get at least one of them in here, and this is one of their most gorgeous: serene, verging on meditational.
16. "Lazy Cow". Back to the straight-down-the-line rock n' roll, boogie piano and all.
17. "I Wonder In Whose Arms". The only non-C&D penned song here, as their own compositions are so generally sterling. Included because they bring to it such a dropdead affecting depth of feeling.
18. "That Old Piano". Now. With these last three songs, we are going for a roaring hat-trick finish, starting with this mournful stroll down memory lane that bulges the back of the net with more power even than C&D collaborators Ardiles and Villa. Possibly our second favourite C&D number...
19. "Ain't No Pleasing You" ...behind THIS. Cast from the same mould as "That Old Piano", this blockbuster, this barnstormer sold more copies than anyone in the current top 40 could dream of, all by dint of writing such a rollicking SONG that for once people forgot that Chas n' Dave weren't cool and just bought it (yes, actually paying money for well-crafted songs seems so old-fashioned and uncool now, too). If you've ever been in a relationship, "Ain't No Pleasing You" should still knock your little socks clean OFF.
20. "Old Time Song". Regrets, they've had a few, but oddly this is one of their earliest, pre-fame singles, and it's a platinum tear-jerker. With a string arrangement so decadently beautiful that even Elbow probably would kill for it, it hits right between the eyes. One of Chas's greatest vocal performances: you can feel the lump in his throat at the start of each verse.
There are many more tracks that we could have more than happily included, indeed probably would have done were we to make this mixtape again now: "Harry Was A Champion", "Give It Some Stick, Mick", "Ponders End...", oh, "Back In The Soul Days"... what a band, what a band.
Oh, and tracking down copies of C&D albums isn't as hard as you might fear, even though we could do with less of the revisionist / jokey / blokey sleevenotes making out that Pete Doherty having heard of them was the best thing that could ever have happened to Chas and Dave. "One Fing" has got a proper re-release; "Mustn't Grumble" and "Job Lot" have been compiled on to a single CD. "Well Pleased" and "Flying" (originally on Rockney and Bunce Records respectively - how brilliant are those label names ?) are compiled as the second half of the "From Tottenham To Tennessee" 'compilation' (with a greatest hits of sorts on CD1), while the EMI "Greatest Hits" includes the "Rockney" and "Don't Give A Monkeys" albums in full, plus the Live At Abbey Road sessions. Plenty of these can be found for a fiver or so, meaning that for twenty odd quid you can treat yourself to the best part of a hundred C&D tunes.
And life goes on: Chas And His Band will be playing a venue near you soon, no doubt. Rightly. Legends.
