“If you walk down the street with no shoes on, you’ll see someone with no feet, and I’m the one with no shoes on in terms of being disabled,” says Ian Dury (whom some have called The Godfather Of Punk) in Ian Dury: Rare and Unseen, released on DVD by Wienerworld/MVD on July 27, 2010. A narrator tells us that Ian “had safety pins in his eyes while The Sex Pistols still used them in nappies”! Having had polio as a child, Ian Dury was affected on his entire left side, but felt that he was far less disabled than most, and “just got on with it” in the normal world. Rocknroll singer, bandleader, actor and lyricist, he said of himself, “I’m not a great singer but there are good words to me,” while Suggs of the band Madness has described him as “possibly the finest lyricist we’ve seen.”

Saying that he’d taken a lot from vaudeville and comedians, Ian Dury became famous during the late 1970′s and later died from liver cancer in the year 2000. He toured extensively with Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and Larry Wallis while releasing a dozen albums. His biopic, Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll, appeared in cinemas in January of 2010, and he was the author of the song by the same name and also other seminal songs like What A Waste, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and Sweet Gene Vincent.

Absolutely unpretentious yet with a powerful and driven personality, Dury always appeared utterly confident when talking about his music (although a bit more hesitant sometimes when speaking of his disability, saying the only time it got in the way was when he was trying to catch buses!). Asked how he knew when a concert was “worked” he replied, “It’s a natural thing – band and audience – a shared attitude……this can happen with 4,000 people if you’re lucky.” Always entertaining his interviewers with funny life experience stories, one told him, in Atlanta, Georgia, that when people asked him for his authograph they acted like he was more of a friend to them than a star.

Singing out with both a cheery and earthy voice, his is also in a low register (kind of like a more-energized Tom Waits). Featuring eight live songs and the bands Kilburn And The High Roads and also The Blockheads, Ian Dury: Rare And Unseen is an affectionate look at a singer-songwriter musician not as well-known in America as in Great Britain (despite his hit album New Boots And Panties going platinum in 1977 and a 56-city tour in the USA). See it to learn about yet another musical great who’s been quoted as saying, “I figure that if you’re dancing you’re not fighting!”

Grade: A Total Running Time: 75 minutes Unrated documentary Directed by Paul Clark and edited by Iva Persan with archival footage and interviews Original music compositions by I. Dury, M. Gallagher, R. Hardy, C. Jankel and Melvin

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