The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories

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The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories
The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories cover
Studio album by Ian Dury
Released 1992
Recorded 1991, 1992
Genre Rock
Length 47:06
Label Demon Records
Ian Dury chronology
Apples
(1989)		 The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories
(1992)		 Mr. Love Pants
(1998)

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, however all of the band bar bassist Norman Watt-Roy appear on tracks on the record.

The album has it's origins in a 1991 Irish film After Midnight when asked to produce music for the film Dury recruited Blockhead Mickey 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.

Ian Dury's in-studio behavior was notably better than it had been during the 1980s and would steadily improve. However one notably drink-fueled event 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 where 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, including both Ian Dury & The Blockheads: Song by Song and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Life of Ian Dury the most common examples being Poor Joey and Poo-Poo in the Prawn

“ I was a very hungry fella

I defrosted my Paella skill
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

 ”

—from Poo-Poo in the Prawn

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. Mickey Gallagher continues to praise the album as one of his favorites, and noted in Song by Song that it was the album he mourned Ian Dury too following the singer's death in 2000. The album however does still receive criticism for the use of a drum machine.

Contents

[edit] Track listing

All tracks composed by Ian Dury and Mickey Gallagher; except where indicated

  1. "That's Enough of That" (Dury, Gallagher, Rhys-Jones) - 4:49
  2. "Bill Haley's Last Words" (Dury, Gallagher, Rhys-Jones) - 3:12
  3. "Poor Joey" - 3:50
  4. "Quick Quick Slow" - 3:14
  5. "Fly in the Ointment" - 2:55
  6. "O'Donegal" - 3:53
  7. "Poo-Poo in the Prawn" - 3:17
  8. "London Talking" - 1:15
  9. "Have A Word" (Dury, Gallagher, Rhys-Jones) - 3:57
  10. "D'Orine The Cow" - 3:18
  11. "Your Horoscope" - 4:00
  12. "No Such Thing As Love" - 3:38
  13. "Two Old Dogs Without A Name" - 4:43
  14. "Bus Driver's Prayer" (Traditional, arranged and adapted by Ian Dury) - 0:59

[edit] Personnel

  • Ian Dury - Lead Vocals
  • Mick Gallagher - Keyboards
  • Merlin Rhys-Jones - Guitar

With

  • Simon Osbourne, Ian Horne - Engineers
  • Bruce Ingman - Cover Painting (from a design by Mike Krage)
  • Jon Millar - photographs

Note: The album sleeve does not give information on who plays what on what tracks.

[edit] Re-releases

Problems have occurred with The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories' CD re-issues, initially Demon Record's CD version did not contain any writing credits for any of the songs it's booklet simply included the five poems written by Ian Dury in fact even now Windows Media Player will only automatically give the writing credits for O'Donegal, Poo-Poo in the Prawn and D'Orine the Cow, the three tracks that appeared on Repertoire Record's Reasons to be Cheerful 2CD retrospective.

Edsel Record's 2003 2-CD re-issue fixed this and included the writing credits above each song's lyric as it had done with the other albums however it erroneously lists London Talking as track 9 and Have A Word as track 8 both on the track list on the back of the CD case, and in the booklet, placing the lyrics in the wrong order.

Edsel Record's re-issue also includes a bonus disc with 8 Bonus tracks, unreleased tracks Amerind, Whale Grape and Grain and The Writer plus four songs that would later appear on later albums with The Blockheads Itinerant Child (which would appear on Mr. Love Pants) and One Love, Cowboys and I Believe (later to be included on Ten More Turnips From The Tip).

[edit] Trivia

  • The voice of Joey the Budgie is, according to Song by Song, not Ian Dury, but Chas Jankel.
  • Even though the album is named after the track, this is Ian Dury's second recording of Bus Driver's Prayer, the original appearing on his 1989 album Apples.

[edit] Sources

  • Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll: The Life Of Ian Dury by Richard Balls, first published 2000, Omnibus Press
  • Ian Dury & The Blockheads: Song By Song by Jim Drury, first published 2003, Sanctuary Publishing.
  • Booklet to Edsel Records 2004 CD re-issue of The Bus Driver's Prayer and Other Stories.