The pretenders top hits4/30/2023 ![]() ![]() It’s probably no coincidence that Johnny Marr ended up joing the Pretenders – I’m sure the attraction was mutual. His guitar playing though was not remotely Richard-like, but rather puts me in mind (in this song and the beautiful follow-up “Talk of the Town”) of classic Smiths. There are guitar hooks a-plenty from the much underrated and sadly prematurely deceased, James-Honeyman Scott, a player with a Keith Richardesque fondness for the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but unfortunately for him, not Mr Richard’s constitution. I can’t agree there are no hooks in “Brass In Pocket”. It’s 1980, I am now approaching nineteen (a final kiss goodbye to the Bun!), my childhood is over and life goes on. So then, as Uncle Mac was apt to say, “Goodnight children, everywhere!” This has been a most pleasurable interlude for me but we are now entering territory which held other memories for me, as a man not as a boy. I can’t promise jokes but he’ll be a far more interesting overseer of the eighties and beyond than I could ever hope (or want) to be. Peter was born in 1975 when I was already a teenager. His name is Peter and he is a site manager down in Eastbourne. I just need to mention that after a titanic struggle I have, it seems, coerced a young friend of mine, “Waldo’s protégé”, to pick up the mantle. And I may well threaten you with an appearance at a future drinkie. I’m sure the bandwagon will roll on sans Waldo. It’s been good exchanging views with everyone on all kinds of everything (sic). I shall single none of you out, even though I have cultivated a contact with one of you in another place and shall soon come face to face with another stalwart when I head for the northern wastes to watch Eastbourne Borough continue their struggle in the top flight of non-league football. Tatty bye too to my fellow bloggers, many of whom were here when I arrived. He has in addition proved to be an admirably objective arbitrator, being faced as he is, with a group of alarmingly passionate and erudite commentators, who take great delight in in revealing disagreements with each other, sometimes with hilarious but other times unfortunate results. The quality of his writing has been simply breathtaking and this is aside from his obvious knowledge of his brief, most of which must have been learned as a history, an obstacle not presented to those who were there at the time. Popular has provided me with a lot a pleasure from then until now and for this I thank our founder, Mr Ewing, who is a magnificent Master of Ceremonies. One of the links led me to some bugger called Tom Ewing and suddenly I found myself trapped in his dream. I had initially googled The Overlanders one lazy day, remembering that I had been at school as far back as 1966 with the son of one of the band members. How I wish I had found you all earlier, although this itself was a case of serendipity. I joined the blog early in 2006 when the group was already discussing spring 1972. We’ve reached 1980 and true to my word, ahm a-checkin’ out. « Popular ’79 THE SPECIALS – The Special AKA Live! (EP) » Comments 1 2 3 » Allīefore the main body of comments, a message from a one-time regular, printed w/o alteration or comment as a last request: Of course, it’s a song about going after what you want with laser focus, so no surprise that the delivery’s kind of calculating – but this is one of those singles where I can understand exactly why it’s loved, but can’t join in myself. I don’t hear that in Hynde, and it means I can’t buy into her technique here. And the honest truth is, I don’t like it – she’s borrowing a lot from Patti Smith but there’s a spontaneity in Smith’s singing, a sense that her squeals and shouts are unbidden responses to musical and emotional momentum. ![]() Without it, actually, the song is nothing at all – there’s no particuarly good hooks in “Brass In Pocket”, no chorus, just build and force: if you don’t like Hynde’s voice there’s not a lot of room for you to enjoy it. The band keep things steady in the background, cresting and rolling back unobtrusively to give their singer the space and stage she needs – and her vocal is a box-of-tricks performance, snapping from purr to pounce in the space of a line. The danger in the song is that its determination could shade into desperation, but when you listen to it you never once doubt that Hynde’s got the moves to back up her words: if anything, the song’s a challenge to her lover-to-be to step up and match her. “Brass In Pocket” isn’t quite what we were getting at – there’s no sense that Chrissie Hynde’s target is any weaker than her, even if his capitulation is inevitable – but as an exercise in total confidence it takes some beating. I had a pub conversation once about Radiohead’s “Creep”, where we decided the ideal cover would be one grounded in full-on swagger, simply inverting every “I” and “You” in the song: “I’m so fucking special – you wish you were special…you’re a creep!”.
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