Song For The day May 8th 2024

My choice is from Don't Stand Me down by Dexy's Midnight Runners and its the final track The Waltz
Don't Stand Me Down is the third studio album by Dexys Midnight Runners, released in September 1985.

The album followed their internationally successful second album Too-Rye-Ay and featured a lineup pared down from ten members to just four: vocalist Kevin Rowland, guitarist Billy Adams, violinist Helen O'Hara, and saxophonist Nick Gatfield, the last of whom left the band after the recording sessions.

Recording

In an interview with HitQuarters saxophonist Nick Gatfield described the recording as a "long drawn out painful process".[1] It marked a telling and troubling shift from Too-Rye-Ay, as unlike that record, which was made very inexpensively and "had an energy about it", "Don't Stand Me Down" cost a huge amount of money and, according to Gatfield, "felt uncomfortable and unnatural".[1]
The album was a commercial failure upon release, in part due to frontman Kevin Rowland's refusal to release a single. "This Is What She's Like" was eventually released as a single, backed with part one of "Reminiscence". Some reviewers were highly critical,[2] with Trouser Press characterizing the release as "a torpid snore that denies entertainment on every level", although writing in the Melody Maker, Colin Irwin described it as "quite the most challenging, absorbing, moving, uplifting and ultimately triumphant album of the year".[3] The album is now considered something of a lost treasure: it was featured in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, published in 2005 by Cassell Illustrated.[4] Writing for Uncut in 2007, Paul Moody called it a "neglected masterpiece".[
The album was digitally remastered and issued on CD by Creation Records in 1997 (CRECD154). Two of the song titles were changed from the original release: "Knowledge of Beauty" became "My National Pride", and "Listen to This" became "I Love You (Listen to This)". "My National Pride" was the original title of the former song, but Rowland "didn't have the courage to title it that when it came around to the artwork." He contributed two pages of sleeve notes, entitled "Foreword to the Second Edition". Two extra tracks were added: "Reminisce (Part One)", recorded in spring of 1983, and a version of "The Way You Look Tonight".
2002 Director's Cut

During the mastering process for the Creation release, a stereo enhancer was used, which, Rowland felt, "ruined the dynamics." As a result, a third version of the album was released in 2002, subtitled The Director's Cut. The tracks were again digitally remastered, and the CD featured new artwork, further notes by Rowland, and the additional track "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time". According to Rowland, the album now sounds to him "as it was intended to sound." "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" had originally been intended to be the opening song (with the introductory lyric "My name is Kevin Rowland, I'm the leader of the band" and, in a later verse, a "joke" of sorts, to "kick off the proceedings"), but was left off the original issue of the album due to Rowland's perception of a "dodgy drum beat" at one point. Rowland penned two pages of notes relating to the track, as well as a "foreword to The Director's Cut."

A limited-edition version of The Director's Cut had a DVD disc included, featuring videos for the songs "This Is What She's Like", "My National Pride", and "I Love You (Listen to This)", directed by Jack Hazan. Rowland penned another page of notes regarding the videos. The booklet shows, in a two-page spread, a photo from the video shoot, with Dexys as an eight-piece band, with Rowland, Adams, and O'Hara in the foreground. All three videos feature footage from this set. While "This Is What She's Like" includes footage of Rowland and Adams walking the streets of New York City, and "My National Pride" shows the band in pastoral scenes evocative of Ireland, "I Love You (Listen to This)" is shot entirely on this set, dark, with a single spotlight on Rowland, no other band member visible, just various angles on Rowland singing the verses and choruses-the majority of the song-until the final instrumental ride-out, when Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, and the rest of the musicians are finally seen for a few seconds.
Track listing
Original 1985 version

"The Occasional Flicker" (Kevin Rowland) - 5:49
"This Is What She's Like" (Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, Rowland) - 12:23
"Knowledge of Beauty" (O'Hara, Rowland, Wynne) - 7:01
"One of Those Things" (Rowland) - 6:01
"Reminisce Part Two" (Rowland) - 3:31
"Listen to This" (Adams, Rowland) - 3:19
"The Waltz" (Rowland, Torch) - 8:21

The Director's Cut

"Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" (Adams, O'Hara, Rowland) - 5:05
"The Occasional Flicker" (Rowland) - 5:49
"This Is What She's Like" (Adams, O'Hara, Rowland) - 12:23
"My National Pride" (O'Hara, Rowland, Wynne) - 7:01
"One of Those Things"(LeRoy Marinell, Rowland, Waddy Wachtel, Warren Zevon) - 6:01
"Reminisce (Part Two)" (Rowland) - 3:31
"I Love You (Listen to This)" (Adams, Rowland) - 3:19
"The Waltz" (Rowland, Torch) - 8:21

"One of Those Things" has a riff taken from Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London". For the 1997 re-release, Rowland admitted in the liner notes that he had used the riff and consequently Zevon and his cowriters, LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel were given writing credits on the song.
"Reminisce (Part Two)" includes "I'll Say Forever My Love" (James Dean, William Weatherspoon, Stephen Bowden).

Personnel

Kevin Rowland - Bass, Guitar, Piano, Vocals, Producer, Liner Notes
Billy Adams - Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Helen O'Hara - Violin, Vocals, Producer
"Big" Jim Paterson - Trombone
Nick Gatfield - Saxophone, Vocals
Vincent Crane - Piano
Tim Dancy - Drums
Julian Littman - Mandolin
Tom Evans - Steel Guitar
Robert Noble - Organ, Synthesizer
John "Rhino" Edwards - Bass

Crusher Green - Drums on "Listen to This"
Mick Boulton - Piano on "The Waltz"
Randy Taylor - Bass on "Knowledge of Beauty"
Woody Woodmansey - Drums on "The Waltz"

Alan Winstanley - Producer
Pete Schwier - Engineer, Mixing
John Porter - Mixing on "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time"

Peter Barrett - Cover Design
Kim Knott - Photography
Claire Mueller - Photography
Jack Hazan - Director
Arun Chakraverty - Engineer (reissue)
Nigel Reeve - Project Coordinator (reissue)Original 1985 version

"The Occasional Flicker" (Kevin Rowland) - 5:49
"This Is What She's Like" (Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, Rowland) - 12:23
"Knowledge of Beauty" (O'Hara, Rowland, Wynne) - 7:01
"One of Those Things" (Rowland) - 6:01
"Reminisce Part Two" (Rowland) - 3:31
"Listen to This" (Adams, Rowland) - 3:19
"The Waltz" (Rowland, Torch) - 8:21
Utterly overlooked upon release, condemned and chastised by every reviewer who came within 50 yards of it, Dexy's Midnight Runners' third album arrived in 1985 with the band's once-illuminated fame looking seriously battered, not only by the three years that Kevin Rowland kept listeners waiting, but also by the fact that he'd seemingly thrown away every pop classic blueprint he'd ever laid his hands on. Quite frankly, the album was a mess, with half the songs sounding like extemporized intros, and the rest seemingly trapped within their own middle eights. The fact that the Smiths, to name but one, had long since made a virtue of such intricacies was irrelevant -- the world wanted another "Come on Eileen." Instead they got "The Occasional Flicker," a song-cum-ramble-cum-rant that apparently went out of its way to disrupt those demands. Ah, but it's such a magnificent disruption. Freed (in his own mind at least) from the tiresome dictates of the band's hitmaking past, Rowland conceived an album that drifts past in a blur of haunting and sometimes haunted melodies, with the vocal lines floating almost conversationally over them. Play the album once, then think back on it later, and all you remember is the sheer casual joy of it all, the sense that Dexy's gathered in the studio for fun as much as profit, and if nobody liked what they did -- which they didn't -- then so be it. Listen closer, however, and even the lackadaisical swagger is expertly crafted. "This Is What She's Like," doomed to become the band's first non-charting single since "Liars A to E," is an absolute corker once you give it a chance to sink into your skull and, track by track, Don't Stand Me Down unfolds to become not the ugly duckling of Dexy's Midnight Runners' hit-packed catalog, but the new dawn that could -- should -- have finally exorcised "Eileen" and her buddies. And when it didn't, the band broke up.
"The Waltz"
Don't stand me down, or around
For I'll never stop saying your name
I was the one who came rushing to see you believed in your strategy
Followed your course
Around this time, yes, I came near to remorse
I never quite did, of course
But then, things were no worse
And you were the one I was waiting to see, believed implicitly
But I never took tea
I was always in doubt
About working it out
Hence my reasons to shout
Were in permanent doubt
It's all changed now
Now, though it seems I am losing
It's not true
And though it seems there's confusion
It's also not true
As if I could not see
Believed implicitly
In the tales of the British democracy
How I swooned to the stories of Royal victories
But the books of history were fairy tale stories
But, never one to doubt
And not first think about
I restrained all my doubt
Now I'm working it out
Your good sister, it seems
Is nowhere to be seen
They don't talk of Kathleen
Things are not how they seem