The Song of the Day is:
The Stranglers – “Peaches”
From the album Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
Well there goes another one just lying down on the sand dunes
I’d better go take a swim and see if I can cool down a little bit
Cause you and me woman
We got a lotta things on our minds (you know what I mean)Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches
Jet Black – Jean-Jacques Burnel – Hugh Cornwell – Dave Greenfield
Were at home canning peaches today. That’s the big plan. So, with me taking my task literally, I’ve got a number of songs worth listening to; I could make a whole playlist. We’ve got Prince with “Peach”, Elton John with “Rotten Peaches”, Zappa’s “Peaches en Regalia”, Beck’s “Peaches & Cream”, Clapton’s “Peaches and Diesel”, Outkast’s “Peaches” and, of course, the Presidents of the United States of America with their iconic “Peaches”. Then there’s the artists Peaches and Herb, the Moldy Peaches and the rapper Peaches. I could cap it off the whole playlist with the Allman Brothers Band’s classic album Eat A Peach. Why, then, are peaches so prevalent in pop music? Well, they’re delicious… but also because of the multiple double-entendres (I’m not going to get into all of it). My choice of song today, “Peaches” by the Strangles, employs mostly a G-Rated version of the euphemism (“she’s a peach”), though I the rest of song is pretty sleazy, R-Rated. Here, The Stranglers are wallowing in their misogyny with just as much gleeful sneer as their punk-rock contemporaries the Sex Pistols would delight in anarchy. In reverting to such an obviously sexually-oriented song, the Stranglers are actually punking punk music which was usually so steeped in political rhetoric. The song is anchored around the bass playing of Jean-Jacques Burnel, who sounds like he’s plucking his instrument with a 60-pound thumb, only to have it mirrored by the Keyboards of Dave Greenfield. Guitarist/singer Hugh Cornwell provides such lascivious vocals that it probably landed him on a few watch lists. In 1982, the band would have their most popular song in the Baroque-pop “Golden Brown”, which would be a rare departure for typical punk bands, but the Stranglers were anything but. Though they’ve have multiple personnel changes, they are still active and have never broken up. They’ve released seventeen albums over their forty-plus year career and have long outlasted their British punk brethren like the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Generation X, and the (classic era) Buzzcocks.
If you enjoy the blog, please consider helping me pay the dues paypal.me/MichaelSliwa.
Thanks!
Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 