I AIN’T GONNA WORK ON DEXY’S FARM NO MORE

The first impressions begin here. Dexy’s Midnight Runners, with a great first album and little popular awareness of it within the U.S., came to New York’s late, great Hurrah club one night in 1980 for their American debut. Disharmonious, weak, a pale shadow of a ripping record, the group compensated for its inability to sound good with overt hostility. Lead singer Kevin Rowland glared at the small but dedicated audience and snarled something like, “There are 10 people with soul here to-, night and eight of them are on this stage.”

Phooey on Dexy’s live, said my friend and I. (obviously, we were the two additional soul-enriched entities). We regretted the disappointment of the event and went back to wearing out tracks on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels like “Bum It Down (Dance Stance)” and “Geno,” a loving tribute to seminal ’60s British soul star Geno Washington.