Monocled Alchemist

LP reviewed in Sounds, 4th September, 1982

CAPTAIN SENSIBLE ‘Women And Captains First’ (A&M AMLH 68548)***** | WHEN I got this album, sped to the Sounds office by a fleet of highly-trained A&M motorbike men as it was, it had several scratches on it. The question is: Why?

My first bet is that these lacerations were committed by Julian-Henri in the A&M press office. A late memo had come round expressing worry as to the ‘punkie’ quotient of ‘Women And Captains First’.

Julian-Henri, three years at Eton, flat in Chelsea, father in the Hussars, mother turned meths drinker, thought it politic to take the key from his TR7 (second-hand) and neatly scratch the vinyl surface.

Hence, the stuttering end to the otherwise (worryingly!) Eagles-sounding ‘The Man Who’s Gotten Everything’, certain to send the eleven-year-old retards, given anyway to spontaneous irrational giggling (they are so punkie!) into veritable hysterics of guffawing at how wacky the old Captain is time and again.

Or when ‘Happy Talk’ turns into a simple “Haphaphaphapetc”, these kids will think it is even more pointless than the original single version. Captain’s got his bird’s eye on value-for-money alrite!

After all, “Haphaphaphapetc” is sure to annoy mummy (turn her to meths?) and is thus highly subversive; that it’s a non-music (see Dirt review) is just par for the course.

Captain Sensible | Women And Captain’s First | (A&M) 1982

There again, this continual halting in progress of a music that is surprisingly melodic and straightly geetared (which worries Julian-Henri’s boss) is connected to the fact that Margaret ‘Such A Nasty Woman’ Thatcher is featured on the sleeve, and the Captain is trying to annoy her. Having her face on the sleeve of an album that has scratches will really madden her!

Or the dirty deed could have been done by Small Faces’ aficionados (those bike-boys?) vexed at the Captain’s complete pinching of ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon’ for the second track, ‘A Nice Cup Of Tea’.

For that matter it could have been George Melly (lifted on ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’) or any, ahem, sensible and real eccentric, unlike our Captain Turd’s Eye, who’s par for the ’82 course in, of course, being a second-hand everything. I mean, my father would make a better Captain Sensible than Captain Sensible makes. He’s about as outrageous as Julian-Henri’s father’s bleedin’ yacht.

We’ve hit on it! Those measly scratches, pockmarking ‘Croydon’ and giving ‘Martha The Mouth’ more mouth than she ever hoped for, weren’t done by any one person.

CAPTAIN SENSIBLE: ‘Women and Captains First’ (A&M AMLN 68548) | WHAT DO you make of Captain Sensible? A genuine breeze of madness shaking up the practically dormant charts or someone who’s sussed that there’s a very lucrative market out there for safe, uncontroversial ‘fun’, especially for fun which is given a bit of an edge by it being produced by a big name punk’? After hearing this I’d go for the second alternative.

I started off really wanting to like it. I thought it was refreshing when ‘Happy Talk’ got to No 1. ‘Wot’ grew on me but now doubt that Captain Sensible has much to offer outside the Damned, if anything at all.

By the third track I was thinking of excuses for him . . .by the end of the first side I’d run out. Before the whole thing had petered out to a finish I was wondering how anyone could seriously commit this kind of meaningless, structureless dross to record and ask people to pay money for it.

Self-indulgent that’s one way of describing It. Captain Sensible has been a familiar figure about the music scene for some time and this is the sort of thing that only an established artist can get away with.

To say ‘Women And Captains First’ is eclectic is too much of a compliment. It’s got a variety of paces but no distinction. On ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’ the Captain tries his hand at an old ragtime number. Perhaps he should have used both hands on this and a little more imagination on the rest.

The sound Is mainly guitar and synth trucking along in a light end airy fashion. It floats about in a vacuum aiming at nothing seemingly but satisfying the 40 minutes or so time requirement for a piece of recording that can reasonably be called an album.

Take a listen to ‘Brenda — Part One and Two’, a naively sweet domestic love lament for what comes across as a grade A lesson In spinning time out. Perhaps that’s not the intention but then, as the saying goes, good intentions are useless without common sense.

A variety of themes certainly, from ‘A Nice Cup Of Tea’ to ‘Yanks With Guns’ but they all have the same superficiality — the only continuity this album can boast of. And I don’t think I’m missing the point. Of course you don’t expect Captain Sensible to come on like Joe Strummer but these songs aren’t even funny.

You could say this album has been made too soon; such is the action of someone trying to cash in on success too quickly. Premature, pre-emptive; whatever the reason this is a joke of on album and not a good one. (Christine Buckley)

On the other side of the fence, we find Sensible getting up The Morning After and bemoaning the state of his kitchen in “A Nice Cup Of Tea”, delivering his autobiography in ‘Croydon’, evoking an absent girlfriend in ‘Brenda’ and – in what will probably be his next hit – fronting a hot Dixieland band on ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’.

‘Women And Captains First’ is a charming and admirable bit of plastic, and its creator is obviously sensible like a fox. (NME, 11/09/82)