Music Arcades: The Durutti Column: The Return of The Durutti Column

Here's another album that sounded unlike anything I'd heard before when I first came across it at school.

Have I told you before about my role as chief copier of post-punk albums of the early '80s? I feel I must have, but cannot remember, or find, when I did. Anyway, this came about because my hi-fi was the best within easy reach of a group of friends who were keen to share the latest releases by Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Simple Minds and The Cure. These friends loathed my taste in music, and I was pretty dismissive of what they gave me to record onto tape — though I later rescinded my scorn in almost every case except The Cure, who deserved, and deserve, every last ounce of it.

But there was one further exception to this pattern, and that was The Durutti Column. I liked this music straight away. It had a foot in the world of long-macs and the other in the world of ambient (which in 1981 was not a world at all, but a hamlet).

So this time I made my own tape recording of the first album and LC, and enjoyed them in that format for several years. There was a track on LC that mentioned the first cigarette of the day, and I liked that a lot.

The thing is that I was never quite sure what the first album was called. I read in the music press about this much-praised album called The Return of the Durutti Column and wasn't sure if that was the one I had on tape, or not. So when I heard that The Return was being re-issued, I ordered it from Polar Bear.

I was almost disappointed to find that, yes, it was the same album as the one I'd be listening to for all those years. Discovering a lost classic would have been fun, but not this time.

In 2008, The Return of the Durutti Column sounds more commonplace than it did in 1981. But not for the same reasons as Obscured by Clouds. The ambient hamlet has since become a bona fide world, and I'm glad that people's ears are better prepared to listen to albums like this.

I admit I don't know whether The Durutti Column has moved on as well. Lucy and I went to see them/him at Ronnie Scott's one Sunday about three and a half years ago. We were disappointed. This remains the only Durutti album I've ever bought. I remain grateful to Vini Reilly, however, for shifting the boundaries of what is acceptable male thinness.