Stone Cold Jam #9: Precious (Pretenders)

The Band: Pretenders

The Album: The Pretenders (1980)


History tells us that T.S. Eliot was a poseur and a twat. He fled Missouri to live in London, where he became an Englishman, one about as believable as Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. His English friends were creeped out entirely by his abuse of bowlers and kippers. What an asshole.

What is this worship of all things English? PBS would run an snuff film if it were English. My niece spent three months in London and came back with the shittiest Maggie Smith accent and a guy I went to high school with lived there for two years and picked up the habit of appending the word "then" to every question. I guess that's better than "innit".

I'm worse, though. I try to pass as Manitoban.

Chrissie Hynde fled the Midwest(Akron) to become a music journalist in London, which is only slightly better than being a poet. Slightly. Fortunately for the canon of Stone Cold Jams, She maybe a poseur, but who cares, cause she doesn't sing songs about the decline of the West or emotionally constipated assholes like J. Alfred Prufrock. Nope, Chrissie sings about people from Cleveland wearing leather and having sex. London and Cleveland. The product of that dialectical mindfuck is the Pretenders.

"Precious" is the template by which all songs about leather-wearing Ohioans forming the two backed beast MUST be judged. It is Chrissie castignating her whimp-a-thing hometown being home to a bunch of J.Alfred Prufrock jag-offs. Then she tells Akron to fuck off, en masse. She literally barks a neat subdued scary bar slut "fuck off" right at the end of the song, and that is when you fall desperately in love with her (I am not assuming you are male or a lesbian. We all fall in love with Chrissie. It aint no thing. It is a genetic stamp of humanity.)

To be honest chosing "Precious" was completely arbitrary. The whole album is a tight as a diamond. James Honeyman Scott riffs like a tommy gun, without flash or wankery, on every goddamn song. If you don't own the album, you might be an asshole. Chances are pretty good you are. So, buy it. You can't afford not to.