Serenaded into the world by his dad’s band The Blockheads banging out Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny Be Good’ in the basement below, and with 6’8” ex-Led Zeppelin roadie named ‘Sulphate Strangler’ for a babysitter, Baxter was never destined to work in a ‘proper’ job. It’s worlds away from the darkness and romantic disappointments of 2005’s ‘Floor Show’, so much so that Dury refers to his new effort as “seaside psychedelia”. Yet Baxter’s lyrical playfulness and acute character analysis ensure the songs are anything but mundane. Sandwiched inbetween mainstream icons such as Tinie Tempah and Katy Perry on his label, Dury jokes that he enjoys “being the only one in the weird hat making bonkers music”. It’s not hard to see why, as he explains: “Growing up there’d be twelve or so people sat in a circle in our living room wearing funny glasses and jamming. I’d join in by shaking a packet of Kelloggs cornflakes or soya beans.” Food packets and pots and pans soon led to guitars and poetry, and in 2001 Baxter released his debut single, the ‘Oscar Brown EP’. Sampling the Velvet Underground’s ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’, the delicate, spaced-out track couldn’t have been further from his pa’s boisterous, cheeky chappy rock and roll. As NME, who christened it their ‘Single of the Week’, put it: ‘Baxter’s surname means nothing. This is a work of casual assurance that no family tree can provide. The record is all you need to know.’ Soon snapped up by indie label Rough Trade, Baxter released ‘Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift’ (2002) and ‘Floor Show’ (2005).
