JOE DOLCE MUSIC THEATRE – "Shaddap You Face"

Sorry, was there a Number 2 Watch with this one? Can’t remember.

This means nothing to me.

Yes, eight weeks at number 1 in Australia, only to be replaced by … “(Just Like) Starting Over”. Luckily we only had that for 2 weeks, before Slim Dusty .. erm, whatever.

Speaking of the cover versions, I’d be very interested to hear KRS 1’s.

i thought shuddup was about the funniest thing ever at the time. not so much now, but i do fairly often find myself singing adaptations of it to our baby girl when i run out of lullabys (not majoring on the shut your face motif, obv). and there’s not much wrong with the glorious baroque nonsense at number two either.
it probably shouldn’t be funny, but the vic reeves ‘ruby trax’ version of vienna has kept me amused for fifteen years now… “hitler dwelt in this land/and van morrison was born here”

I always thought that Dolce was actually Italian and couldn’t understand why he’d play up a cartoonish stereotype in this way, but I just found out he’s a bloody Yank/Aussie and now I can’t decide if it’s merely affectionate or the worst kind of “Love Thy Neighbour” caricature. Best not to think of it at all really. Even “Imagine” was better than this. Where he hell did this come from? Can we blame Noel Edmonds for it?

A mate of mine used to do an impression of Bryan Ferry singing this song. It was hysterical, but you had to be there.

A dismal run of number ones, I must say. I do remember reading some interview with Dolce where he said this single had ruined his chances of ever being taken seriously as a musician, bla bla bla. Then again, I just looked at his website and judging by the titles of his follow-ups (‘You Toucha My Car, I Breaka You Face’, ‘Pizza Pizza’), he was still trying to milk it several years later.

I think the bigger Ultravox injustice is that the song was never used for a Wall’ss ice-cream advert. “This means pudding to me…oh! Vienetta!”

I don’t mind this, I think because whenever I hear it (which admittedly is very infrequently), I imagine it as the climax of an autobiographical one-man show, where the audience would have been innoculated against its sentimentality and Cornetto pastiche Italian.

Eight year old Billy enjoyed this, especially the custard pie climax of the video – a gag which is sadly not so amusing to my grown-up self.

Extremely popular in the primary school playground, where “Ah shadduppa ya face!” worked very well as a comicly irreverant catchphrase. Indeed, I think that the last song to work so well in that context was ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’.

Joke hasn’t worn thin in our family, and I fully expect to hear my dad shout “Whatsa matter you? Gotta no respect?” as I snaffle the last bottle of Spitfire in a couple of weeks.

Must revisit post-Foxx Ultravox and possibly re-adjust my prejudice. I get the feeling that disliking Vienna in 2008 is on a par with people laughing at The Monkees in the early 80s.

Didn’t most of the indignation about Shaddap You Face keeping Vienna off the top emanate from Ultravox? That’s how I remember it.

‘my real hope was that kanye had gone all out and sampled vienna in a diamonds are forever style, of course’

I am still hoping he’ll get his hands on Alphaville’s ‘Sounds Like A Melody’

#29 – It would certainly be a worthy contender (and a better song than Vienna). But I just had to look up whom it was number two to, despite the fact I was a Pulp-loving student in 1995 – I don’t automatically associate the song with being number two to R***** & J*****, whereas I do associate Vienna with being number two to Joe Dolce. Extrapolating wildy from my own experience, I think that would be the case for a lot of people.

#30 – I’m sure there are – but they’re not automatically remembered as part of this particular club.

There are so many potential jokes in the phrase “worthy number twos” I don’t know where to start.

Ignore me, I’m juvenile.

Hi all, been lurking here a while – finally decided to join in with this one as it was number one when I was born.

I’ve just re-listened to the song on YouTube and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s shorter than I thought it was. Other than that, it’s terrible. Can anyone shed any light on who actually bought the single? Very young kids? Racist dads? Going on what I know of the early ’80s pop scene it doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere but then I guess that’s the point of a novelty/comedy single.

As for ‘Vienna’, I remember it making the charts as a reissue in 1993 (trailing a best-of I assume) and loving it then – the oddness of it appealed to me I guess. Still enjoy it now, although I’d pick ‘All Stood Still’ as their best Midge-era song. Anyway, Joe Dolce’s getting a 2/10.

I think Jarvis was
1) Commenting that he understood what it was to be working class, not saying he was
2) being taken aback that this girl had decided hewas “common people”..

anyway, back to…

When the Beatles ‘took’ america, a thought was posited that it was a reaction to coming out of mourning for Kennedy.

So it is, that as we all came out of grief for Lennon, what we needed was a bit of singalonga “shut-uppaya-face”

And rightly so. Give it 5 from me.

I’m ashamed to say that I thought this was great in 1981 but then I had only just turned six and liked simple songs and it was a birthday present. I bet all you older ones thought the same about something like “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” ten years before. I don’t care about it stopping Vienna. I agree with the person who said that Vienna is remembered more as a number two than it would have done had it gone one better. As for Shaddup, I now wish it would because of course the song is for kiddies or piss heads like Waldo who sing anything when bladdered. As someone also said you never hear this now outside chart shows and we all know why. Shocking record.

The first record I ever bought.

I remember being very annoyed at the singalong section, because the audience kept shouting “hey!” at the end of every line, when Joe had very specifically told them that they should shout “hey!” at the end of the first line, then he would “singa the rest” – at which point they could all sing “shaddap-a your face.” They JUST DIDN’T LISTEN. I can feel myself getting slightly cross when I think about it now, actually.

What’s strange is that they could have fixed that pretty easily – this is one of the great “not really live” recordings, its in-concert facade about as convincing as “The Seeds – Raw And Alive”, or The Beatles At Shea Stadium. In fact, sonically, it’s one of the most synthetic things I’ve ever heard, like it should be coming out of a greetings card. There’s clearly a “proper” band playing there, but they sound like they’re one inch tall and thin as paper. Something else peculiar about this record: it lasts more than three minutes, but feels a great deal shorter. I mean, a lot shorter. I’m not sure why. Perhaps Mr Dolce’s hatred of his mother is just so vivid it warps your perception of time.

I have no idea what made me want to go out and buy this, and can only assume it was the joy of hearing someone shouting “ah shaddap-a you face”, and being able to join in; sort of punk for pre-teens. The B-side was “Ain’t In No Hurry”, which I think I preferred slightly, a nasty boogified AOR number with another “interaction with the audience” interlude: Joe tells everyone that they’d “smoked a lot of cigarettes” and “drunk a lot of coffee” and had finally reached the B-side of “Shaddap You Face”. I remember being slightly confused by that, but only in a vague, casual way, like I’m confused that this was the first record I ever bought, but don’t really care.

As for “Vienna”, it’s the sort of record that sounds pretty impressive to a kid, horribly pompous to a teenager, then laughably irrelevant to an early-20s Music Expert – but right now, it sounds… fascinating. I’ll never love it, as it calls to mind too much of what I didn’t like – and still don’t – about the early Eighties (and indeed about Midge Ure), but it’s also saved by having been made in the early Eighties, in that it lacks the weight and power of a 70s production or the digital force of a more recent production – either of which would have added weight to its pretensions, and sunk the whole thing. Rather, it’s delicate and slightly dinky, a perspex symphony. Simulataneously tacky and beguilingly unreal, like a remake of “The Third Man” filmed on 1981-vintage videotape. The instrumental break is fantastic, lovely strings gliding over a nasty Binatone music box backing, growing steadily more saturated till they white out and go snowblind. The drop in pace back into the last chorus does quicken the heart slightly, corny as it is, and the “Countdown”-style pssstcheowwws in the background undercut that daft grandiosity. I haven’t listened to this for many, many years – my memory had touched it up, made it the record Midge would have wanted, booming and foggy and classic, and completely wretched. I’m pleasantly surprised: it’s nothing like that at all. I like this “Vienna” far better.

Not sure it’s worth going back and checking out Ure’s Ultravox, though. I had their greatest hits at one point, and there was some really gruesome stuff on there – “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” stands out as particularly strained, seemingly sung while wearing the expression of someone who’s just made it 4-3 in the last minute of the Champions League final, but without any particular purpose. Very grimy pig-iron: the filth comes off on your hands. I mean, I misremembered “Vienna”, but I’d be flabbergasted if all these years on, “Love’s Great Adventure” was anything other than galloping, mock-heroic horseshit.

Rosie – Maconie gives Manchester a bit of treatment too, being a Wigan pie-muncher rather than a Manc. “Monumental hubristic vanity… Manchester has fancied itself rotten for as long as anyone can remember”, he comments after an account of the “Manchester Passion” production of Easter 2006 (the one where Judas sings “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”). It’s an entertaining read and I think you’ll enjoy it. (Barrow doesn’t come out too badly either.)

# 41 Very much like the description of Vienna. It’s the combination of earnest (indeed in this instance meaningless) pretension and a slightly cheap pop aesthetic that made the new romantic hits of 1980/1981 so great. And despite their ropey reputation these days, at the time this felt, to me at school in Yorkshire, like a proper trendy record (almost) hitting the top. There are very few #1s among the canon of early eighties new romantic/synthpop records, which makes the infamous #2 status of this one a bit sad.

Personally I still like the Ure-era Ultravox, particularly this and the subsequent Rage in Eden album (although yes, point taken regarding Love’s Great Adventure and everything that followed).

Nothing whatsoever to say about the actual thread subject I’m afraid.

#41 I like “perspex symphony”.

re #34 ‘LFO, Royksopp and Green Jelly’

was that a deliberate mistake?! thanks for reminding me of ‘Three Little Pigs’ tho