Lavis Praise

Squeeze - Take Me I'm Yours

I'm doing my death-level best to spread out the mortality memorials, so I can't be held responsible for overwhelming everyone with a grief so profound they go sprinting into the nearest woodchipper, you know?

What is it about all these drummers and bass players dying at once, can anyone fill me in? Is their some disastrous rhythm section shortage in The Great Beyond, that all these cats are being summoned home to their eternal reward at once like this?

No, that isn't Philip Glass. When he goes they'll have to pour me into a Pint Glass, I'll be so wrung out.

That's Gilson Lavis -- the drummer of postpunk/powerpop stalwarts Squeeze -- who passed away the other day at 74.

Probably one of the very few drummers who could say they backed both Chuck Berry and Dolly Parton on (unfortunately separate, imagine those two together?) UK tours in the mid 1970s, he joined Squeeze in 1976 after answering their ad when they were forming.

He was with them for their heyday, and left in 1992 to pursue painting, which he became super successful at, with all sorts of gallery shows of his portraits since he moved on from music.

Having grown up adoring Squeeze -- and having always appreciated how he served their eclectic and catchy pop confections so tastefully as their drummer -- there was no way I was not gonna give him his flowers, as the young'uns say, on here.

That's gonna be the guy's calling card as a musician, in the ten centuries from now when they're still rocking Pulling Mussels from the Shell and are again Tempted to spin East Side Story, for instance.

That all of their tunes were both the same and very different and distinct, and that Gilson Lavis never played a single note that didn't prioritize the song and exactly what it needed to both drive and support it.

Anyway, this master of sticks and, later, brushes has moved on to join the ancestors in the forever firmament. So the other day, when I saw my hero Pervesser Goody had worked on and DIMEposted this show here from the pinnacle of Squeeze in 1981, I instantly remembered it was on Bill's Bevy Of Boosted Boots, and that what they were streaming there likely went higher in the spectral analysis -- and, therefore, the audible high end  -- than the 12 kHz he was being forced to wring from a generated FM cassette.

Well, I may not be right about much, but the 20 kHz lossless the stream contained sure was a major improvement, and now -- in honor of Gilson Lavis and after running it by the Pervesser for some minimal pitch adjustments -- we can get this incredible concert circulating in its tastiest, most sonically superior iteration yet.

Squeeze

The Ritz

New York City, New York USA

6.28.1981

01 introduction

02 If I Didn't Love You

03 Another Nail In My Heart

04 Take Me I'm Yours

05 Too Many Teardrops

06 Separate Beds

07 Piccadilly

08 Someone Else's Heart

09 Farfisa Beat

10 I Think I'm Go Go

11 Is That Love

12 Vicky Verky

13 Slightly Drunk

14 Tempted

15 Cool for Cats

16 In Quintessence

17 Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)

18 Yap Yap Yap

19 Slap and Tickle

20 Messed Around

21 Goodbye Girl

22 Labelled with Love

23 There At the Top

24 Up the Junction

25 outro

Total time 1:32:04

disc break goes after Track 14

Glenn Tilbrook - guitar & vocals

Chris Difford - guitar & vocals

Paul Carrack - keyboards & vocals

John Bently - bass

Gilson Lavis - drums

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, repaired, edited and remastered by EN -- 

with minimal speed/pitch adjustments by Pervesser Goody -- November 2025
602 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back next weekend, as more rigor mortis sets in, with yet another fallen warrior of sound, and then again on Thanksgiving with what -- speaking of musical deities now departed --  may be shaping up to be a real Feast of St. Anthony, if I do say so.

It would, however, have put another nail in my heart not to tribute Gilson Lavis, who -- after a career supplying the beat to some of the best songs of the Rock era, as well as the portraiture to a thousand faces -- has gone up the junction, but not before leaving us in quintessence. OK, those were bad puns and I Think I'm Go Go now.--J.

6.27.1951 - 11.5.2025