Bergo '45 Song of the Week #112 - Dwight's Pick for 8/23/15:
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"Up The Neck" by The Pretenders from The Pretenders (1980)
Real/Sire Records

"Run for cover. It's herself! Ms. Hynde! She's the Lady Macbeth of Rock. Even so, I find her irresistible." - Dwight Lewis

This is a weekly dive into the musical mind of Bergo '45. Each week, a new song is chosen by a different member of the band. Check out the playlist to see all of the past selections. Grab a towel and give it a listen....


The Pretenders are an English-American rock band formed in Hereford, England, in March 1978. The original band consisted of initiator and main songwriter Chrissie Hynde (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), James Honeyman-Scott (lead guitar, backing vocals, keyboards), Pete Farndon (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Martin Chambers (drums, backing vocals, percussion). Following the drug-related deaths of Honeyman-Scott and Farndon, the band has experienced numerous subsequent personnel changes, with Hynde as the only consistent member, and Chambers returning after an absence of several years.

Pretenders is the debut studio album by the British-American band The Pretenders, released on 19 January 1980 under Real Records (Sire Records in the United States). A combination of rock, punk and pop music, this album made the band famous. The album features the singles "Stop Your Sobbing", "Kid" and "Brass in Pocket".

Nick Lowe produced the Pretenders' first single, "Stop Your Sobbing", but decided not to work with them again as he thought the band was "not going anywhere". Chris Thomas took over on the subsequent recording sessions.

Pretenders debuted at number 1 on the UK Albums Chart in the week of its release and stayed there for four consecutive weeks. It also made the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum during 1982 by the RIAA. Pretenders has been named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (#52). In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 155 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and, in 1989, ranked it the 20th best album of the 1980s. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at #64 on its list, "Best Albums of the 1980s".

Pretenders was remastered and re-released in 2006 and included a bonus disc of demos, B-sides and live cuts, many previously unreleased. "Cuban Slide" and "Porcelain" originally appeared as B-sides to "Talk of the Town" and "Message of Love", while "Swinging London" and "Nervous But Shy" both appeared on the flip side of "Brass in Pocket". The Regents Park Demo of "Stop Your Sobbing" was included initially as a flexi-single in the May 1981 edition of Flexipop magazine. The tracks "Message of Love", "Talk of the Town", "Porcelain" and "Cuban Slide" alongside a live version of the album's opening track, "Precious", were released on a follow-up EP entitled Extended Play soon after.

Pretenders was also reissued in 2009 by Audio Fidelity as a limited edition, audiophile gold CD using the original master tapes. However, this remaster suffered from limiting supposedly applied after engineer Steve Hoffman's digital master was created and approved. The song "The Phone Call" is missing some of the sound effects on this release because they were flown in after the master was completed for the song and, as a result, weren't on the original master tape. There were no bonus tracks included.

A shortened version of "Tequila" would be performed nearly fifteen years later on the Last of the Independents. "Sabre Dance" features Chrissie Hynde singing portions of "Stop Your Sobbing" over lengthy solos by James Honeyman-Scott and Martin Chambers' insistent drumming, making it a truly unique version.

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