Monday, 8 May 2017

Oliver!: John Peel Show - BBC Radio 1 (Saturday 14 March 1992)

Now that Peel was broadcasting on the overnight shift on Fridays and Saturdays, it had a knock on effect for his weekends.  By his own admission, today was the first Saturday afternoon he had spent in London for years.  "I was thinking I was going to do loads of interesting things, as you do.  Go to the pictures; go and buy records; go shopping; go and see people; sit in amusing cafes talking codswallop over expensive food and drink.  Of course, int the end, I did none of these things.  Instead, I spent all afternoon in the Radio 1 office putting this programme together for you the listener."  His new weekend arrangements stopped him from accompanying Sheila to Portman Road to see Ipswich play out a fortunate goalless draw with Leicester City.  The Pig had had to borrow a friend's child in order to sit in the family enclosure.  Peel hoped that Leicester wouldn't become a bogey side for Ipswich in the way that they had once been for Liverpool, "Of course these days, virtually every team appears to be a bogey team for Liverpool."

The selections for this show came from a short 47 minute file.  There were 2 other tracks I would have liked to include had I been able to:

Crane - Colourblind - My notes call this "good drone rock" and it seems a good example of that obesssion that British guitar bands over the late 80s/early 90s to rewrite any of See My Friends2000 Light Years From Home or Tomorrow Never Knows.  All clanging guitar and Eastern drumming pattern - heavy on the cymbal to tom-tom shuffle.  It can't help but seem a little lounge jazzy in comparison to its original sources, but not bad for all that.

Cutty Ranks - The Agony - despite featuring plenty of a guitar note that sounds like it's doing a Kenneth Williams impression, I enjoyed this a lot.  I particularly liked the way he works in refrains from kids' songs like Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar.  His flow defeated me on a number of occasions, but it seemed to be going down the "love makes you a hypochondriac" route.  Completists may be interested to know that there is a track called Agony doing the rounds credited to Cutty Ranks and Chinese Laundry, but it was not the one played by Peel on this programme.

Lots of "bundle tracks" in this episode.

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