The Comedy of Errors: Not From There - Sleep/Earl Bostic and his Orchestra - Sleep (8 May 1992)

Buy Earl Bostic on Discogs

Buy Not From There on Discogs

With Christmas imminent, I must give thanks to this blog’s very own Santa Claus - the sainted We bite - who has provided both of these tracks direct from Peel’s broadcast on 8/5/92.

On the one hand, we have Sleep by Australian power pop trio Not From There followed by Sleep as performed by one of the most influential jazz saxophonists of the 1930s-1950s, Earl Bostic.  I can let Peel himself tell you about the significance of the Earl Bostic record and how it fed into his feelings of outsiderdom when he played it to his school’s jazz club.   Needless to say this was of a piece with some of Peel’s other experiences of his upbringing which saw him being sneered at and snubbed by groups as varied as his army hockey team and Liverpool Ramblers A.F.C. In the former instance due to a combination of his inadequacy as a hockey goalkeeper and the fact that as the only non-officer in his team, none of them deigned to speak to him or treat him with any kind of respect:
“Before and after the games none of my team-mates spoke to me and they spoke rarely during the game other than to chide me for allowing the opposition to score.  I was a crap goalkeeper and they were crap human beings” (Margrave of the Marshes, 2004, page 161).
In the case of the Ramblers, Peel was trying to please his father in looking to extend his social circle by joining a football team made up of the type of public school figures who had likely sneered at Earl Bostic in the mid 50s.  “The Ramblers were almost exclusively public-school types who were crap at football and met in a bar called the Crooked Billet.  Upon entering the Crooked Billet, you found yourself at the top of a flight of steps leading down into the body of the bar and it seemed to me that, in the manner of figures in an H.M Bateman cartoon, everyone spun around to check out new arrivals at the top of the steps.  On the third occasion I put myself through this ordeal, there was as I entered, I felt, a certain amount of tittering from my team-mates gathered on the floor.  I froze in the doorway.  Eventually, some languid oaf detached himself from the crowd at the bar and sauntered over. ‘Excuse me, old chap,’ he said. ‘Are you playing for the Ramblers this afternoon?’  When I nervously confirmed that I was, he raised his voice slightly to say, ‘Perhaps, then, you’ll be a good fellow and do your flies up.’  This was greeted with guffaws from, it seemed to me, the entire company.  I never went back.”  (Margrave of the Marshes, 2004, pages 174/175).

Peel’s reference to the Lord Palmerston pub in South West London before playing Not From There refers to a sleeve note on the Conned mini-album encouraging people to send “All offers of food, money and drugs” there.  Anyone taking them up on the offer would have had a return to sender given that the pub closed in 1990 and was converted to flats by 1996.  You can visit the North London variant though.  What seemed to have escaped Peel’s notice is that Conned was produced by Mark E. Smith.  It surprises me that he would have the patience to produce another act, but he does a fantastic job on Sleep which fairly tears along.  Building around a refrain of “The point that I missed”, which leads me to feel that the track may have been better off being called Insomnia given
the many things, looks and emabarrasments that vocalist Heinz Riegler reels off.  After releasing Conned, two-thirds of the band were deported back to Australia with Riegler, an Austrian, moving out to join them.  It would be another two years before they released their next record and they continued to be active through the 90s.  It will be interesting to see whether Peel returned to them.

If I had been in Peel’s school jazz club, I would have loved the Earl Bostic record, mainly because I love a good vibraphone solo.  Originally recorded as the flip side to future sitcom theme The September Song for a 1951 release, its treatment sounds remarkably prescient and in its urgent grooves and propulsive melody it seems to foreshadow elements of both rock ‘n’ roll and soul music, in contrast to its croonerish A-side.  His feelings may have been hurt, but even at school, Peel was showing an awareness of what was out there, musically, that would move things along.  It wouldn’t be the last time he would hear sneers for his musical enthusiasms, but it could also be seen to be the first clear example of his judgement being absolutely spot-on in the face of opposition.

Video courtesy of Webbie.