This was a busy day for me and my family. As previously mentioned, my mum celebrated her 46th birthday on this day. However, she had to wait to enjoy the occasion because she and my dad came to watch me play my first, competitive game of cricket. The smack of leather on willow was my true soundtrack to the summer of 1992, as I spent most of the time playing for Falmouth Cricket Club’s Under 16 side, as well as acting as scorer for the Second Xl. I made a better job of working scorebooks and boards than I did of playing the game. I made 11 runs for the Under-16s across something close to 10 matches, batting anywhere between Number 8 & 11. We were not a talented side, only mustering 2 wins across the season - both against sides who were perceived to be worse than us. We were pretty much uncoached from mid-July onwards as well, generally coming together for nets and a muck about between ourselves. The show was kept on the road by the club’s secretary and some heroic parents who shuttled us to away games. On a personal performance level, tonight represented my peak as we played against Perranarworthal U-16. In a match reduced to 18 overs a side due to them being held up in traffic, we batted first and within 10 overs, I was walking out to bat with us 27 for 6. As I walked to the wicket, I did all the stuff young and impressionable English cricket fans did in 1992 - swinging my arms and jumping around like Robin Smith. It all looked much more difficult and intimidating to be out in the middle against people who were strangers. I worked on small targets: don’t get out first ball; try and still be in by the end of this over; try and hit the ball; try and hit the ball again. My friend, Steve Bonney was at the other end and we had played over this scenario many times in the preceding 2 years since discovering a mutual love of cricket. Now it was really happening. As a spectator sport, ours was not a thrill-a-minute partnership - this was new to both of us. We ran byes, played out extra deliveries as their bowlers sent down wides, Steve hit a couple of singles. We calmed everything down after the initial clatter of wickets. Going into the 18th and final over, the score was now 39 for 6 and I felt, for the only time that I played the game, “in”. I’d seen all the bowlers, my nerves were steady. I’d met my targets except for one: to score a run. I didn’t care if I got out now, I was going to do it by scoring a run. First ball of the over, the bowler drops it short. The ball bounces up, I step across and pull it to the leg-side. It’s not a sweet hit, by any means, but it’s passing between two fielders so I call for the run. As I run, I become aware that the cheers and applause from my team-mates have got louder. “Good hit, Dave” says Steve as we run back for the second and it becomes apparent that the ball has run away for four runs. I score a single off the next ball. Steve drives the third for 2 runs. We’re positively showboating by now. Blimey, if we had been playing the full 20 overs we might have got the score up to...phwoar...I don’t know...55 runs perhaps. Instead we walk off with a team score of 46 for 6 - S. Bonney 7*, D. Pascoe 5*. I shook hands with Steve and we walked up the pavilion steps to applause from both the opposition and our team-mates (except for the three miffed batsmen who had seen their chances of getting a bat ground out of existence by Steve and I’s doggedness/determination/luck). This was lovely. I would come to appreciate applause more as I did more drama, but in a sporting context, nothing can beat it. Onstage, you’re playing out a script where, you know what will happen and you are presenting for others to enjoy. For the most part, you have mastery over what you do and what you expect to happen. In sport, there is no set programme to follow. You play and whatever happens comes about because you make it happen. Also, you’re doing that against people who want you to fail. It’s a battle of wills, heart and skill - but it’s also the safest and most enjoyable test of character one can go through. Applause in sport is the hardest earned of all and on that day, I felt I’d earned it more than any other kind of appreciation, I had ever received. Perranarworthal brought all this fine feeling crashing back to earth though as they comfortably knocked off the runs for the loss of only 1 wicket. And the rest of my cricketing summer was a parade of shattered stumps, dolly catches and stupid run-outs.
Having touched such heights on this day, John Peel would have had his work cut out getting much of a look-in with me, and that was how it proved. The selections for this show were taken from a file covering the first 95 minutes of the show. In a sense, I’m glad it fell out this way, but this turned out
to be one of those incidences where the roads Peel took me down did not tally with the things I wanted to see. Only five selections from my initial list made the cut. Some fell by the wayside, and even those I had down to include but couldn’t share had question marks against them. Consider:
Secret Shine - Take Me Slowly - there is an acoustic version of this track out there which, unfortunately sounds like The Monkees at their limpid worst. The electric version carries a greater force, but standing alongside Japanese Kam Kam on the Anglo/Japanese compilation album, The Birth of the True its limitations come up to the surface. Peel was impressed though, labelling it their best recording so far.
Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle - Ostblockgirl 91/Horsti Schmandoff [Peel Session] - This was FSK’s fifth Peel session. Ostblockgirl 91 appears to be an update of a track from their 1982 debut album, Sturmer. My notes describe it as “a German pop fusion of Blue Moon and You Drive Me Crazy by Shakin’ Stevens. With influences like that, it would have been a definite candidate for inclusion. Horsti Schmandoff, a a staple of the German canon, would have been a little more touch and go, but on a playlist that wasn’t throwing me much in terms of bones I could contentedly gnaw on, its cheery Schlager vibes would probably have carried the day.
There were three tracks in the frame for inclusion, but which missed out.
Stereolab - The Seeming and the Meaning - Another band to rank alongside Superchunk or The Hair and Skin Trading Company who have consistently found themselves in, in, in and then out when it’s come to the crunch on this blog. There’s a lot I should like about The Seeming and the Meaning. It drives along at a fair lick. It doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s clear that Arcade Fire were big fans. There’s lots to admire there, but whether it’s the Motorik beat, the distancing vocal or the awful lyrics, I find that I can’t warm to Stereolab at all. I appreciate that the qualities which turn me off, are exactly the things that inspire devotion in those who embraced them. Wikipedia talks of later work incorporating jazz and bossa nova influences - give me a call back when we get there. If nothing else, they showed they had a sense of humour. Peel read out a press release from the band relating that they had chosen to name their debut album, Peng! after the sound a gun makes when it discharges.
Napalm Death - The World Keeps Turning - Peel described them as “A very different band to me these days” and with this track touching nearly 3 minutes, Napalm Death were firmly into their Supper’s Ready phase in comparison to the more immediate thrills served up by You Suffer. Peel didn’t hold it against them and remarked how much he was enjoying their latest album, Utopia Banished. For me, it sounded great on radio but lost something on replay.
Unrest - I Do Believe You Are Blushing - Peel made reference to the fact their Imperial FFRR album was attracting “hysterical reviews - could well be the next big thing.” Perhaps critics were looking for the antithesis of Nirvana and grunge. If so, I don’t know what they found here to get them so excited. I was listening to a Peel show from about a month after this one, last week and he played another track from Imperial FFRR, called Firecracker and that left me nonplussed too. For the foreseeable
future, if I’m going to rave about Mark Robinson, I’ll stick with Grenadine.
On the home front, The Pig had spent the evening watching PJ Harvey play in Norwich. Peel’s show
played its part in Radio 1’s 31 Days in May extravaganza by offering a chance for a listener to
accompany Peel to see the final of the European Football Championships in Malmo, Sweden. More on this when we cover the show for 16/5/92.
The summer of 1992 meant GCSE exams for, among others, me, Peel’s oldest son, William and
Oliver Astley of Derbyshire who requested a record for anyone who thought GCSE Child Development would be easier than cookery. I had spent the first half of Year 11 wasting my time on a childcare module as part of a piece of City & Guilds bollocks that I chose to do called Pre-Vocational Studies which ran over my final two years at school. I did it because one of the modules involved work experience, but I got nothing sorted for that and ended up as an assistant to Mr. McLachlan who ran the course. The highlight of childcare was spending one morning a week helping out at the nursery which was run at Falmouth School. It was OK, though my big memory of it is of the lad who accompanied me to the nursery, Stewart Hibbs, complaining indignantly that one of the toddlers had told him to fuck off during a game.
Peel was still in a state of depression about the Bosnian War. He played a track from an album by Kalesijski Zvuci called Bosnian Breakdown: The Unpronounceable Beat of Sarajevo. It featured, “any number of ghastly ironies in the tracklisting” which he sought to demonstrate by playing a track whose title translated as My Dear Neighbour.
Full Tracklisting
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