The Comedy of Errors: 70 Gwen Party - Auto Killer UK/Smash [Peel Session] (20 June 1992)

Buy this at Discogs

“Stupendous...I’ve said this before, if these people were from Minneapolis, we’d be going mad for them” John Peel during the 70 Gwen Party session broadcast on 20/6/92.

On his 2 January 1993 show, Peel read out a long list of bands which had been tipped for success in the coming year by the writers of Melody Maker.  Some of these bands did indeed go on to lasting acclaim and success (Radiohead and Jamiroquai), others rode the wave for a while (D:Ream, Apache Indian and Transglobal Underground) while the majority remain cult footnotes (The Moles, The Mabuses, Cords etc).  Later in the programme, he played Knee Deep in Evil by 70 Gwen Party.  Afterwards, he pledged unwavering support for the band given that they hadn’t featured in any lists for bands to watch in ‘93.  He would remain good to his word up until Victor N’Dip and Lurgin Pin called it a day in 1997.

Based on the Peel Session that 70 Gwen Party recorded on 26 May 1992, I would surmise that part of the reason why no-one was flying the flag for them in the music papers was probably down to the fact that they weren’t the type of outfit who could have a neat label attached to them or their music.  The best I can come up with is hard rock/funk/electro-clash.  Peel suspected that one his favourite magazines of the period, Your Flesh, would describe their sound as “Experimento pound-thump”.  However, you describe them, their music is an almost unique mixture of punishing rock and danceable grooves.

Another reason why 70 Gwen Party may have remained a secret in musical circles is that their music is unremittingly dark, ominous and chaotic.  The band wanted success and wider recognition, but their music was never going to make a daytime playlist, and if it did, one could only imagine the onslaught of furious calls jamming a Radio 1 switchboard.  The two session tracks I heard on the 20/6/92 show bring together this blend of darkness, noise, energy, fury and fear.  Just as Bivouac had done in the same programme, we’re presented with tracks which sound like the musical scores for lost extreme horror films.  I don’t think I’ve heard anything in quite a while that is conveys such a sense of danger and savagery.  It seemed out of place in 1992, but is perfect for 2020.

Auto Killer UK starts off with a ringing alarm bell and it becomes increasingly clear that we are a long way from Trumpton.  Something terrible and massive is coming, like an alien invasion.  Thanks to the thunderous synth notes, one can imagine the Auto Killers stalking the land and pursuing their victims relentlessly to dreadful ends.  The quieter mid-section evokes a resistance movement being put together to combat these killers, albeit with periodic needs to flee as the alarm bell sounds again.  Ending on a low, growling, unresolved note the track suggests that the human race  may be doomed against these machines and that the forces of dehumanisation will win.
The cackling laughter that opens Smash, sounding like it comes from the cocktail party from hell, segues into what sounds like a demented reimagining of Rio by Duran Duran.  Smash is a song of revolution, a revolution designed to overthrow the bourgeois participants of the cocktail party but which hinges on the sample declaring at 1:58, “The revolution is now complete. We have no more use for that song.  See that it is forbidden.” And as the synth eddies upwards, so the mocking laughter of the overthrown continues behind it.  In the 70 Gwen Party worldview, the revolution eats its own so as to create a new layer of elite and providing those who were torn down with a final laugh either from exile or the grave.  This thinking was out of step in post-Cold War 1992, but appears horribly prescient now.

It’s the way that 70 Gwen Party combine a lack of hope with such head-poundingly danceable energy that makes them so cherishable and ultimately so important.  The world is fucked, burned and dangerous and they will soundtrack our inevitable dance of death towards the flames.  It was tragic for their prospects at the time, but I hope they find some consolation in the fact that their time is now - with the world currently stuck in a handbasket and bringing Hell into being all around us.

The complete Peel Session is on YouTube.  I can recommend the third track, Stop, Resurrect and Fire, not least because it samples from Hellraiser.  Second track, Howard Hughes is a rare dud in which time seemed to hang so heavy that by the end I thought I was danger of looking like its subject.

Videos courtesy of Vibracobra23Redux

The Comedy of Errors: Bivouac - Spine [Peel Session] (20 June 1992)

I wasn’t aware of Bivouac in the 1990s.  Even when they were releasing albums on Nirvana’s record label, I was oblivious.  It wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I was talking about this blog with Simon Chatterton, a near neighbour of mine, and he told me that he played in a band which included the Derby trio among its influences.

Spine is the only track from the session which I heard and wanted to include.  It was repeated on the 20/6/92 show having been originally broadcast 28 years ago today.  The version recorded for Peel is a work in progress with scant lyrics - they would be completely rewritten and expanded when the track was released two years later as part the Marked and Tagged EP - but the reference to feelings stretching “from the kitchen all the way upstairs to the bedroom” accompanied by the haunting bass line from Granville Marsden and then supplanted by Paul Yeadon’s full throated roar of the title line gives the track the feel of a haunted house with danger lurking around the corner which must be fought, and apparently is to judge by the loud guitar bursts on the choruses.  The record version made more of the spooky atmosphere, though both share the slightly hopeful end resolution sequence which runs from 2:36 up to the end of the song and which with a final burst of energy and drummer Anthony Hodginkson whacking baddies on each landing of the house, features the session version resolving with a final burst of chainsaw like guitar - the end scene jump scare still being in vogue in early 90s horror films.

I heard this Peel show in two 45 minute chunks which meant I didn’t hear Drank, which would probably have ended up on the metaphorical mixtape.  The other tracks were Two Sticks and Lead.

Video courtesy of 101misanthrope.

The Comedy of Errors: Red Red Meat - Idaho Durt (20 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs

I’m speculating but I think that the main reason that Peel included this track from Chicago-based Red Red Meat on his show is the same reason why I’ve included it on my metaphorical mixtape. Namely, the opportunity to luxuriate in the oaky tones of Evel Knievel’s voice.  Excerpts from a 1974 interview album wend their way through a track which starts out like a trailerpark blues cousin of the old soul instrumental Last Night before a brief, final flurry as a Krautrock lullaby about Knievel’s litany of injuries and ongoing process of recovery.  Were it not for the Knievel inserts on motorcycle safety and his idea of the Heaven he would hope to find if he died in an accident, then it would be pretty forgettable.
Given his great love of motorsports, Peel would have been a sucker for any piece of music that gave centre stage to someone like Evel Knievel and given the fact that it doesn’t look as though he played any other tracks from the eponymous Red Red Meat album released through Perishable Records, he may well have leapt upon the track as something to break the tedium of the first 10 tracks on the record.  However, the final 5 tracks, I felt, were very good and it may have been off the back of those that Red Red Meat were signed to Sub Pop, who released a further three albums for the band up to 1997.

Peel has a ringside seat for a couple of 4 wheel daredevil crashes on The Late Late Breakfast Show
in 1983.  The production team looked at this situation and decided that the best way to address such accidents was to sack Peel, because hey, that’s a much easier approach to take than to incorporate safer working practices.



Videos courtesy of Red Red Meat - Topic and IvorT Engine

The Comedy of Errors: Les Quatre Etoiles - Luila (20 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs

Originally recorded for their 1984 album, 4 Super Etoiles (4 Super Stars) and reissued on the then contemporaneous Sangonini album, Luila tends towards the more meditative end of the soukous canon.  Perfect, late afternoon unwinding music but not even the best soukous track I’ve heard this week.  I must give thanks to Rhodri Marsden for tweeting the below track from TPOK Jazz Orchestra  and raising a smile for anyone working at or queuing to get into a certain supermarket.

Buy this on Discogs



Videos courtesy of Syllart Records (Les Quatre Etoiles) And Pan African Music (Franco/TPOK Jazz)

The Comedy of Errors: John Peel Show - BBC Radio 1 (Friday 19 June 1992)

The selections from this show were taken from the first 90 minutes of the programme. To anyone looking at the scarce number of tracks that I’ve blogged about this show and thinking that it must have been a poor show, I can only attribute the paucity of tracks down to a mixture of Peel playing a number of records which have already shown up here over recent weeks (Sonic Youth, The Fall, Urban Hype etc) and the fact that after a pretty lengthy run of being able to share whatever I wanted, several tracks that I had slated for inclusion weren’t available.  Such as...

Fudge Tunnel - 10% [Peel Session]:  The Nottingham metallers had written to Peel in order to bring him up to date with what they had been up to and their imminent activities.  “For a band that hates touring..” they had been clocking up a lot of live work over 1992 including support slots with Sepultra (a band which I know more for their various T-shirt designs than for any of their songs).  They had been due to play some gigs in the United States later in the year, but this had fallen through due to incompetence on the part of their record label.  Still, they remained sanguine about this turn of events, “Who wants to tour America when you can play Stoke-on-Trent.”

Wreck  - You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave): Hailing from Chicago, this cover of Hank Williams Sr’s 1949 song was the b-side to their 7-inch single, Mikey.  Surprisingly faithful to the spirit of the original despite being produced by Steve Albini.

Custom Floor - UPS Driver: a 55 second quickie that featured on the San Diego band’s first single released via the local label Goldenrod Records.  Peel liked the tune but had no idea what the title meant. It would be another year or two before the mellifluous tones of Jonathan Pryce would soundtrack their British adverts.  Even now, if you were to ask me to quote an advertising slogan from my youth, it’s probable that I would say “Consider it done” before any other.

Peel declared himself to be suffering from “9 consecutive colds” but he had been taken out of himself by the beauty of Holland’s third goal, scored by Denis Bergkamp a day earlier in their 3-1 win over Germany at Euro ‘92.  He had even gone to the trouble of contacting Erwin Blom of Eton Crop to congratulate him.

In the news, the people of Ireland had backed closer union with Europe in a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty by a margin of 69%/31% (that’s what a mandate looks like).  Meanwhile, John Major was warning Tory eurosceptics that there would be no going back on relations with Europe...


Full tracklisting

The Comedy of Errors: The Shamen - L.S.I (Love Sex Intelligence) (19 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs.

Happy Easter everyone and here to blow away any Lockdown inertia is a real old skool, weekend floor filler.

If dance music hit its commercial peak in the early 1990s in terms of the ubiquity with which the genre dominated both the charts and radio play, then The Shamen may have claims to be the most successful act of the period.  Between 1991’s Move Any Mountain single, the platinum selling Boss Drum album and its attendant singles including 1992’s most “controversial” record, the band were a fixture in the Top 10 of both single and album charts for around 18 months.
L.S.I (Love Sex Intelligence) was the first single to be released from Boss Drum and peaked at Number 6 in the UK Top 10.  It’s a piece very much of its time with standard Shamen touches such as  compressed synth sounds and drum flourishes, as well as some of the cliches of the era such as prominent female vocals, by Jhelisa Anderson in this case, and an overture statement by rapper, Mr. C (“Ooh, I want your love, I need your love”).  For all that though, I think The Shamen’s music from the period still stands up very well, partially helped by the fact that they never seemed to release the same record twice and varied up who took prominence on any particular track.  So it was Jhelisa Anderson here but with contributions from Mr. C and Colin Angus.  But on Move Any Mountain it was Colin.  Ebenezer Goode was virtually a Mr. C solo track. Boss Drum was a Colin/Mr. C duet while the criminally under-rated Phorever People showcased Jhelisa and Mr. C.  They kept mixing it up like a house music Beatles - with Mr. C’s raps as Starr Time.

John Peel had been playing The Shamen since they had started out as a psychedelic guitar band in the mid 1980s.  He had continued to play their music as it shifted towards electronic dance and had been playing early, vocal-free mixes of L.S.I in the weeks before playing the 7-inch single on this programme. He confessed that he had been glad to hear the vocal version as it meant he could stop racking his brains as to what L.S.I stood for: “Love Sex Indigestion?”

Video courtesy of themosttogain. Music starts at 0:13.

The Comedy of Errors: Blunderbuss - Line Drive to the Forehead (19 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs.

Blunderbuss were a Pittsburgh trio who after their initial burst of activity over 1992-95 have periodically come together to continue releasing music into this century, including an eponymous 2006 album.  Recommended for anyone who is currently chafing during the Coronavirus lockdown and has a desire to get back at any annoying neighbours.  Sonically, Line Drive to the Forehead (a baseball term) reminded me of bands like Tar, Loudspeaker and occasional flourishes of Unsane; while the lyrical themes of loss amidst the racket recall the wonderful Circus Lupus. What great company to be in.

Although their Discogs page is attributing a 2019 EP called  Swash, Buckle & Roll to them, I don’t think it is this iteration of Blunderbuss.  And if it is the Pittsburgh Blunderbuss, they’ve mellowed out considerably.  More in keeping with their Line Drive to the Forehead style is the work which members of the band have been doing as part of Broughton’s Rules since 2009.

Video courtesy of atheoryofmusic.

The Comedy of Errors: Confetti - Whatever Became of Alice and Jane (19 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs.

Confetti were a short-lived but prolific side project of Fat Tulips guitarist Mark Randall (operating under his middle name, David) and Virginia Aeroplane.  The duo released a series of EPs over 1991/92 of which the present track, Whatever Became of Alice and Jane was taken from their penultimate release, Sea Anemon EP.  Gently sung female vocals, acoustic backing and punning EP titles.  We’re a long way from Seattle 1992, but for all that, I refuse to use the label “Twee pop” to summarise this up in anything other than the most begrudging manner.

My reticence stems, not least in the fact, that as in keeping with several other favourite examples of the genre that cropped up on Peel playlists such as Think of These Things by The Field Mice, Look For the Holes by Po! or Fillings by Grenadine, most of what I’ve heard of Confetti’s output works that trick which distinguishes the best of the genre by setting steely, quietly determined sentiments in deceptively light backgrounds.  A track like Who’s Big and Clever Now? deals with a deceitful former lover in the manner of a switchblade wrapped in a silk handkerchief.

By contrast, Whatever Became of Alice and Jane finds a rare note of contentment in the musical world of Confetti as two people find love and mutual protection in a coastal town amid brutally bad weather.  But again, the notion of this track as “happy music” wilts under further consideration.  I think that the narrator is either Alice or Jane and that they have found love with one another.  The same-sex relationship may cause waves similar to those crashing on the shore of this seaside town though.  “This means more than a change in the weather” suggests that they know their relationship is going to cause a stir.  Virginia’s lyrics present negative and positive contradictions throughout.  Regardless of the terrible weather conditions or stormy seas, her protagonists feel terrific internally and safe with each other.  The final verse sees them resolved to spend their time together under the pier and staying there forever.  It presents an intriguing question though as to whether she means that Alice and Jane will stay in this town or instead abandon themselves together to the sea.

The three tracks on The Sea Anemon EP were all linked by seaside and water themes and when heard  in sequence they present an almost concept-EP-like structure centred around escape and the cleansing properties of the sea, especially in Here Again.  Perhaps Confetti were taking a break from the stoic angst of earlier recordings and advocating a life by the sea as a means of curing all emotional ills.  As someone who lived 32 years of my life by the sea, I can report that it was never a panacea and emotional distress could find you in Falmouth just as easily as it could in London, Manchester, Cardiff, Birmingham or Glasgow.  But when you were content, it was a hell of a setting to place your happiness within.  Confetti used the EP as a testing ground for the idea and by the end we come to the conclusion that one way or another, Alice and Jane are not going back to whence they came.

 When Peel played Whatever Became of Alice and Jane, he mentioned that he was a sucker for
records with seagull and seaside effects, so he would have found plenty to enjoy here.  My notes at the time of hearing it said that it “walked the line between drippy and delicious”.  Gradually it charmed me, but this 2013 cover by Rose Melberg offers evidence of how to get Confetti wrong.

This video contains the other tracks on The Sea Anemon EP:  Here Again and River Island.


Videos courtesy of Royeca Roel and Confetti Topic