The Comedy of Errors: Sonic Youth - Genetic (28 June 1992)

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Written and sung by Lee Ranaldo, Genetic serves as a pretty effective snapshot of the emotional state of Sonic Youth’s guitarist during 1991/92, a period in which his first marriage broke up and he started a new relationship that would eventually lead to his second and current marriage, with artist
Leah Singer.

Split into two distinct sections, the driving urgency of the first two minutes takes on the quality of a final discussion/moment of truth between Ranaldo and his first wife, Amanda.  Although specifics are a bit light on the ground (this is not a break-up song written with the acerbicity of Stephen Merritt), Ranaldo has clearly been thinking about his life and his marriage, leading him to the conclusion that change is needed.  There’s confusion (“I’m still looking for these things that I can’t find/Thoughts just come and go swirling through my mind”) but no bitterness and I suspect that that is down to a recognition on Ranaldo’s part that although he may be moving away from the marriage and marital home, he will never move away from the family given “the genetic kiss” that he and Amanda share in the form of their son, Corey:

I see me and you/Then it’s him I’m thinking of
We sit alone/No one else at home
I taste it, I feel/And now I know it’s true
Your genetic kiss reveals/I’ll always be with you

At around 2:04, the track changes tempo.  The urgency replaced by a lighter, dreamier sound - my notes reveal that it was the “shimmering atmospherics” of the last two minutes which won me over to it, though I now feel the whole track is exceptional.  The lullaby-like tone is deliberate as Ranaldo addresses his young son, attempting to put his mind at rest and offer loving reassurance ahead of the domestic upheaval to come.  But because this is a Sonic Youth song, there is an expectancy that young Corey will need to grow up quickly in order to fully appreciate it:

There’s no perfect idea/There’s no perfect fate
Just little stabs of happiness/Sometimes a little too late
So keep your eyes wide open/And know what you’re made of
Remember first thought, best thought/Try to stay in love

All during this the music builds up again like the feel of lurching, tearful emotions before dropping down again into quietly restrained atonal twists - the sound of someone trying to jam as much of their material life as will fit into the back of their car, before fading out on Steve Shelley’s simple drumbeat, the sound of a pounding heart looking in the rearview mirror as it drives away from a home in which it will never spend another evening.

It’s devastating stuff, brilliantly brought to life by Sonic Youth, but Genetic caused enough headaches for the group that it almost led to a break-up in Ranaldo’s professional life as well as his personal one.  Recording for the Dirty LP was close to completion when Ranaldo brought the song into the sessions.  Furthermore, it was offered to the group as effectively a completed piece of work rather than as something which could be worked on and pulled together by the band collaboratively as was their usual method of working.  For Ranaldo, the song was something that he needed to get out there in light of how he felt at the time, and although his band mates came through for him in terms of the performance, there were tricky discussions waiting to be had and which led to tension when the tracklisting for Dirty was being agreed and Genetic was vetoed.  Instead, it was one of the b-sides on the lead single for the album, 100%.  The remaining content in this post is taken from Goodbye 20th Century - Sonic Youth and the Rise of the Alternative Nation by David Browne published by Piatkus in 2008:

‘“Genetic was a song that was obviously based on some personal issues Lee was dealing with at the time,” recalls Thurston Moore.  “And I felt a little weird about having the band being set up for him to voice those issues in.  And he said, ‘Well it should be set up for me to voice those issues - why would I be in it otherwise?’ And my argument was that the band really started as a forum for something I wanted to express.  And that obviously changed over time.”  ....The implication that directly emotional songs weren’t the stuff of Sonic Youth - didn't especially placate Ranaldo....For a brief moment, the possibility of Sonic Youth being a trio hung in the air as Ranaldo pondered his options.  Some feel he considered leaving the band, although Ranaldo says it “never got quite that extreme.”
“We tried to make as much allowance for Lee, and it became a little tempestuous,” Moore admits. “.....It was a bit of a showdown.”
After a difficult few weeks, the matter died down [via the b-side compromise].  In retrospect, Ranaldo had to concede that the Sonic Youth working method...overruled everything. “People don’t feel as close to a song when it’s not something they put a lot of time and energy into.  There’s something to the fact that we had this body of songs we worked on for months and months and then this other one pops up at the last minute and you can’t help but feel a little less close to it.”  The wound would heal, although it would take several more years for a complete mend.’ (Browne, p.242)

Video courtesy of Arc Arcadio Archiadio
All lyrics copyright of Lee Ranaldo

The Comedy of Errors: Cosmic Baby - Cosmikk Trigger 1 (28 June 1992)

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It may have been semantic mischievousness that caused Peel to schedule records with the words, “cosmikk” and “hippy”  in them to follow one another on this show but if  he did, he kept quiet about it.

Apparently, there have been at least 5 separate volumes of Cosmikk Trigger recorded by Harald Blucher aka Cosmic Baby.  Having listened to four of them, my advice would be to stick with Cosmikk Trigger 1 and then move on.  Subsequent volumes, especially the 10 minute Cosmikk Trigger 5.0 go deeper and denser, with the narrator spouting slogans which sound like you’ve wandered into some hellish New Age cult convention from which there’s no escape.  But the rub of it is Cosmikk Trigger 1 is tempting enough to make the listener tour around them all, despite any inherent cynicism.
Blucher is shrewd enough to wrap the meditative slogans around a series of exciting and invigorating melodies which when combined with the insistently sexy narration and breathy sighs suggest that cosmikk triggers are being squeezed all around the dance floor.  An intoxicating, sensual, Siren-like call to surrender your inhibitions.  Just try and get out before the hard sell lectures start on the later volumes.

Video courtesy of thelostreef

The Comedy of Errors: Bello - No Hippy (28 June 1992)

Thanks to the wonderful Webbie for providing this track directly from John Peel’s Music on BFBS on 28/6/92.

I am a bit of a sucker for what I call “simple flimsy sound” tracks which would turn up on Peel playlists from time to time.  I don’t mean flimsy in a fey C86 kind of way, but tracks like Music by The Safehouse, which would be easy to bypass were not for an indefinable quality which seeps in and steals your heart.  They don’t draw attention to themselves, generally lack bombast or wide appeal, but somehow seem tooled to snare in those listeners dotted around the millions who the track seems to be specifically for.  It’s even more exclusive than cult music, rather it’s like finding one blade of grass on a lawn somehow more fascinating and engaging than it should be, but for you (or me), is.
So it is with No Hippy.  The setup is very simple: one electric guitar which plays the same melody throughout , a tambourine (a tambourine FFS...), a little bit of harmonica over the final 40 seconds, two vocalists - or possibly one doubletracking both parts.  It sounds like a Stands demo.  Meanwhile, Webbie’s choice of accompanying photo is doubly perfect not just in relation to the title, but the lyrics, which chronicle a sense of deflated boredom about people, television and music radio, sound precisely like a musical collaboration between Rik and Neil from The Young Ones.  Apologies, I’ve made it sound dire, haven’t I?  And yet, the “No inspiration” refrain and the repeated guitar melody has been stuck in my head ever since I first heard the track sometime last year.  And given the “certain rough hewn charm” alluded to by Peel after he’d finished playing it, I think it will soon be stuck in your head too, given half a chance.

The fascination with the track has become more pronounced for me given that I could find no further information about Bello.  Not even a Discogs page, while this blogpost, may in time, join Webbie’s YouTube video and their place on the tracklisting for this show at the John Peel wiki as the only results returned in a search engine request for “Bello No Hippy”.  What I do know is that on the following week’s BFBS show, Peel played another track from Bello’s album called Cynical, another good track with a much fuller “band” sound.  Peel liked the album, “Usually when you get sent a record limited to [200] copies, it’s usually pretty terrible, this one certainly isn’t”.  Apart from mentioning that it was recorded in Berlin during 1991, Peel gave no further details about the LP’s name and the only way to have found more details at the time would have been to write to Peel via BFBS.  He promised that he would reply to any correspondence, “sooner or later.”  I would definitely include Cynical if I was going to blog about Peel’s 5/7/92 show, but The Comedy of Errors had finished its run on 1 July 1992, and once I’ve rounded up everything from the play and any outstanding tracks from the last couple of years of trawling, the blog will jump forward to October 1992 and Bello have yet to resurface.  I would urge you to click on the link and listen to that 5 July 1992 show though because it’s a cracker.

Video courtesy of Webbie

The Comedy of Errors: The 5.6.7.8’s - Pinball Party (28 June 1992)

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Having been introduced to The 5.6.7.8’s through their Ah-So single, Peel continued his immersion into their music by getting his hands on their I Was a Teenage Cave Woman EP, which he described as “pretty difficult to get hold of unless you live in Tokyo.  And it’s my understanding that it’s pretty darned difficult to get hold of even if you’re in Tokyo”.  What I can gleam from having heard it, and you can hear the bulk of it by listening to the last five tracks of this, is that Peel preferred them when they were unleashing their inner Dick Dale rather than when they were trying to be Piss.  He gave Pinball Party a couple of plays through June 1992, but a look through some admittedly incomplete tracklistings over June/July 1992 doesn’t show any plays for the sludgy, harder edged tracks on the EP.  If this was the case, I think it’s a shame and that his audience, which would in all likelihood have been the only one that their music would have been exposed to on Radio 1, were shortchanged if they were led to believe that The 5.6.7.8’s were nothing more than a bunch of Shindig/Hullabaloo recreators, instead of what they were: the most exciting band to have come out of Japan in a long time.  They scorch off the grooves of their records with a sonic assault that is truly breathless to listen to.  They make the wonderful Shonen Knife sound pedestrian, while being capable of matching disturbing aural chaos with the likes of the aforementioned Piss.  Edie is a Sweet Candy is a fine example of a track simultaneously terrifying and invigorating in the classic 5.6.7.8’s mould. Indeed, it’s their ability to switch from dark to light and sound like an unstoppable hurricane in either setting that makes them so good.

For all that, Pinball Party is slightly conservative compared to some of the tracks on the EP, but the verve and brio of the performance are typically life-affirming and smile inducing.  The growl of “Victory!” at the 1:50 mark seems thoroughly justified here.

Video courtesy of CakouGa

The Comedy of Errors: Culture - I Am Not Ashamed (28 June 1992)

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This should have been posted a few weeks from now, but with the news breaking today of Little Richard’s death, I’ve brought it forward because it owed its place on Peel’s running order for this show due to him finding it during his year long Little Richard cover search.  Having reached the C section of his singles collection, Peel played this 1977 single and announced that he was currently in the middle of what he termed, “a Culture revivalist period.”

Recorded for Joe Gibbs Record Globe, I Am Not Ashamed starts out like a Stax soul record of the period - all urgent hi-hat and Saturday night bar-room saxes, but it quickly reverts to classic reggae style chopping guitar and stabs of discreet organ.  The momentum comes from some outstanding percussion work and an earworm chorus line declaring faith in Jah.  The song may be seen as a Rastafarian update on the 18th Century gospel hymn, I’m Not Ashamed to Own My Lord.  Not only as a result of the title similarities but in the open acknowledgement of how faith in the Lord has sustained the subject when little else, including family in Culture’s case, could do so.

Videos courtesy of jahquarius (Culture) and PS Fred Evans.

The Comedy of Errors: Syncope - Link Up (28 June 1992)

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It could just be me, it usually is, but YouTube appears to have made sharing videos to Blogger much more difficult, which is why to paraphrase Martin Jarvis, the videos now appear the size of a disembodied gremlin viewed through a porthole.  But what matter!  This mighty slab of acid techno from Fabian Van Messen’s Syncope project transcends size, albeit without the celebrity endorsements of their previous contribution to the metaphorical mixtape.

Video courtesy of picolettouao

The Comedy of Errors: John Peel Show - BBC Radio 1 (Saturday 20 June 1992)

The greatest bugbear for a radio disc jockey to endure is the programme before theirs over-running.  Between the DJs themselves, it is regarded as the height of disrespect for one jock’s programme to eat into the time scheduled for whoever was following them.  When he was host of Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, Simon Mayo often found himself starting his show with a tut and a sigh due to early morning show host, Gary King being regularly unable to do the handover on time.  Hence why anyone reading this may be saying to themselves, “Gary who?”
In 1992, John Peel found himself following The Rock Show with Tommy Vance on Fridays and Andy Kershaw on Saturdays.  Vance was able to time his endings immaculately; Kershaw occasionally handed over to Peel with apologies for going a few seconds over, which Peel accepted with good grace from his friend.  But on Saturday 20 June 1992, Kershaw had the night off due to Radio 1 spending most of the day broadcasting a live bill of performances at Woburn Abbey ending with a headline set from Dire Straits.  It should have finished by 10:30pm, but instead it overran and Peel’s show, set for an 11pm start, began 13 minutes late.  To judge from his opening remarks, he was seething through every one of those minutes as Mark Knopfler and company played through Wild Theme.

“I tell you what, it’s been an honour to lose 13 minutes of the programme as a result of the marvellous music we’ve heard tonight on One FM from Dire Straits. I wish they could have kept going all night.”

To compound matters, the layout of the studio had changed.  He usually used three turntables and two CD players, but now the CD players outnumbered the turntables meaning that he was now unable to play other pieces of music between the records.  The new setup also caused him to hit the wrong buttons when he was trying to start tracks.
With the summer solstice imminent, the UK was enjoying a spell of good weather.  This was a mixed blessing for Peel though as the warmer temperatures were causing an outbreak of “disgusting spots” under his wristwatch.  He asked for any advice on how best to combat them.  Reuben from South Shields faxed into suggest he wear an Elastoplast under his watch, but Peel felt this would look inelegant, “And I’m such an elegant guy...”.
One disc jockey whose show Peel wouldn’t be over-running into was Gary Davies, whose “pure quality” Sunday night show promising tracks by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Eagles was trailed by Peel on this show.  After the trailer, Peel promised to continue serving up “impure quality” and played Firecracker by Unrest.

Humour was restored by his receiving the tickets which would take himself and the suited Martin Behan to the final of Euro 92 on June 26.  Though even this was fraught with difficulty.  Peel had been waiting for the tickets to be sent to his house, but they had ended up in correspondence sent to
his work address and he only found them, virtually by chance after going through a batch of post at Broadcasting House.  Had he waited another week to do this, they would have lost their chance to go to the final.

The news featured the story of an attempt by U2 to take direct action in protesting the building of a new reactor at Sellafield.

The selections from this show came from the first and last 45 minutes of the programme.  There was one track, I would have liked to share which was unavailable:

Thriller U - You Shook Me Up - reggae track from Thriller U’s latest album, Drive.  Produced by Steely and Clevie.

Two tracks fell from favour:

The Family Cat - Colour Me Grey - I only caught the last minute of this on the file and my notes suggest I was really taken by what I heard.  With PJ Harvey on backing vocals, how could I not be.  But I made a note to listen to the full track and unfortunately, the title turned out to be all too apt.  A rather colourless and whiny miasma of a tune.  I’ll stick to their Peel Session for the time being.

God is my Co-Pilot - 2 Meats - my notes make a big deal of the “Do that again” refrain in this typically chaotic, brisk and puerile track from God is my Co-Pilot.  But coming back for a fresh listen a few weeks ago, the refrain didn’t even crop up enough to be noteworthy.  Without that, there wasn’t much to merit going back for.

With better grace than he began the programme, Peel handed over at 2am on 21/6/92 to Lynn Parsons
and the file catches her beginning her programme with Side 1 Track 1 of every DJ’s Opening Track of the Programme album.

Full tracklisting

Cheer up, John.  They also caused Loose Talk to go out later than billed.

Video courtesy of Telegraph Road in the Spanish City

The Comedy of Errors: Whipping Boy - Submarine (20 June 1992)

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Sometimes, when Peel announced he was playing a track from an unfamiliar band’s album, I would be overtaken by a spirit of churlish cynicism and reckon that he’d chosen something from the first four tracks and then moved on to something else.  Given the mountain of records he was sent, this wouldn’t altogether be a reprehensible strategy to follow.  But, clearly in the case of the Submarine album by Dublin’s Whipping Boy, Peel had put in the hard yards given that the title track was the final one on the record.

Progressing through three distinct movements from its Eastern tinged opening strum, into Fearghal McKee’s echo drenched vocal promising escape into the depths of consciousness underpinned by a blend of wall of sound guitar playing off more drowsily liquid guitar sounds.  This is especially apparent from around 2:46 onwards when the playing moves from a gently smooth sound to a progressively more frantic tempo as if the listener is being plunged deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ocean.  The track foregoes the tranquility that one might expect from the concept of submersion into something more akin to an aqua based take on Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive.  But whereas the Floyd soared off into infinite space, Whipping Boy eventually touch the ocean’s surface in a cowbell/percussion shaking ending like the sound of bolts popping free of their rivets and allowing the water to flood in.  It’s breathless stuff and the near six minute running time flies by.  A fantastic piece of music.

Video courtesy of tristanheanue.