Nobody, not even the great stand-up comedians, did a better job of talking about their ailments than John Peel: If you were listening to last week’s edition of John Peel’s Music on BFBS, you’ll have heard me moaning on about damaging my back while playing tennis. The night after the programme, I was in such pain, I actually phoned up a friend of mine, because I didn’t want to stay at my Mum’s house on my own, and said ‘Look, can I stay at yours?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, course you can’ . So she put me in her spare room and at about - ooh, I don’t know - half past four in the morning, as we elderly men do from time to time, I needed to go to the loo. And I simply couldn’t sit up at all. So, I got my legs out of the bed and this didn’t work, so I thought ‘No, there must be another way of doing this’. I pulled my legs back in and tried to roll onto my stomach - and that took a bit of doing because I had to put my hands backwards, and I was in such pain that I couldn’t move from the waist down. So, I had to put me hand underneath me bum and just tried to lift it up, just shift across the bed a bit at a time. This took quite a long time until eventually I got to the edge of the bed and then rolled over onto my stomach and sort of fell onto the floor into a kind of praying position. I put me hands on the bed, I couldn’t get upright at all, I was pushing up on the bed. It really did hurt a lot but eventually I got into a kind of upright praying position and then tried to stand up and I couldn’t do it. So, I made my way to the end of the bed and one hand onto the bed, and there was a piece of furniture that I could just reach. So, I made a lunge at this furniture and pulled myself up so that I was in a kind of froglike position, a semi-upright position: stark naked of course and I got stuck in that position and just held on there for about seven or eight minutes. After a while, the absurdity of the situation came through to me and I started laughing. I mean I was laughing and crying at the same time and eventually, all I could do was just collapse back down onto the bed again, which hurt a great deal. The operation, by the time I got to the loo, took me 40 minutes and...not a lot of laughs, although in retrospect it seemed quite entertaining.
The Peel Show played its part in the 500th anniversary of America’s discovery by playing Happy Birthday, Captain Columbus by The Philistines Jr., a band whom Peel had recently shared a beer with in London. He hoped that a similar opportunity might come up with Grifters, whose track Love Explosion had him declaring them “a mighty band” and hoping they would come to the UK soon.
Going a little further back in musical history, Peel also played So What, a 1959 single by Johnny Duhon and the Yellow Jakets. Its appearance on a CD compilation called, Eddie’s House of Hits - The Story of Goldband Records led him to declare that CDs justified their existence in allowing such tunes to be rediscovered.
But it wasn’t all good news for Peel’s ears as he tested his audience with a track by Peter Blegvad called King Strut, which Peel introduced thus: When it first started, I thought, “That’s the kind of record I really hate.” However, it had grown on him while he listened to it. At the end of its airing on this programme though, I think I may have been right the first time, but no matter.... Judge for yourself.
As ever, I had a few instances where I worked in reverse, lining a track up here for inclusion only to go cold on it when listening again. Examples from this show included:
3Ds - Fish Tails - The title track of the New Zealand band’s first EP from 1990. According to Peel, immersion in the New Zealand music scene tended to be an intermittent affair :Things come in, followed by nothing for a couple of years then suddenly a great deluge.
The Gladiators - Stick A Bush - Roots reggae from The Gladiators 1978 album, Proverbial Reggae. Peel disliked the use of the synthesiser on the track which he felt....added nothing and took away a lot. He would have preferred to play the non-synthesiser recording of Stick A Bush only to remember that he didn’t own a copy of it.
Bandulu - Internal Ocean - At some point in the next year, there is a very good chance that I will write a post on here celebrating the excellent Peel Session that Bandulu recorded for Peel’s second show of 1993 and with that in mind, I came hurtling back to Internal Ocean with pounding heart and rampant anticipation, only for it to fail to re-engage me. There’s rhapsodies to be written about Bandulu, I swear. Providing time doesn’t continue to erode my ear heart.
Having talked about what fell from favour, there were a few selections which could not be shared.
The Gories - Hey Bo Diddley - The opening record of the show and described by Peel as sounding like it was recorded at the bottom of a well. A cover of Diddley’s 1957 track with vocals which sounded like they were indeed being recorded underground. Being a Bo Diddley song, you can naturally sing Not Fade Away over the top of it, even though you have to remind yourself that he didn’t write it.
Glue - Dreading Every Day - Taken from their album, Gravel, this was a punky, thrash track with a touch of the Peter Blegvad about it, just so as to avoid complete predictability. Listening to it on the tape of this programme, it might not have made the cut if it had had to be subjected to close consideration. They came from Glasgow which perhaps suggests why the sound of the record was closer to first-wave punk rock rather than grunge.
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