A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Gunshot - Nobody Move! (15 November 1992)

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We’ve already heard a little bit of Leyton based hip-hop crew, Gunshot on this programme through their participation in the B.R.O.T.H.E.R Movement’s GhettoGeddon single, but Peel gave them the floor by programming Nobody Move!, the b-side to their new single, as the opening track of this edition of John Peel’s Music.

 I can’t get into specifics over the pluses of this track because it’s an example of hardcore hip-hop and so leaves me, a white 45 year old, in its slipstream as the flow speeds past me, but the feel of the thing is irresistible.  Using the refrain from Yellowman’s 1984 album opener, Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt as its foundation, Nobody Move! appears to be set at a funeral if we take the opening oration at face-value, but further listening and the bits of MC Alkaline’s rap that I was able to make out have led me to think that the funeral is purely symbolic with Alkaline replacing Soundboy as the fastest, hottest lip on the mic.  We aren’t here to bury Soundboy but witness Alkaline’s coronation and his own speech lays out just what he did to get to the top and what he’ll do to stay there, namely be the best and stay the best - Ah...the confidence of youth.  And if we all stay still and pay homage, no-one will be killed - literally or linguistically.

Peel loved Nobody Move! but admitted that he thought the A-side of the single, Killing Season was even better. Unfortunately, he couldn’t play it on the radio due to a number of profanities that were in it.  I find it amazing that British Forces Broadcasting Service would have been so squeamish about bad language given the demographic that Peel was broadcasting to - though admittedly, it wasn’t just people serving in the Armed Forces that would have heard BFBS’s output.  Maybe they feared that a battalion hearing the word “shit” on a record would lead to anarchy on the parade ground.

Video courtesy of Tyron88N

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Brighter - Killjoy (15 November 1992)

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Twee Pop - The Art of Taking Difficult Decisions 

With its near minute long arpeggio-laden overture, Killjoy is a jangle-pop classic. But what makes it stand out for me is the way that it’s another example of the way in which supposedly drippy Twee Pop could so brilliantly and honestly reflect the most painful moments of romantic relationships with a force and directness that other more muscular styles of music weren’t able to match.  Oh sure, there were louder scenes with singers who could do heartbroken and wracked, but their pain and emotional upset never sounded as comparable to mine or yours as it did when vocalised by people like Keris Howard of Brighter.

Furthermore, as with Look For the Holes by Po!, the track brings the audience in just at the point where decisive action is being taken and it’s that tension between the steely sentiments and the gentle, almost timid delivery that I find so interesting.  These bands dealt in a romantic landscape where hearts were broken and relationships ended with regret, but also with a clear sense that this had to be done for everyone’s sake because to go on would only bring greater pain and eventually outright hatred on both sides. At their core, these bands and that scene recognised that love and relationships were hard work and that more often than not, especially in the late teens/early 20s phase of life, unpleasant conversations would need to be had and unpopular decisions made.  Short-term heartbreak and contempt for long-term peace of mind and serenity of spirit.

Killjoy seems to be taking place during the calmer phase of a breakup discussion.  It’s open to a couple of different interpretations and I lean towards one side coming out towards the other about their true sexual/romantic orientation: I can’t bear to deceive you any longer/Cos this is me/You always were my friend/So how come you pretend?  It certainly gives the feelings around the breakup greater potency than they míght have had if it was just a case of Howard meeting someone else. 

Although one other spin is that Killjoy represents the feelings of someone breaking someone else’s heart for the first time, bringing together the blend of guilt and self-justification that such an unpleasant duty often engenders, especially if you’re not natural heartbreaker material. I wish I’d been aware of it during   my own brief stint as one during spring/summer 1994.  Either way, it’s a little gem of a song, beautifully written and performed.

Alas, it also signalled a break-up within Brighter themselves, with the Disney EP serving as their swansong release.  Their page on the carefully curated Sarah Records webpage is a nice guide to the journey they went on.

Video courtesy of hernaniexchange

Lyrics copyright of their authors.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: J. - Born on the Wrong Side of Town (15 November 1992)

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I know what he’s singing and I know why he’s singing it but I wish he didn’t sound so much like Marc Bolan at times. - John Peel after playing Born on the Wrong Side of Town on 15/11/92.

I think that when I first heard this, I included it because I was drawn in by the catchiness of the chorus, despite the mannered vocals, which considering that J. was singing in a second language, I think we can forgive him for.  However, once I started to listening to the track again, in-depth, for this blogpost, I was astonished to discover that what was coming out of that wannabe Anthony Kiedis-mouth was a political song, the contents of which sound predictable after 29 years, but which could have been an incredible shock to anyone tuning in on 15/11/92 who was still enjoying the long political laze that the early 1990s seemed to promise would last indefinitely.

Jaye Muller was born and raised in East Berlin, but moved to Paris between the time of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.  Just over two years to the day since West Germany and East 

Germany came together with the West using free enterprise, market forces and greater individual freedoms to absorb and dissipate the socialism of the East, Muller provides an update on just what the benefits of capitalism have brought to his family, friends and neighbours in the former DDR and  the answer appears to be poverty, loss of security, loss of dignity and self direction albeit with the positive that East Germans can travel anywhere they like without having to ensure they have their papers, but as J. remarks even this freedom proves to be a pyrrhic one if you haven’t got enough money to travel anywhere.

It’s always shocking to hear sentiments like these because they not only confront us with the news that “our values” for want of a better word haven’t worked out well for those who it’s claimed will benefit from them, but also they feel pretty irrefutable.  Simply saying, “Well, do you want to go back to how it was before?” feels as though it will just invite the answer, “Yes, please.”  However, it’s worth remembering that even those of us born and brought up in capitalist societies our whole lives have many of the complaints about the system that J. expresses.  The search goes on for a middle way which can bring together the best of both systems, though you won’t find any suggestions of that in Born on the Wrong Side of Town. There’s only a sense of profound disappointment and ice cold fury.  Nevertheless, for Müller, capitalism eventually brought its rewards as he co-founded the communications firm, J2 Global in 1995, which allowed users to access fax and voicemail through their email accounts.  He has continued to enjoy success both as a musician and an entrepreneur over the last 25 years.

Video courtesy of kittypawn 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Volumina - Alright (15 November 1992)

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Volumina was a one-off collaboration between German DJs and producers, Tommi Eckhart and Andreas Doreau.  Although the collaborative’s name translates as “Volumes”, the prevailing sound in Alright is experimental and surprisingly intimate despite the club beats and an excursion into raise the roof synth play at 2:57, but it doesn’t dally with that long before finding its way back to the softer, liquid sounds that form the basis of the track. 10 points to anyone who can recognise the source of the female vocal sample that opens the track and wends its way through it right to the end.  It sounds like it's been lifted from a film noir soundtrack and its whiny, insistent melody - somewhere between that of a tired, tetchy child, a cat wanting to be let in from the rain to be stroked and a chanteuse holding a smoky Berlin club spellbound is probably going to be the main thing that you take away from listening to this.  But it’s an intriguing hook to hang the track on and it works very well indeed.

Video courtesy of Galaxy Groove.