In my opinion, there is 75% of a wonderful song in Warm/Crawl. If it had ended at the 3 minute mark, I’d have gone as far as calling it one of the best guitar tracks that Peel played in 1992. The fusion of Sarah Shannon’s vocal and the high guitar line, which almost doubles as a second vocal is so beautifully arranged, it strikes me as one of those instances that demonstrates exactly what a guitar is for.
Unfortunately, the track goes on for a further minute and the atmospherics of the first three-quarters of the track are replaced with a generic rock thrashabout in which Velocity Girl appear to have lifted a bit from the end title music of Blackadder the Third. This may have been the band trying to subvert their melodic reputation by including some of the louder/hardcore elements of their live shows, as touched upon in this interview. I suspect though that Warm/Crawl came about by bringing together two separate fragments of songs; Shannon’s ethereal vocal and the blistering guitars reflecting the warmth of a dozen suns and the rockout in the last minute sounding like a crawl in the dirt.
Another burst of Ramones-style homage from the Gross Misconduct album. However, unlike My Girlfriend’s a Robot, this quickfire field notes ode to roadkill sees vocalist Johnny Hanson sounding alternately like Joey Ramone one moment and Elvis Presley the next. Musically, the track also reminds me of a slightly more ghoulish twist on Slow Down by Larry Williams.
While my wife was making lunch on Friday, a Madonna song was playing on the radio and she was singing along with it. I told her “My next blogpost is going to be about a cover of a Madonna song. Do you remember Angel?”
“No,” she replied, with immediate certainty.
“Neither do I.”
Of course, as I’ve prepared this blogpost, that hasn’t quite been true. The melody of the chorus has come running from the distant edges of my mental jukebox, shouting more insistently as it’s got closer, “Yes, you know! The one that goes ’You’re an angel’. Yeah? That’s right, the one that nobody remembers,” all while other “forgotten” Madonna tracks like Everybody or Where’s the Party look smugly on, thinking, “Well, at least he could make a passing stab at singing our choruses.”
She originally recorded the song for 1984’s Like a Virgin album, and it was released as a single; a successful one at that, peaking at Number 5 on both the UK and US singles charts. However, it was
overshadowed by the other two singles which came off that album, namely the title track and
MaterialGirl, both of which in different ways were gamechangers for Madonna’s career. By contrast, Angel became a footnote. I would probably have remembered it if she had included it in the setlist for her 1987 Who’s That Girl Tour, the live video of which I must have seen around 30 times due to indulging a school friend of mine who was, and remains, a massive Madonna fan and who had bought the video but had nothing to play it on. I think I saw that show more times than some of the videos I owned back then, but I assented to the regular plays of it because I fancied one of the backing singers and in 1989 with puberty jumping down onto me from a great height, I considered the hairspray, high heels and leather dresses look to be the apex of eroticism. Madonna, by contrast, with her goofy costume changes and the emphasis on Fun! Fun! Fun! wasn’t in the picture. It took a few years before she caught my attention.
But coming into view to rescue Angel from obscurity, here come Drop Nineteens, last seen on this blog as part of the mass dismissal of tracks played by Peel on his 8/11/92 show. On the evidence of this cover and some of the other tracks which Drop Nineteens recorded for the Delaware LP, that may have been a case of Peel’s occasional knack of giving prominence to a duff track on a record when he had an abundance of riches to choose from. Drop Nineteens version of Angel pitches the song at a lower key and while the synth/bass hook of the original is still evident, they build spaciously impressive guitar dynamics around it, which manage to both drive the song along for those in the mosh pit but also brings an ethereal quality missing from the original. Madonna’s song saw her falling for an earthbound figure of goodness, a metaphorical “angel”; Drop Nineteens sound like they have had a genuine visitation. Had saner voices prevailed at their UK label, Hut Records, then it should have been released as a single because an edited version up to the 3:44 mark would have had real mainstream potential. However, the band may have been wary of tying their future to a cover and potentially always being identified with another artist’s song so instead they released a tribute to Winona Ryder. Peel had seen them play recently in Norwich and had enjoyed them a lot, despite having previously written them off after seeing them described as “American shoegaze”, which may explain why the band attracted more interest in the UK than in their native homeland. In person however, as he told his audience, Their sound is a lot more robust than you might imagine.
Yes, it’s that one. Seems obvious once you hear it, doesn’t it?
Videos courtesy of Drop Nineteens-Topic and MadonnaUnusual
Thunderground was a collaboration between the members of Bandulu and DJ Lewis Keogh which released 4 records over 1992-95.
My notes for Illegal Rush describe it as sounding like a cross between a Celtic New Age relaxation track and the theme to an urban cop show; the gold standard for which remains Stewart Copeland’s superb theme for The Equalizer. But lest you think that all sounds a bit too dark and foreboding, the third element of the track appears to take inspiration from the It’s the Mind sketch on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Overall, it’s a slightly repetitive bag of tricks but a constantly enjoyable one nevertheless.
This record, originally released via Vocalion in 1935 as part of the soundtrack to a film called To Beat the Band will give you some idea of one of the directions of travel which John Peel’s playlists were taking over late 1992/early 1993. He got on to something of a jazz vibe; you’re going to see the name Camille Howard appear here quite a lot once we get into 1993.
The Dandridge record is also another example of how Peel could find Christmas songs with a twist. I have to smile listening to the opening salvo of clarinet and trumpet from 8 seconds in given the number of amateur dramatics shows I’ve seen and sometimes been in which use something similar for their opening and closing curtain music.
As for Peel, he revealed that he’d always loved the name Putney, and wished that he’d been christened with it as his own name. It held such a fascination for him that he’d once used it when confirming an order at a pizza restaurant to widespread bemusement.
