Equus: Cell - Dig Deep (17 January 1993)

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If in 1993, I had been mourning the dissolution of London art-metal band, Milk, I would have found consolation in the sound of New York’s Cell who having caught my attention on the last Peel show with Everything Turns provide us here with a Milk-alike in the opening riffs on Dig Deep. As with Milk’s epic Claws, the song takes sexual tension as its theme though lyrically it is closer to the kinky, deviancy of Awestruck by Sugartime.  Unfortunately,  unlike the other tracks, it doesn’t develop its ideas into anything of any great substance, but the track is redeemed by the quality of its influences, not least in its playout from 2:12 onwards which put me in mind of the spine-tingling instrumental break on The Move’s cover of The Last Thing on my Mind.

Video courtesy of groscocochat.

Equus: John Peel’s Music - BFBS (Sunday 10 January 1993)

Peel confessed to his audience that he was recording this show with a slight hangover.  We know that he had been drinking the night before given that he confessed to having indulged in a rare outbreak of public dancing.  For those wondering why he may have been drunkenly dancing to Whitney Houston, it appears to have been an ecstatic reaction to his watching a set by Voodoo Queens, the first all Asian female band that he’d ever seen.  The band played 3 songs in a 10 minute set, which bowled Peel over and had him inevitably making comparisons with how he felt when he had first seen The Slits.

Also receiving a thumbs up was reggae artist, Terror Fabulous, whose single Pop Style was played on this show.  While liking the single, Peel advised caution when approaching Terror Fabulous albums due to the amount of sexist claptrap on them.  This was starting to become a bugbear for him, and while he would never abandon reggae, I’ve noticed a marked drop off in rap/hip hop records on Peel playlists as my own listening approaches May 1993.  Although, I have a Terror Fabulous track from April ‘93 on my list of selections.  Join me in 2026 to see if it retains its place on the metaphorical mixtape...

Given his love for watching motor sport events, and remembering what a wonderful time he had at the previous year’s TT Race in The Isle of Man, Peel was surprised to reflect that he had only attended one drag race event in the last year. He resolved to change this in 1993.

This programme also featured a Wrong Speed moment with Peel playing an eponymous track by Bedouin Ascent from his Ruthless Compassion 12-inch EP at 45rpm for over a minute and not intervening until it duly lapsed into unlistenability, though he thought it had sounded good up until then.

There was 1 track which I would have liked to share but couldn’t find:

F.I.A.F. - Untitled: taken from a white label 12 inch called Chart Material and issued under the disappointingly crap new name for Foreheads in a Fishtank. What were they thinking? Didn’t they remember what happened to Kajagoogoo?

There were 3 tracks which made the shortlist, which fell from favour:

The Orchids - Pelican Blonde - Taken from a compilation album of Sarah Records artists, this track had the same effect that the work of The Magic Numbers had on me back in 2005/06; I was briefly seduced on first hearing and then revolted by the maudlin tweeness that characterised the work and which seemed so obvious when the track was heard again. When Sarah Records got it wrong, the results could be excruciating.

Johnny DuHon and The Yello Jakets - So What - Released in 1959 as one side of a split single with Fatty Hattie by Ray Gerdsen, who was also backed by The Yello Jakets.  This is a swoonsome, bluesy instrumental which fuses Jimmy Reed style guitar with a precursor to the Motown brass style.  On first listen, it’s got swagger and style, but subsequent listens left me thinking that the title of the track hit the mark a little too closely. It’s much better than Fatty Hattie and can be considered a borderline miss, as can...

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Gentleman’s Lament - my notes describe this as a crazy, chaotic rocker with choirboy vocals (not literally) and there’s no disputing that, on first listen, it’s a lot of fun. But to have stayed on the mixtape that chaos needed to invite the listener to participate without reserve, each time I heard it.  Instead, it got more and more distancing.  Ultimately, I think I’ll regret leaving it off, but it’s too late now.

Full tracklisting

Equus: Nirvana - Been a Son [Live] (10 January 1993)

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A little over one month after this programme was broadcast, Nirvana would head into Pachyderm Studios, somewhere in a forest in Minnesota to record their follow-up album to the colossally successful Nevermind.  Although it meant nothing to me at the time, it was arguably the most eagerly awaited album of 1993.  If people were looking for clues as to what the record might be like, they could have done worse than to listen carefully to the band’s holding operation compilation, Incesticide, which was released by Geffen Records shortly before Christmas 1992 and gathered together a collection of unreleased recordings, live session tracks and some previously released recordings which pre-dated the group’s major label days.

The compilation included the BBC sessions which the band had recorded in 1990 for John Peel and for Mark Goodier, the following year.  Been a Son was one for those who had been backing the band in its earliest days.  Originally recorded for their 1989 Blew EP, the song garnered attention as evidence of the pop sensibilities which Kurt Cobain would showcase more widely over the next two years. Although, people spoke about the track’s Rubber Soul harmonies, it sounds to me to be more widely nudging towards a thrashier version of The Who’s late 1965/early to mid 1966 sound.  Krist Novoselic contributes a bass solo and the lyrics subvert those of I’m a Boy. Whereas, Pete Townshend wrote about a boy forced into dresses and make-up by his determined mother, Cobain was singing about his father, Don’s, attitude to Kurt’s younger sister, Kim and his belief that he would have preferred another boy for a child, not least in the chilling couplet: She should have died when she was born/She should have worn a crown of thorns.

Kurt had not been shy about referencing family in his songs, not least in their single, Sliver. It was territory he would return to on some of the songs on In Utero, such as Serve the Servants and Radio Friendly Unit Shifter.  However, those were for future Peel playlists. In the present, he happily played the version of Been a Son which Nirvana recorded for Mark Goodier in November 1991, citing it as one of his favourite Nirvana tracks.

Video courtesy of Virtual Jukebox.

Lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Equus: The Ukrainians - Batyar [Bigmouth Strikes Again] (10 January 1993)

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If 2022 was the year in which we all stood with Ukraine, then it's appropriate that as the year ends, we include a track by The Wedding Present off-shoot, The Ukrainians. Recorded for an EP of Smiths covers, the band correctly deduced the tonal similarity between Morrissey's croon and the Eastern European folk tradition.  I felt that it worked very well on Batyar, but palled on me when spread over an EP.

Johnny Marr spoke of wanting Bigmouth Strikes Again to be a rush all the way through and The Ukrainians take it at enough of a gallop to make for a compelling recording. Although Morrissey’s lyrics seemed to be a comic expression of his psychotic Alan Bennett demeanour when The Smiths recorded the song in 1985 for release the following year on The Queen is Dead, they sound considerably more harrowing to listen to in 2022, when a Ukrainian may very well know someone who was bludgeoned in their bed and they fight an enemy who considers that the whole country has no right to take their place in the human race.

Videos courtesy of LXL and The Smiths.

Equus: Soukous Stars - I Yelele (10 January 1993)

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When she used to work with Peel on the BBC's coverage of the Glastonbury Festival, Jo Whiley would  tell stories about how she would ask Peel whether he wanted to join her in watching a big name act on the Main Stage, only for him to decline because it clashed with Kanda Bongo Man playing somewhere else on the site. A choice between watching John Squire or Diblo Dibala was no choice at all as far as he was concerned. But curiously, although the effortless beauty of African guitar music could move him to tears of joy while watching or listening to it, the one thing it seemingly couldn't do was make him dance. Listeners to this edition of John Peel's Music were given an inventory of John Peel's Previous Attempts to Dance Since Reaching Adulthood and they were described as:

1) In Moscow with his wife, Very romantic. I won’t describe it in detail because you’ll start crying.

2) At a local dinner dance in Suffolk when Pearl, landlady of the village pub, and who is physically stronger than me, dragged me on (to the dancefloor).

3) The night before this show was transmitted, he had found himself dancing to a Whitney Houston song caught up in drink and the emotion of the moment.

The reasons behind his reluctance to dance can be traced back to childhood,  As he told his audience on this show: I used to go to dancing classes when I was a kid. My mother used to take me to the village hall in Neston and push me and my brother, Francis through the front door. And the first 3 or 4 times we went, we just walked through the hall in a confident manner and went straight out of the back door and hid in the outside toilets until it was all over. But somebody cottoned onto this and we were compelled to stay there and dance. And because we were very shy, country kids, we were always the last people to choose partners when it came down to it....And I always used to end up dancing with this girl who was about 3 or 4 times my size, and the back of her legs were always covered in mud. I never understood that at all. And Francis used to dance with this girl who was a good head taller than him who he once rendered unconscious during one of the more complex figures of something like a military twostep ‘cause he nutted her under the chin. And down she went, it was quite exciting, about the best thing that ever happened in fact.

To say he only danced three times in his adult life was a typical piece of self-exaggeration by Peel.  He danced plenty of times, he just wasn’t very demonstrative about it. When writing about the excitement caused by the eruption of punk rock bands, during a review of the music scene at the end of 1977, Peel noted that his dancing technique was little more than a barely perceptible shuffle of the knees, but I have done more of this in 1977 than in any other year (The Olivetti Chronicles, p.185, 2008, Bantam Press) In his autobiography, Margrave of the Marshes, the shuffle was given a name, The Westbourne Grove Walk and was described as a kind of energetic, springy, shuffling walk on the spot.  (Margrave of the Marshes, p.273, 2005, Corgi).  If the subjects of Sniffin’ Glue* could move Peel to dance than surely the stars of soukous (or even the Soukous Stars) would similarly get Peel to bust out the Westbourne Grove Walk.

Peel admitted that in retrospect he would have preferred to swap Whitney Houston for the Paris based supergroup, Soukous Stars as his dance record of choice.  Usually the word, supergroup, means an intermittent side-project or a short-lived collective of talents that struggle to subsume themselves into a ongoing entity.  But from their formation in 1988, Soukous Stars albums were released at a dizzying rate (4 were put out in 1991 alone) while egos were kept in check by crediting each of their first 7 albums to a different band member and Soukous Stars.  Indeed, Gozando, the album for which I Yelele was recorded, was the first of their albums not to include a band member’s name as part of the LP title.                              

Built around a delightfully sweet guitar riff and catchy chorus phrase, I Yelele gives a chance for everyone to shine, including rhythm guitarist and songwriter Lokassa Ya Mbongo and lead guitarist Dally Kimoko.  Even the brass section get a short solo slot and chance to impress Paul Simon by providing what can only be described as a textbook example of the standard soukous brass riff throughout the track.  I’m always slightly protective of brass sections on soukous records after what happened to the one used on Bayaya by Wawali Bonane.

*Danny Baker, who wrote for Sniffin’ Glue before finding wider media exposure was another man who moved in a world surrounded by music, but wouldn’t dance to it.  Indeed, in an episode of TV Heroes dedicated to the audiences on Top of the Pops, he claimed and showed that the only time in his adult life he danced was when he attended a recording of the show in 1979.  I know it looked like I was trying to stamp out a small fire but I assure you, it was a dance.

Video courtesy of Syllart Records.

Equus: Thieves - Placed Aside (10 January 1993)

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Anybody listening to this edition of John Peel’s Music on BFBS would have got a 2 year head start on the rest of us in learning one of the immutable laws of pop music: The gorgeousness quotient of any song will increase by at least 50% if David McAlmont sings on it.

For me, McAlmont was the best UK singer of the 1990s, only Jaime Harding of Marion came close.  His achievement, which may also have been his curse, is that his voice needed lush, ecstatic and grand settings  to be heard in. Certainly anyone who worked with him in the 1990s knew that you couldn’t have that voice in front of your bog-standard guitars/bass/drums sound. The boat needed to be pushed out to make use of such a stunning voice and on several occasions in the 90s, McAlmont’s voice was at the forefront of several aural luxury cruise liners which sailed beyond the waters of a John Peel playlist and into the harbours of mainstream popularity. His brace of 1995 singles with Bernard Butler, Yes and You Do as well as his 1997 solo effort, Look At Yourself are all massive, brilliant songs which feature the kitchen sink being thrown at the listener, because to do anything less would be to let McAlmont down.

At times, it felt as though one reason for the sonic excess was because it was needed to try and cover the awkwardness of the material.  As a lyricist, McAlmont was seemingly incapable of writing anything which could be thought trite, banal or cliched. His work has always been emotionally deep, humane, often scathing of those who’ve treated him poorly but ready to reach out to those desiring a connection with him. His work doesn’t lend itself to simple ditties or melodies and even in the hands of someone as musically savvy as Butler, there could still be tracks such as The Debitor, which as a listener, you had to sit back and let them get on with because there was no way you could keep up with them.

This tendency to use McAlmont's voice and big arrangements as a cover for densely personal material was evident from his earliest work as part of the duo, Thieves which McAlmont formed with multi-instrumentalist, Saul Freeman. An NME review of their show at the Camden Falcon  from December 1991 written by Gina Morris mentions that, They've got no songs to speak of, there's no definite hit amongst fillers, but the music does serve as a foundation for his voice. And what a voice he has - mesmerising, encapsulating and hypnotic, where the lyrics are inconsequential and the band don’t exist.

It’s a summation which you may find yourself agreeing with as you listen to Placed Aside. If you were to take the track apart and examine each element individually, you’d be hard-pressed to see how any of it would fit together convincingly, but McAlmont’s stunning voice and Freeman’s equally ecstatic arrangement - under the production of Paul Sampson at the Cabin in Coventry, producer of this blog’s most viewed post - are enough to assuage any doubts.  

Peel liked the track and resolved to keep an eye on Thieves’ progress, though it doesn’t look as though McAlmont ever featured on a Peel running order again, so I’m invoking blogger’s privilege by ensuring one of my favourites gets on the metaphorical mixtape. And while this post may be a slice of McAlmont at the start of his musical career, I was delighted to see that this very month sees the release of a new album from him with Hifi Sean.

Videos courtesy of David McAlmont and Hifi Sean.

Equus: Elmore James - Stranger Blues (10 January 1993)

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I recently read The Age of Anxiety, a novel by Pete Townshend. It combines some of his meditations on how the vibration of sounds in the atmosphere can lead certain chosen ones to hear music wherever they go, with a narrative structure straight out of a Joanna Trollope novel: marriages fail, affairs are pondered, long-lost children are rediscovered etc. A Twitter thread I saw some time before reading the book reckoned it was one of the worst novels ever written. I don’t agree with that, it’s not a bad book. The symphony of sounds which afflict the lead character are quite evocatively described, but it feels as though Townshend felt that the book would be impenetrable if it was hooked purely around a form of extreme synesthesia, so sought to ground the story by basing it within marriage, family and friendship groups. Unfortunately, Townshend can’t really pull off the Aga saga elements. There are contrivances, red herrings and coincidences which Trollope would have binned after completing her first draft. As a result, the book walks a tightrope between sense and nonsense, which it just about manages to avoid falling off. 

The vessel through which these sounds are transposed into music is through rhythm & blues singer, Walter Watts. Walter is the singer with a moderately successful pub-rock band and becomes a wealthy man off the back of a song he writes which is used in a Ford commercial, which is fortunate given that his band don’t appear to be playing venues any larger  than Dingwalls in Camden.  With its mid-90s setting, Townshend seems to be trying to imagine how the lead singer of Ocean Colour Scene would cope if he became so attuned to everyday sound that he could hear music in any of it.

Walter’s band features a guitarist called Crow, who we are told: Whenever creative matters came up, for example prior to  recording sessions, he would simply pull out the same six vinyl albums. “Let me remind you lot what our mantra is here - What we do.” Then he would yank his shabby army-surplus bag open and lift out several old vinyl albums. “This is the pinnacle. This is the White Cliffs of Dover we jump from. This is where we start. We are a pub rock band, we do not play fucking jazz.The albums were Booker T. and the M.G.s Greatest Hits, Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall, The Everly Brothers Greatest Hits (two albums), a white label collection of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates singles, The Best of  Little Walter (on Chess Records) and Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline. (Townshend, The Age of Anxiety, pages 48-49, 2019, Coronet). Reading that, you have to conclude that if Crow took those records and a couple of bottles of red wine to Peel Acres, then he and John Peel would have had a wonderful evening together. 

I thought of Crow when listening to Peel playing Stranger Blues, one side of a 1962 single by Elmore James, imbued as it is with those very qualities that feel like music stripped down to its basic core elements.  When you can sing as well as James does and hit the kind of groove that the guitar and brass manage, the idea of over-decorating music sounds like an offence against nature and culture which should be punishable by firing squad.  And as Peel told his audience, seeing or not seeing Elmore James live, was enough to drive a man to consider deceit.  I toyed for a very long time, this is shocking, with the idea of pretending that I’d seen Elmore James live. ‘Cause I know that, I mean none of you have, and I’ve never met anybody who did see him live. Because he must have played in Dallas - I mean he died in 1963 - but he must have played in Dallas or in that area, while I was living there.  And I’ve often thought, ‘Shall I tell...’ because no-one would be able to say, ‘You never did, you fat twerp’ but I’ve often thought of telling people, ‘Yes, I only saw him once, but my God, he was incredible live!’ But my natural honesty and goodness won out in the end.

Video courtesy of Glendoras//DJ Mean Mojo Mathias

Equus: Tiger - Beep Beep (10 January 1993)

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When reflecting on the large number of reggae stars who enjoyed substantial success in the UK singles charts from around 1993-95, it’s a surprise to me that Tiger (Norman Washington Jackson) never managed to get a slice of that action.  He’d put in the work, having recorded since the late 1970s and enjoying considerable success in Jamaica by the end of the 80s. John Peel gave his records airplay and the major labels clearly felt that if the early 90s were going to be the era that reggae artists started getting exposure on MTV and the like, then Tiger needed showcasing. 

This led to the release of Claws of the Cat, Tiger’s 15th album since 1986, and his first with any kind of major label backing behind it - via an imprint of Columbia Records called Chaos Recordings.  It should have been a perfect calling card record which showed off his chameleonic vocal abilities across a mix of pure, dancehall ragga tracks combined with more daytime radio-friendly fare.  There was no global hit on the record in the manner of Shaggy’s Oh Carolina, but it’s not beyond the realms of imagination that a follow-up to Claws of the Cat would have been tooled for mass-mainstream appeal.

Sadly, the whole issue became irrelevant after Jackson was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in January 1994.  Although he survived, Jackson’s recording career ground to a halt and it would be nearly a decade before he sang live again.

In the circumstances, it would be tasteless to see Beep Beep - also known as Beep Beep, Move Over on some single pressings - as predictive of Tiger’s fate.  For me, there are several potential readings of the track’s meaning:

1) The literal meaning in which Tiger is burning up the road and wants dawdlers to get out of his way. Unfortunately, his speed on the road alerts the police who threaten to take him into jail.

2) The song could be directed to a reluctant wannabe lover who is procrastinating over committing to a girl and as a result finds themselves being given a subtle warning.  “If you’re not going to do anything about this, then get out of the way and let me take my chance.”

3) At street level, the track could be announcing the presence of a new King of the Street in the middle of a turf war, hence why the police may be making their presence felt.  But this is by no means certain, and indeed, the flow on the track is so quick that it’s entirely possible that none of the interpretations I’ve put forward are correct.  Nevertheless, the track is great entertainment from start to finish.

Video courtesy of Eldorado Sounds

Equus: Unsane - Urge to Kill (10 January 1993)

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As the new year dawned, Unsane found themselves in something of a holding pattern. With a new drummer in their ranks after the death of Charlie Ondras, they did the most obvious thing and released a singles compilation which could serve as both a tribute to Ondras and allow people who had got into the band after the release of their debut album - a record which John Peel had absolutely caned throughout late 1991 - to discover their earliest work. Urge to Kill was a b-side on the band’s first single, This Town, released in 1989. It leans towards the industrial end of their sound, albeit underpinned with those sudden swerves into melody underneath the drone which always meant that Unsane never sounded bland or one note in their sonic attacks. This Town even manages to sound close to funk-noise-drone-rock.

Urge to Kill takes the listener through the progressively darkening mood of someone driven to psychosis. The crunch moment appearing to be around 3:04 when the battering cymbals and downbeats on guitar and bass paint the picture of the psychotic impulses being played out for the first time, with the playout suggesting both the scramble to hide the evidence and the chase on to find the next victim.  It seems appropriate that the fadeout feedback at the end of the track feels like the screams of the next victim or of those discovering the dead bodies. 

When they released Urge to Kill in ‘89, the band were known by their original name of Unsane N.Y.C and I wondered just how much of an influence their home city and things like New York based slasher films had been on them. This was a bit of a stretch as far as theories go given that if the band were looking to slasher films for inspiration, they appeared to be taking their cue from Italian director, Dario Argento given that they were named after the English language title for Argento’s 1982 film, Tenebrae. But the scores to Argento’s films, especially those made with groups like Goblin, tend more towards electro-folk than noise rock - I cannot claim this to be all-encompassing as I’ve only seen a couple of Argento’s films and I don’t really like his movies.  I had thought the track may have been inspired by Abel Ferrara’s 1979 film, The Driller Killer in which an artist living in New York cracks up due to a mix of money, work and romantic troubles which are further exacerbated by disturbed peace from a rock band who rehearse at all hours in the flat above his. This conspires to send him on a killing spree around the city, murdering various homeless alcoholics with a drill powered by a battery pack. Until this week, I hadn't seen the film but could remember its opening title card which declared This film should be played LOUD. But while the film was great, the soundtrack was a million miles away from the kind of anarchy suggested by a track like Urge to Kill, the rock band specialises in sub-blues pub rock while the rest of the soundtrack owed more to those of John Carpenter and Wendy Carlos.  I’m still waiting to chance upon an early 80s New York based slasher film with a hard-rocking, urban, industrial soundtrack. Maniac (1980) is another film which brings the scuzz in terms of its look, but which is trying to pitch for dinner-table music with its soundtrack.  Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Unsane started 1993 by touring the UK and Peel revealed that he and his oldest son, William were hoping to go and see them in the coming week.

Video courtesy of Unsane - Topic

Equus: Polygon Window - Audax Powder (10 January 1993)

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Riding high off the back of the acclaim lavished on Selected Ambient Works 85-92, the Aphex Twin, Richard D. James was ready to unveil his Polygon Window side project via an album called Surfing on Sine Waves.  Audax Powder mixes both the soothing (the deliciously mellow sine waves of sound which are the foundation of the track) with the assertive (there’s a percussive synth beat throughout which sounds like someone drumming on industrial plastic tubes with table tennis bats.)

For myself, I think there are better tracks from the record which Peel could have played.  I particularly like Supremacy II and Quoth, which was also released as a single.  However, Peel appears to have been drawn to Audax Powder due to its title, which he felt sounded like a remedy for athlete’s foot and his views on the subject generally chime with mine:

I like having athlete’s foot. I was trying to persuade somebody the other day of the pleasures and the virtues to be derived from having athlete’s foot.  They thought I was nuts of course, but I’ve hours, weeks even, of innocent pleasure out of that.

The version of Surfing on Sine Waves that Peel was playing was a limited edition, numbered, double album pressed on clear vinyl. His copy was number 27, which led him to think that he might get £15 to £20 for it if he lived to be 110.  Well if, as we all wish, he had lived to 83, then going by this morning’s prices for that version of the record on Discogs, he could have got over £700 for it.  

Audax is a form of long distance cycling race, so it’s possible that powder gets used to deal with saddle soreness.  When James returned to the Polygon Window name on a 2001 12-inch white label, he discarded the enigmatic track titles for the slightly more prosaic likes of Portreath Harbour and Redruth School.

Video courtesy of God Bless Electronic Music

Equus: Cell - Everything Turns (10 January 1993)

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Everything Turns was the final record that Peel played on the 10/1/93 edition of John Peel's Music on BFBS. He may have thought that the woozily, dreamy guitar work of its final 45 seconds would have made for a suitable sign off for the programme.  Unfortunately, the intention was sabotaged by BFBS going to the news a few minutes into the track.  All these years later, the squaddies’ loss is our gain.

Recorded by New York band, Cell for their debut album, Slo*Blo, Everything Turns starts and ends in contemplative mood and lyrically it maintains a philosophical stance by discussing the way that moods and ideas can change with the passing of time or be swept away like a tide. The way that revolutionary zeal can be dulled the passing of time and the gaining of experience, in this setting, feels like Bob Dylan’s My Back Pages as seen through the eyes of Dinosaur Jr.

If the song takes evolution of ideas as its main theme, it's likely that it does so from a political as well as personal viewpoint, especially given many of the political upheavals of recent years which were still settling down by 1992/93.  However, at nearly 30 years remove, it's striking how ambiguous the song feels about the process of change and the latter section of the song seems incredibly far sighted about a lot of the discourse that has motivated many of the upheavals we have seen in the last decade. What music plays in the heads of Trumpists/Brexiteers/phobists? Could it be:

Ideas move, like they're on fire.

Everything turns.

Tell me why?

When you spark a town

Then you let it burn.

Everything returns back.

And when they've ranted themselves to a standstill, and you venture to ask why they were so angry, all they have is:

Everything changed so quick.

I got lost in it.

Oh Cell...how we could have done with you to act as a bridge these last 14 years.

Video courtesy of groscacachat.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Equus: John Peel Show - BBC Radio 1 (Friday 8 January 1993)

It’s always interesting when acts that formed part of my musical diet in the mid-1990s start turning up on John Peel programmes in the early 1990s. This edition of  Kat’s Karavan saw Peel give a play of Moonshine by Cornershop, taken from their debut EP, In the Days of the Ford Cortina.  Peel played the track on the limited edition curry coloured 7-inch, though he didn’t remember ever having a curry which looked anything like the same colour as the vinyl. Moonshine missed out on a place on the metaphorical mixtape due to the crime of Excessive Feedback Wankery.

Although Peel got through what I heard of the show without making any mistakes such as playing records at the wrong speed, he did balls up some of his wider responsibilities towards Radio 1.  A fax from A.C. Temple promoting a gig supporting The Edsel Auctioneer (more on them shortly) which was set for January 12 in Newcastle reminded Peel that he had left a load of promotional material for upcoming Radio 1 activities in the North East at home.

Selections from this show were taken from the first 2 hours of the programme. There were two tracks I would have liked to share but couldn’t - and as they didn’t have a note on them a la The Giant Mums, I haven’t gone back to check on them.

Calvin Party - Mass: Peel promised to stop mentioning that this was the new name for the band formerly known as Levellers 5. The track ended up as the finale to their debut album, Life and Other Sex Tragedies

Hula Hoop - Blues From a Vaseline Gun [Peel Session] : Purveyors of highly competent indie rock which on several occasions during this session fell into the same hole as The Hair and Skin Trading Company, where I find myself thinking, “It’s good. It’s good....I don’t like it.” This would have got in though it doesn’t appear to have any connection to the peerless Blues From a Gun by The Jesus and Mary Chain.  The track was ultimately recorded alongside other exotically titled tracks for their debut album, My Sweet Amputee.

There were a couple of tracks which were slated for inclusion but which failed to stand the longevity test when they were returned to.

The Edsel Auctioneer - Stomachful : Maybe it sounded more impressive on the radio recording but with those whiny vocals and a guitar solo that sounds like it’s being played through a straw, I think I’d have spent January 12 going to the Bigg Market after A.C. Temple had finished their set.

The Eternals - Rockin’ in the Jungle : From 1959, this slice of novelty doo-wop presents Tarzan, Jane, Cheeta and Boy having a party in the jungle. It’s immaculately performed as you’d expect and Peel found himself wishing he could make the sounds in it which he thought sounded like Lenny Henry’s Katanga character. When I revisited the song though, I found that it made me uncomfortable for precisely those reasons. Political correctness hadn’t registered with me in early 1993, but in 2022 I am much more choosy. I love doo-wop, but I can live without this one.  Had Peel wished to play a Tarzan themed record, I wish he’d gone with Paul Jones.

And a couple of older women.

Video courtesy of Franklin Pierce.

Full tracklisting

Equus: Love Inc. - Dark Side of the Moon (8 January 1993)

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This was another track which nearly missed out on a place here. It was only after listening to it, loud, on headphones that I gave it the nod for inclusion.  To be fair, the opening 90 seconds of Dark Side of the Moon are not especially promising given that it starts out as sludgecore, then transitions to a fairly by-the-numbers industrial trance beat suggesting some gloomy dystopia. But then at 1:28, in comes a synth line of such infectious danceability that the doubts are blown aside.  If Love Inc. - one of a number of aliases for Wolfgang Voight - intended to use the opening to create a mood of dystopian dread, it’s to be welcomed that he had a sense of humour to use as the track’s principal hook something which sounds like a Breakdancing flash mob gatecrashing a fascist rally. The light and colour of that synth line does battle throughout the track with more ominous sonic opponents, and by the end, like a real life flash mob, it disperses into the shadows again, leaving the status quo disrupted but in those piercing shards of sound, trying to reassert itself again. 

Play it loud and dance free.

Video courtesy of yoshiochamaable

Equus: The Giant Mums - I Wove Myself In (8 January 1993)

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This track from The Giant Mums debut EP, Eyedropper, should have turned up here a couple of weeks ago when I reached it while working through the notes of selections made from this 8/1/93 show.  Its absence is even more inexplicable when you consider that my notes say This may be worth requesting, which I would have to do from my benefactor, Webbie, who has come up trumps for me with uploads any time a track heard on a Peel show has not been available on YouTube. Webbie's generosity and support has been invaluable to this blog. They have provided two requested uploads for 1993 already. I can count on their support totally, but I only go to them when it’s a track I really, really want to include because I don’t want to be a nuisance or have them feel I’m taking them for granted. I also like the random element of not being able to include tracks if circumstances dictate it. Generally, I only ask for tracks if it’s an earworm that stayed with me from the moment I heard it.  Sometimes, there can be a gap of two years between hearing a track on an audio file and blogging about it, but if I can still sing or hum it to you having maybe only heard it once before, I will ask for it.  But despite what my notes said, I couldn’t remember a blessed thing about I Wove Myself In.  It wasn’t like the choruses and playout of Sweet Revenge by ColourNoise, the atmosphere and grandeur of She Ran Away From the World by Big Red Ball or the gloriously cheap, homespun charm of guitar and tambourine led No Hippy by Bello, all of which told me from the moment that I heard them that I would need to ask Webbie to make sharing these possible for me to enjoy and by definition, put them out there for everyone else to enjoy as well.  It made me happy and hopefully made others happy too to expose these unseen, unheard gems after nearly 30 years.  

But with I Wove Myself In, all I drew was a brick wall blank, no recollection whatsoever.  And no one else had uploaded it, so it clearly didn’t deserve to be heard despite what I had written in my notes 

sometime in 2020.  In a fit of fatigue and with other tracks from 8/1/93 waiting to be blogged about, I pushed on and was all set to ignore it until I realised that as I was poised to write a  Notes post and then move on to another Peel show and other records, I owed it to myself, to you and to The Giant Mums to go back and listen to the track to see whether I should ask Webbie for it.

I can’t pretend that the memories came piling back to me as I listened to it play on the recording of the show, but I was initially taken by the muscular, angular riffs that came in at the end of each verse. However, it was the last 2 minutes, from around 1:56 onwards that told me that, yes, this would have gone on the metaphorical mixtape and although I don’t rate it as essential as some of the tracks I’ve previously asked for, it was worth asking Webbie whether they could help.  Typically, the upload was made within an hour or so of my asking. I run out of superlatives to describe Webbie but I mean every one of them.

Despite the loudness and attack of the music, I Wove Myself In is, like Headacher by The Bear Quartet from the same show, quite a sweet song.  It holds great resonance for me given that the emotions it describes seem to chime perfectly with those of someone looking to enter into a relationship, which I had spent most of the previous year aching to do, though I looked for a calmer take on things as 1993 dawned. It’s a love song of great directness and awareness of the emotional disturbance which falling for someone can cause, though the lyrics also point towards singer, Dave Roby having to process the feelings that someone else appears to have towards them and being unsure how to react to this.  But what makes the track are those final 2 minutes with guitar work which spends a minute or so suggesting quiet reflection on whether to commit to the relationship. There is in those almost arpeggio like figures that run through the third minute of the track, a feeling of inner contemplation and talking through the night to gain a better understanding of each other. The music suggests two hearts moving closer to each other, losing one another in the pools of each other eyes. And then at the 3:00 minute mark, the pace picks up again with the feel of Roby and his prospective partner falling into each other’s arms and kissing passionately at the moments where the band come in together and languorously in those guitar windmill like interludes that punctuate the last 30 seconds of the track. Although, it appears to end emphatically, those tinkly chiming sounds which carry on under Peel’s voice at the end of the track seem to suggest the start of the stopwatch which commences anytime two lovers come together. Will they last forever or are the sands already starting to run towards their inevitable break-up?  I Wove Myself In manages to project all of this in a little over 3 and a half minutes. Maybe it was more essential than I gave it credit for.

Video courtesy of Webbie from the 8/1/93 show.

Equus: Twinkle Brothers and Trebunie-Tutki - Skanking on the Grass (Wiecno) (8 January 1993)

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The idea of an album which fused Jamaican roots reggae and Polish folk music seemed so incomprehensible to John Peel that when he found himself holding a copy of just such an album he laughed out loud because he felt that the conceit could not possibly work.  However, Higher Heights Twinkle Inna Polish Style - a collaboration between veteran reggae group Twinkle Brothers and the Polish family folk group Trebunie-Tutki - worked its magic and Peel admitted, before playing it on this show, that he had been humming Skanking on the Grass all week.

Looking over Twinkle Brothers’ discography, they were no strangers to Poland.  This may have been facilitated by Norman Grant’s 1980s move to the United Kingdom which opened up Europe as a consistent venue for touring.  In 1988, they recorded Twinkle in Poland and the following year saw the release of a live album recorded in Warsaw. Grant’s exposure to the music of Eastern Europe, especially in the Tatra Mountains area inspired and excited him, eventually leading him to seek out a musical collaboration. 

The historic meeting took place in the autumn of 1991 when the snowfall had already started dressing the mountains in white sparkles and Norman Grant accompanied by Dub Judah entered the mountain hut of the Trebunia “Tutka” family. The family have lived in their house for as long as the memory can stretch.  For generations they have played their music with its roots right where the mountain stream of Bialy Dunajec springs out.  The family opened their doors wide with the old Polish saying, “The guest brings God into your home.” and Madam Zosia greeted everybody with all the warmth of her heart.  - From the sleevenotes of Higher Heights Twinkle Inna Polish Style.

Between 1992 and 1994, the two groups released four collaborative albums. If we accept the chronology on Discogs, Higher Heights Twinkle Inna Polish Style was the third of these releases.  There are shared tropes between the two styles of music which, on this record, form the basis of a loose concept album about (SPOILERS) an outlaw called Johnny (referred to as Janosik in the sections sung by Trebunie-Tutki) who returns to his village after hiding out in the mountains so that he can enjoy a reunion with his wife. But trouble is never far away and he gets into a fight with someone which leads to him getting killed towards the end of the second side of the record.

I heard every track on the album apart from the last one, so don't know how it ends.

In keeping with most concept albums, the plotting is quite vague and repetitive, but the two sound styles meld together well enough to avoid sounding jarring or a novelty. In choosing to play Skanking on the Grass, Peel steered clear of any of the tracks which are integral to the story. But the track is still one which takes elements of storytelling and setting from both the reggae and European folk traditions: trying to smile through poverty by enjoying simple pleasures of dancing while mothers fret about the children ruining their nice shoes, an important status symbol as the first visible sign of progress out of barefoot poverty. Next, will come a bicycle and then the ultimate symbol of progress, a car.*

After 1994's Comeback Twinkle 2 Trebunia Family LP, the groups went their separate ways until 2008 when they reunited to record Songs of Glory - Piesni Chwaly which went Gold in Poland.

*This is my theory, not one from the album.

Video courtesy of Akla the First

Equus: Cub - What the Water Gave Me (8 January 1993)

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Three surprising things I learned about What the Water Gave Me in ascending order of unexpectedness:

1) The title is taken from a partial self portrait of Frida Kahlo.

2) The track was written by Florence Welch, according to the YouTube algorithms I came across when looking up the video of Cub’s recording. This briefly intrigued me until I found out that to have written this would have been a hell of an achievement given that Welch was only 6 years old at the time that Peel played it. You’ll have to forgive me for my ignorance, I leant more towards Santigold in the late 00s rather than Florence and the Machine. I harboured hopes that the 5 and a half minute choral euphoria of What the Water Gave Me which was recorded for their 2011 LP, Ceremonials was inspired by Welch or Paul Epworth chancing upon the 73 second strum-along which Cub recorded for their debut EP, Pep, 20 years earlier but no, it was inspired by the Kahlo painting.

3) Cub, who included future Peel favourite, Neko Case as an occasional drummer on some of their recordings, were exemplars of a style of music known as cuddlecore, a North American version of twee pop. Considering the critical hostility which bands affiliated to Sarah Records attracted from the UK music press, it’s possible that those same critics would have spontaneously combusted in horror had they attended a Cub gig and seen the girls emphasising their gentle credentials by playing in their pyjamas and giving out presents to the audience.

As ever with twee pop though, while the music may be light and jangly, the lyrics cut deeper than the shiny surface suggests it will.  I had initially been reading an Ophelia subtext into the lyrics as I’m wont to do whenever a fey sounding woman sings about water, but the allusion to bruises worn like new tattoos and love withdrawn from an abuser suggests that the water will give the narrator escape either by sailing away from their troubles, or like Ophelia, a means by which to end their heartache permanently.  Frida (and Florence) would approve.

Video courtesy of Matias Monges

Equus: The Bear Quartet - Headacher (8 January 1993)

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On his 8\1\93 show, John Peel made this confession:

Over the years, I’ve received quite a lot of records and CDs, mainly CDs, from Sweden.  There was somebody who was sending them to me in batches of 20 and 25, and I listened to them very patiently because that’s the kind of twerp I am and I never found anything in them that particularly stimulated me. So when I got a couple more from Sweden, just before Christmas, I must admit they went to the back of the pile. But they made their way to the front during the course of the week...

He found Penny Century, the debut album by five-piece band The Bear Quartet to be a great surprise and a welcome one, though he thought their musical resemblance to Pavement was so close that he had briefly thought when listening to the album that it was an in-joke by Pavement themselves.

This was a borderline inclusion for me, I felt there was a great track in there somewhere, but was irritated that for a long time, I couldn’t make out much from the vocals except the headacher/heartbreaker rhyme which I thought was pretty neat. It was only after going back and listening to the recording of the show that I was able to catch the heartbroken sentiments that underpin the track and how the driving, relentless guitars convey the wish to escape the woman who is causing such pain to Mattias Alkberg.

The Bear Quartet had impressed Peel with Penny Century. It remains to be seen if he was taken by their subsequent work, but there was no shortage of material for them to tempt him with. Between 1992 and 2003, they released 11 albums with a further 4 released after Peel’s death, up to 2010.

Video courtesy of goldentony111

Equus: Ivor Cutler [Peel Session] (8 January 1993)

Recorded on 25 November 1992, this was the 18th session which Ivor Cutler had recorded for Peel. It was perfect timing for Martin Reynolds, one of Peel’s listeners, who had written to request something by Cutler to celebrate the birth of his daughter on New Year’s Eve ‘92. Peel was delighted to have a new Cutler session for everyone to enjoy, though he had to give out his periodical reminder that none of Cutler’s Peel Sessions were commercially available. Himself and Andy Kershaw were determined to try and set up a not-for-profit record label by which means they could distribute the sessions to those who regularly wrote in whenever one was broadcast.  Sadly, this has not yet come to pass.  

In the meantime, Peel’s fervent hope was that Cutler had managed to appear on Radio 5 and by doing so, add to his legend as the only musician to have had his music played on Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4.

This session comprised 11 pieces of prose and short songs.  I will let Ivor fill in the details but they run as follows:

Doing the Bathroom (Part 1) [Prose] - Young Ivor is sent to the rubbish tip to find something to spice up the family’s mince dinner.

The Lid [Prose] - How birdsong works.

25,000 Miles [Prose] - Meditations on walking and the importance of the role of the groin in the act of striding.

Part of the Ground [Song] - A woman settles permanently in a new town.

Between Two Walls [Song] - Do not stand in my light, Daddy...

Your Side [Prose] - The river cuts off the betting shop.

Pschawa [Prose] - The intransigence of bees, especially Polish ones.

Ros Vulgaris [Prose] - Information about the dewdrop.

Dale Song [Song] - Topography.

Two Paracetamol [Song] - A slipped disc while washing a handkerchief.

Doing the Bathroom (Part 2) [Prose] - Seven year old Ivor starts to form political convictions.

Video courtesy of Fruitier Than Thou.

Equus: D.H.S - House of God [X-Energy remix] (8 January 1993)

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A prime example of an artist's debut musical statement overshadowing their subsequent work, The House of God, originally issued by Ben Stokes aka Dimensional Holofonic Sound (D.H.S) on Hangman Records in 1990, is one of the most remixed dance tunes in the history of the genre. The main source of its longevity appears to be the beguiling nature of its principal sample, the unidentified televangelist whose voice sounds compassionate, wise, inspirational and genuine even while exhorting listeners to send in donations of 50 dollars or more so that God's work can continue.  Full details can be found on the original mix. Indeed, it's because the televangelist sounds so reasonable and humble compared to the more flamboyant hucksters which we associate with American religion that we're moved to support him. However, the sound of bombs dropping at 2.25 acts as a reminder to the listener to keep their scepticism closer to their wallet than their generosity when considering such requests.

The X-Energy mix was taken from a 1991 release on an Italian label of the same name.  Stokes, who has been much in demand as a director of music videos, has continued to intermittently release records under the D.H.S moniker, with the most recent being a 2020 LP called Seeing is Believing.

Video courtesy of Energy TV

Equus: Ongaku - Mihon #1 (8 January 1993)

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Ongaku - Japanese word for music.

Mihon - Japanese word for sample or specimen.

But alas, the Ongaku group on this release from Pod Communication were not Japanese, but German.  One of them, Uwe Schmidt got played by Peel around six months before this show as part of Bi-Face. There appear to be around 5 different Mihon tracks put out by Ongaku (3 were on the Mihon 12-inch and 2 more came out on compilations) of which Mihon #1 is by far the most danceable, although it’s more subtly constructed than your average banger. The other 4 Mihons lean more towards ambient trance and given his love of Star Trek, Peel would have found much to enjoy on the samples used on Mihon #2. However, Mihon #1 is the one to have on while you’re doing something.  Given the swishing noises that form a backdrop to large parts of the track, it’s music for artexing to.

Video courtesy of Bunker Headz.

Equus: Bongwater: Nick Cave Dolls (8 January 1993)

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This blog took John Peel’s Radio 1 show from 2 November 1991 as its starting point. Ordinarily, the beginning of November was a time of great excitement on his show as it heralded the opening of voting for The Festive Fifty, whereby listeners could vote for their favourite 3 records played by Peel during the course of the year. 1991 should have been the 15th anniversary of the list, but due to a poor response from listeners, Peel decided not to proceed with one that year. According to Peel, voting had been so slow that any record receiving votes was likely to make into that year’s chart, which he felt rather defeated the point of the exercise.  Indeed, it seemed likely from his demeanour when he announced the cancellation of voting that the Festive Fifty had run its course altogether.

However, it was back the following year and apart from a truncated chart in 1997, it retained its place in Peel’s schedule for the remainder of his life.  At some point during 1992, while going through paperwork at home, he found the bundle of cards and correspondence that constituted the votes for the 1991 Festive Fifty. He didn’t have time to go through them and make them into a chart but offered any interested listener the opportunity to take the data and compile it into a chart. This was carried out by a listener in Sheffield, whose work was labelled The Phantom Fifty by Peel and which he broadcast, at a rate of one track per Radio 1 show, over the first half of 1993.

At Number 50, sat Nick Cave Dolls, a track from Bongwater’s 1990 album, The Power of Pussy.  Sonically, the set up is close to the previous Bongwater song featured on this blog, once you get past the Boomhauer - like sampling at the start, the track starts with a halting, drone like guitar, damped down and struggling to assert itself. It needs something special to lift this track to our attention and thankfully, Ann Magnuson provides it with her dream-like narration, which may not be entirely coincidental given that she sometimes used to use a dream journal as a basis for lyrics on Bongwater content.  However, this cannot be entirely taken for granted as she may well have had experience of the scene on Hollywood Boulevard that she describes.

The narrative feels Lynchian but Magnuson is setting out a path that would point the way to movies more than a decade away from realisation such as Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Here, the stars are all shrouded in red light and the only auditions are not for blockbusters and Oscar contenders, but nude/lingerie poseathons. It’s a good thing that Magnuson confesses to feeling horny enough to want to get involved, but her reference to murdered Playboy model/actress Dorothy Stratten  shows that she’s not blind to the danger which presents itself as she gets talking to a freak attending the poseathon who talks about burying his toys so that no one else can use them. It’s at this point that the track starts to veer more towards the territory that Magnuson may have chronicled in her dream journal, albeit that the punchline feels like a cry from the subconscious which was too neat to go unused in the track.

The opening 85 seconds of Nick Cave Dolls may test many people’s patience, but the rest is pure Bongwater: skeletal, sensual, absurd, funny, brilliant - and Peel’s listeners only rated this at Number 50?  No wonder he tried to abort the whole enterprise.

Video courtesy of hunchybunker.

Equus: Camille Howard - Instantaneous Boogie/Miraculous Boogie (8 January 1993)

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Boogie-woogie music dominated John Peel’s playlists in early 1993. Compilation albums such as Speciality Legends of Boogie Woogie, Lucille Bogan/Walter Roland 1927-1935 and Barrelhouse Blues 1927-1936 were providing multiple tracks for his January shows.  But none held his attention and admiration more than those of Camille Howard, pianist with various groups led by Roy Milton, and who enjoyed a number of hit singles through the 1940s and early 1950s.

Both pieces date from 1949 and were released as b-sides to exquisitely performed supper club jazz standards drenched in immaculate good taste: Fiesta in Old Mexico and The Mood I’m In respectively. Perfect songs to sit down and eat to in other words.  But both Miraculous Boogie and Instantaneous Boogie work as perfect antidotes for getting patrons up out of their seats and dancing off the food and drink. If the b-side of a single can be seen as the opportunity for artists to express their true selves - at least  as would have been the case before artists starting using the LP to do so - then these show Howard in a dazzling light. Out of the two, I marginally prefer Miraculous Boogie, mainly because of the bluesy major key interval section between 0:57 and 1:10.  But the unbridled, infectious, joyous sound of both recordings  cannot fail to raise heart, mind and spirit.

As to why Peel was giving so much air time to boogie-woogie music, a remark that he made before playing Jookit Jookit by Walter Roland on 2/1/93 appears to have been his main motivation: As a chap who doesn't go to a great number of parties but when I do, I’ve always hoped.... I’d love to be able to, when someone says, “Anybody play the piano?”, just to be able to sit down, smile around the room - and do this.  And that, I think is one of the most transcendent qualities of great music, to make us, the listener yearn to be able to do what Camille Howard and co could do as effortlessly as they were able to. (See also Leo Kottke on acoustic guitar and The Mono Men on electric guitars).

Videos courtesy of Top of the Pops Fan and 78RPM Studio

Equus: Big Red Ball - She Ran Away From the World (8 January 1993)

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Was this the first truly great guitar record played by John Peel in 1993?  This is not me attempting to be enigmatic by posing an unanswerable question, but the man himself may very well have thought this by the end of January. When he played She Ran Away From the World on the 24th of January edition of his BFBS programme, he revealed that he had tried to move on from playing the record but kept returning to it as he felt that there was no other guitar record around at the time which sounded anything like it. He was so beguiled by it, that he had attempted to contact the band only to find that two separate lineups were listed on the record and this was frustrating his attempts to open up communication with them.  It remains to be seen whether Peel ever worked out that Lisa Raye was who he needed to contact if he ever hoped to get Big Red Ball in for a session given that they were effectively her ball and she decided who got to play with or part of it.

I’m fully with Peel in recognising that there was something special about this song.  In a way it feels a bit like a logical endpoint for a couple of music scenes given that it’s difficult to see it being improved upon within those genres.  So brilliantly does She Ran Away From the World combine the hypnotic qualities of shoegaze with the lyrical desolation of sadcore that it almost makes any further statement from anyone labouring under those labels feel superfluous. Previous contenders such as Codeine made their depressive worldviews seem relatable and understandable, but Big Red Ball make self-enforced isolation and obsolescence sound empowering and thrilling.  That’s not something to be encouraged on a personal level, but artistically, it’s quite a coup to have pulled off.  

In a just world, Big Red Ball would have matched the  same feat that Bang Bang Machine pulled off the previous year by having their record played in the opening weeks of the year by Peel and exerting enough of a stranglehold on the listeners’ minds to have ended up as the Number 1 record in the Festive Fifty. The fact that it didn’t register a place anywhere in the 1993 Festive Fifty convinces me that I’m wise to have nothing to do with any of the programmes where Peel’s listeners voted for the best records of the year.  It wouldn’t be good for my blood pressure.  Needless to say, I won’t forget it when I put my 1993 Festive Fifty together, one day.

Video courtesy of Webbie from the 8/1/93 broadcast.

Equus: John Peel Show - Saturday 2 January 1993 (BBC Radio 1)

With New Year's Day 1993 given over to wrapping up the 1992 Festive Fifty, our blog joins Peel on the following day, FA Cup 3rd Round day, my abiding memory of which was Radio Five Live breathlessly wondering whether renowned FA Cup giant killers, Yeovil Town could make the most of home advantage and repeat the achievement of their 1949 FA Cup win over Sunderland and in doing so knock out a top flight club. Unfortunately, they were playing Arsenal, who put on a professional display to win by three goals to one, en route to winning the trophy 5 months later. They knocked Ipswich out too in the days when we could actually have something approximating a cup run.  Losing on 3rd round day always stings. A week later John Peel received a request from George, a Swindon Town supporting friend of his, who asked for him to play Masturbation Made a Mess Out of Me by DQE to cheer him up after the Robins were knocked out of the Cup by Queens Park Rangers.  George was to receive consolation in the end of season play-offs when Swindon were promoted to the Premier League.  The following season, Swindon were relegated from the Premier League, winning only 5 matches all season, yet somehow they conspired to do the double over QPR.  By the end of the third round, Peel would be able to sympathise with George as Liverpool, who went into the competition as holders, were knocked out by Bolton Wanderers at Anfield. 

While the sourness of an early cup exit was still a twinkle in Peel’s eye on 2/1/93, it was perhaps an inevitable low given that, on this night, he was still basking in the high of seeing himself and his show rating highly in the year-end polls run by the music papers.  Peel took the time to thank any listeners who had voted for him, It makes an old man, very happy and with Matthew Bannister and Trevor Dann poised to start a revolution at Radio 1 throughout the course of 1993, it may have played a part in ensuring  Peel was still at the station once the dust settled. Reading some of the bands/artists which the music papers were tipping for success, he noted the comments of Pete Paphides in Melody Maker who was predicting great things for Cords who had a shot at success despite the handicap of coming from Holland, having a drummer called Pi and being played by John Peel.

The Little Richard cover search had continued (fruitlessly) over Christmas but had led Peel to rediscover a single by Half Japanese called I Don’t Want to Have Mono No More, which had been pressed as a 7-inch single and put in an 8 inch sleeve, a decision which consequently made it very difficult to file.

Such frivolity was the last thing on the mind of anyone associated with the release of the  Big Black compilation album, It’s Toasted, the sleevenotes of which emphasised that it contained no previously unreleased material and should in no way be considered a collectors item. According to Discogs, no other Big Black compilations have been released since It’s Toasted. Nevertheless, Peel gave a non-exclusive play of Things to Do Today from the LP.

One of the stories during the 11:30pm news bulletin featured a story which may seem unfathomable to people today - a Conservative government promoting the protection of refugees, specifically Muslim born babies conceived through rapes during  the Bosnian War.  Towards the end of the programme, Peel had to read out a traffic report warning of difficulties and accidents being caused by freezing fog together with suggestions for safety measures which drivers should take,  leading to the following rant:

Speaking as a man who drove up from Ipswich to Bradford on the Monday before Christmas when all those accidents occurred and various motorways were blocked and a lot of people were alas killed, I was awestruck by the stupidity of some of my fellow motorists. I always try to drive in a gap to avoid other vehicles because I remember my dad telling me, before I could drive at all, to treat every other driver as though they were either drunk or demented, and this seemed to be fairly sound advice.  Every time you had to stop going up the A1(M), it was just accident after accident after accident, and emergency vehicles going all over the place, doing an astonishing job in the circumstances. I mean they must have been stressed to the limit. Every time you pulled up because there was another bunch of flashing blue lights and another pile of cars and lorries, you'd just sit there with your teeth clenched and your eyes shut, just waiting for someone to slam in to the back of you. Happily for us it didn't happen but for a lot of other people it did. Having got past all these accidents and getting up towards Ferrybridge and turning on to the M62, still in bad fog and having seen 7 or 8 separate accidents, several of them quite serious - I'm driving along, I look in my rear view mirror and there's a truck, so close behind me that all I can see in my rearview mirror is the whole of its grille. I'm not a fighting man, but you'd love to pull over to the side of the road and say, "Look, you've seen all of this and yet you seen to be prepared to kill myself and my wife for what reason? Why do you have to do this? Is there something seriously wrong with you?" But you can't do that and they wouldn't know what you're talking about. So if you are driving, just remember that the other feller is probably out of his head.

The selections from this show were taken from the full 3 hour show. Selections which I was unable to share included:

Frontier Trust - Highway Miles: There is a live recording of this track seemingly taken from a cable TV show, but given that the vocals are virtually inaudible, I can’t see what prompted me to slate it for inclusion.  The band reminded Peel of The Turbines.

Bandulu - Soweto 200/Funk Waffle/Song [Peel Session]  I couldn’t find any trace of the session, nor alternative studio versions of any of these tracks which is a shame given that Peel regarded it as A first rate session. Great start to the new year if you ask me.  My wife just heard the end of Song and really liked it, so its absence is to be regretted.

Free Kitten  - Smack/Glue - Action Man: I’ve banded these together because Peel played them back to back towards the end of the programme.  Free Kitten were another Sonic Youth affiliated side project created, like Ciccone Youth, to re-inspire a friend of the band, in this case  Julia Cafritz to start making music again.  Free Kitten were a duo of Cafritz and Kim Gordon, who used the project as a means of switching from bass to guitar as her primary instrument.  In keeping with the band name, Smack sounded like a cat venting its anger to the sound of noisy guitar and tambourine, albeit with a catchy refrain of I am not a pest/I am the best.  According to Peel, Free Kitten’s debut EP, Call Now had received bad reviews in the music papers, though he had quite enjoyed it. He would have plenty of opportunity to enjoy other material from Free Kitten in subsequent years as they recorded and toured intermittently over the next 15 years.  As for Action Man which was to be found on Glue’s album Gravel, it sounded like a remixed variation of Smack albeit taken at faster pace and in a slightly more conventional rock song format than the noisecore leanings on Smack.  

As for tracks which fell from favour, well I’ve discovered that on present evidence, maybe I don’t like boogie-woogie music as much as I thought I did:

Cow Cow Davenport - State Street Jive/Walter Roland - Jookit Jookit - Peel went big on 1920s/1930s boogie woogie records in early 1993 and the sound of the shellac inspired a warm feeling in me on first hearing, but subsequent listens saw the warm glow of nostalgia fade. I think that the State Street Jive may have made the cut had it not been ruined by Ivy Smith, whose talking blues vocal sounded as irritating and unfocused as Mark E. Smith at his worst.

Up for the cup