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

Equus: The What Four - I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy (2 January 1993)

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Originally released as a single on Columbia in 1966, I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy is both achingly of its time and slightly pioneering and far-sighted.  The What Four were marketed as an all girl garage band, but the sound of this record doesn’t suggest The Stooges or even anything that the all-girl groups at CBGB might have worked into their sets as a dim memory.  There’s an attempt to capture the galloping pace of a British Invasion-style hit (or someone’s idea of it, but it doesn’t quite gel).  The guitar solo sounds like an off-cut from a long forgotten surf record. All told it sounds less garage and more Go-Go, you can picture The What Four performing this on a TV show like Shindig! or Hullabaloo backed by an orchestra and dancing girls.

What makes it stand out are the relatively lo-fi production on the vocals - it sounds like all four women in the band are singing, but they’re mixed down with the result that the performance sounds scuzzy enough to qualify as garage rock rather than pop - and the directness of the lyrics which make no bones about the fact that the girls are going out with their looks and their sex appeal set to kill the object of their desire. They feel hot and they are going to make sure that the boy knows it and is powerless to resist it.  I’m guessing that for all the talk of keeping ammunition under cover, the bullets are going to be straining to escape the chamber; they’ll have someone’s eye out with those nipples....

There’s a bawdiness to the lyrics which would have made this tune a good fit for someone like Mae West.  Indeed, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that when West recorded a rock ‘n’ roll album in 1966, at the age of 73, this song wasn’t put to her as one for potential inclusion.  However, its far-sightedness comes in the fact that its sexually charged sentiments and self image of “looking good, feeling hot, catching my prey” seems to suggest that the roots of female-centred hip-hop should acknowledge a small debt to this track.

I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy owed its place on Peel’s playlist to its inclusion on the tracklisting for Girls in the Garage Volume 5, Romulan Records, latest release chronicling the seemingly inexhaustible supply of girl pop groups in 1960s America. 

Video courtesy of funknroll.