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.
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