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