Equus: St. Johnny - Go to Sleep (24 January 1993)

Buy this at Discogs

After 3 years of patient work, Connecticut 4-piece, St. Johnny were ready to burst into national attention. With a recommendation from Thurston Moore in their top pockets, they were attracting major-label attention which would see them eventually sign to DGC Records. Before that though, came the release of Go to Sleep as a precursor to the High as a Kite LP. Peel reckoned it was the second St. Johnny record he owned, the other may have been an an eponymous EP from 1990.

The hype seemed partially justified on the basis of Go to Sleep, which after a delayed opening bursts forward to overwhelm the listener with its charms.  The theme of the song appears to be the over-reach between glossy dreams and sordid realities.  In the opening verse, singer Bill Whitten outlines his aspirations: This is a story/This is a film.  He wants to be seen and admired like a model in my Chevrolet. But the live fast/live free mood of the opening verse is undercut by the hazy sentiments of the second verse, which seems to suggest that Whitten is in a situation where he is surrounded by people who are cramping his style and causing him headaches through their misbehaviour and lack of trustworthiness.  It’s small stakes stuff, but important to enough to strangle the grand aspirations before they have time to grow. The music goes the same way as the energy and bite of the track finally splutters to a halt like someone mislaying their credit card after booking a Mardi Gras.  All the same, an enjoyable enough ride until the energy runs out of the meter.

Video courtesy of cryptickeeper.

Equus: Gravel - Bucket of Blood (24 January 1993)

Buy this at Discogs

It’s unfortunate that every time we look at Gravel, the talk is all about who else they sound like.  Last time they were on this blog, it was Nirvana, but with Bucket of Blood, they sound more like Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. It’s a curious track, slightly out of keeping with its contemporaries.  Singer, Bryan Elliott appears to be singing about what an average night is like for him as a vampire. For similar “early-90s rock as ghost story” vibes file it with Room 429 by Cop Shoot Cop.

Video courtesy of s142057.

Equus: Don French - Lonely Saturday Night (24 January 1993)

Buy this at Discogs

If someone ever attempts to put together a definitive compilation album covering all aspects of the teenage experience throughout the history of popular music, they have to make sure that there is a place on the tracklisting for Don French's 1959 recording of Lonely Saturday Night. It’s a stripped down recording, which is fully designed to bring audiences to their feet either in recognition at its sentiments or sympathy for French’s little-boy-lost performance as a man spending Saturday night dateless and isolated.  

Listening to the song with 2023 ears, it comes across like a bit of an incel lullaby, but they didn’t know the word back in 1959 (lucky buggers), and its themes remain universal and timeless.  If homework is one thing nobody misses as they grow beyond school/college age, then that dreadful, false feeling that you’re missing out on a great time if you’re spending Saturday night on your own is one thing I don’t miss about late teens/twenties.

The song was covered in a 2007 blogpost on Locust St. in which the author received a bit of a dressing down in the comments from a Margo French (a relation of Don’s perhaps?) for describing his singing as almost comically deep and describing the track as being as ominous as it is ridiculous but I think the performance rings full value out of the sentiments of the song.  For Peel, the vocal was what made the track. He called it…a classic of that kind of tortured Conway Twitty vocal…it really ought to be far better known than it is.

Video courtesy of Wesley B.

Equus: Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps - Woman Love (24 January 1993)

Buy this at Discogs

Recorded in May 1956, Woman Love was a b-side to Gene Vincent’s signature hit, Be-Bop-A-Lula. Although it wasn’t written by him, Vincent would have been synched in to this tale of doctors’ advice for various lovesick ailments given that he had spent most of the previous year receiving treatment for a leg injury.

The performance is chock full of Vincent’s idiosyncrasies with his fluttering stutters at the start and Presley/Lewis hybridised vocals. It was originally slated to be the A-side of the single, but Vincent’s publisher, Bill Lowery took steps to ensure that Be-Bop-A-Lula garnered more airplay and exposure.  It was the right thing to do given that Woman Love is a reasonable song lifted by Vincent’s personality, while Be-Bop-A-Lula works both in terms of content and form.

I don’t think Woman Love is as good as some of the other Vincent tracks which have turned up on this blog, such as Git It, but it’s interesting to listen to Vincent at the point where he first emerged and was marketed as a rougher, wilder version of Elvis Presley, albeit at a time when Elvis himself was causing the moral guardians of America to get into a panic about how he was corrupting their youth.  Ultimately, Vincent was a little too left-field to enjoy sustained success in the United States, but it makes perfect sense that he went over so well in Europe given that Presley never performed outside North America, so Vincent was as close as European rock’n’ roll fans were going to get to the King.

Ian Dury included Woman Love as one of his Desert Island Discs in 1996, feeling that the song may have been quite rude, and while a case could be made that it’s a song about venereal disease, the lyrics debunk this by showing that the protagonist is desperate (and not fussy) about finding a woman to have a relationship with.

Video courtesy of Jarski. J