Equus: Digable Planets - Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) (29 January 1993)

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Although never a big hip hop fan, I’d always been dimly aware of Brooklyn trio, Digable Planets. I suspect it was because I used to get their name wrong, thinking it was either Digible Planets or in moments of extreme brain fog, Dirigible Planets. It wasn’t just that though.  I say I was always dimly aware of their existence and having listened today to their debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), I felt as though several of the jazz samples which they used in tracks on the album played out in the background to moments in my life during the 1990s.  I can’t give you any specifics, and I’m talking on a subconscious level - so subconscious that I nearly blurted out “Fuck! I haven’t heard this in years!” when the album reached the superb Nickel Bags - but I found that somewhere in me, I knew this music and had always responded to it.

Forgive the overt self-psychology, but it potentially speaks to where my cultural receptors were tuned to in early 1993.  I didn’t hate myself and want to die, so grunge was overlooked while I absorbed 60s guitar music.  Similarly, I didn’t see South Central L.A. as my spiritual home, so had no connection to gangsta rap and why would I when the music and attitude of Digable Planets was friendlier, sexier and cooler than the tawdry world of the gangsta rappers. 

Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) is indicative of the vibe and theme on the Reachin’ album which in track after track talks about living your best life while taking the listener through an aural lecture on jazz music and how it feeds into the group’s sound.  And what could be better than hanging out with cool new friends who want to expose you to new sounds? It took me 30 years to take it from a subconscious acquaintance to a committed meeting, but I’m glad I have.

John Peel was also keen to get to know Digable Planets better after playing Rebirth of Slick, but lamented the fact that he didn’t, yet, have a copy of their album.  “They’ve probably got it already on the really cool programmes, said he, bitterly….”

Video courtesy of Digable PlanetsVEVO

Equus: Cranium Croutons - Blitzkrieg Bop (29 January 1993)

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I’m not normally a fan of videos where you see a record playing, but as this wouldn’t have been available for sharing before last month, I think it would be churlish to not use it.

Australian punk rock group, The Meanies, were not on my cultural radar 30 years ago.  I don’t recall hearing Peel play anything by them in the 8 years I’ve been doing this blog either.  Nevertheless, before putting this post together, I dutifully sat through a listen to their 1992 album, Come ‘N’ See before addressing the merits of their Cranium Croutons side project.

The Meanies were formed in Melbourne in 1989. In true punk rock style, they adopted aliases using various pop-culture references from the previous 20 years. All hail Ringo!, Jaws! and er…Link? As per the Ramones, they each took Meanie as a surname too.  While none of their records quite had the same cultural impact as the Ramones, they have proved an astonishingly durable group, still gigging and releasing records up to the present day. Come ‘N’ See wouldn’t have made me into a rabid convert had I heard it when I was 16, but it does buck the trend of a lot of Ramones-influenced punk rock records in that its strongest tracks are in the second half of the record rather than the first half, which is a pretty neat trick to pull off when the listener is starting to worry that the initial burst of energy is going to sputter out.

An interesting feature of The Meanies’ style on Come ‘N’ See is that while the guitars come at the listener with CBGBs like intensity, the vocals are pitched somewhere between Sarah Records style feyness and Mono Men wannabe muscularity.  Yet, most of the tracks feature a moment where the blue-eyed punk voices make a controlled attempt at Death metal growling. The effect is that of a mountain bear just reaching puberty, but neither is it a completely laughable affectation.

Link Meanie aka Lindsay McLennan decided to give free rein to his Death metal indulgences by recording a solo four track EP of Ramones covers called Ramonic Verses. In this instance, solo meant solo as he played all of the instruments himself. In order to reassure any Meanies fans who may have worried that this side project threatened the future of his band, he renamed himself Link Nastygraze and put the set out under the fabulously lurid name of Cranium Croutons.  Furthermore, the EP was put out as a limited edition of 1000 copies. John Peel was sent number 209.

I actually think Peel played safe by airing the Cranium Croutons version of Blitzkreig Bop, which even with its slowed tempo and guttural vocals, still maintains a recognisable link with the original, not least via the untreated “Hey ho! Let’s go!” backing vocals. Link’s reworkings of Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Go Lil’ Camaro Go are far more radical and extreme, as you can hear from around 2:41 onwards. I suspect Peel may have felt that if he was going to use the record as a means of pointing listeners towards The Ramones, it was better to do it by playing a cover in which the inherent brilliance of the original still shines through. The other versions do more to showcase Link Meanie than they do the band he was supposedly honouring.

What’s Your Name? My favourite track from Come ‘N’ See.

Videos courtesy of holesinmyknees and VeraRabbit.

Equus: Joe Haywood - Warm and Tender Love (29 January 1993)

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Strike up another hit for the oldies on this edition of Kat’s Karavan. Released in 1965 by Joe Haywood, who moonlighted as a singer when he wasn’t acting as a drummer for various bands in South Carolina, it’s another example of the kind of soul ballad which John Peel seemed to favour when programming his shows: it’s intimate, sparsely arranged, deeply felt in its performance by Haywood and it also has spiritual overtones. At face value, it’s a love song, but the lyrics could also convey the sense of a sinner ready to embrace religion with the fervour of the newly converted.  The track, which is credited to producer/impresario, Bobby Robinson, but could be written by Haywood himself, hit wider attention when Percy Sledge put out his version as a follow-up to When a Man Loves a Woman in 1966. Having just listened to Sledge’s version for the first time, I prefer the rawness of Haywood’s version.

Moonlighting as a singer isn’t really a fair way to sum up Haywood’s talents.  His discography covered 10 singles between 1965 and 1972, but as was the way of it, many of those were released on smaller independent labels. It took until 2016 for a Polish label, Play Back to compile Haywood’s recordings into a compilation album.  There is a lot of mystery around who Joe Haywood was, a man who was once described as being able to sing Sam Cooke songs better than Sam Cooke. In 2006, ten years after Haywood’s death, the website Soul Detective took a trawl through his back catalogue and attempted to find out more about him. Highly recommended.

Video courtesy of EvaDStruc.

Equus: Bunny General - Spy Fi Die (29 January 1993)

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I don’t run blacklists on this blog - though Superchunk and The Hair and Skin Trading Company may disagree with that - but reggae artist Bunny General has on previous occasions offended me to an extent where I thought I would never include anything by him here again. However, to my surprise, Spy Fi Die turns out to be one of the best dancehall tracks I’ve heard Peel play. The artistry and exuberance here overrides any queasiness over Bunny General’s previous bigotry. It helps that, unlike in the disgraceful Pon Mi Border, Bunny General has traded baiting other ethnic minorities for baiting soundboys in sound clashes. Braggadocio and arrogance plays a central part in the culture of sound clash. Most of the time, I find it a turn-off to listen to MCs going on about how great they are compared to the competition, but confidence can be infectious to listen to when it’s delivered as well as Bunny General does here. 

The “spy” context in this song, I think refers to moles within a sound crew who might pass on information to rival crews about the music that could be played in a sound clash, so that crews can trump others by finding rarer dubplates to play and draw the crowd to them. The “killing” referred to in this context means beating out opposition crews by beating them in the sound clash.  Nevertheless, Bunny General and his producers show they cannot be entirely trusted not to drag the tone down by dubbing on gunshots throughout the track. As with the hip hop wars, the links between sound clash and gang culture in the Caribbean could overlap to almost interchangeable effect.  So much so that the basis of this track, including Bunny General’s vocal was remixed by Top Cat as his version of the dancehall standard Informer Fi Dead later in 1993.

Video courtesy of Bunny General - Topic