I’ve gone back and forth on including this track here. It only revealed its indispensability to me when I heard it again while trawling for other tunes/information on Peel’s 20/3/93 show.
Sloan came to Peel’s attention when he received a 4-track compilation EP from Sub Pop called Never Mind the Molluscs, which showcased bands from Canada’s maritime districts. Between January 14 & 16, 1993, Sloan, Jale, Eric’s Trip and Idee du Nord, under the direction of Bob Weston, recorded tracks for the EP of which, marginally, Pillow Fight edged out Idee du Nord’s Iodine Eyes as my favourite track on the record.
Sloan, who have continued to release records into the 2020s, included Pillow Fight on a compilation of their b-sides from 1992-97 on which they not only reprinted the lyrics but included background information about each track. Unfortunately, the notes I’ve seen on Discogs are slightly too blurry to read, and it would have been useful to have a full look at the lyrics, especially given the moments where singer Jay Ferguson is drowned out by the band.
Although, they rock a bit harder than their British counterparts, the overall effect on Pillow Fight appears to be a more angst ridden take on twee pop. Unlike tracks like Po’s Look For the Holes or Brighter’s Killjoy, the song is set at the point where a relationship appears to be turning toxic, but hasn’t yet reached the splitting up stage, so we’re catching this couple at the mutual contempt stage. Calling the track, Pillow Fight suggests a certain meek impotence about the emotions which have contributed to the breakup, and potentially leaves the audience wondering just how seriously we can regard either of the participants in this relationship. But there’s a underlying hint of danger under the jangle as Ferguson compares himself to his soon-to-be-ex - who writes their thoughts in a journal - while he keeps his in his head, which on the face of it, is far more dangerous as he has no outlet for his emotions. Further lines reference unresolved issues for the pair and, ominously, while Ferguson confesses to thinking about his partner he seems consumed with how to get back at them rather than trying to get them back onside. All of which sets the ground for a potential confrontation where both parties may go into battle with something more dangerous than a pillow to hand.
John Peel was one week away from finally completing the Little Richard cover search which he had spent the past two years working through his collection of singles to try and find. Having got to the letter N, he rediscovered this 1980 curio which had been commissioned by the Northampton Development Corporation to try and promote the town as a place where businesses and families may want to move operations to or work in, during the period in which it was earmarked for regeneration as a new town.
Starting out as a jingle, 60 Miles by Road or Rail was expanded into a song so that it would have greater reach to promote the town, while also raising money towards the target of £100,000,000 which the NDC had to raise in profit for the sale of homes and workspace it had built in the area. This became necessary when, in the late 1970s, both major UK parliamentary parties moved away from the concept of building more new towns, and those that were being built up at the time had to pay their own way, in Northampton’s case by the end of 1984.
Conscious of the fact that no one would want to play a record which seriously set out opportunities for commercial expansion, composer Rod Thomson tried to meet NDC’s brief by playing up one of the major benefits of Northampton - its 60 mile proximity to London - by writing a song in which the heroine, voiced by former Buggles backing vocalist, Linda Jardim, excitedly sang about travelling to meet her lover and begin a new life, brimming with romance and excitement in the town. Jardim has previously lived her life vicariously through magazine stories and trashy TV, but now real life and real opportunity awaits her (and all those relocating businesses in Northampton.)
But that was then, my time’s been changed.
I find my life’s been rearranged.
My magazines have finally all come true
Baby, since I met you.
Had I heard this in March 1993, I’d have had it on a mixtape as an example of one of those quirky tunes that occasionally turn up on a John Peel playlist, but in future years, I too would find myself making journeys from Cornwall, of considerably more than 60 miles, to be with my lovers in places like Lampeter, Uxbridge, Runfold and Henly-in-Arden. None of these places, on their own terms, were anything special but they were mini-Paradises to be travelled to with love in my heart and desire in my loins for the girls I loved who studied and worked there. It is to the man I was who used to travel those distances between 1996 and 2004 that this song earns its place on the metaphorical mixtape.
I currently live about an hour away from Northampton, but my only visit there took place in February 2013. A friend of mine was living there at the time and had written a one-act play based on her experiences working as an exotic dancer in the town, which was being staged as part of a double bill at a small venue in Northampton. My wife and I decided to go up and offer our support, we booked a room at a Premier Inn so we could make an evening of it. However, we started our journey of 60-ish miles from Orpington in low spirits after receiving a phone call that morning from my wife’s mother telling us that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Happily, she was successfully treated over the course of that year, but as you can imagine, the initial phonecall didn’t do much to set up the mood for a rip-roaring night at the theatre.
Our spirits were not improved when we got to Northampton itself, which was one of the most unattractive looking places either of us had ever seen. After booking into the Premier Inn and having some dinner, we set out to find the venue. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. “You have reached your destination” bleated the sat nav, but none of the buildings we saw had anything on them to indicate that they were theatres. We asked at a nearby pub, but they hadn’t heard of the place we were looking for. We rounded a corner and saw a community hall building with lights on. “That could be the place,” we said hopefully and walked in confidently, only to be greeted by the sight of a pair of imams tidying away a PA set and cushions from a prayer meeting. However, they were pleased to see us and crucially, they had heard of the venue we were looking for. The plays were being staged in an upstairs theatre, the sign for which was no bigger than your average Harley Street brass plate and to our great relief, our friend’s play was wonderfully written, marvellously acted and very funny. We were both glad to see her and the play, but neither of us has rushed back to Northampton in the subsequent decade.
What’s curious about Peel’s play of 60 Miles by Road or Rail is that, based on a look at the John Peel wiki back in the spring and early summer of 1980, he tended to play the other side of the single, Energy in Northampton. To the same musical backing, this saw Linda Jardim sing a kind of War of the Worlds meets Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft tale about aliens driven from their home planet by war and struggling across the galaxy in a disintegrating set of spaceships, who find the new home they have been looking for in Northampton. All of it delivered without tongue in cheek and tying into the single’s promotional tagline that a love affair with Northampton is a journey into space. I wonder whether Peel played 60 Miles by Road or Rail in error given that he quoted the tagline after playing it, which made no sense in the context of what his listeners would have just heard.
Finally, I must direct you towards the 60 Miles project, which gathers together the stories of the new town projects to produce documentary and theatre shows reflecting Northampton’s development and expansion and the effects it had on the town. The 2021 show 60 Miles by Road or Rail can be viewed on the website with the conception and recording of the Linda Jardim record taking up most of the second half of the play. I found it not just invaluable as a source of information for this blogpost, but a terrific show in its own right. Not only did it bring history alive, it also brilliantly reflected why new town projects stalled and the ongoing issues that rage when bringing together established communities and transplanted ones, even if the transplants have only travelled 60 miles.
At the recording session for 60 Miles by Road or Rail. That’s great, Linda. Just try another one for safety.
Energy in Northampton
Videos courtesy of EvenThisNameTaken
Lyrics copyright of Rod Thomson
Dialogue from 60 Miles by Road or Rail by Ryan Leder
A month earlier, this was the track whose ending fooled Peel into thinking he was allowing listeners to hear a bonus track on Repulse’s Heads EP, only for him to discover that it was all still part of Barriers. You can go to around 3:30 to see whether it would have caught you out in a similar way.
I didn’t shortlist Barriers on that 21/2/93 show, but it caught my attention on this show. Given that Repulse came from Larne in Northern Ireland, like my favourite band of early 1993, Therapy?, I can only imagine that had I known this when I was approaching my 17th birthday, I would have considered Larne to be the centre of the musical universe, rather than Seattle.
Based on what I heard in Barriers - and indeed on the whole of the Heads EP - Repulse rocked just as hard as Therapy?, but lacked the vocal roar of Andy Cairns, and so sounded a far more winsome proposition. Instead, they applied effects to the vocals with Barriers boasting a tremolo vocal. Unfortunately, this makes them hard to hear when buried under the avalanche of noise, but Barriers, which I felt was the best track on the EP, appealed to me not least for its rock /metal jig opening riff.
In their best moments, Repulse reminded me of the art-metal of Milk and the heavier moments in my 1992 Festive Fifty winner., thus making their inclusion here something of an inevitability.
