A quick question for you before we go any further; on your first listen to Red Alert [2], do you think that the spoken word sample is saying “Where’s the money?” I did, and initially had plans to write about how this track seemed to combine techno tropes with a noir sensibility. But then I heard it again and realised that it said “Red alert” instead and that its sensibility was decidedly futuristic.
John + Julie was an alter-ego of the husband and wife team of Michael Wells and Lee Newman. Red Alert was the final record they put out under that monicker and contained three different versions. Red Alert [1] and [2] are very similar to one another, albeit [2] is taken at a faster pace while [1] flirts with trance music.
Red Alert [3] is the least commercial sounding of the 3 and has a more hardcore, tribal edge to it.
Peel did indeed play Red Alert [2] while sitting in for Jakki Brambles on Thursday 8 April 1993.
Wells and Newman may have finished with John + Julie, but as was their way, they went on to many other projects and aliases, the best known of which was probably Technohead who enjoyed a Top 10 hit with a remixed version of I Wanna Be a Hippy in early 1996. Discogs lists at least 11 separate projects that they worked on, and who knows how many more there may have been but for Newman’s premature death from cancer in 1995.
Video courtesy of Webbie, taken directly from Peel’s 26/3/93 show.
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