We like to imagine John Peel, sitting in his office at Peel Acres or snowed under at Room 318 in Broadcasting House listening to music and making considered choices about what would feature on his playlists. In the 1999 documentary about him, Turn That Racket Down, we witnessed him putting together running orders while listening to an album and noting down both timings and any tracks on the record which he may have wanted to play in a programme. The reality is that, given the amount of music both new and reissued that was sent for him to listen to, some records only received snatched, momentary listens; either to be returned to at another time or getting lost under the piles of vinyl and CDs fighting for space around him.
Such was the case with a compilation album issued by ROIR Europe called Dub or Die featuring artists like Niney the Observer and Lee “Scratch” Perry. The album opened with The Right Way by Prince Far I and The Arabs, from their 1978 album Crytuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1. Peel admitted that of the 13 tracks on the album, it was the only one he had heard so far. I suspect his thinking being that the reissued material wasn’t as pressing as the need to listen to newly released content.
Originally, I was going to say that references to Prince Far I will always be poignant for admirers of John Peel given that one of his last recorded statements on his final Radio 1 show, broadcast 11 days before his death included a mention of him in the belief that Far I had been sampled on Time 4 Change by Klute. But then I noticed that today - 15 September 2024 - marks the 41st anniversary of Far I’s death, at the age of only 38, after he was attacked and shot in his home. With that in mind, I give thanks for the happy coincidence of this blog arriving at Peel playing a Prince Far I track, so that I can pay tribute to him by including his work here. No poignancy, just pure dub brilliance.
To judge by the John Peel wiki, Foreheads in a Fishtank’s space on Peel’s playlists was narrowing. After this session, they would only feature - as records currently show - on two more Peel shows, one of which would feature a repeat of this session. If their national radio exposure was coming to an end, then it makes sense that they would sign off with some of their most demented and deranged music yet.
The session comprised one track, Pussy, from their recent LP, Yeah Baby Wow and three works in progress which would turn up on their next and final album, Stripper. I passed on Rum, but liked both Onions and Bond, however, Onions is the only one that has turned up in its session form. I could have included Bond, but the only version currently available is the one that was recorded for the Stripper album, and although it includes the same sound palette in that it sounds like a herd of elephants has been let loose on a set of brass instruments, it’s not really representative of the Peel Session version. The big difference is that in the absence of most of the lyrics - though the Welcome to the greatest show on Earth refrain was included - the band used samples of a terrified woman taken from what sounds like a third rate horror movie. This seems to be in keeping with the vibe of both Bond and Onions, a sense that normality has been over-run and natural order has been turned on its head. When they recorded Bond for their album, the band dropped the samples, perhaps due to queasiness over the woman-in-peril motif, even though the samples and the track itself feel as though they’re soundtracking a zombie attack on Margate Pleasure Beach rather than a slasher/snuff movie.
So instead, we are left with Onions, which tonally also feels as though it is segueing from respectable civility to outright barbarism. We get a taste of this right from the beginning as the classical string section which open the track are very quickly caught up with by a cacophony of approaching kazoos and party razzers. It’s as though the London Symphony Orchestra were collaborating with a set of Gremlins.
But what’s the song about? I haven’t heard the version which Foreheads in a Fishtank recorded for Stripper, so my observations and examples may end up being completely irrelevant, but from what I can hear, Onions is about coping with loss. Although the bellowed refrain of “Tipp-Ex” suggests that singer Jeff Leahy is trying to erase memories of a relationship gone wrong, I suspect that the loss relates more to death than to a break-up. Leahy’s vocal moves between an urbane crooner and a wizened goblin as in Mr. Whippy, but both voices allude to grief and grieving, whether that’s references to celebrating as the good Lord intended via a wake which would potentially include the sandwiches mentioned at 1:53, to be consumed after living your life in the best way possible. In his goblin voice, Leahy on several occasions urgently and breathlessly gasps the refrain, I can’t, as though the words are caught in a battle within his diaphragm against sobs of heartache. And then there’s the final minute, from around 3:15 onwards as the string section are propelled on by a rapidly growing choral hum, sounding like a fleet of angels bearing the soul of the deceased person onto the next life and ending on what passes as a note of tranquility in the world of Foreheads in a Fishtank.
Video courtesy of The Football Programme taken from Peel’s 27/3/93 show.
The vinyl version of Guided by Voices Propeller LP was consistently causing problems for Peel. This was the second night running that he had played a track from the album and once again he called the track by the wrong title. In fairness to him, he did mention that he wasn’t sure whether he was giving the correct title due to the number of titles in the tracklisting not lining up with the number of tracks on the record. Whereas the previous night’s Weedking was announced by him as the album opener, Mesh Gear Fox, this play of Quality of Armor was introduced as Metal Mothers. I wish it had been that one, because I think Metal Mothers is the best track on the album. However, it isn’t too much of a disappointment to be including Quality of Armor here.
In contrast to the monolithic hard rock of Weedking, on Quality of Armor Guided by Voices sound like they’re channelling the ambiance of The Beach Boys with the righteousness of The Clash. Alongside this are the qualities that distinguish the best Guided by Voices material:
1) The way they can make the everyday seem psychedelic, while making the psychedelic seem everyday.
2) Their propensity to world build and draw the listener to the places where these songs take place. The narratives they spin are so well realised that we, the listener, feel that we know the people that GBV sing of. The “you” they address in Quality of Armor is not us the listener, but somehow we are made to feel that we know everything about the people they are singing to. This is quite an achievement given that almost none of the lyrics on Propeller could be considered as naturalistic.
I’m not convinced that the drive my car opening is about actual road tripping, rather I suspect that a different kind of trip may be the inspiration for the song. In the play out from around 1:51 onwards, the references to travelling Beyond the secret bogus world show that the journey they’re on might be one into the depths of the subconscious rather than to the local beach or makeout point. Whatever they’re taking appears to be something to inspire introspection and debate rather than a wish to party. In contrast to the brightness of the music, the tone of the lyrics is argumentative and serious, especially in the second verse:
The worst offence is intelligence.
The best defence is belligererence.
How we stalemate our predicament.
Governed by tissue and by filament.
Clearly, it’s not a group of party animals on this trip. The personality dynamics are so well constructed here that I can clearly picture the thick black spectacle frames and slanted 1970s haircut of the Velma-alike who is …finding God in the dictionary/Taking photographs in the cemetery. But unlike those taking the ride in Sonic Youth’s Pacific Coast Highway, there seems less danger about making it home safely. We may be at risk of dying of exposure to drug-induced earnestness more than anything else, though.
One of the sub-debates that caught my eye in the reaction to the news about Oasis reforming to play live dates in 2025 was whether demand for tickets to their shows would be comparable to anyone trying get a ticket for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. It’s been a long time since I concerned myself over attendance figures at a rock concert. The last time I did so was mid-1996, when my concern for how Blur had seemingly gone from heroes to punchlines after winning the Country House vs Roll With It single battle, but decisively losing the Great Escape vs (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? albums battle both in terms of sales figures and, more crucially, in the court of public opinion. They were due to play a gig at the RDS Grounds, Dublin which I feared virtually no-one would attend. In the event, 32,000 people turned out and those present got to be the first people to hear Song 2.
I’m out of the loop when it comes to Taylor Swift. I drifted away from mainstream music over the course of the 2010s, so her rise to superstardom was something I knew about, but didn’t witness. Apart from a bit of the chorus to Shake It Off, the only thing I know about Swift’s music is that she got her start in the business as a country music star. Going by Wikipedia, she’s subsequently recorded albums that are inspired by pop, rock, hip-hop and electronica. Maybe I should go through her back catalogue one day as it appears that she has never stood still as an artist and has been eager and brave enough to step out of her musical lane, time and time again. I thought about Swift while researching the story behind Thumper Jones’s 1956 single, Rock It, released through Starday Records. Not least because the man who recorded it found that having done so, he had no wish to get outside of his designated lane. What’s more, he actively tried to close the other lane down.
Thumper Jones was a pseudonym used by country singer, George Jones, a man who was regarded as one of the finest and most successful country singers ever. He had over 160 hits on the country music charts from 1955 to 2013. His first records came out in 1954, just at the point that rock ‘n’ roll music was getting started. Indeed, Jones had shared bills with Elvis Presley during 1955. Although Jones had already had a couple of Top 10 hits on the country charts, he set to writing a fast rockabilly tune called Rock It, so as to reflect the new musical sound. However, it doesn’t seem as though he was artistically invested in the single, not least because he put it under a pseudonym. He subsequently admitted that he had taken a punt on trying a rock ‘n’ roll tune in the hope of making a quick buck. The record didn’t chart and Jones beat a path back to pure country music as fast as he could. In fact, Jones was so embarrassed by it, he unsuccessfully tried to buy the masters to both sides of the single so that he could stop them surfacing on compilations.
It’s a shame that Jones had such a low opinion of both Rock It and its flipside, How Come It, because he gives a terrific performance here. There’s a degree of appropriation going on with a few borrowed “Go cat, go!” lines and he also tries to channel Elvis’s “smushy” vocal sound* at points. He also makes a bit of a dogs dinner of the Everybody likes to do the bop/Some is just too slow lines where they clearly don’t fit the scansion of his tune, but these quibbles apart, the tune flies and Jones makes it a compelling listen with a lyric which can be read either as one about dancing or sex.
I wish Jones had had a few more stabs at rock ‘n’ roll music, as he clearly had the aptitude to do it well. If he felt that it was an inferior art form to country music then he’s entitled to his opinion. But having listened to his 13 Number 1 country hits while prepping this blogpost, I only found 3 of them to be anywhere near as good as Rock It. Two of them were duets he sang with his ex-wife, Tammy Wynette (1976’s Golden Ring & 1977’s Near You). The best of them was his first number 1, White Lightning, recorded in 1959, and ironically given Jones’s antipathy towards the form, arguably his most rocking country hit. This could be down to the fact that it was written by The Big Bopper and Jones does a fine job of marrying the idiosyncrasies of Bopper’s style with his own in the recording.
Peel occasionally played George Jones’s records through the years and four years to the day of the broadcast of this show, he played Developing My Pictures from the 1982 compilation album, Burn the Honky-Tonk Down, released via Rounder Records.
*I’m thinking particularly about the way Elvis sounds on the “…so lonely…” lines of Heartbreak Hotel.
