People make strange choices when they’re demob happy…
The received wisdom about the reason behind John Peel’s week long holiday cover stint for Jakki Brambles’s lunchtime Radio 1 show is that it was the result of a bet made to then Radio 1 controller, Johnny Beerling when he was attending a conference. I have also seen comments that Beerling arranged it as a way of trying to make a point to then BBC Director General John Birt about the qualities that distinguished Radio 1 from the commercial sector. Either way, Beerling was free to make the decision knowing that regardless of whether the week was a roaring success or a disastrous failure, any repercussions from it would not affect him given that he was due to take enforced retirement from his role in October 1993. “John Peel on a daytime broadcast for the first time in over 20 years? Sure, why not!”
On the face of it, the decision to use Peel as cover on a daytime show made sense. He was hardly a broadcasting novice after all, and while he may not have had the kind of slick, ultra-energetic presence associated with daytime radio presentation, he had wit, warmth and an ability to think on his feet. He was also, at least on his first couple of days, genuinely enthusiastic about it. Only, when he started having to deal with hostile fax messages from Brambles’ regular audience, did self-defence kick in and Peel retreated into a higher degree of sarcasm than he had done at the start of his stint. Though it should also be said, he received plenty of queries and interest for some of the lesser known tunes that he brought in to go alongside the daytime playlist.
For this first show, I’m going to concentrate mainly on the music that I would have put on the metaphorical mixtape. For me, the timing of Peel appearing on daytime radio is a happy accident, given that I spent a period of around 6 weeks through March to May of 1993 both transcribing the UK Top 40 Singles Chart and taking the time to watch Top of the Pops to see who from those lists would appear on the show. Eventually, I lost interest and just went back to watching TOTP, but in a sense the music from this period is what I think of if you ask me to recall chart hits from 1993.
The John Peel wiki not only contains links to recordings of the shows, but also a full transcript of Peel’s links for this 5/4/93 show. I will have more to share on Peel’s observations, problems and occasional triumphs on the Tuesday to Thursday shows. Timing issues meant that the only one I never heard was Peel’s final show on Friday 9 April, but I’d pretty much got the point by then, and anyway, I shall begin soundtracking my next production with Peel’s regular Friday night show, which was broadcast the same day. Selections from that show and others will be presented in the usual Greasepaint format on a track by track posting, but for these Jakki Brambles shows, selections will be presented as a group with comments on their reasons for inclusion. And we start in the most obvious place:
The Fall - Why Are People Grudgeful?/Sir Joe Gibbs - People Grudgeful
Videos courtesy of Renato Trap (Fall) and Ziggybollus (Gibbs)
Alongside their latest album, The Infotainment Scan, The Fall released a single which saw them mash up the 1968 reggae beef singles, People Funny Boy by Lee Perry and the reply record by Gibbs. Both Perry and Gibbs accuse each other of being both jealous of the others’ success/influence while also trying to claim credit as to why the other has become successful or influential. Such themes of resentment and a calling out of perceived ingratitude would have been right up Mark E. Smith’s street and God only knows which former (and present) members of The Fall, Smith would have had in mind while recording his vocal.
Snow - Informer
Video courtesy of RHINO
From memory, any discussion about this record at the time it came out boiled down to three topics of conversation:
1) “Did you know he’s white?”
2) “Did you know he’s from Canada?”
3) “Did you know ‘I-licky-boom-boom-down” refers to oral sex?”
Looking at number 3, I feel that we could potentially blame Snow for opening the door for The Outhere Brothers, but as he released the better tune, clemency has been earned.
Chris Isaak - Can’t Do a Thing (To Stop Me)
Video courtesy of Infinity.
Peel’s dismissal of this track, which was the first single released from Isaak’s new LP, San Francisco Days, has been held up as his greatest moment from his week sitting in for Brambles. In response to the title line, he faded the record down and retorted, That’s where you’re wrong, pal. I can take the CD off and throw it as far as I possibly can. That’s what happens when you get a computer to write your songs. My notes for the Brambles shows that I heard don’t have him talking this disrespectfully about any of the other daytime playlist records. I suspect this was because Brambles’ producer would have pointed out that while Peel was only there for the week, Brambles and her team needed to keep on the right side of major record labels, and it wasn’t going to be helpful to her if labels got queasy about letting Radio 1 play their records given that a DJ had pulled one out of the CD player, live on air, slagging it off as they did so.
For what it’s worth, I quite like this tune. Chris Isaak was only ever crashingly OK to my ears, but there’s a playful tone and spirit to Can’t Do a Thing (To Stop Me) that I find quite attractive and charming. Although Peel may have given it short shrift, I would imagine that other daytime Radio 1 DJs gave it a fuller airing. However, the British record buying public seemed to side with Peel, and hopes of a Wicked Game style success failed to materialise with the record stalling at Number 36 on the UK charts - in the US, it failed even to break the Top 100.
The Human League - Don’t You Want Me
Video courtesy The Human LeagueVEVO
The UK’s Christmas Number 1 single for 1981 and played by Peel after a trailer advertising shows Radio 1 were putting on around Sheffield Sound City ‘93, which started on this day. Peel was going up there to take part in one of the forums being held on Saturday 10 April. I remember reading very positive reviews in Melody Maker for the sets by Saint Etienne and World Party. Some of the other artists who played during the week can be found here.
Sunscreem - Pressure US
Video courtesy of Sunscreem.
It’s taken me till I wrote this post to learn that this track is titled Pressure US - as in United States - rather than Pressure Us. This was a re-release of their 1991 single called Pressure, which broke into the Top 60. The difference between the two versions is that Pressure only features the chorus and includes two comedown sections, suggesting that it was recorded with the clubs in mind. Pressure US loses the comedown parts and adds verses to its structure, suggesting that it was written with gig venues in mind. Over the previous year, Sunscreem’s trajectory had been moving upwards and Pressure US was their third consecutive Top 20 hit. But after taking a two year break to record new material, they came back to find that M People - who had enjoyed 4 Top 10 hits in 1993 alone - were so firmly ensconced in the public’s hearts as their pop-dance band of choice, that their subsequent releases struggled to get much of a look in. A real shame, but a delight to hear this again.
The Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
When Peel played this 1978 Jam setting of a mugging to music, he expressed a hope, based on articles he had seen, that The Jam were going to reform. He hoped that they would. We’re still waiting…
Sybil - When I’m Good and Ready
I can’t adequately describe how broad my smile was when I was listening to the file that contained this show, and the “When I’m….When..When I’m…When..When I’m…When… When I’m Good and Ready” opening filled the air. Hearing that again really did transport me back to my bedroom in the Spring of 1993, listening to Bruno Brookes on the UK Top 40. At the time, in terms of favourability, I ranked this just behind Show Me Love by Robin S. marking as it did a culmination of a period in the early 90s - started by CeCe Peniston - when the charts were awash with big voiced African-American women singing club-land hits. Then from 1994 to 1996, the pendulum swung the other way and the charts filled with hits for Sheryl Crow, Lisa Loeb, Meredith Brooks, Joan Osbourne and Alanis Morissette. Whether your preference was for Sybil ‘n’ CeCe or Sheryl ‘n’ Alanis, they were all singers who put themselves at the service of the song. Unfortunately, as the decade ended, producers, writers and artists seemed to decide that the template they wanted to work off was Whitney Houston’s performance of I Will Always Love You from late ‘92, and with that Celine Dion and Mariah Carey lost all restraint, while Christina Aguilera arrived fully formed to usher in the age of Female Vocal Masturbation. No wonder I was so pleased to hear Sybil again after all those years.
Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams - Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)
Video courtesy of Edward George.
I reckon this was the best track inside the Top 40 in this period. The public liked it enough to get it to Number 3 on the chart. My abiding memory of it was seeing them perform it on Top of the Pops and my eye being drawn more towards bassist Jimi Goodwin than towards Melanie Williams, I think through a mixture of his endearingly naff dancing and the clumsiness of how he held his bass guitar. Nine years later, on the same programme and with a record at the same chart position as Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) had been, I’d watch Goodwin and his Sub Sub colleagues, now working under the name of Doves, produce a performance of such emotionally intense ferocity that it produced a genuine ovation from the TOTP crowd instead of the all purpose cheer that went up 90% of the time. As for Sub Sub, they spent the next 5 years trying to replicate the success of Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use); this included collaborations with Tricky and Bernard Sumner, before switching to Doves, an act which at their best include enough of their dance roots alongside the rockist elements to produce some of the best tracks of the early 21st century.
Sam & Dave - Soul Man
Video courtesy of RHINO
Always a pleasure to hear this 60s classic of course, though it serves as a reminder of how stretched the music policy still was on what was regarded as the BBC’s radio station for young people, after 26 years. I have memories of catching an edition of Steve Wright in the Afternoon around this time, when someone put Radio 1 on at college and him opening the programme with a play of the Rolling Stones 1967 hit, Let’s Spend the Night Together and trailing an interview with The Hollies, who were releasing a new single to mark 30 years since their first hit. By the time I started listening to Radio 1 in 1995, the New Music First policy was firmly in place on the daytime programmes and the only place you’d have heard something like this would either have been on The Gold Hour portion of Simon Mayo’s mid morning show or Mark and Lard’s Graveyard Shift. It was an arrangement which worked perfectly for me.
Faces - Stay With Me
Video courtesy of junkfoodie1
Another golden oldie (dating from 1971), but one which did at least have particular relevance to Peel given his bond with Faces. It gave him an opportunity to tell the audience about one of his favourite ever gigs: Faces in Sunderland, 1973, on the weekend that the Mackems beat Arsenal to reach the FA Cup Final. Peel was able to add it to the small list of times that he had danced in public.
At the start of this programme, Peel tried to reassure listeners that he would be playing plenty of pop music to go alongside the stuff he was bringing in himself, though he was categorical that he would not be playing anything by Simply Red. This was as much due to his personal antipathy towards Mick Hucknall as it was towards their music. I can only imagine how pained he would have been if, while this was playing, someone from the future crept into the studio and told him that Faces would reform in 16 years time, but with Hucknall on lead vocals instead of Rod Stewart. “But you won’t need to worry about that, John…” said the visitor, sadly, as they dematerialised.
Shinehead - Jamaican in New York
Video courtesy of Mark Seliger.
Given the ubiquity of reggae-pop in the UK Charts at this time, I was a little surprised to see that this reggaefied update of Sting’s Englishman in New York got no higher than Number 30 in the Top 40. I suspect that a credibility gap stopped most reggae-lovers from adding this to their collections, while any hopes Shinehead and company may have had of getting a sales boost from Sting’s fans was over-ridden by them saving their money to buy singles released off Sting’s new album, Ten Summoner’s Tales. I liked Jamaican in New York a lot at the time, but it’s hanging on by its fingertips now. The record’s underperformance didn’t stop Shinehead from trying to have a hit with another artist whose standing was in a low spot in 1993, as he followed this with a cover of Paul McCartney’s Wings hit, Let Em’ In, which just crept inside the Top 75. It’s probably better to go back to his earliest release, a 1984 version of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson and…well! Look who it is!…
Michael Jackson - Give Into Me
Video courtesy of Michael Jackson VEVO
Although I liked his music, I never owned any Michael Jackson albums. There didn’t seem to be any point given that most of the record would be put out as singles. Give Into Me was the seventh of NINE singles released from Dangerous. If you bought any of those singles, you basically got a stack of remixes, the occasional live track and in the case of the Heal the World single, you had another track from Dangerous, She Drives Me Wild crowbarred on as a b-side. I couldn’t trust anybody who never bothered with putting a distinct b-side on at least one of their formats. No wonder the grunge and Britpop groups found an audience.
For a very long time, I associated Give Into Me with the worst elements of my brief spell of writing down the weekly Top 40 singles charts. When I was listening, it was on the slide down the chart - after peaking at Number 2 - but I seemed to remember it going on, seemingly forever, and holding the rest of the chart up from being played. But listening to it again this time, that drawn out ending and Jackson’s controlled exhortations seemed to take on a kind of weary grandeur, which even the guitar wankery of guest contributor, Slash couldn’t undermine.
Peel brought a couple of tunes in that would more usually be associated with his regular programmes, such as Feel Your Need by L-Dopa, which made my list, but I’m going to hold off on it until it’s played on Peel’s show a couple of weeks on from this. He also played Wrath of the Black Man by Fun-Da-Mental
One track which I had on the list but went cool on was Animal Nitrate by Suede, who had just seen their debut album enter the charts at Number 1. Listening back to it, I was reminded of the way in which I wanted to like it more, back then, but I could find no point of entry into the song which would allow me to embrace either the song or the band. As the years rolled on, I became more of a Suede-sceptic and I held most of their output in a sort of amused contempt which remains my default feeling about them now, but for three exceptions: She’s in Fashion (1999), which I regard as one of the best songs of that year; Electricity (1999), which I regard as one of the best songs of that decade and The Wild Ones (1994), which I regard as one the best songs of that century.
