On tonight’s programme, Peel played a run of three tracks from Today’s Active Lifestyles, the second album by Polvo. And just as he had done the previous week with Swirlies, he picked three tracks which were unlikely to make any of his listeners into converts for the band in question. To be fair to him, I don’t think he had a great deal of choice given that none of the tracks on the album really stand out as worthy of love. There’s a couple of tracks over 7 minutes long as well, which would have given Peel time to have a cup of tea and a comfy sit on the toilet, but would have seriously tested the listeners’ patience. Too much of the album sounds like a band in the rehearsal room, with the music constantly shifting in tone and tune, but hardly ever taking time to really engage the listener. If I was to be generous, I’d say that the constant shifts are reflective of the hyperactivity suggested by the album’s title, but it’s not an album that really deserves having excuses being made for it.
Lazy Comet gets on to the metaphorical mixtape because it was the only one of the three tracks which Peel played which had me straining to hear more, I’m thinking particularly of the gorgeous section of music between 0:55 and 3:20. Alongside it, he played an instrumental called My Kimono and Sure Shot, two tracks which if I called them nondescript, would make them both sound better than they are.
Over the course of 1992/93, Amir Abadi and Peter Kuhlmann, working together under the name, Escape, released four 12-inch singles which combined trance and ambient music. Thematically, the records were linked by being set on different planets: Earth, Mars, Neptune, with their final record set on the star, Polaris. There would always be two trance tracks on each release, which would be titled Escape to… and Escape from… the respective planets/stars which were the subject of the release. The ambient tracks on each release would be titled Trip to… although the Mars release also included Trip from Mars.
Escape from Neptune was on the third Escape 12-inch, which to my ears was the most enjoyable of the Escape releases. It’s fast, frenetic and melodic stuff compared to some of the troughs and irritating sonic cul-de-sacs which some of the other releases contained. Escape 3 also contains the best ambient track of the set, and the only one which doesn’t follow the titling sequences of the other Escape records. The 17 and a half minute, Atmosphere Processor is the undisputed triumph of the Escape discography.
It appears that when they were putting Escape 3 together, Abadi and Kuhlmann were using the film, Aliens as an inspiration given that all of the tracks on it contain quotes from the film. However, when you think of how quotable Aliens is, the lines they lifted are disappointingly bland. I mean if you’re going to quote Aliens, go big or go home.
I think there are two major themes which Happy Shopper is based around:
1) Personal disenchantment - There are certain metaphorical signposts which show us that our lives are not moving in the direction that we would have hoped. One of the most dispiriting is when our food and everyday household items come exclusively from own brand sources. It’s pure snobbery, of course, but if you’ve been used to Fox’s Biscuits and Twinings Tea, you may consider McVitie’s and Tetley to be something of a comedown. But there is further to fall, if you’re not careful. And this song plunges into that poverty with its screams of OH CHRIST! WHO BOUGHT THESE TEABAGS/BISCUITS!, delivered with the absolute disgust of someone who has taken said biscuits and teabags out of the cupboard only to discover the Happy Shopper logo on the packaging.
It may be that they taste perfectly acceptable - for instance, my wife loves Sainsbury’s own brand of tortilla chips ahead of Doritos - but that garish orange and yellow logo, as was, shines out one message loud and clear: this is your failure. You can’t even afford “proper” biscuits and teabags. You might as well be supping water straight from the tap while chewing a slice of mouldy bread for all the nutritional satisfaction you’ll get from this. You thought you deserved Fortnum’s and yet here you are, scrabbling around with stuff that Spar would look down their noses at. You need better. You deserve better. Why haven’t you been able to enjoy better? Something….or someone…has led you to this crappy state of life….
Which leads us on to the second major theme of Happy Shopper:
2) Domestic discord - the song makes no bones about the fact that domestic relationships can easily sour once you get enmeshed in the tediousness of household chores. The ongoing relentlessness of keeping a house clean ends up meaning that intimacy and romance ends up as a clumsy fumble over the kitchen table.
As I write this, I’m thinking of my dirty bath upstairs, which needs cleaning. The eight stroke guitar riff that opens and underpins the song sounds like the circling motion of tired arms, windmilling to try and wash away stains that will refuse to shift. That eighth beat is the brief moment of respite before restarting the seemingly endless scrub. And in the back of your mind is the dull, draining thought that once this piece of drudgery is finished, there’s a whole list of other chores to work through. And in a few weeks’ time, you’ll be back scrubbing away another set of stains from this same spot and rotating your way through the same set of chores again.
The regular, metallic clattering which pops up throughout the track sounds like an amalgamation of endless bins needing to be put out with the pots and pans being pulled out of drawers and thrown to all corners of the kitchen. Once you throw children into the mix, and the day starts to become centred around ensuring that you’re in time to relieve the babysitter of their duties, so that you can make dinner with your groceries bought from Happy Shopper, then it’s hardly surprising that the facade cracks and the concept of domestic bliss and the nuclear family becomes something to be hated in as violent way as possible.
As the shout becomes Domestic, domestic, domestic bliss/Oh God, I hate it!, the answer to theme 1 starts to come into sharper focus. You’re not having the better life you deserve because of your responsibilities to others. All the rushing around to pick people up/drop them off, the cooking, the cleaning, the looking after the kids - that’s why your life is a misery. It’s their fault!
And as the track plunges into its final 20 seconds, with Jeff Leahy’s hatred of the crappy teabags being underscored by the clatter and bang of the drums, it sounds disconcertingly like the pots and pans are being used to bludgeon his partner to death - a man finally pushed over his limit by own brand produce, and changing his life in the most terrible way.
Jauntily psychotic, Happy Shopper is Foreheads in a Fishtank’s masterpiece, and I’m only sad that when the time comes for me to do this blog’s version of a Festive Fifty for 1993, I won’t be able to include it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bath to scrub.
*Peel had meant to play Happy Shopper on the previous Saturday, but had left the record at home. He was apologetic that this meant that it had thrown the schedule out by a week and meant that the eventual reveal of the Number 1 record on the Phantom Fifty would end up taking place a week later than planned - People have had to reorganise their summer holidays and everything.
The video is taken from Peel’s Radio 1 show on Friday 5 March 1993. By the time he came to re-broadcast Sissy Bar, seven weeks later, he had a clearer idea over what The Peter Fonda Album was all about. It was released by a collective that called itself Peter the Man Eeter and comprised six different artists, some of whom never released anything other than the track that they recorded for this album. I suspect that the artists involved all knew each other to some degree, not least because a couple of them appeared on a follow up album which was dedicated to Night of the Living Dead. One of the artists who appeared on both records, an underground film maker called Jon Moritsugu recorded a tune for the Living Dead record called The Death of Peter Fonda.
The Peter Fonda Album appears to have been inspired by a group of people who hero worshipped Fonda. I’ve not heard the album in full, and some of the tracks listed on it leave me wondering what they have to do with Peter Fonda. Zip Code Rapists for instance offer up a cover of Her Majesty, the shortest Beatles song, but surely She Said She Said would be a better choice given that Fonda inspired John Lennon to write it in the first place. Sissy Bar, though, offers a direct and obvious link to Fonda, being as it is a complete deconstruction of Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf, one of the key tracks on the soundtrack to Easy Rider, a film which Fonda co-wrote. As you’ll hear in the video, Peel was absolutely knocked out by what K-Tel Wet Dream had done and rightly so. There appear to be four different versions going on throughout the track, including snippets of the original recording, but interspersed with wild percussion, oriental guitar, funk freak outs, a refrain of the chorus which sounds like it’s been cribbed from a Liverpool rehearsal room space, a Woodstock-style ending, and at regular intervals throughout, Born to Be Wild’s iconic riff - albeit presented in thunderously compressed form.
K-Tel Wet Dream are smart enough to present all this in a little over 3 minutes and they keep the changes in mood and volume coming at regular intervals so nothing ever gets boring or irritating. I think that Sissy Bar nods to Fonda in a couple of other respects. The track as a whole could be taken as an attempt to set the acid trip scene in Easy Rider to music, but the use of compression in it makes me wonder whether they were inspired by Fonda’s cover of Donovan’s Catch the Wind. In late 1965, Fonda released a single, November Night, which he backed with Catch the Wind. Although Fonda sings it with a light sweetness of tone, the backing is considerably heavier than Donovan’s original with producer Hugh Masekela providing piercingly mournful washes of brass and a bassline that sits down heavily on the recording as though the wind that Fonda is trying to catch is less a breeze and more a mistral.
This is a very appropriate track for me to be writing about at the moment, because my wife and I have both been under the weather this week with one of those irritating viruses that isn’t strong enough to send you to bed for a few days, but instead contents itself with making you go through the week coughing grizzling and feeling generally underpowered.
Cough & Spit Out is the name given to the dub flip side of Danger Zone by Super Morris. The cough in question comes from the chestier end of the spectrum. For some reason which I can’t fathom now, I originally had a question mark against including this, but it’s a concise and pleasant piece of dub music. I suspect it may have been because I was still reeling in shock and wonderment at the tune by K-Tel Wet Dream which Peel played directly before it - more on that in the next post.
Wikipedia describes Tiger Trap as being part of the twee pop scene. I think they sound a bit more muscular than that, but what they do have in common with some of the other twee pop exponents that we’ve heard previously (The Orchids, Brighter, Cub etc) is an ability to confront painful emotions head on and with strength. The Supreme Nothing of the title appears to be someone that the narrator had regarded as a friend, only to find themselves being snubbed, so rather than trying to keep them in their lives, they’re rejecting them, without any sense of regret for what’s being lost. It all goes to prove the theory that a kind person is a vengeful person, and you cross them at your peril.
Life on the road in the music business is mythologised as one long round of alcohol, groupies, drugs, pranks and freedom. And for megastar bands, there’s probably enough of those distractions to alleviate the boredom of the travelling which takes up so much of the time on a tour. One other advantage that The Rolling Stones/U2/Guns ‘n’ Roses etc also enjoyed is that they were backed by enough money to overcome logistical setbacks and problems without too much difficulty. But for those further down the touring chain, the reality is very different, especially if you’re not travelling by plane, train or in a record-company backed Winnebago. And when things go wrong while you’re out on the road, then your future and your sanity is in the lap of the Gods - or at the very least the mechanics at Firestone. Indianapolis is a tune for every musician who strikes out on their own in a van which has done more miles than it should have, and for whom every penny in the tour kitty has to be used for a specific purpose. At this level, unexpected overheads can be life-changing in the worst way possible.
The problem here stems from a broken fuel pump necessitating an expensive repair job and a prolonged stay in Indianapolis, Indiana, where the only sexual activity that Brian Henneman can access is the tow-truck driver’s story of his arrest for sexual misconduct. Indianapolis serves as a reminder of how easy it was to be mired in boredom if you were stuck somewhere in the pre-Internet age. Phone calls had to be rationed to save money for instance, meaning that Henneman had to go 10 days before speaking to his girlfriend, doubtless while waiting for money to be sent through via Western Union. I’m guessing that a lack of available disposable income, after saving up for the repairs on their van, is why Henneman and friends find themselves stuck in a bar which has John Cougar playing on rotation on the jukebox. The only thing sustaining Henneman from killing himself or his bandmates is the thought of the road out of Indianapolis and how the sight of it will inspire him to greater musical heights in the future.
Henneman based the story of Indianapolis around a real life incident which befell him and members of the alt-country band, Uncle Tupelo, whose songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, both play on the recording; Farrar provides the blistering harmonica solo. Henneman recorded it for a one-off single release after his previous band, Chicken Truck had dissolved. The record attracted enough attention for Henneman to win a new record contract, which he used to invite some of his colleagues in Chicken Truck to form a new band with him, The Bottle Rockets, which would last up to 2021. On their 1997 album, 24 Hours a Day, The Bottle Rockets would record a new version of Indianapolis.
Peel really liked Indianapolis, and was sure that Andy Kershaw would like it as well. However, the copy that Peel had got for him was faulty, so he ended up playing the second purchase of the record that he had made for Kershaw, on this programme.
On the Soma recordings, Dot Allison sings of an angel which managed both to reanimate one of her former lovers and to possess her like an Incubus. On the Boys’ Own version, which this mix was originally released on, the angel is a contradictory mix of lover and master; it enslaves her because it wants to save her. Allison’s breathy Justify My Love style-storytelling reveals the potentially abusive nature of this relationship as she swears the listener to secrecy on other mixes, but this one takes time to describe how the attentions of the angel invigorate and revitalise her. If she is a captive, then she’s a willing one.
The chorus, They say we‘re hard to please/They say we have too much/As if all this would do/When all we want to have is fun speaks for an entire generation, lost to convenience and trinkets, but aching for spiritual gratification of mind and body.
This mix featured on the compilation, Volume Six. I think it may have been acting as a curtain raiser to listeners who would hear a lot from One Dove over the course of 1993. They released a debut album, which made the top 30 and two of their singles had also charted in the top 30 by the end of the year. That could have given them a platform to go on and enjoy further success over the coming years, but they had not enjoyed the compromises that their record label had forced them in to, and disbanded while writing material for a second album.
Exciting news, readers! After four months of redundancy, I’m starting a new job on September 29th. And with exquisite timing, here comes the exquisite Admiral Tibet asking why it is that working men - in this case sugar cane cutters - cannot earn enough money to pay the rent or feed themselves. The track is very good at highlighting the issues - namely that there are some branches of work which haven’t advanced much beyond the days of slavery, and that full and fair redistribution of wealth is something which isn’t a priority of those who could do something about it.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t put forward much of a solution to these issues. There’s no call for revolution, just a plea for the brethren to keep their heads down and wait for Jah to lead the many to their just reward. We can only hope that Jah has a good accountant given the claims that could be made. But, they’re disappointingly wishy-washy sentiments in the face of the problem. Were it not for the beautiful way they’re delivered, I’d almost be tempted to write Tell Me Why off as an example of CentristDancehall, a genre where you enjoy the grooves and make no waves. But then isn’t that the case for most working people?
Here’s a really nice letter that I discovered as I was going through the mail, and it comes from Manchester, Chorlton. I won’t give the names out to save on embarrassment. It says, “A friend of mine has just started nurse training in Dumfries. She has a boxy room in a staff residence and we agree that whenever you move house and you’re sat there feeling crap and alienated, turning on the radio and getting Peel in your room, gives you a feeling of being at home and no matter how many times you move house, turning on to the Peel show softens the blow.” Well that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be all about and that’s cheered me up a lot, reading that.
John Peel on 17/4/93 and in answer to a request in the letter for a Sebadoh record, he played them Two Years Two Days.
My selections came from a full 3 hour show. I was able to include everything I wanted to keep, but 3 selections fell from favour:
Luke Slater - Amil [Remix] On the Discogs review of Slater’s X-Tront EP Vol 1, which this track comes from, one reviewer puts forward the theory that Amil has nothing to do with amyl nitrite, but instead links to amiloride, which is used to treat high blood pressure. The music certainly does enough to convey the body working with the various beats and lines evoking the pumping of blood, heartbeats and crackling synapses. However, once the track moves into skronk territory with frequencies and modulations which sound like a migraine developing into a stroke, I had to make a decision, and if this was to end up on a mixtape, I think I would end up regretting it. The type of track which, if heard in company, you end up talking to the other people all the way through it, so as to distract them from the lapse in taste. All that being said though, it’s only a near miss. As is….
The Infotainment Scan (1993) was all about regressive idealism. You can’t live in the past like that. It’s a lot more dangerous than you think. Kids growing up hearing their mams and dads talking about how great 1976 and 1981 were - it’s bullshit! There have never been any great years. You get the odd moment here and there but never a clean year of wonder….and then all of a sudden you’ve got those ridiculous list programmes like One Hundred Great Horror Films and whathavya. (Mark E. Smith, p.197/198, Renegade, 2008, Penguin).
From what I can hear - and definitely from what I can read - A Past Gone Mad is a pure embodiment of that idea, with its swipes at Spangles, old football annuals, the glorification of murderers and, oddly, Ian McShane. Even the instrumentation makes clear that this is a track with its eyes fixed firmly on the future - there isn’t a dual drum kit to be heard. The problem is though that everything I’ve learned about A Past Gone Mad’s reason for existing has been learnt away from the actual recording itself. As Smith unleashes his screed against the things he would rather die than become, the production overwhelms his vocal almost to the point of inaudibility. What we end up with is a fairly inessential sounding techno track. The lo-fi cackling laughter at the end of the song could be a deliberate comment on this, but if we can’t hear the points being made, and it strikes me that this was a lyric which was intended to be heard, then who is the joke ultimately on? The 2025 me thinks that A Past Gone Mad is great, but it’s on behalf of the 1993 me, who would not have had the supporting information to hand, and who would have been wondering, “What’s so funny?” that it misses out.
I think that the reason why I initially react positively to Blast Off Country Style tracks is because it’s always nice to hear skinny guitar in amongst the growlier, abrasive guitar sounds that tended to be on Peel show playlists at this time. The problem invariably comes once Evelyn Hurley starts singing….
I was, however, able to place what her voice reminded me of, and why I suspect I may not be able to take them seriously in the future - although Peel gave them plenty of exposure during the 90s. Nevertheless, listening to Hurley I found myself transported back to 1992/93 and evenings spent watching the erotic drama, Eleven Days, Eleven Nights (1987), which I rented on a few occasions from a video shop in Penryn.
If you find The Cars original version of Drive to be a bit too po-faced and solemn, then this Steely & Clevie production, which served as the title track on Eustace Hamilton’s seventh studio album might be for you. The original is treated respectfully, Thriller U provides an impassioned vocal and there’s no big bwoy Carribean toasting rap dropped into the middle of it (I’ll drive ya home/Be ready ta go etc), but the synthesisers are, in typical dancehall style, a good deal more jaunty than they were on the original. The key difference is probably that you’d play Thriller U’s Drive in the middle of a party, and The Cars Drive at the very end of one.*
Peel felt that Thriller U’s version had a chance at being a hit single, which given that this show was being broadcast a few weeks after the top 3 singles in the UK chart were Oh Carolina, Informer and Mr. Loverman, and while the chart also contained other reggae flavoured songs like Sweat and reggae covers of 80s material such as Jamaican in New York, seemed a decent prediction. In the event, Thriller U never had a UK hit single, but my checking of the UK Singles Chart website provided me with a lightbulb moment that I hope I’ll be able to go on pursuing for as long as I enjoy listening to music.
My Friday evenings tend to be quiet these days. Nobody seems to rehearse plays on a Friday night anymore, and I don’t go out on the town. Instead, my wife and I sit at home and watch Gardeners’ World, while I might also have a football match on mute on one tablet, while scanning Bluesky to read people’s pithy remarks about the Top of the Pops repeats showing on BBC Four. I’ve been disengaged from the singles charts and contemporary music for nearly 20 years, I reckon. It’s a mixture of me growing older and the market changing. Given that the charts now include downloads of any song ever released, I wrote off any attempt to follow them given that it struck me they would be stuck in a perpetual version of the charts circa 1972, with contemporary releases jostling alongside re-releases of tunes that could be 10, 20 or 30 years old.
In this environment though, I found myself wishing that Top of the Pops were still around now. The great thing about it was that it gave viewers - whether they were in the target demographic or not - a snapshot of what contemporary pop music was like. Parents, grandparents, those who feel that music was better when they were young could all get some kind of handle on what was happening now. They wouldn’t necessarily rush out to buy any of it or namedrop it to try and appear cool, but it would at least keep them in the loop. That seemed to be gone now, and the consequence of it is that if you asked me to sing any hit song from 2010 onwards, I couldn’t.
But looking over the chart yesterday, with its blend of songs both modern and ancient, it struck me that in the age of YouTube, it would be easy to do your own version of Top of the Pops each week. Just choose 7 songs, all of which have to be climbing in the chart, regardless of how old they are - but skew more towards the newer releases than the older ones - and Bob’s your uncle, you have your contemporary pop music snapshot. My list from last night was:
I liked them all, though it’s a good thing I like electropop which seems to be the dominant style now. I intend to pick seven songs each Friday in order to give me that snapshot and in the case of the older tunes, educate myself on what I missed. I won’t do anything with this, except to maybe link contemporary tunes that I hear post-2010 with things that the artists themselves may have heard in Peel-aligned artists. In the main, it will serve to keep my head in the musical present, while my heart and soul remain in the musical past.
Video courtesy of All Reggae.
*In case you’re wondering, Thriller U sings “Mm-mm” instead of “pork pie”.
This blog is now reaching the stage where I could make playlists of tracks based not just on genre of music, but on specific subjects. Nutritious Treat would take its place on the Intense Driving Songs playlist alongside tunes such as Potvan by The Werefrogs, Bow Hitch-Hiker by Rollerskate Skinny and the pinnacle of the genre, Pacific Coast Highway by Sonic Youth. But, Nutritious Treat shares a sound closer to the blues rock rumble of Two Tons of Chrome by Gear Jammer. Indeed, it’s probably the first song I’ve heard since that record to produce what feels like the movement and life of a motor engine in full, ominous effect*. Using only bass and drums, godheadSilo create a thunderous wall of noise which serves to remind us that cars can be exceptionally dangerous things. The track roars and judders along like some kind of mechanical/beast hybrid.
The line Is it the alcoholic or the alcohol? provides an ominous extra layer of darkness, albeit one working with a clever degree of subtext. Those souped up Thunderosa Cadillacs could be dangerous enough to control at anytime, but they become lethal weapons when driven by someone who’s been drinking.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1993, there were 17,461 traffic fatalities which were alcohol related. These accounted for 44% of the total number of traffic related deaths in the USA for that year** The subtext comes in the way that godheadSilo use drink driving as a way to expose the hypocrisy behind the assertion that guns don’t kill; people do. Which is true, but giving them access to the tools which allow them to do so is a moral puzzle that America shows no sign of being able to solve. In the case of driving under the influence, what Nutritious Treat suggests is that we are fundamentally weak creatures, unable to resist the sweet temptation of alcohol, which then opens the door to behaviour and actions we were either always capable of, or thought we could get away with. However, there will always be a price to pay.
And yet, the song also feels upbeat, alive and excited as it jumps behind the wheel. If American Graffiti were set in 1992 Washington State, instead of 1962 California, then I can just picture the opening 50 seconds of Nutritious Treat soundtracking the journeys of Richard Dreyfuss and friends. Although the line referring to putting Chachiin charge suggests that godheadSilo were thinking of Happy Days rather than American Graffitti. Maybe, Chachi was the designated driver? Regardless, with cries of Thunderosa, Cadillac worm, we career into the final 20 seconds watching godheadSilo drive off, picking up speed, passengers hanging out of the windows, engine growling, exhaust exploding and on a journey towards their fate.
Video courtesy of Stars Kill Rock
*I’m discounting Tuesday by Milk Cult because its automobile music was produced from samples.
The dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation - John Peel after playing Testament Two on 17/4/93.
And indeed, it’s very easy to picture walking into any club in Britain over the last 32 years and hearing a clued in DJ playing any one of the three Testament tracks that make up Chubby Chunks (Vol 1). The disco swing and the house beats on all three tracks sound utterly timeless, and I have no hesitation in recommending Testament Two as perfect accompaniment either for a party or while doing work around the house.
Going by the John Peel wiki, Testament Two appears to be the only one of the tracks that he gave any airtime to. Listening to them all, this morning, it seems just about the right choice though I think that Testament One would have been in with a shout as it’s an absolute banger for the most part, but is let down by a piano piece which seems to have been lifted from a school music lesson. It’s clunky enough to lift the listener out of the track, whereas Testament Two is seamless in comparison. I’m also a little surprised that Peel wasn’t tempted by Testament Three, which is a little jazzier and more sonically interesting than the first two Testaments.
A year later, Chubby Chunks Vol. II came out - as with Vol. 1, on the Cleveland City label, out of Wolverhampton - and brought us Testaments 4, 5 & 6. While still focused on the dancefloor, they were a little more quirky and playful than the previous year’s tracks. Testament 6 is a good representation, I think, but there is no record of Peel playing anything from Vol.2, nor from the remainder of Chubby Chunks’ output. Nevertheless, the early Testament tunes appear to have stuck in the memory, with Testament One receiving fresh remix releases in 1994 & 2021. Testament Two was paired with Testament One on a 2003 re-release through S12.
I’ve spent the last couple of days soaking up the relaxing, dreamy, ambient tone of Spacey, which was presented on this 17/4/93 show, courtesy of the compilation album Volume Six, as a dry run for the overhaul which it would receive when it was recorded for Fluke’s second studio album, Six Wheels on My Wagon, later in the year.
The chilled feel on this first version is a perfect setting for lyrics which read as a counselling session set to music. Amidst the burbles of rainforest-like keyboards and descending piano scales, vocalist Jon Fugler delivers some gentle thoughts on the process of maturing and accepting that the certainties of youth can and should evolve with greater life experience: Everyone changed, always the way and always the same.
Perhaps, this was because he had turned 30 during 1992? All that being said, the lyrics suggest that change is good, providing you maintain some kind of link to your younger ideals: You can’t stop the love in you.
It makes for a calming, yet exciting mixture, and I think it’s superior to the album version, Spacey (Catch 22 Dub), which dispensed with the homilies, only retaining the various You can’t stop the fighting…refrains. The version on the Volume compilation outdoes the final recorded version, which wasn’t always the case, and in one infamous example threw a spanner in the works of this blog’s 1992 Festive Fifty.
Me-Jane sounds like it shares its lead riff with 50Ft Queenie, which gave PJ Harvey her first Top 40 hit, but it’s much the better song.
I’ve got so used to hearing Harvey songs where she’s either prostrating herself to a lover (Oh My Lover), or trying to dominate them (Rid of Me) that’s it a bit of a shock to hear one where she’s so viciously giving up on her man. During 1992, Harvey went through a relationship breakdown, which appears to have provided inspiration for the lyrics to a number of the tracks on Rid of Me. In the case of Me-Jane, the contempt and hatred is on full display as Polly reaches the end of her tether with her brutish, alpha-male other half. She may have fallen for the John Greystoke figure of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels, but the song suggests that he has now morphed into the apeman figure of the films, but without any of his redeeming values.
We know that there’s trouble brewing thanks to both the riff and Rob Ellis’s drum pattern, which very effectively convey a sense of foreboding within the tribe, which can be heard from one side of the jungle to another. While Polly starts out by conveying her contempt in coldly, unemotional tones, things quickly start to build to a more violently upset conclusion.
It’s not just a break-up song though. There’s a thread of self-affirmation running through the track, highlighted by the reversal of the famous line, Me Tarzan, you Jane (though this apparently was a misquote), which now sees Tarzan left out entirely and Jane foregrounding herself around who she is and what she wants. If it inspired one other woman to get out of a similar situation, it will have justified its existence.
Heartical is patois for genuine or sincere and this 1990 recording sees Lloyd Hemmings getting straight to the point on nothing less than the key tenet of Rastafari: The time to pack up, leave behind the everyday world of Babylon and make the journey to Zion to reconcile with Jah. The problem is, as Hemmings notes, too many people are obsessed with fighting wars or fighting with each other, to set their differences aside and make the collective move. Whether it’s warring countries or warring family members, Heartical Decision is a lament for the time and energy wasted on negative emotion.
It’s just unfortunate that it’s only in its last 20 odd seconds, from 3:00 to 3:25, that Hemmings really seems to get animated with a message to the older generation about how they may be able to persuade their children to accompany them, instead of being bidden off by them in ill grace. Typical that just as we start to get some detail on how this split could be avoided, the fade out kicks in - though the video segues on to the dub side of the single which was overseen by Augustus Pablo and Rockers All Stars.
Welcome everyone to another edition of A & R Officers’ Corner, where we once again try to answer the thorniest of questions about the mechanics of the music industry. Today, we go back to a real doozy, a point that’s been debated for as long as the marriage of art and commerce has existed. And that question is: Should singles released from an album serve as a gateway to what listeners can expect from an album, or should they purely be focussed on getting the public’s attention as a means of potentially luring them into buying the album, even if that ends up being something they didn’t expect?
If Kurt Cobain had been happy to write and record three Smells Like Teen Spirit-alikes alongside 9 or 10 tracks of whatever noisy, discordant, abrasive music he wanted to make on subsequent Nirvana albums, then maybe the course of his life would have taken a different turn. I’ve not been able to establish whether Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations were deliberately trying to fool record buyers with the single releases that led up to their second and final album, Hypnotwister, or whether they were following a plan to put accessible material out there ahead of unleashing the ball of fury that large parts of the album are made up of. I’ll be posting again about some of the tracks that best summarise the vibe of Hypnotwister, in the coming months, but having first suggested that they were trying to channel a spacier Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe with the November 1992 single, Misdiagnosedive, Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations now stepped on to The Verve’s * territory with the spacy and contemplative Moment of Truth.
Anyone who missed Misdiagnosedive - as I appear to have done on this blog - would have been tempted to hear Moment of Truth and think, “Ah! They’re going ambient.” And that’s no bad thing here. The track is far less tedious than The Verve could sometimes be in similar compositions. Indeed, the 9 and a half minutes fly by, despite the languid tone, and even when the track tries to up its tempo and energy levels in the last 2 minutes, the band maintain wonderful control over things. There’s never any sense of impatience or impetuosity, they know exactly what sounds they want to make and where they want to take the listener to. The rock solid rhythm section keep things perfectly moored as Howard King Jr. coaxes atmosphere and moodlines from his guitar.
Three times the track coalesces around a scat-mantra from King Jr., which sounds like it’s describing a process of transition. Does Howard’s reference to resurrection soulicide or worlds colliding refer to the moment that the consciousness passes from straight to high, or perhaps from life to death? In contrast to most of the material that the band recorded for Hypnotwister, this manages to be quite supportive and comforting. An oasis of calm in what ended up sounding like an emotionally incendiary record; and all put out in a single to lure in the unsuspecting.
I can only think it must have been a sales masterplan, especially given that neither the band nor John Peel followed the advice I would have been frantically giving to put out or play the album’s best track, Real World.
Apart from a comment that Fats Domino didn’t seem to get much contemporary radio play, Peel didn’t add anything else about his playing of Domino’s 1956 recording of Blue Monday on this show, but I’m wondering whether he was subconsciously inspired to do it by the fact that Sting’s new single, Seven Days had been released earlier that week, and maybe he felt that his audience deserved to hear a better example of a song about the stresses of a week.
For myself, I call an honourable draw between them, especially given that Seven Days deals with Sting spending his week contemplating having to genuinely fight a rival for his lover’s affection, who is bigger and stronger than he is; whereas Fats deals with the standard blues lamentations of having to face the horror of Monday morning and then dragging his ass through the working week to get to payday on Friday before a day of debauchery on Saturday, and a day of rest on Sunday. You’ve heard those themes a million times but Fats’s style carries the day.
In case you’re wondering, after playing this version of Blue Monday, Peel chose not to follow it up with an obvious open goal.
Listening to Seven Days again, I can imagine Fats Domino absolutely smashing a cover of this.
Videos courtesy of Jazz Everday! (Fats) and kirtww (Sting).
A classic case of misdirection in the title as there’s nothing particularly jazzy - or indeed jizzy - in this mix of Spunky Marimba. The Spunky Mix does feature some keyboard parts which sound marimba like, but is a less interesting track than the Marimba Mix, which, curiously, doesn’t feature anything resembling a marimba.
Instead we have a perfectly serviceable piece of techno electronica, which with its whistle refrains and drum breaks intermingling with pulsing rhythms and shadily, melancholic synth lines does a good job of taking the listener to the Shindig club nights running in Newcastle at the time. Shindig started as a duo (Lee Mellor and Scott Bradford). On subsequent releases - though not this one - they would be joined by Chris Scott, who would go on to enjoy a top 10 UK hit with I Believe as part of Happy Clappers. That record got its initial release on Shindig’s own label.
Video courtesy of The Space Cadet 90s House and Techno.
For all that though, why have I only included one track from Roovel Oobik’s session? Well, I should say that it was touch and go that Betterlife [Recreation Version] made it on to the metaphorical mixtape at all, but having listened to the session again this morning, I did seriously consider including the whole session here. We’re back in Revolver territory again…
All of the songs in the session follow a pattern: strong, melodic starts which get undercut by weak vocals - albeit I need to make allowances that vocalist, Tonu Pedaru, was singing in a second language - and that ultimately lead onto slightly overindulgent playouts. I did nearly change my mind and include Masters of Day Dream Machinery here as well, but I think that Betterlife [Recreation Version] does all anyone really needs to be able to enjoy Roovel Oobik. For me, the gorgeousness of the wah-wah guitar work and the ska-dub playout counterbalance the gormless vocals. We can’t have one without the other, so let’s embrace the glorious and the grim here.
Peel hoped that Roovel Oobik would come back and do another session the following year, but in the event, he never played anything by them ever again after the session was repeated on 20 August 1993. He doesn’t appear to have played anything from their 1994 album, Psychikosmos, and it took him a decade to discover that from the mid-90s onwards, several members of the band had been recording and gigging as a dance act called Una Bomba.
He always spoke fondly of them though, remembering when, during their brief stay at Peel Acres, the band would always go outside to smoke on a grass verge opposite the house. During one smoking break, Peel went out to join them and told them to consider the verge as a part of Estonia, the band even made up a sign which they planted on the verge saying, Welcome to Estonia. In 2003, an Estonian TV crew interviewed Peel about the band and took footage of the verge. They also passed on to him a copy of the Una Bomba album, Aerosol and Peel played a track from it on 19 March 2003.
In 2005, Roovel Oobik reformed to release an album called Supersymmetry. Since then they’ve released two further albums, the most recent being 2024’s Transcent.
Video courtesy of VibraCobra23 Redux
Apologies for not being able to include the dots over the o in the band’s name.
The video is taken from Peel’s show on 17/4/93, and as you’ll hear him say, Come Alive is taken from the album, Cake and Eat It, but what he didn’t mention was the lengthy journey that The Blue Up? had gone through to get an album distributed.
Formed as an all-female quartet in 1984, the Minnesota outfit released two singles in the mid-80s on Susstones and by 1989 were set to record their first album. The album, called Introducing Sorrow, was due to be released by British label, Midnight Music, but it ultimately never saw the light of day due to Midnight Music going bust. By the time The Blue Up? recorded Cake and Eat It, they had reduced themselves to a trio and, clearly eager to make up for lost time, produced an album boasting 23 tracks, albeit half a dozen of them were snippets ranging between 7 & 23 seconds in length.
With its jittery time-signature verses and strident choruses, Come Alive somehow marries together Eastern European folk with Goth rock. In the verses, singer Rachel Olson - now better known as Ana Voog - sounds as though she’s channeling the heroine of Another Day by Paul McCartney, a woman out of place in the modern world, simply trying to get through another day without being harmed or hurt. And yet lurking under the surface is a more confident, sensual figure waiting to burst forth when the time is right. The cries of despair after each chorus showing how desperately the heroine wants to break free of the constraints placed upon her, constraints which in Voog’s case were later attributed to Post-traumatic stress disorder and agoraphobia. These conditions foreshadowed Voog’s later work as a visual and internet artist, where she would garner notoriety with anacam, one of the earliest life-casts on the nascent internet, in which she set up a webcam to broadcast her life 24/7, and did so for 13 years. This Vice article by Voog from 2018 gives more details of why she did it and what she learnt from it.
The band clearly had a high opinion of Come Alive as they re-recorded it for their only major label album, Spool Forka Dish, released on Columbia Records in 1995, but the snippet of that which I heard on genius.com suggests that, like Shonen Knife before them, The Blue Up? lost something of what made them so compelling once they stepped into bigger and shinier facilities. Stay in the Catacombs where The Blue Up? recorded this version and enjoy something both catchy, chilling and icily magnificent.
Back in the 60s and 70s, if John Peel was excited about the release of a new album, it was common practice for him to play the whole record on one of his shows. Examples include Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles* and Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan** (as well as Desire by the same artist). In subsequent years, Peel would content himself by playing trios or quartets of tracks from new records that particularly excited him.
On 17/4/93, he dotted 4 tracks from Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, the debut album by Swirlies, throughout his programme. My notes show that only Pancake would have interested me enough to keep on a mixtape. I like the tension between the driving, grinding rock sound coming up against the woozy keyboards and off-key singsong vocals of Seana Carmody. The lyrics mentioned missed classes, and given that the album’s tracklisting featured titles such as Bell and His Life of Academic Freedom, I wondered whether the album might be a concept record about life in college. I listened to the record last night and soon discovered that it wasn’t. If the record has any kind of theme, it’s around those of regret and tough love, but most of the lyrics are too abstract to be definitively pinned down.
What I must say about Blonder Tongue Audio Baton is that it is very much a record of two halves, and as I waited for Pancake to roll around - it’s the sixth track out of eleven on the album - I found myself wishing that I hadn’t felt the need to satisfy my curiosity about whether the record was a concept album. I found the first five tracks a slog to listen to, mainly because Swirlies fell into the trap of layering them in all kinds of discordant sounds and weird modulations, while simultaneously failing to lift the tempo above meandering, and I discovered last night that I really cannot get on with meandering drone rock, no matter how scuzzed up the band make it.
Then we reached Pancake, the halfway mark in the album and the first track that Carmody sings on. The first five tracks were sung by Damon Tuntunjian, which had me wondering whether Swirlies were in the same category as Moonshake and whether I would find myself leaning more towards “her over him”. Nevertheless, it was a welcome harbour to reach after 5 tracks of audio gristle. But then something rather wonderful happened. Over the second half of the record, Swirlies leave behind the sonic kinks and knots and let the material breathe a bit more. The album becomes progressively more “songy”, more involving and more exciting to listen to. I’m always happier to hear an album which has a stronger second half than first half, not least because it’s better to be looking at the time and thinking “How much more have I got left to enjoy?” instead of “How much more have I got to endure?”
But I only took one track out of the four that Peel played. A look at the tracklisting for this show reveals that, alongside Pancake, Peel played Bell, His Love Just Washed Away and His Life of Academic Freedom, which are…let’s see…tracks 2, 4 & 5 on Blonder Tongue Audio Baton. So, Peel was leaving us in no doubt which half of the album his preferences lay with. In fairness, he did play tracks from the second half of the record in subsequent programmes, ***but based on my experiences with it, I can’t help but wish that he’d gone back to his 1970s self and played the whole album, so as to give a fuller and truer picture of what it was like. Sometimes, John Walters’s attitude of We’re not here to give the public what they want, we’re here to give them what they didn’t know they needed could work against both audiences and artists, and that’s something which I feel happened in this programme.
Video courtesy of Swirlies - Topic
*Strictly speaking, the link doesn’t go to a Peel show. Radio London got an advance copy of Pepper about three weeks before it was released, and Ed Stewart was the first DJ to play it, albeit with a highly emotional Peel sitting in with him as he did so. I’d be surprised if Peel didn’t give the album a full play on The Perfumed Garden at some point.
*** On 1 May 1993, Peel played what I think may be the best track on the album, Jeremy Parker, but aggravatingly, the file of that show, which I made my selections from, missed the track off, so it won’t be blogged about here.
