Guys and Dolls: Slint - Good Morning, Captain (10 April 1993)

 

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Coming in at Number 23 on The Phantom Fifty, Good Morning, Captain was the closing track of Slint’s second and final album, Spiderland.

This is the first Slint track that I’ve heard, and I see now why Colin Murray cited them as an example of the music he might play when he took on the Peel slot in late 2006.* In the event, like Keir Starmer, he promised the faithful one thing, and then once he got his prize, he compromised everything to buggery. I’ve no idea whether Murray ever actually played anything by Slint in his 3 years hosting the 10pm show - I stopped listening to him after the first couple of weeks when it became clear that Peel show and OneMusic listeners were not the demographic he was targetting - but I’m sure that if he did, they were tucked well away after his plays of Snow Patrol, Elbow and his favourite Family Guy clips.

That being said, any of Slint’s tracks from Spiderland would have fitted well on Murray’s show as a lead in to the best part of it. In the final minute of his programmes, at 11:59pm, Murray would sign off with the line, In a minute from now, today will be over, and this would lead to a chopped-up, bitesized collage of clips from that day’s news stories. The tone was usually downbeat, faintly ambient, slightly trippy and gently haunting. Slint’s music would make a perfect match to this.

Good Morning, Captain is a ghost story. I’m not saying that because of Brian McMahan’s quietly spoken delivery, which is a feature of nearly every track on Spiderland, but rather, it’s the creepy bass riff that serves as the foundation of the song - and which is subsequently supported by some spidery guitar work - while McMahan tells the story of a shipwreck survivor haunted both by the memory of his lost colleagues but also by the child who arrives at 5:07. 

I’ve seen a couple of theories floated about who the child is. The line, I want the police to be notified led one Reddit user to posit that the Captain was face-to-face with his childhood self and that the promises that I’ll make it up to you, were the adult self promising the child self, that he would make up for things suffered during childhood. It’s a persuasive thesis, especially if the shouts of I miss you! during the final minute are a lament for lost innocence. 

For myself, I still go with the ghost theory, and I think that the shipwreck may not necessarily be set during the age of the galleon ship, but could be a family sailing trip gone wrong, with the Captain being the family patriarch, attempting to outrun his responsibilities only to find grief and guilt catching up to him, once he’s behind the door of his beach-house.

Video courtesy of rasalinga.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

*I have a clear memory of seeing this quote on a brilliantly written article (which appears to be missing now) which lamented that this kind of promise wasn’t being delivered by Murray and that his 10pm show was a musical dead end for listeners who expected a broader range of music at that time of night. With the passing of time, I’ve come to see that the model for Murray’s 10pm show wasn’t really John Peel at all, but rather Mark Radcliffe’s Graveyard Shift from the previous decade. The principal difference being, as the list from Murray’s In the Company Of feature shows, he was a wretched starfucker in a way that Radcliffe wasn’t.

DISCLAIMER - I make no bones about the fact that I regard Colin Murray as pretty much my least favourite DJ in the 20 odd years that I listened to Radio 1. However, on Five Live, I think he’s tremendous. As a speech radio host/interviewer, he’s one of the best around. It’s only when he has to play records, that I get impatient and unkind about him.

Guys and Dolls: Hamp Jones - Pack Your Clothes (10 April 1993)

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Hamp Jones was one of the many variations applied to the name of Harmon “Hump” Jones, who at some point in 1957, wrote and recorded three songs: Lookin’ for my Baby, You’re Not My Girl and Pack Your Clothes. Musically, all three sit at the point where rhythm and blues intersects with swing, but Jones was clearly influenced by rock ‘n’roll too.  Listen to the melody of the verses on Pack Your Clothes and it’s apparent that once Jones’s dumped lover has packed their belongings, he fully intends on having them unpack them again at Heartbreak Hotel…

Video courtesy of DJ Pete Pop.

Guys and Dolls: High on Love - In My World [San Fran Vibe] (10 April 1993)

 

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Peel had spent most of Saturday 10 April 1993 up in Sheffield. He’d travelled up there to take part in a panel discussion at one of the events being held for Sound City ‘93. He then returned to London to present his regular show. Waiting for him, in the Radio 1 office, was a 12 inch called In My World by High on Love, aka Chris Rushby and Roland Armstrong, two DJs otherwise known by the frankly superior name of Stoned Democracy. Armstrong would later go on to form Faithless. He’s also Dido’s brother, proving that John Peel shows are often little more than a variant on the six degrees of separation game.

Peel was so taken by In My World - which fuses together reggae, gospel and dance music - that he reworked the running order for that evening’s show so that he could play it, just hours after hearing it for the first time. Indeed, it featured fairly frequently over the coming weeks.

At 32 years’ distance, parts of In My World sound laughably dated now. I’m thinking particularly of the farting saxophone sounds which were ubiquitous at the time.  But, its ambition can’t be faulted as it tries to create a late 20th Century Summer of Love vibe, with its references to where “Candlestick Park and Haight and Ashbury meet” combined with theories about God owning a pink umbrella and second hand shoes. Overall, what’s most remarkable about In My World is the way it manages to be simultaneously chill and aggressively humane. Some of the calls for racial tolerance in this sound like they’ve been learnt from the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprasy school of public speaking, but please don’t let that put you off.

Video courtesy of Freddy Loves.

Guys and Dolls: Capricorn - 20 Hz (10 April 1993)

 

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Before I go any further, I must thank Hans Weekhout for confirming for me that he used the alias of Capricorn because it is his star sign. Indeed, he shares his birthday with someone who tends to overshadow anyone else born on the same day. So, if you enjoy this track, please send birthday cards to Jellywood Studios in Amsterdam. On the basis of 20 Hz, he deserves the acclamation.

20 Hz has three distinct movements and is, for the most part all about the beats, which hit home in a particularly European way. 

The first movement puts me in mind of Date M by The Traveller, because it shares with it what I previously described as bicycle spoke percussion. Listening closely, I now recognise those struck bicycle spokes as probably being a glass bottle xylophone.  Whatever it is, it makes for a wonderfully beguiling melody line to lead the listener into the centrepiece of the track.

For the second movement, at the 58 second mark, we get wind of something which initially sounds like radio interference but which builds over the next 75 seconds into a relentless onslaught of marching band drumming, all underpinned by an equally insistent throbbing bassline.

As the drummers fade out into the distance, around 2:15, we move to the third and best part of the track. The synths squelch and swell, the beats change from rhythmical to groovy and the whole thing starts to take off into the stratosphere. It’s almost a shame that everything loops around again over the final three minutes, given that the first 3 and a half minutes are so perfectly realised that if Weekhout had chosen to fade out at 3:30 then 20 Hz could be held up as having no flab or excess on it all. Just a perfectly realised jewel. At the very least, having displayed it’s brilliance through it’s first half, a repeat through the second half allows any waverers time to get to the dance floor.

It’s a surprise that 20 Hz wasn’t a hit in ‘93, however, four years later, a reissue called 20 Hz (New Frequencies) snuck into the Top 75 of the UK Singles chart.

Video courtesy of paolosounds.

Guys and Dolls: Rollerskate Skinny - Bow Hitch-Hiker (10 April 1993)

 

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24 hours earlier, John Peel played Potvan by The Werefrogs, a song which I described as evoking the sense of a stoned man driving at 5mph.  I was reminded of it while listening to Bow Hitch-Hiker by the Dublin band, Rollerskate Skinny, which had just been released on their Trophy EP and would also feature on their debut album, Shoulder Voices. 

Imagine if the toked driver of Potvan picked up a couple of hitchhikers, but they turned out to embody the spirit of the songs, Pacific Coast Highway by Sonic Youth and Cumulus by Pram. And I feel that way because with its multiple movements and styles, Bow Hitch-Hiker manages to convey the disturbing intensity of the former track and the unsettling oddness of the latter, all while mixing in their own brand of Celtic stoner rock. At times they sound like the disturbed older brother of The Thrills.

Wherever Rollerskate Skinny and their passengers are heading in this track, we’re left with a sense of people trying and failing to outrun their pasts. The swirl of sounds within this track, which run from the melodic to the abrasive suggest moments of psychological calm in constant battle with psychological turmoil. And what about lines like, It’s alright, all the girls are here now/All the girls are dead.  Just what has singer Ken Griffin been doing? Whatever it is, lines like It’s like a million years of shame on my back and in my ears/But it’s alright, all the girls are gone suggest that he’s been carrying a heavy burden around. As the various crunchy riffs fade out through the last minute and a half of the song, we’re left with a circulating seven note riff running around the inside of the brain, like a guilt which can never sit still.

The Jittery White Guy Music blog included Bow Hitch-Hiker among their favourite 1000 songs, and also talked about what a noisy live act Rollerskate Skinny were. Something which Radio 1 listeners got to experience when the band recorded a Peel Session at the end of May, which included a live version of Bow Hitch-Hiker.

Video courtesy of Austo77.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.