Guys and Dolls - John Peel Show - Saturday 10 April 1993 (BBC Radio 1)

With this show, Peel completed potentially his longest run of weekly airtime since the days of The Perfumed Garden. Between his time sitting in for Jakki Brambles and the two editions of his own show on Friday 9 April and tonight, he had accounted for just under 18 hours’ worth of Radio 1’s output for the week. His weekly two-hour BFBS programme had also gone out today, though this may have been a pre-record given that Peel had forsaken a Saturday morning lie-in so as to catch a train to Sheffield and take part in one of the panels at the Sound City ‘93 event.

On getting back to London that afternoon, Peel had been delighted to find waiting for him in the post a copy of In My World by High On Love. He was so pleased, he put it into that evening’s show. Less pleasing to him was the weekly letter that he had received from an anonymous correspondent whose letters contained instructions about things they wanted Peel to do for them regarding the football pools. However, Peel was never able to oblige because he didn’t understand the terminology. He asked if anyone knew the person that was sending him these letters, and if they did, to ask them to stop.

The selections from this programme were taken from a 90 minute file. My notes excitedly described the shortlist I’d made as With a handful of exceptions, all killer and no filler. That didn’t stand up to subsequent scrutiny given that 3 selections fell from favour:

Th’ Faith Healers - Sparklingly Chime [Peel Session] - I was quite excited to see these back on the Peel show, but despite a decent chorus, this was ultimately a bit too meh. The link has the whole session, including Peel’s intros, but the most interesting thing from an historical point of view is the brief news snippet before Sparklingly Chime which included the story about an off-guard John Major referring to three of his Eurosceptic Cabinet members as “bastards”.  More innocent times of course, especially given that I’ve a feeling that some of Major’s successors would probably have used far stronger terms, 20-odd years later.*

Blast Off Country Style - Social Firefly - This is one of those tracks which charms you on first acquaintance and then repels you when you go back to meet again. What sounds light and charming on the first listen morphs into something feeble and annoying on subsequent hearings.

L’Empire Babuka and Pepe Kalle - Mabele Riche - my shortlist notes called this soukous track, magnificently smooth and I was looking forward to hearing it again, but having just derided Blast Off Country Style for being too feeble, my problem here was that the track sounded too slick. I really do seem to want the moon on a stick sometimes, don’t I?

There was one track I couldn’t get hold of:

Crane - Deconstruct [Peel Session] - This was from a repeat of their second Peel session and it would have been included as a piece of very enjoyable funk metal. After back announcing it, Peel reported that Crane had lived up to the track title and had disbanded. The wiki link talks about how, with the exception of Peel and the North East media, Crane struggled to get wider attention. 

It may have helped if they had changed their name, given that they formed two years after the similarly named Cranes, another band who Peel briefly championed and who found something of a benefactor in Robert Smith of the Cure.  While Crane toiled, Cranes supported The Cure on tours, a Smith remix of one of their songs gave them a Top 30 hit and when Smith hosted Peel’s show four days before Peel’s death, he included that very same Cranes hit on his playlist. 

If a promoter booked a band expecting Cranes’s dream pop and instead got Crane’s catchy but abrasive funk metal, then I’m sure the blow back from the complaints and inquests from people who had hoped to hear Jewel rather than Asleep must have worn them down in the end. 

Full tracklisting

*The dating on the link is quite strange. The “bastards” story broke over the weekend of 24 July 1993, though the John Peel wiki lists a repeat play of the session on 30 July 1993. For further confusion, the video has the tracks sequenced in the order that they went out on 10 April.