My notes describe this show as being …at times, like a Peel Show version of Junior Choice. This is because at least two of the records played on the show were inspired by children. He played Open the Door, Richard! by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, originally recorded in 1947, in response to a fax he had received from James Turner, aged 6, from Cardiff. James wrote to say that he liked Peel’s show, that he had a tape of Jordan’s music and wanted to know whether Peel liked him too. Peel dedicated Open the Door, Richard! to James, claiming that this, and Silver Dollar, were the first songs in his life that he had learned the words to.
Meanwhile, Peel’s son, Tom, was away on a school trip to Normandy, so he dedicated 33% Free by Ford to him, just in case he was able to hear the programme on a long wave frequency. According to the John Peel wiki though, Peel ended up playing the other side, Friendly, which ended up delaying the 11:30pm news by an extra minute.
Other dedications included Enna Garrib by Harram, which went out to the taxi driver who had taken Peel from Stowmarket to Colchester earlier in the week. This was the longest journey he had ever done by cab, though he didn’t specify which roads he’d been taken on.
A14/A12 covers 28.6 miles, A14/A12/A134 would have been 28.7 miles, with the A14 alone offering the longest journey of all at 30.2 miles. If he was using “Stowmarket” to encompass a pick up from Peel Acres, then the distances increase to 31.2 miles via A14/A12, 31.4 miles if using Combs Lane before the A14/A12, but the quickest journey of the lot - in terms of distance - would have been via the B1115, which was only 26.2 miles, though it was the longest journey in terms of time, at 48 minutes.
Perhaps Peel had needed to use the taxi in order to take him to see The Fall, who he had seen in Cambridge, earlier in the week, and whose performance he described as at their most non-commital. He opened the show by playing Everything Hurtz, which would have made a nice partner to a similarly named REM hit which was clogging up the airwaves around April/May 1993.
This show was also to have featured the naming of winners for a competition relating to Sebadoh, but he had received no entries for it. Peel blamed himself for this as he had given out what he termed a silly address for the entries to be sent to and realised in retrospect that this may have put people off.
The show was notable for Peel being thrown into a state of alarm when he realised, halfway through the programme, that he had mistimed the music he was going to play through the various hours of his show. One hour had 75 minutes’ worth of music programmed in, while another hour only had 45 minutes’ worth. This was problematic because he also had to ensure that the news bulletins came in at the right time.
One record which was unaffected by all this was Ritmista! by Astrospider, which was the first fruit of Peel’s hookup with the Belgian label, Wonka Beats. Peel had made contact with them during his Grand Tour of Europe, the previous autumn, and they had promised to send him all of their future releases.
The selections from this show were taken from a full 3 hour programme. Everything which made my initial list of selections was available, but five choices fell from favour on relistening:
Blade - Keep It Goin’ On - UK rapper, Blade, made history in June 1993 when he released the double-album, The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength. This was one of the first albums ever to be released via crowdfunding:
The original crowd funded album, just goes to show how far ahead of the game Blade was. I sent off my cheque (for £25 from memory) to Blade months before the album was released and my name is in the album. Every mail order piece of vinyl I bought from Blade had a hand written note from him included. Absolute legend of the UK rap scene. (A messageboard comment by sskelly on Discogs, 13 August, 2021).
Keep It Goin’ On was the opening track on The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength. It always had a question mark against it, because it was OK, but not OK enough to make me want to keep it. I then did that thing I occasionally do where I listen to an album that a track has been taken off to see whether it would ultimately make my mind up for me - see Gallon Drunk on the previous Friday’s Peel Show. I need to stop doing this, because, apart from setting it in context, it really isn’t a particularly relevant method of choosing whether to include a single piece of music by comparing it to potentially better pieces of music by the same artist. Make no mistake, some of the tracks I heard from The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength (I didn’t listen to the whole album) were very good indeed. For instance, Gripper the Pitbull (The Approach) would have got on without any problems at all. But ultimately, doing this only caused me to wish that Peel had been playing that instead of this. As I listened to the other tracks I became quite beaten down by the aggression and attack, it all seemed to become rather one note. Hence, why my summary of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hyper, which I listened to after some prolonged exposure to Blade, was so succinct. After all the moaning, it was a necessary blast of effervescence. Still, I have a Blade track down on my list of selections from Friday 28 May 1993, so maybe he will end up in the mixtape after all.
Ohio Players - Walt’s First Trip - 1970s funk and a track recorded for their 1972 album, Pleasure, which appears to have been a companion album to another album they released the same year called Pain. A look at their album covers suggests that the team behind This is Spinal Tap may have had both them and Roxy Music in mind when it came to the idea around the Smell the Glove album cover. I sometimes get blindsided with surprise when Peel plays a funk/soul track because of a misconception I have about him not being keen on the genre. This is palpably untrue and is most likely down to me constantly making the touristy mistake that because Peel preferred the output of labels like Stax over Motown, that any soul based record appearing on his show is a surprise. As a result it means that I’ll initially include pleasant if unremarkable instrumentals like this one. It’s only on re-listening that I find myself thinking less about how I would dance to the tune and more about what I would be ordering for a starter if it was playing in a restaurant. Pleasant but wholly unremarkable. Speaking of whom…
The Edsel Auctioneer - Philled/Summer Hit [Peel Session] - Oh lads, lads, lads….another name to add to the list alongside Stereolab and The Hair and Skin Trading Company of artists who regularly make my initial list of inclusions but who fall from favour at the moment that I would be pressing the record button on the metaphorical mixtape. This is the third occasion that I’ve left The Edsel Auctioneer out in the cold. I’m not going to lie, their name is a big turn-off for me, but ultimately they are far too bland for me to want to keep hold of. My notes say that I agreed with Peel that Summer Hit was the best track of the session.
Both Philled and Summer Hit ended up on The Edsel Auctioneer’s second album, The Good Time Music Of…, released in 1995. Looking at the track titles, my interest was piqued by it including a track called 11th September ‘94*. Morbid curiosity provoked me to listen to it to see whether the band had any kind of foresight for the terrible events that would take place on that date, seven years later. But all I got was, what d’you know, a pleasant but inessential instrumental track, which is notable only for the fact that it has commentary from Leeds United’s 2-1 win over Manchester United, which was played on the same day, in the background.
The full session is available including two additional songs called Simple and State of Grace.
Candy Machine - The Merchant’s Square/Macrobot - Peel played three tracks from the Baltimore band’s eponymous debut album on this show. These two made my initial list, The Constant didn’t. Having listened back to the tracks, I see now that the only reason I chose them to start with is because I liked the band’s name. The Edsel Auctioneer were always up against it, and ultimately they missed out because the quality wasn’t good enough. Candy Machine’s name promised sweet treats, but the music was gnarlier and lumpier than I thought it would be or that I could stand it being. The Candy Machine album is available for listening. The Merchant’s Square and Macrobot are the first two tracks.
Admiral Bailey - Can’t Keep a Good Man Down - This started out quite promisingly, but I lost patience with it when halfway through, the Admiral abandoned what he was doing and started to perform Psalm 23 - The Lord Is My Shepherd instead.
*By curious quirk of fate, the Peel Show that I’ve just finished listening to for this blog was the one from exactly a year before The Edsel Auctioneer recorded that instrumental.
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