So we've got to the end of the first month's worth of shows, during which time I started getting to grips with the different roles I was playing in Oliver, learning the songs and adapting to the strange mix of activity and inactivity that characterise rehearsals.
From this show I made 8 selections, 3 of which were from the show's session guests, Barbel, a Liverpool based group who released a mini-LP, One Horse Planet, in 1989 and an EP, Inferno, in 1991. The Peel session they did isn't available for sharing sadly though it was made up of the following tracks:
Kicker
Lay-By
Income Tax
None of those tracks appear to have been recorded by them anywhere else and they didn't release any other records after Inferno.
I really hope the video they recorded for this song looks like this.
The other 5 selections can be seen in the posts below this one and I'm so pleased that access to more unedited shows has seen hip-hop and dance start to make its presence felt.
Programme tracklisting
Video courtesy of issakomat.
Saturday, 21 February 2015
Oliver: Ultramarine - Geezer (30 November 1991)
For its January 2015 issue, Uncut magazine managed to tear itself away briefly from the altar of their regular cover star, Neil Young to present a review of Ultramarine's reissued 1992 album, Every Man and Woman is a Star. Sam Richards's review used phrases such as "bucolic electronica" and "pastoral techno" to describe an album which he/she? felt pioneered techno dance music's initial excursions into "Arcadian bliss rather than dystopian dread".
This track, Geezer, popped up on several of Peel's playlists through late 1991 and has a nice Sunday morning comedown feel to it. It walks the line of blandness at points, the type of sound that DJs on the radio use as background music "bed" tracks. It wouldn't surprise me if Rob Da Bank had been a big fan of this. However, I like it enough to give it the benefit of the doubt and the fact that this clip was filmed at a Cornish festival (Port Eliot near Saltash - an area which on the few times I drove through it when I went to North Cornwall made me wonder if there was anything for people to enjoy unless they were prepared to schlep over to neighbouring Plymouth) clinches the deal.
Video courtesy of downbylaw2012.
Friday, 20 February 2015
Oliver: Fu-Schnickens - Ring the Alarm (30 November 1991)
If I struggled to follow the thread of Krispy 3's, Don't Be Misled then I was completely flummoxed by this piece of machine gun like reggae hip-hop from Brooklyn based trio, Fu-Schnickens. At times like this, all one can do is allow oneself to be floored by the artistry involved and to applaud them for their excellent taste in samples. The "Ring the alarm" refrain being taken from the 1985 single of the same name by reggae/dancehall artist, Tenor Saw.
The source material.
Videos courtesy of Fu-ShnickensVEVO and Alexblaj18 (Tenor Saw).
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Oliver: Back From Detox - Dove People (30 November 1991)
Oh such sweet naievety...
When I first heard this track, I thought Dove People were pacifists. I was only 38 at the time.
Video courtesy of disruptcore.
Monday, 16 February 2015
Oliver: Bleach - Wipe It Away (30 November 1991)
When John Peel left London in the early 70s to move to the village of Great Finborough in Suffolk, he threw himself fully into the country life. Whether it was inviting everyone at his local pub back to Peel Acres to celebrate Christmas 1973, opening the village fete, swopping Anfield for Portman Road to get his football fix or running the local youth club (the brilliantly named Great Finborough International Airport), Peel was a part of the East Anglian furniture.
His residence there also meant that the East Anglian music scene had an important ambassador which provided East Anglian bands/artists with a window for their music, similar to that which Welsh bands currently enjoy with Huw Stephens. At the time I started listening to Peel in the late 90s/early 00s, he would play plenty of examples of "the sound of young Stowmarket/Bury St Edmunds/Lowestoft" (delete as applicable). Names like Cowcube, Miss Black America and The Vaults. Peel planned to wear a Vaults T-shirt in the photograph that would have accompanied his unwritten article from his Peruvian holiday in order to give the band more publicity.
The best remembered of the East Anglian bands that Peel played were probably Extreme Noise Terror, whose short sharp bursts of explosive grindcore could inspire Peel to rhapsodic lyricism when singing their praises. If you've never heard Extreme Noise Terror's music, it's basically the sound of a band vomiting, shitting itself and spontaneously combusting in quick succession.
Ipswich based 4-piece, Bleach were another Suffolk band that Peel championed and it was a message he read from the band informing him that their debut album would be out in early 1992 that encouraged him to play this track from their debut release, Eclipse EP, which had been released in 1990.
Starting out with a thumping drum pattern, the song is given the hurry along by Salli Carson's stroppy sing-song yowl as she canters through a thoroughly pissed off and demotivated list of complaints from the perspective of an exhausted worker - numbed by the tediousness of what she's doing, disgusted at the sight of schoolchildren in their uniforms "already fucking socialised" who will eventually find themselves in the same place as she is. The rising rage is mirrored by the unfolding swirl of feedback running in the background as the first verse progresses. When the guitar comes crashing in, I initially saw the battle between guitar and vocals as the song's declaration to reach for the skies, even when we can't lift our arms. But as Carson announces her intention to have someone remember her after she's dead and the worms "eat my bones and turn me to dust", it suddenly struck me that this song is a planned workplace massacre set to music. And it's absolutely brilliant.
Video courtesy of marmaladesoup.
Starting out with a thumping drum pattern, the song is given the hurry along by Salli Carson's stroppy sing-song yowl as she canters through a thoroughly pissed off and demotivated list of complaints from the perspective of an exhausted worker - numbed by the tediousness of what she's doing, disgusted at the sight of schoolchildren in their uniforms "already fucking socialised" who will eventually find themselves in the same place as she is. The rising rage is mirrored by the unfolding swirl of feedback running in the background as the first verse progresses. When the guitar comes crashing in, I initially saw the battle between guitar and vocals as the song's declaration to reach for the skies, even when we can't lift our arms. But as Carson announces her intention to have someone remember her after she's dead and the worms "eat my bones and turn me to dust", it suddenly struck me that this song is a planned workplace massacre set to music. And it's absolutely brilliant.
Video courtesy of marmaladesoup.
Saturday, 14 February 2015
Oliver: Wenge-Musica - Luc Bo Molo (November 30 1991)
Having started the November 1991 selections with a track from Wenge-Musica album, Aile Paris, it seems appropriate that one should crop up in the last November 91 show.
I don't think this track is as good as Nouveau Testament but the rejection threshold for soukous tracks is set very high on this blog, so dance on everybody.
Video courtesy of Elpollo Negro.
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Oliver: John Peel - Radio Mafia [Finland] (Thursday 28 November 1991)
John Peel's breadth of musical influence was not only material but geographical. From Germany to Finland by way of the United States thanks to British Forces Broacast Services and The BBC World Sevice, he had claim to the most widely heard disc jockey in the world. And all before the Internet made it easy to listen to whichever radio programme you want to hear. The programmes were almost all pre-recorded and mainly made up of records linked by Peel's inimitable narratives. The lengths were anything from half an hour (World Service) to 2 hours on BFBS. I have to say that an hour of Peel seems just right to me. The onslaught of music he shared was a wondrous thing, but attention can start to drift when you're being exposed to thrash metal after an hour and a half.
The online community has done a great job of making many of Peel's foreign shows available for listening to and where a show is broadcast within the time period of any show I was rehearsing, it will be listened to in case any selections which had slipped past the Radio 1 recordings are included.
This show for Finnish station Radio Mafia seems either to have been an extended 90 minute show or two 45 minute ones. I selected 6 tracks which would have gone on a mixtape, the only one of which I can't share is:
Perspex Whiteout - You Turn On My World.
Half Man Half Biscuit were nearly included with the track Hedley Verityesque, but after listening to it again a few times, and despite including a splendid barb at the Blockbusters Hand Dance, I decided it wasn't good enough to be included. Selection is always in the balance until I write these show overviews. Already we've seen tracks included that didn't grab me on initial hearings and others which fell from favour between initial listens and blog post time. It's a cruel business, but I don't think it will be long till Half Man Half Biscuit are back.
Ohjelma kappalelista
The online community has done a great job of making many of Peel's foreign shows available for listening to and where a show is broadcast within the time period of any show I was rehearsing, it will be listened to in case any selections which had slipped past the Radio 1 recordings are included.
This show for Finnish station Radio Mafia seems either to have been an extended 90 minute show or two 45 minute ones. I selected 6 tracks which would have gone on a mixtape, the only one of which I can't share is:
Perspex Whiteout - You Turn On My World.
Half Man Half Biscuit were nearly included with the track Hedley Verityesque, but after listening to it again a few times, and despite including a splendid barb at the Blockbusters Hand Dance, I decided it wasn't good enough to be included. Selection is always in the balance until I write these show overviews. Already we've seen tracks included that didn't grab me on initial hearings and others which fell from favour between initial listens and blog post time. It's a cruel business, but I don't think it will be long till Half Man Half Biscuit are back.
Ohjelma kappalelista
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