Equus: Linda Jardim - 60 Miles by Road or Rail (20 March 1993)

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John Peel was one week away from finally completing the Little Richard cover search which he had spent the past two years working through his collection of singles to try and find. Having got to the letter N, he rediscovered this 1980 curio which had been commissioned by the Northampton Development Corporation to try and promote the town as a place where businesses and families may want to move operations to or work in, during the period in which it was earmarked for regeneration as a new town.

Starting out as a jingle, 60 Miles by Road or Rail was expanded into a song so that it would have greater reach to promote the town, while also raising money towards the target of £100,000,000 which the NDC had to raise in profit for the sale of homes and workspace it had built in the area. This became necessary when, in the late 1970s, both major UK parliamentary parties moved away from the concept of building more new towns, and those that were being built up at the time had to pay their own way, in Northampton’s case by the end of 1984.

Conscious of the fact that no one would want to play a record which seriously set out opportunities for commercial expansion, composer Rod Thomson tried to meet NDC’s brief by playing up one of the major benefits of Northampton - its 60 mile proximity to London - by writing a song in which the heroine, voiced by former Buggles backing vocalist, Linda Jardim, excitedly sang about travelling to meet her lover and begin a new life, brimming with romance and excitement in the town. Jardim has previously lived her life vicariously through magazine stories and trashy TV, but now real life and real opportunity awaits her (and all those relocating businesses in Northampton.)

But that was then, my time’s been changed.

I find my life’s been rearranged.

My magazines have finally all come true

Baby, since I met you.

Had I heard this in March 1993, I’d have had it on a mixtape as an example of one of those quirky tunes that occasionally turn up on a John Peel playlist, but in future years, I too would find myself making journeys from Cornwall, of considerably more than 60 miles, to be with my lovers in places like Lampeter, Uxbridge, Runfold and Henly-in-Arden.  None of these places, on their own terms, were anything special but they were mini-Paradises to be travelled to with love in my heart and desire in my loins for the girls I loved who studied and worked there. It is to the man I was who used to travel those distances between 1996 and 2004 that this song earns its place on the metaphorical mixtape.

I currently live about an hour away from Northampton, but my only visit there took place in February 2013. A friend of mine was living there at the time and had written a one-act play based on her experiences working as an exotic dancer in the town, which was being staged as part of a double bill at a small venue in Northampton. My wife and I decided to go up and offer our support, we booked a room at a Premier Inn so we could make an evening of it.  However, we started our journey of 60-ish miles from Orpington in low spirits after receiving a phone call that morning from my wife’s mother telling us that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Happily, she was successfully treated over the course of that year, but as you can imagine, the initial phonecall didn’t do much to set up the mood for a rip-roaring night at the theatre. 

Our spirits were not improved when we got to Northampton itself, which was one of the most unattractive looking places either of us had ever seen. After booking into the Premier Inn and having some dinner, we set out to find the venue. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. “You have reached your destination” bleated the sat nav, but none of the buildings we saw had anything on them to indicate that they were theatres. We asked at a nearby pub, but they hadn’t heard of the place we were looking for. We rounded a corner and saw a community hall building with lights on. “That could be the place,” we said hopefully and walked in confidently, only to be greeted by the sight of a pair of imams tidying away a PA set and cushions from a prayer meeting. However, they were pleased to see us and crucially, they had heard of the venue we were looking for.  The plays were being staged in an upstairs theatre, the sign for which was no bigger than your average Harley Street brass plate and to our great relief, our friend’s play was wonderfully written, marvellously acted and very funny. We were both glad to see her and the play, but neither of us has rushed back to Northampton in the subsequent decade.

What’s curious about Peel’s play of 60 Miles by Road or Rail is that, based on a look at the John Peel wiki back in the spring and early summer of 1980, he tended to play the other side of the single, Energy in Northampton. To the same musical backing, this saw Linda Jardim sing a kind of War of the Worlds meets Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft tale about aliens driven from their home planet by war and struggling across the galaxy in a disintegrating set of spaceships, who find the new home they have been looking for in Northampton. All of it delivered without tongue in cheek and tying into the single’s promotional tagline that a love affair with Northampton is a journey into space. I wonder whether Peel played 60 Miles by Road or Rail in error given that he quoted the tagline after playing it, which made no sense in the context of what his listeners would have just heard.

Finally, I must direct you towards the 60 Miles project, which gathers together the stories of the new town projects to produce documentary and theatre shows reflecting Northampton’s development and expansion and the effects it had on the town.  The 2021 show 60 Miles by Road or Rail can be viewed on the website with the conception and recording of the Linda Jardim record taking up most of the second half of the play. I found it not just invaluable as a source of information for this blogpost, but a terrific show in its own right. Not only did it bring history alive, it also brilliantly reflected why new town projects stalled and the ongoing issues that rage when bringing together established communities and transplanted ones, even if the transplants have only travelled 60 miles.

At the recording session for 60 Miles by Road or Rail. That’s great, Linda. Just try another one for safety.

Energy in Northampton

Videos courtesy of EvenThisNameTaken

Lyrics copyright of Rod Thomson

Dialogue from 60 Miles by Road or Rail by Ryan Leder

Equus: Repulse - Barriers (20 March 1993)

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A month earlier, this was the track whose ending fooled Peel into thinking he was allowing listeners to hear a bonus track on Repulse’s Heads EP, only for him to discover that it was all still part of Barriers.  You can go to around 3:30 to see whether it would have caught you out in a similar way.

I didn’t shortlist Barriers on that 21/2/93 show, but it caught my attention on this show. Given that Repulse came from Larne in Northern Ireland, like my favourite band of early 1993, Therapy?, I can only imagine that had I known this when I was approaching my 17th birthday, I would have considered Larne to be the centre of the musical universe, rather than Seattle.

Based on what I heard in Barriers - and indeed on the whole of the Heads EP - Repulse rocked just as hard as Therapy?, but lacked the vocal roar of Andy Cairns, and so sounded a far more winsome proposition. Instead, they applied effects to the vocals with Barriers boasting a tremolo vocal. Unfortunately, this makes them hard to hear when buried under the avalanche of noise, but Barriers, which I felt was the best track on the EP, appealed to me not least for its rock /metal jig opening riff.

In their best moments, Repulse reminded me of the art-metal of Milk and the heavier moments in my 1992 Festive Fifty winner., thus making their inclusion here something of an inevitability.

Video courtesy of Repulse - Topic

Equus: Little Walter - My Babe (20 March 1993)

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Alongside the laidback subtlety of the performance and vocal on Little Walter’s 1955 hit, My Babe, what stands out to me about it is that it’s a great example of what I think of as “good cop/bad cop” songwriting. There’s no chorus in the song, but the verses alternate between one about how loving and sweet Walter’s lady is and one about how strict and implacable she is at any hint of infidelity on his part. The concept of an open relationship clearly never gained much traction in the world of the blues.  Given that the ratio of loving to admonitory verses is 1:3, maybe Walter’s girlfriend has had plenty of practice at telling him what she will not accept. And yet, like a dope, she takes him back everytime…

This mixture of sweet and sour owes a lot to the source material that inspired My Babe. Its writer, Willie Dixon, conceived it as a secular reworking of a 1920s gospel blues song called This Train is Bound for Glory which spoke about the wonder of passing into Heaven, but in typical religious damp cloth style, the majority of the song is devoted to telling the listener which groups will not be allowed onboard.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe announces the next departure to Heaven from platform 666.

Video courtesy of Angel Neira (Little Walter) and Enzo GD - Music Videos (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)

Equus: Ragga Gabba Posse - Zap Machine Part 1 (20 March 1993)

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What do you get if you fuse together a guitar riff that half sounds like Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, but taken at the tempo of the riff from Hush by Deep Purple?  The answer is something like Zap Machine Part 1 by the Ragga Gabba Posse, a one shot gathering of a group of Dutch DJs.  Were it not for that riff, I’d probably have passed on this, as we’d mostly be left with sub Traveller style noodling.  Part 2 is slightly more interesting, but as an example of meat and potatoes rock/dance fusion, Part 1 is a great workout tune if nothing else.

Video courtesy of Webbie, who has provided the recording directly from Peel’s 20/3/93 show.

Equus: John Peel’s Music - Sunday 21 February 1993 (BFBS)

 I’m as crisp as a dew picked lettuce - John Peel introducing this edition on 21/2/93.

It’s always nice to hear Peel with a spring in his step, and in this case it could possibly be down to a letter he had received from a listener called Michael, who had written to say how much he enjoyed hearing dance music on the show. Peel was touched by this as he reckoned that Michael was the first person to have said this to him since he started playing dance music on his BFBS programme. He played Home is Where the Hartcore Is by Loopzone in thanks to Michael.

Also getting a spin was a 1979 tune by Skids called TV Stars, which mentioned Peel’s name together with a host of soap opera characters from Coronation Street and Crossroads. Peel warned any listeners who felt this was self-indulgent that they hadn’t heard anything yet as he played a recording called Humbug 1 performed by Combs Middle School which featured his son, Tom, as the lead voice. The song was taken from a show that appeared to be an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, with the song being sung from the perspective of workers in the factory owned by Ebeneezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley; perhaps during a visit from The Ghost of Christmas Past.  Impressively, the show itself was written by two of the music teachers at Combs Middle School. If you haven’t clicked on the Humbug 1 link, I’d encourage you to do so, not least to hear Peel’s tale of his being ejected from the final of a national schools production competition for heckling the judges when Combs Middle School failed to win it.  It’ll also serve as a long distance taster for when this blog reaches late 1994 and soundtracks my participation in Carnon Downs Drama Group’s production of the musical, Scrooge.

When replying to listener correspondence, personally, Peel often wrote by postcard. If he wasn’t using a Radio 1 publicity card - either of himself or more often of a younger, better looking colleague - he would reply on postcards showing images of Stowmarket. However, the company that made these cards had gone bust, so Peel was making up his own cards using photos he had taken of the town. He hadn’t really mastered the picturesque style of postcard images given that his portfolio of shots so far included an Indian restaurant and a set of major roadworks. Stirring stuff….

I’ve already referenced three tracks from this show which I passed on including. Other rejections included one of the few House of Love songs that I don’t care for, namely Love in a Car from their 1988 debut album, which was requested by a listener. Another request was for a 1979 track called Window to the World by the Australian band Whirlywirld, about which and whom Peel had no recollection of having previously played. On this show, he also played Barriers by Northern Irish band, Repulse.  As he back announced it, he thought the next track on the Heads EP was playing. He liked what he heard and let it play on, only to discover it was just the ending for Barriers.

The selections from this show were taken from a full 2 hour show.  There were 3 tracks that I had earmarked for inclusion but was unable to share:

The Brady Bunch Lawnmower Massacre - I’m Gonna Drink Myself to Life - More Australian rock from a 7-inch single on Shagpile.

Tiger - Chaos [Jungle Mix] - As previous posts have shown, I was enjoying the Jungle music tracks on this show, and my notes say that it was the jungle vibe that would have put this up for consideration.

Culture Fire - No Existence - A track taken from their Release EP and requested by a listener called Sebastian, who was due to spend the next 4 months away in San Francisco.

Three tracks fell from favour, having made my initial shortlist:

Nirvana - Oh The Guilt - I remember the excitement when this was released as part of a split single with Puss by Jesus Lizard and it reached Number 12 on the UK Singles Chart, so plenty of people were delighted to have it. But listening to it again for this blog, I have to confess that Nirvana philistinism raised itself within me again and my abiding instinct was to yell, “STOP FUCKING MOANING!”

Leatherface - Do the Right Thing - This is a band who have been appreciated here before for the emotional depth behind their hard rock clatter, but this ended up sounding far too by the numbers for permanent inclusion on the metaphorical mixtape.

Mudhoney - We Had Love - This was Mudhoney’s contribution to Set It Off, a compilation album of artists covering songs by The Scientists, whose work was unknown to me ahead of hearing Mudhoney’s version of We Had Love. I listened to about three-quarters of the performances on Set It Off, comparing each one to the original Scientists recordings, and it was certainly successful in terms of encouraging me to go and discover the work of The Scientists. However, this was mainly because of how poor virtually every cover was in comparison to the original track. I agonised over leaving We Had Love out, not least given the passion of Mark Arm’s vocal, but ultimately I decided that it was as guilty as all the other versions of not meeting The Scientists’ standards.

Full tracklisting

Equus: Camille Howard - Ferocious Boogie (21 February 1993)

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When this blog has finished working through selections from this edition of John Peel’s Music on BFBS, I’m intending to jump ahead to selections from Peel’s Radio 1 show from Saturday 20 March 1993. In terms of chronology, that show went out a week before I and my fellow Castaway Theatre Company members on the BTEC Performing Arts course performed Equus.  It also went out 10 days after the death of Camille Howard, at the age of 78.  I’ve had a look over at the John Peel wiki for March 1993, and it doesn’t appear as though news of her death was communicated on any of his programmes. This wouldn’t be altogether surprising given that Howard had quit the music business in the mid-1950s, and in those pre-Internet days of 1993, news of the death of an obscure boogie-woogie piano player would have taken a lot longer to make itself more widely known.  Peel kept her work in the spotlight by intermittently playing her recordings up to late 2001.

Ferocious Boogie was the b-side to Howard’s 1949 single, Maybe It’s Best After All, and is of a piece with many of the other Howard boogies that Peel played through early ‘93, not least in the way that it knocks its more conservative A-side partner into a cocked hat.  Peel wondered how different his life would have been had he actually heard the track when he was a boy in 1949, instead of the records he was actually listening to at the time which he remembered as being by artists such as Doris Day and Jo Stafford.

Video courtesy of Tim Gracyk.

Equus: Pulp - Razzmatazz (21 February 1993)

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Described in its sleevenotes as the bits that Hello! leaves out, Razzmatazz swaps the breathless, urgent, romanticism of O.U. (Gone, Gone) for contemptuous, derisive misogyny.

According to Jarvis Cocker, the lyrics of Razzmatazz are about a former college girlfriend of his. He described it at the time as the most bitter song Pulp had ever done, and he certainly goes in with both feet on the girl and those closest to her by throwing around accusations of incest, unplanned pregnancy, ignorance, stupidity, shallowness, mental instability and - most damning of all - getting fat while she goes out with someone uglier than him. 

It took me a couple of listens before I decided to include Razzmatazz here. I’ve had to confront a personal truth about Pulp that I’d only vaguely suspected back in the 90s, but which I have clarity on now.  Quite simply, they were too difficult for me to embrace as a favourite band.  There’s great humour in their music, and in my late teens, they seemed to be the only band I heard during the Britpop era, who acknowledged the desperate hunt for sex in a pre-internet world.  But there was always an underlying bitterness to their material which kept me at a distance from them. They could certainly do warm material, as O.U (Gone, Gone) and 1996’s Something Changed confirmed, but I’ve come to feel that the tone of Razzmatazz is far more indicative of the type of band that Pulp were, and that doesn’t make them an easy band to love, either then or now.

What’s undeniable about Razzmatazz though, is that it’s the sound of a band who were starting to find greater confidence in themselves and were turning more heads and minds towards them.  I suspect that this would have found its way on to the metaphorical mixtape in an attempt to, if not follow the herd, then at least trail along at a quizzically interested distance from it.

Cocker revealed in subsequent interviews that, to his embarrassment, he had bumped into his ex-girlfriend and that she had worked out that she was the subject of Razzmatazz.  Apparently, she had taken it in good humour, perhaps feeling, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that when it’s the opinion of one of the most famous British men of the mid-1990s, it’s better to thought of as a twat than not to be thought of at all. I also like to think the female verses on Ciao! by Lush, which Cocker guested on two years after the release of Razzmatazz, offer his ex some form of right of reply.

Video courtesy of Pulp.