Equus: Richard Hell and the Voidoids - The Kid With the Replaceable Head (29 January 1993)

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Anytime there is a particularly lengthy gap between posts on this blog, it's usually down to one or all of the following:

1) Heavy work commitments.

2) We have guests staying with us.

3) I'm doing research to help me with the next blog post.

All have applied here. Of greater pertinence with regards to Richard Hell and The Kid With the Replaceable Head was the fact that I spent Tuesday listening both to the first Voidoids album, Blank Generation and re-listening to John Peel's first punk rock special, which was broadcast on  10 December 1976 and which I last heard while sitting in an airport near Puglia about 15 years ago. I had a vague memory that Hell's work was what I'd responded most appreciably to.  But while I thought that the Dylanesque Blank Generation was very good, I wasn’t so taken with the supporting album.  Too many of the tracks seemed ponderous and plodding.  Peel noted on his punk special that “punk rock” meant something different in the US to what it appeared to be in the UK, and Hell’s output in 1976/77 bore that out.   The closing track on the album was over 8 minutes long, showing perhaps that the sonic self-indulgence of the American rock scene at the time could still bleed over into the supposedly new revolutionary music scene.

By 1978, punk was starting to cross over into New Wave and Hell had caught up with it, at least for a brief moment given that his musical output had dried up after the release of Blank Generation. The single, The Kid With the Replaceable Head is twice as much fun as anything on Blank Generation, though its superficially quirky surface potentially covers a darker underbelly with Hell himself as the titular Kid, shrinking his world due to heroin use, trying to stave off the fear courtesy of the dishonest dread, all while hanging out with his three best friends which, in this context, could be the needle, spoon and vein strap. Though, I think it’s more likely that the replaceable heads refer to the different faces Hell could present in different contexts i.e. private, public, family/friends etc.

Video courtesy of Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

Equus: John Peel’s Music - Sunday 24 January 1993 (BFBS)

In a 1999 documentary to celebrate his 60th birthday, John Peel described the niche he had carved out for himself on British radio as allowing him to lead something of a dream life. However, anyone who had been listening to this edition of John Peel’s Music, broadcast six years earlier, would have heard him describe his everyday life in somewhat more lugubrious and narrow terms. He described his weekends as being spent trawling around record shops in Central London, a pinched and drawn figure, trying to find records featuring Popolipo on guitar. To demonstrate just what a waste this was, he played a fairly boring track by Zaiko Langa Langa Familia called Coeur Ouvert. Though, having found a record featuring Popolipo may well have contributed to the jolly mood which Peel confessed to feeling in by the end of the programme.

We can be fairly sure that whatever records Peel had picked up on his latest trip around the stores, the majority of them were probably vinyl and not CDs. He had intended to include on the programme a track by Lotion, but it wasn’t until he opened the CD case in the studio that he discovered he’d left the disc in a CD player somewhere. In his ever expanding list of reasons to dislike CDs, he could add the ease at which they could be forgotten about - They’re left in the dark, little blighters. I mean you never leave a vinyl record on a turntable, do you?

Peel may have ended the programme in a jolly mood, but he had started it irked by the template on his latest notepad, which had the legend, Nice day… emblazoned across the top of each page. Why do people do that? I’m tempted to stop this programme right now! Which would have been quite the tantrum, given that he’d only played one record at this point.

There was a demonstration of the bond he had with his audience, when in response to a letter from a listener called Sebastian telling him that he wouldn’t be able to hear the show for a while as he was about to spend four months out in San Francisco, Peel told Sebastian that if he could provide him with a forwarding address in San Francisco, he’d try to ensure that he would be able to hear the shows while he was away. At  the time, Sebastian may well have chanced upon editions of Peel Out in the States, a series of half-hour shows Peel made which were distributed to college and commercial radio stations in the U.S. across the first half of 1993.

This programme featured a horrified Peel riff on the then growing craze of bungee jumping. Before listening to the clip again, after a gap of maybe 2 years since hearing the file of the show, I had wondered whether he had mentioned this due to watching Dave Allen discuss it on his show, broadcast three days earlier. “You’d certainly crap yourself on the way down, wouldn’t you?  And then you’d pass that crap coming down, on the way back up!”  But, the inspiration came from there being a number of monitors in the BFBS studio which were showing people bungee jumping: How people do that…I mean it’s all of  my worst fears brought to life really…or near death. I wouldn’t even go up to the places they jump from, let alone jump off them.  I mean, utterly terrifying, these people are nuts! I’ve seen people doing it at the Isle of Man TT Races and it wasn’t that high by the standards of these things…though it doesn’t make much difference whether you fall from 80 feet or 180 feet, you’re still going to be seriously damaged by the time you hit the ground.

The selections from this show were taken from a full 2 hour recording.  There were three tracks I wanted to include but was unable to find:

Phantom Surfers - Big Screen Spectacular Tonight: Taken from their LP The Phantom Surfers Play The Music From The Big Screen Spectaculars. Listening back to it, this short, sharp blast of contemporary surf guitar may not have made the cut had it been available.

Dreams Made Flesh - Ripchord - Taken from a 7-inch single called Two Ton Overcoat. Described by Peel as Another one of those obscure American singles on an obscure American label from an obscure American town that I keep coming back to because it has a certain je ne sais quoi. For me, the certain something is the chorus in which the singer exhorts, Don’t make me breathe, in the style of Semisonic circa 1998, which might sound gruesome to you, but would possibly have yielded a crossover hit for Dreams Made Flesh had they held the track back for a couple of years.

Hardfloor - Acperience I - There are a lot of different mixes of this space-trance dance track out there for sharing, but not it seems the version played by Peel on this programme by Mixmaster Morris.

Two tracks that were slated for inclusion fell from favour:

The Bear Quartet - Hrnn Hrnn - I suspect that when I first heard Peel play this, I was still vibing off the brilliance of Headacher, but when it came to listening back to Hrnn Hrnn, all of Peel’s prejudices about the dullness of Swedish bands seemed to be borne out.

Superchunk - The Question is How Fast - Oh dear…yet again Superchunk find themselves on the shortlist for the metaphorical mixtape only to be rejected from it when it comes to the crunch. If they give a damn about it, they’re fully entitled to feel victimised by this and it may be simpler for everybody if I just decide to ignore Superchunk entirely, going forward, regardless of how good their music is. It could be awkward though given that Peel continued playing tracks by them up to the end of 1994.

I’m 99.9% confident that they have the date wrong on this.

Equus: Cornershop - Kawasaki [More Heat Than Chapati] (24 January 1993)

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Who knew that what we were all waiting for to revitalise British pop music in early 1993 was a contemporary update of Funky Moped by Jasper Carrott.   Throw in the fact that the tamboura-led coda of Kawasaki owes a debt to Lightnin’ Never Strikes Twice by The Move and its inclusion on the metaphorical mixtape would be a given.

Peel was very taken by Cornershop, appreciating not only their music but the way in which they were reclaiming Asian stereotypes.  As he put it, They hit that racist stuff and they hit it hard. He recommended that people should try and see them live if they got the chance.

Video courtesy of Cornershop.

Equus: St. Johnny - Go to Sleep (24 January 1993)

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After 3 years of patient work, Connecticut 4-piece, St. Johnny were ready to burst into national attention. With a recommendation from Thurston Moore in their top pockets, they were attracting major-label attention which would see them eventually sign to DGC Records. Before that though, came the release of Go to Sleep as a precursor to the High as a Kite LP. Peel reckoned it was the second St. Johnny record he owned, the other may have been an an eponymous EP from 1990.

The hype seemed partially justified on the basis of Go to Sleep, which after a delayed opening bursts forward to overwhelm the listener with its charms.  The theme of the song appears to be the over-reach between glossy dreams and sordid realities.  In the opening verse, singer Bill Whitten outlines his aspirations: This is a story/This is a film.  He wants to be seen and admired like a model in my Chevrolet. But the live fast/live free mood of the opening verse is undercut by the hazy sentiments of the second verse, which seems to suggest that Whitten is in a situation where he is surrounded by people who are cramping his style and causing him headaches through their misbehaviour and lack of trustworthiness.  It’s small stakes stuff, but important to enough to strangle the grand aspirations before they have time to grow. The music goes the same way as the energy and bite of the track finally splutters to a halt like someone mislaying their credit card after booking a Mardi Gras.  All the same, an enjoyable enough ride until the energy runs out of the meter.

Video courtesy of cryptickeeper.

Equus: Gravel - Bucket of Blood (24 January 1993)

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It’s unfortunate that every time we look at Gravel, the talk is all about who else they sound like.  Last time they were on this blog, it was Nirvana, but with Bucket of Blood, they sound more like Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. It’s a curious track, slightly out of keeping with its contemporaries.  Singer, Bryan Elliott appears to be singing about what an average night is like for him as a vampire. For similar “early-90s rock as ghost story” vibes file it with Room 429 by Cop Shoot Cop.

Video courtesy of s142057.

Equus: Don French - Lonely Saturday Night (24 January 1993)

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If someone ever attempts to put together a definitive compilation album covering all aspects of the teenage experience throughout the history of popular music, they have to make sure that there is a place on the tracklisting for Don French's 1959 recording of Lonely Saturday Night. It’s a stripped down recording, which is fully designed to bring audiences to their feet either in recognition at its sentiments or sympathy for French’s little-boy-lost performance as a man spending Saturday night dateless and isolated.  

Listening to the song with 2023 ears, it comes across like a bit of an incel lullaby, but they didn’t know the word back in 1959 (lucky buggers), and its themes remain universal and timeless.  If homework is one thing nobody misses as they grow beyond school/college age, then that dreadful, false feeling that you’re missing out on a great time if you’re spending Saturday night on your own is one thing I don’t miss about late teens/twenties.

The song was covered in a 2007 blogpost on Locust St. in which the author received a bit of a dressing down in the comments from a Margo French (a relation of Don’s perhaps?) for describing his singing as almost comically deep and describing the track as being as ominous as it is ridiculous but I think the performance rings full value out of the sentiments of the song.  For Peel, the vocal was what made the track. He called it…a classic of that kind of tortured Conway Twitty vocal…it really ought to be far better known than it is.

Video courtesy of Wesley B.

Equus: Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps - Woman Love (24 January 1993)

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Recorded in May 1956, Woman Love was a b-side to Gene Vincent’s signature hit, Be-Bop-A-Lula. Although it wasn’t written by him, Vincent would have been synched in to this tale of doctors’ advice for various lovesick ailments given that he had spent most of the previous year receiving treatment for a leg injury.

The performance is chock full of Vincent’s idiosyncrasies with his fluttering stutters at the start and Presley/Lewis hybridised vocals. It was originally slated to be the A-side of the single, but Vincent’s publisher, Bill Lowery took steps to ensure that Be-Bop-A-Lula garnered more airplay and exposure.  It was the right thing to do given that Woman Love is a reasonable song lifted by Vincent’s personality, while Be-Bop-A-Lula works both in terms of content and form.

I don’t think Woman Love is as good as some of the other Vincent tracks which have turned up on this blog, such as Git It, but it’s interesting to listen to Vincent at the point where he first emerged and was marketed as a rougher, wilder version of Elvis Presley, albeit at a time when Elvis himself was causing the moral guardians of America to get into a panic about how he was corrupting their youth.  Ultimately, Vincent was a little too left-field to enjoy sustained success in the United States, but it makes perfect sense that he went over so well in Europe given that Presley never performed outside North America, so Vincent was as close as European rock’n’ roll fans were going to get to the King.

Ian Dury included Woman Love as one of his Desert Island Discs in 1996, feeling that the song may have been quite rude, and while a case could be made that it’s a song about venereal disease, the lyrics debunk this by showing that the protagonist is desperate (and not fussy) about finding a woman to have a relationship with.

Video courtesy of Jarski. J