Guys and Dolls: Spiral Tribe - Going All the Way (16 April 1993)

 

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I never went to a rave. I wasn’t well connected enough to know where any of them in Cornwall were taking place, and if I had known, I don’t think I’d have been too enthusiastic about trying to get out to a remote beach on the arse end of the coast, especially given that I would have been too nervous to do any drugs in order to make the long night pass by more beautifully. 

I don’t tend to think of this as a major omission in my life experience until I hear a tune like Going All The Way by the free party collective, Spiral Tribe, and then I know that with its hypnotic, eddying runs of sound - I especially like the part around 1:37 which sounds like it’s remixing Tuesday by Milk Cult at 128bpm - and banging tribal drum beats, I’d have been set to dance way beyond dawn and all the way up to lunchtime.

Unfortunately though, if I’d wanted to do so in 1993, I’d have had to take a crossing to France given that Spiral Tribe moved their operations over there due to increasingly repressive UK legislation - sparked off by the vastly over attended Castlemorton Common Festival and culminating in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 - which sought to stamp out unlicensed raves and festivals. Once again, the UK’s loss would prove to be Europe’s gain. At least Spiral Tribe put out a steady stream of official and unofficial releases throughout the 90s in order to bring the raves to those who couldn’t get to them.

Vice Magazine with more on Castlemorton Common - “The Biggest Illegal Rave in UK History”

Video courtesy of Bryan G.

Guys and Dolls: The Sonics - Dirty Robber (16 April 1993)

 

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There was a strong sense of 21st Century influence over including this, not least because it’s nice to hear The Sonics performing something which doesn’t cause the listener to worry about whether their car insurance policy is in date. 

It’s a coin flip as to whether The Sonics version of Dirty Robber, which they recorded for their 1965 debut album, is better than the original 1959 recording by The Wailers. What is beyond doubt is that there was clearly something in the water in Tacoma, Washington where both groups hailed from.  The Sonics recording has the benefit that you clearly hear the lyrics, albeit garlanded throughout with singer Gerry Roslie’s trademark shrieks and screams. But, in The Wailers’ original, the deceitfulness of his lover has driven Kent Morrill to an almost incomprehensible babble, leaving him sounding like a hybrid of Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent, whilst poised on the brink of an orgasm, a heart attack or both. 

Similarities between the two versions are probably deliberate given that Morrill and Wailers bassist, Buck Ormsby produced the Here Are The Sonics!!! LP.

 Unlike The Wailers, The Sonics never had a hit single, though their influence was huge on many, more successful bands that came after them. Michael H. Little gives some reasons as to why success may have eluded the band during the 1960s*.

Videos courtesy of garagefan66 (Sonics) and Mr RJDB1969 (Wailers)

*TLDR - The Sonics were producing explosive versions of Rock ‘n’Roll standards at a point (1965-67) where the market and the more go-ahead groups were seeking to expand their sounds beyond the standard rock band sound. In 65-67, The Sonics were an anachronism of sorts. By the time, music started looking back to its roots circa 1969 and groups like The Stooges were getting wider attention with The Sonics garage rock playbook, The Sonics had disbanded.

Guys and Dolls: Eric’s Trip - Haze (16 April 1993)

 

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For the second Friday show running, we get an Eric’s Trip song which is open to two interpretations. Unlike last week’s where I thought it was about one thing when it was actually about another, I’m open to persuasion on both potential meanings for Haze.

1) Your music is better than mine: This is the meaning which I’m less enthusiastic about, mainly because I don’t really like songs which are about trying to write songs. The giveaway on that is lines such as I live within some stupid rhyme and So trapped within this useless rhyme, which both have the feel of placeholder lyrics which were subsequently never replaced. However, lines such as I saw the fire in your try (or tribe?) together with the I can’t be what I need refrain suggest some element of inspiration being taken from another source while our narrators struggle to get their own music off the ground due to a tendency to fall into writing lousy rhymes for lyrics.

2) An encounter with aliens: This is the meaning I’m more persuaded by, principally due to the atmosphere which permeates the recording and the transcendent harmony between Rick White and Julie Doiron, which manages to conjure up a romantic moment between a lost (in all senses of the word) human and a passing traveller from far, far away. The beauty of that scenario is that it’s impossible to definitively say which role was played by Rick and which was played by Julie. The vibe is closer to Starman* than Out of this World.

Alternatively, Haze could be like Listen, a love song, but in this case it’s one about being unable to see the love that’s in front of you due to the distractions and prevarications brought about by the haze of everyday life. It’s quite some achievement to be able to project so many different interpretations from such lo-fi material. While I don’t think I’m fully ready to passionately embrace Eric’s Trip, I can see myself starting to regard them as a more substantial band than I previously had. It just takes a little time and exposure, as Bone Rolling Reviews can testify.

*The 1984 John Carpenter film, not the David Bowie song.

Video courtesy of RockAllTheTime247.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

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.

Guys and Dolls: IPG (International Peoples Gang) - Disneyland [KKKings mix] (10 April 1993)

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I very nearly missed out on including this.  For legal reasons, the t:me label pressed up two versions of Disneyland (the later version changed the title to D*****land), with the same mixes on both discs but on the D*****land version the KKKings mix was called the Station K mix instead. And that was the mix title which was shareable. If I hadn’t seen the insert sheet on the promo version of Disneyland and which was the record played by Peel on this programme, I’d have been writing this up as “a record I’d have liked to share, but couldn’t…” on the notes page for this show.

The promo blurb seems as good a place as any to start when it comes to celebrating this mix.  The tracks on the Disneyland 12-inch are described as Five concept mixes taken from one bassline. As for the KKKings mix…

Bhangra falling upwards…Station K ready to blow. Radical Sista, Balwinder Safri, Mikha B and PalmDeep Chana give us the ultimate street sound of the East Midlands. This is the first recorded moment from Station K. Anything can happen in the next 6 months*. (Promo notes on the Disneyland EP, t:me/Hollywood Records, 30 March 1993).

Bhangra forms the basis of this mix, but KKKings keep things interesting with tuneful and intoxicating digressions along the way: Indian singing, woodwind, laser blasts, funky guitar, a thundering tabla beat that never lets up, and perhaps most interesting of all, a wah-wah riff that folds back in on itself from the moment it’s introduced at 1:20, but which sounds familiar. Listening to it, I found myself wondering if it hadn’t stuck with Fatboy Slim, when he was looking for a suitable refrain when remixing Wildchild’s Renegade Master, several years later. I’ll be astonished if at least one of you who plays the video on this post doesn’t find themself singing, With the ill behaviour over the final 80 seconds.

This seems to have been Peel’s favourite mix on the record as he played it again the following week. It’s my favourite too, though all the mixes are worthy of your attention. They run the gamut from clubland workouts to ambient space jazz and hypnotic past life regression. I regret that Peel didn’t appear moved to play the Nyman/Sisterlove mix, which I also love for the way that it fuses industrial samba with snatches of music that sound like it’s been taken from a 1970s Canadian TV Movie of the Week.

Videos courtesy of h3lme.

*Anything could happen and duly didn’t.

Guys and Dolls: Cornershop - England’s Dreaming (10 April 1993)

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At the risk of repeating myself, I find myself once again forced to confront my teenaged complacency on issues which I remember thinking were on the wane at the time. A few weeks’ ago, Marxman reminded me that Neo-Nazis weren’t sitting it out in post Cold War Europe; now we have Cornershop popping up to show that, as far as they were concerned, racism wasn’t something which used to happen back in the 70s & 80s.

The genius of England’s Dreaming, which was the lead track on their Lock, Stock & Double~Barrel EP is how subtly it targets those it is most disappointed in. While it loudly and defiantly calls out racists, sexists,  homophobics and urges others to join them in the fight against discrimination, the force of the song isn’t so much set at those who would taunt and attack people based on their skin colour, but rather it scolds those whose first reaction to seeing a non-white face is to retreat into suspicion, distrust and fear. It almost sounds as those Cornershop can deal with the prejudice of being hated, but can’t accept the prejudice of being feared. The late music journalist, Neil Kulkarni, summed up what it was like to be on the end of both expressions of this prejudice, and its corrosive effect on those who suffer under it: 

The shout from a passing van window, the night at the bus stop or chippy where abuse and fists fly, the vaginal search your gran tells you of, the eyes on the street, the tight clutch of the handbag as you pass - all those moments are replayed and erase the months of tolerance that intersperse them, becoming a dirt mark on your memory that can never be removed.

That 8:04am train journey mentioned at 1:19 carries the ghosts of all those suspicious eyes and uncomfortable passengers. What’s even more upsetting is that there appears to be no source of support to call on, with even apparently sympathetic church figures unable to do much to turn the tide which the Singh boys feel is against them.  The calls to fight are not only directed at other minorities, but also towards would-be allies. 

It all coalesces in the track’s most audacious moment, as the singer sits talking to a nursing sister in hospital - potentially after being on the end of an assault - in which lyrics from Morrissey are set next to lyrics from Chuck D. The invitation to anyone listening in 1993 was clear - choose your fighter. And when Stephen Lawrence was murdered, less than a fortnight after this Peel show was broadcast, that ongoing call to join the fight was only going to get louder and more urgent.

Neil Kulkarni - Melody Maker 1990s

Lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Video courtesy of Borstal Boy.

Guys and Dolls: Leo Kottke - The Driving of the Year Nail (10 April 1993)

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A second Leo Kottke track on Kat’s Karavan in the space of a fortnight and, just like the previous one, it was dedicated to Peel’s youngest brother, Alan, who was probably enjoying the fact that he had been able to reclaim his house from its enforced period of hosting the Estonian band, Roovel Oobik - though it appears that they had also spent some time staying at Peel Acres before they were finally able to return home.

The Year of the Driving Nail was the opening track on Kottke’s 1969 album, 6- and 12-String Guitar. His liner notes refer to it as being From an old Etruscan drawing of a sperm cell. I initially thought this was him making a coded reference to the track being inspired by masturbation, but he was being completely serious.  According to Joseph Campbell’s 1964 book, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, every year, during the annual meeting of representatives from the 12 cities that made up the region of Etruria, a nail would be driven into the wall of the sanctuary of the goddess, Nortia - though other sources suggest that it was done to mark the beginning of the Etruscan New Year, with the nail representing the fate of the civilisation. It was believed that when the wall was completely full of nails, the Etruscan race would die out.  By 88BC, the Etruscan civilisation had been pretty much absorbed into the Roman kingdom.

The Driving of the Year Nail was immortalised on the rear of Etruscan bronze mirrors, with an image of the winged goddess Athrpa holding both the hammer and nail, along with a boar’s head and joined by Adonis, who was killed by a boar, his lover, Aphrodite; alongside another couple, Meleager (whose continued existence was dependent upon the preservation of a log in a fire that was burning when he was born) and Atalanta, whose brief but chaotic relationship during the Calydonian boar hunt has to be read to be believed.

From left to right: Adonis, Aphrodite, Athrpa, Meleager and Atalanta.

Image taken from The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology (Campbell, 1964, p.310, Secker & Warburg, London)

Video courtesy of toke to elk.