The Smell of the Greasepaint and the Sound of John Peel
Thursday, 3 April 2025
Guys and Dolls: Eric’s Trip - Listen (9 April 1993)
Thursday, 27 March 2025
Guys and Dolls: Hole - 20 Years in the Dakota (9 April 1993)
Hole, writing a song about Yoko Ono is one of the most brilliantly predictable things that could have happened in 90s rock. The parallels between Ono and herself would have been ringing out loud and clear to Courtney Love as her husband’s band grew to become a globally recognised name, and Love would almost certainly have slapped down anyone who addressed her as being “only” Kurt’s wife. Like Ono, she was an artist in her own right and was married to a man who, in the eyes of many, transcended the label of “musician” and her reward was vilification. Other similarities include drug use and the early deaths of their husbands - via different means - to firearms.
Ultimately, what links Love and Ono is a steel and toughness; quiet and playful in Ono’s case, belligerent and angry in Love’s. What she makes clear in 20 Years in the Dakota, both to herself and the “riot grrrls” trying to bring her down is that Ono is the patron saint of them all, and that none of them will ever truly be able to repay the debt they owe to her. I do find myself wondering who The Fabulous Four would have been in Love’s case: Kurt, Krist, Dave and…..Butch?
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Guys and Dolls: Nelories - Peel Session (9 April 1993)
The Radio 1 Fun Computer has rather scrambled their names, unless one of them has a surname spelled K-v-b-o-m which I rather doubt - John Peel, introducing Nelories’ session on 9/4/93.
NOTE - The order of tracks on the show was different to the order on the video. It was originally broadcast to run as follows: Run Free > Trampoline > Neutral Blue > Garlic. This post will follow the order of tracks on the video.
On Sunday 14 March, 1993, Jun Kurihara and Kazmi Kubo took their guitars, drum machines and accordion into the BBC’s Maida Vale studios to record a Peel Session. It satisfied all the usual labels that can be attached to certain styles of Japanese pop music; veering from the catchily kitsch to the profoundly heartfelt, before ending in a manner that leaves this listener - and I hope other listeners who read this post - feeling warm, fuzzy and cosseted, which is quite an achievement considering that they were singing in a second language and with voices that walked the tightrope between soothing and adenoidal.
The jazzy Garlic follows in the spirit of their earlier Banana in using foodstuffs as pseudonyms for other things. If Banana dealt in sex, then Garlic deals in love as it appears to be the pet name for a lover, identified by their long blonde hair…blue blue eyes, which appear to make up for the earlier acknowledged absurd freaky smell. Given body odour once played a part in breaking up a relationship I was in, I wish Garlic could have passed on some tips to me about how to ensure that can be cancelled out in favour of one’s more positive qualities. Although, if the song is about a dog, it all becomes moot given that pets can be loved regardless of what they do. It’s the trade off for them not being able to enjoy alcohol and culture, I suppose.
When I first heard the 9/4/93 show, for some reason, I ended up leaving Neutral Blue off my list of inclusions from the session. I can only conclude that I was having a funny couple of minutes, because listening to it again on this video reveals it to be the highpoint of the session. My initial thoughts on it were that it was about repenting the breakup of a relationship with a steady but boring person, especially given that, in the slightly garbled lyrical language of Nelories, we learn that neutral blue was the colour of your talking. But subsequent listens have me wondering whether the song is more about mourning the death of its subject rather than breaking up with them. For it seems that the separation really is a permanent one and this comes home in the key line of the song: I’ve heard that loneliness and being alone don’t always mean the same. Also, Kubo’s guitar run from 6:22 to 6:32 sounds like someone desperately rummaging around to find a handkerchief to cry into. Brutal blue, indeed….
Run Free is another example of the way in which Nelories’s songs could work as advertising jingles. This one could either be promoting the benefits of holidays (You may go everywhere/Everywhere’s a destination), exercise (Let’s go for a run/We’re on the road to nowhere/I am sure to say that/We’ll feel a whole load better, loads better than miles) or mindfulness (Walk slowly, don’t hurry, you’ve got more things to see…slow down, don’t hurry). It’s a beautiful mix of the bizarre and the profound, which is only to be expected given that Kurihara was writing her lyrics in a second language. It’s testament to her skill that she gets more right than wrong in what she writes, though this Trouserpress overview of Nelories back catalogue highlights some of her more unusual lyrical non-sequiturs.
The theme of Trampoline appears to be much clearer. The title serves as a metaphor for the behaviour of the kind of charismatic, attractive, sexy man who has friends and lovers everywhere, but never takes the time to stay in one place too long. Any time a commitment is sought, they jump on their trampoline and spring off in another direction. Typically, Kurihara is in love with this gadabout, all while recognising his flaws: Maybe I cannot be his trampoline.
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Guys and Dolls: Voodoo People - Altitude [Malana Edit] (9 April 1993)
Wednesday, 5 March 2025
Guys and Dolls: Puressence - Offshore (9 April 1993)
Sometimes, writing this blog allows me to consider alternative histories that I could have lived through, at least in terms of what my musical passions could have ended up being. All of the qualities that caused me to fall in love with Marion - surging guitars, vocals that mixed soul with passion - are to be found here in Offshore by Puressence. Had I been fully clued into contemporary British music, two years earlier than I chose to start buying the records, listening to the shows and reading the magazines and papers, I can well believe that I’d have fallen under Puressence’s spell under the belief that they had something which set them apart from the rest, just as I did with Marion in 1995/96. It opens up the distressing possibility that I’d have dismissed Marion as copyists, imagine! A world without This World and Body - ugh! - I have to take a lie down to dismiss the possibility. No, history takes care of itself for the right reasons, and I am grateful that, in this instance at least, it played out as it did. Apparently, the two groups toured together at one point. I wonder how many of the audience had to be carried out due to being overcome by emotion at those gigs.
My abiding memory of Puressence in the 90s is the way that the music press kept suggesting that achieving major success was only a question of time for them. Be patient, lads, stardom is coming - albeit in the manner of a bus service which ran once a day, every sixth Sunday. At least Puressence’s fans never had to wait too long for new material from them. Offshore was their third EP release inside a year on 2 Damn Loud, and their last before they signed to Island Records.
Thursday, 27 February 2025
Guys and Dolls: PJ Harvey - Missed (9 April 1993)
I had my doubts about including this, the second track on the PJ Harvey trio’s Rid of Me LP. My notes suggest that it’s the power of Missed’s closing minute which made it into a possible inclusion. It also helps that Harvey sounds recognisably like herself, rather than putting on the irritating faux-American drawl which served only to alienate me from some of her music in this period.
My problem with Missed when I first heard it was that the verses sounded rambly and unfocused. Harvey appears to be stating her love for someone in typically florid style: I put stars at your head/Put Mars at your feet. The mention of Mary felt creatively lazy, but I now see that the laziness was mine, and that Harvey has actually written something brilliantly poetic and evocative here. Once I looked at the lyrics it became clear to me that Missed is set during the period leading up to the resurrection of Jesus. The hesitant, wan feel of the opening minute reflects a mixture of feelings: