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?
At 1:34, the focus of the song shifts from Yoko to Courtney, touching on - among other things - motherhood (My waters break like turpentine), but more pertinently, a recognition of her husband’s developing death wish: The pee girl burns to be a bride/Your ever lovely suicide. Cobain’s heroin usage was growing to the extent that overdoses were becoming an almost normal occurrence for him. In contrast, Love was trying to clean up her health, perhaps shaken by a lengthy and expensive battle the Cobains had gone through with The Department of Family Services, which had seen a very real risk of their daughter, Frances, being taken into care.
In late spring [1993], [Love] hired a psychic to help her kick drugs. Kurt balked at paying the bills from the psychic and laughed at her advice that the couple needed to reject “all toxins”. Courtney took it seriously however; she attempted to stop smoking, began drinking fresh-squeezed juice every day and attended Narcotics Anonymous. Kurt taunted his wife at first, but then encouraged her to attend N.A. meetings if only so he had more free time to get loaded. (Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven, page 276, Sceptre, 2001)
At its conclusion, 20 Years in the Dakota features one final audacious touch, with the band working in a tribute to the end of Hey Jude, but replacing its choral enormity with a droopier, hazier feel as the lines I don’t remember, I forget fall away like someone nodding off into a drug induced stupor.
In the event, Ono spent 50 years in the Dakota, finally selling her apartment in 2023.
Video courtesy of David Rolfe’s Rock and Metal Channel
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.
I’m feeling anxiously excited as I write this. Tonight, the greasepaint part of this blog becomes relevant to me for the first time in 6 years as it’s the first night of Here Comes a Chopper, a 1970 play in which Eugene Ionesco predicts COVID-19, 50 years before it happens. It’s meant the world to me to get back on a stage again over these last 8 weeks or so. I suspect my stomach will be going over and over around 7:25pm tonight as I’m faced with the prospect of acting in front of an audience again after so long, but the show is in good shape, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.
I couldn’t let today go past without blogging. I’m aware that a number of recent posts have marked things I’ve been doing - see records by The Slickers and The Upsetters while I was on holiday in Saint Lucia.
I’m celebrating my return to the stage with a near 7 minute burst of Goan trance from Paul Jackson aka Voodoo People. While I can’t see Altitude replacing Paul Jones’s High Time as my choice of opening night music - a tradition I’ve maintained for 32 years now - it’s got enough energy and life to send me out into the spotlight again with my heart racing and the blood pumping. It also makes for a marginally better listen than the track which Peel misidentified Altitude as when he played it on this show, the slightly scratchier Love, Love American Style.
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.
The title track here demonstrates how Puressence were still able to play their strongest cards, while sloughing off some of the bloated tendencies of their previous releases. For example, Offshore clocks in at 3 and a half minutes, whereas each of the tracks on their Petrol Skin EP were between 4 and 6 and a half minutes long, while seeming to want to fill every available second with James Mudriczki’s admittedly brilliant voice. Lyrically, Puressence mixed the agitational with the painterly. “Offshore” in this track alludes to a self-imposed wish to isolate oneself from others. Paranoia runs rampant, indeed Mudriczki’s vocals often sounded like someone trying to keep a panic attack under control. And yet running alongside that is the gorgeous, near-chorus of Underwater butterfly keeps so dry, it just bowls me over/Gazing through pathetic lies and I can’t keep down/Something’s got me going now.
And it’s this that was crucial in understanding why groups like Puressessnce and Marion inspired such devotion in their followers. They fully acknowledged the pressure of being alive and the pain it exposed us to, but they never gave into it. There was always reason to fight on and find your way back to shore. Whether you crawled up it or strode up it, Puressence weren’t about to let themselves or their listeners drown.
Bonus points are also awarded for them working mal de merinto the lyrics.
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:
1) Unprocessed grief.
2) Anguish over the empty tomb and missing body (My son, where’s he been?/Don’t deny it and don’t you hide him.)
3) Sceptical astonishment at the prospect of the body being resurrected (Show yourself to me and I’d believe/I’d moan and I’d weep. Fall silent at your speak/I’d burst it, full to the brim.)
Harvey wisely decides that trying to write about the meeting between Mary and the resurrected Jesus might be a little too difficult to pull off, but the doubts and weariness of searching for the missing Saviour which are reflected in the final verse from 3:00 (No words, no sign etc) are underpinned by a whining guitar note which gives way to the final Ha! at 3:32, and as the band crash it in and full volume while Polly Jean repeatedly sings, Oh, I’ve missed him, it all comes together to sound like nothing less than Jesus descending to Earth in front of our eyes (or ears). A stunning piece of music and one of the highlights of the Rid of Me tracks which Peel had played to this point.
I’m still in St Lucia, so I’m still skipping through my selections from Peel’s 9/4/93 show to pick out any Caribbean influenced tracks that he played that night.
In comparison to Man Beware by The Slickers, Bucky Skank, a 1973 Lee Perry production with The Upsetters, is a trickier listen. Unlike Man Beware, I wouldn’t put this on at a party, unless I was hoping to hurry people home. Although it has a narrative running through it - the scolding of a wannabe bank robber (bucky meaning a home made gun in patois) - it’s really more of a mood piece than a sound system floor filler. The track seems afraid to draw attention to itself, almost afraid to blow its cover in the same way that its protagonist would be while preparing for a robbery.
With its plangent guitar notes and strikingly, strange vocalisations, the listener is taken into the jittery, disturbed mind of the track’s protagonist. I’ll be honest and admit that this is a borderline inclusion, but what carries it through is precisely that strange, almost nocturnal atmosphere that pervades the track.
I’m hoping to go to the weekly street party in Gros Islet tomorrow evening. I don’t expect to hear Bucky Skank played there, but I’ll let you know if it is.*
*It wasn’t.
Video courtesy of Rare Samples and Songs Oleg Tsoy.
I’m writing this while on holiday in St Lucia, so posting a rocksteady reggae track feels entirely appropriate. Man Beware was released in 1969 and was produced by Joe Gibbs. On this show, Peel dedicated the airing of Man Beware to John Downey of Lolworth, who had written in to assure Peel that the 1988 compilation album, Joe Gibbs & Friends - The Reggae Train 1968 - 1971 issued by Trojan Records was still available as he himself had recently bought a copy at Daddy Kool Records in London. That compilation not only featured Man Beware but other Peel show favourites such as Kimble and People Grudgeful.
