Guys and Dolls: Royal Trux - Steal Yr Face/Gett Off (7 May 1993)

 

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On the evidence of these two songs, which made up both sides of a single released through Sub Pop, if you take a sprinkling of early 1970s Rolling Stones guitar riffs and season with Sonic Youth-style vocals, you get Royal Trux.

In keeping with those two other bands, on both of these tracks, Royal Trux manage to combine a musically sexy but unromantic sound with lyrically striking junkie poetry. The creative force behind the band was a couple, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema. On Steal Yr Face, Hagerty - who had already acknowledged a debt to the Stones when his previous band, Pussy Galore (featuring Jon Spencer) had recorded a cassette only cover album of Exile on Main St. - takes on a hybrid Jagger cum Thurston Moore role, warning of dire consequences at losing oneself to narcotic excess. Meanwhile, Herrema dusts down her Kim Gordon cosplay act on Gett Off, barking out unintelligible orders over a clipped guitar sound, which sounds like Brown Sugar’s autistic, younger brother, before becoming overwhelmed by spooky harmonica playing, as though the solo in Little Red Rooster was having a stroke.

It’s difficult to pick a favourite here, as they both have lots to cause fascination and enthralment. It’s not fair of me either to talk about Royal Trux sounding like other bands, especially given their influence on Sonic Youth - Kim Gordon’s side project duo Free Kitten took inspiration from the Royal Trux sound, for example.

Videos courtesy of Rich Neil and myaimistrue.

Guys and Dolls: Moonshake - Girly Loop (7 May 1993)

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I talk sometimes about tracks on this blog being borderline inclusions on my metaphorical mix tape. Girly Loop by Moonshake is so borderline that I can picture it diving under a descending doorway, Indiana Jones-style to take up its place here rather than being left out in the cold.

It owes its place here, mainly, due to pleasure in having new material from Moonshake and hearing them on a Peel show again. The material he had played from the Eva Luna album had been among some of the most consistently entertaining heard on a Peel show during late 1992. Now, the band were back with a mini-album called Big Good Angel, a record which functioned as something of a holding operation while the band toured extensively through the first half of 1993.

However, alarm bells have been ringing when I find myself admitting that it has taken me 3 or 4 listens to engage with Girly Loop, and even then I’d say that my enthusiasm for it is lukewarm at best. When I posted about their Peel Session from 29/1/93, I highlighted the band’s smorgasbord of styles and textures that they work into their songs as being what drew me towards them. But, curiously, it’s precisely that blending which works against the track here. The mood starts out nocturnal, spooky and primal as Margaret Fiedler McGinnis sings about trying to find crazy men and wild men, as a contrast to the passive partner that she has at home. The illicit thrill - albeit a dangerous one - of trying to find, what I presume are new sexual partners, that she tries to convey as she steps out into dangerous environments is telegraphed by bursts of noise which are trying to introduce notes of abrasiveness into a quiet basic track, but which just ending up sounding either like a flock of seagulls having an argument or an amplifier breaking wind. 

For a change, the eclecticism sounds forced, they’re metaphorically throwing sounds out of the speakers to see what sticks, and at times you can see the beads of sweat on their foreheads with the desperate effort of it all.

It just gets by on the strength of who it is and Fiedler McGinnis’s vocal. Also, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see how the approach here may have inspired PJ Harvey’s music in her post-Rid of Me albums. Fiedler McGinnis would subsequently play as part of Harvey’s live band in the early 2000s, so I trust that Polly made her debt clear to Margaret.

Video courtesy of TheMelcene.

Guys and Dolls: Lee and the Clarendonians - Night Owl (7 May 1993)

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Peel played this 1972 roots reggae track because he claimed that he was still going through his collection of singles even though he had now found the elusive record in the Little Richard cover search. I’m guessing that in the L section, Lee and The Clarendonians would have been positioned before Mickey Lee Lane.

If Discogs is to be believed, then Lee in this instance was Hubert Lee, and this was one of his earliest releases. Indeed, it may have been a conscious decision to pair Lee up with the more experienced vocal duo, The Clarendonians (Peter Austin and Ernest Wilson), to give things a more polished veneer. It continues the theme of records from this Peel show which deal with relationships collapsing, although in this case, it’s the man waiting up with a rolling pin to greet the late homecoming of his party-loving other half, and sending her to bed with a message that her behaviour has killed his love for her.

I’ve had to do a lot of driving recently, both for work and for the extended run of a play I’ve been in. This has led to me following Peel’s lead and re-listening to albums I haven’t heard for many years. The tone of this track came back to me when I was listening to Better Do Better from Stars of CCTV by Hard-Fi. 33 years separate Night Owl and Better Do Better, but the message is clear - whether you’re in Feltham or Jamaica - those women gonna drive you mad!

Video courtesy of Mr Charlie Chalk.

Guys and Dolls: Moose - Suzanne (7 May 1993)

 

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Still makes my head go all funny, that one. John Peel after playing Suzanne on 7/5/93.

The Phantom Fifty had got to Number 17 and presented a track which is the flip-side of Vi Ploriontos by Scrawl. Whereas that track was about someone choosing to end a relationship, Suzanne finds Russell Yates and Moose having to manage the pain of being dumped by the titular lover, who at least has the decency to look sad about it.

Musically, there’s a lot going on in Suzanne, which reflects the sense of emotional turmoil that it’s trying to chronicle. The chiming guitars that open it sound like choked breaths of disbelief that another day has come around and that the pain of this breakup has to be relieved again, a weary recognition that things haven’t got easier yet. We even have arpeggios that sound like falling tears cropping up at some points. Lyrically, the song touches on the pain of seeing the one who has let you go having the strength to work through their own guilt and make progress, all while Yates still finds himself looking longingly at photographs he’s not yet ready to throw out and recognising that, just by existing, Suzanne still has mastery over his emotions and heart: She walks all over me/I can’t take it from her.

And what complicates these feelings further is the fact that while Yates suffers, both Suzanne and the world at large keep going, oblivious to his pain: She goes where she wants to etc while the galloping, driving drum pattern sounds like the rest of the world clattering around our stricken, lovelorn hero. Moose up the ante on this from around 2:15 onwards by introducing a loud white noise effect through to the end of the song which does a brilliant job of evoking just how overwhelming it can be to try and pick your way through the everyday world when your heart is broken.

Around the second chorus the white noise guitar bursts through and takes over the song, swinging from side to side on the stereo spectrum, hitting a single note column of sound where a normal guitar solo might be, and the song just builds onwards, drums roll, guitars get more frantic, the noise increases like the blood boiling in your ears until the band crash to a halt. Still stunning now, and for me a high water mark for shoegazing.  (Taken from We almost laughed, we almost cried, a 2014 retrospective article on the work of Moose, published on A Goldfish Called Regret).

 Moose talk about how they made the video to Suzanne.

Video courtesy of 9emmett9

Lyrics copyright of K.J. McKillop and Russell Yates.

Guys and Dolls: NSO Force - In 2 Deep (7 May 1993)

 

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NSO = No Sell Out

My notes seem to suggest that I misinterpreted what In 2 Deep was about when I first heard it. I thought it was tremendous, but was perturbed by troubling sentiments. I was probably guilty of taking the title and the line at the 38 second mark about re-offending, as a sign that the track was about the narrator embracing crime, and accepting it as their way of life, because it was impossible to turn back from it.

However, it’s become clear to me on subsequent listens that it’s a repudiation both of a criminal life and living a conventional 9-to-5 existence. The NSO crew - Douglas Haywoode, Niles Hailstones and Ola The Soul Controller - have clear heads about both their purpose and the sacrifices they will have to make in order to be true to what they want to do. However, there’s no bravado on show here. The mood of the track is quite downbeat with its  repeated wah-wah sample reflecting all the possibilities being gone over and rejected, and the jazz trumpet evoking the noirish sense of late nights and melancholia at the struggles which await them as they try both to develop as artists, and stay true to their cultural principles.

And make no mistake, “struggle” is the central theme of In 2 Deep. It’s the struggle not to work as a wage slave or puppet, so as to attain the dream of a place in Battersea, eating caviar and swine - now that’s what I call London weighting. It’s a struggle not to get embroiled in intra-racial conflicts with other black people and artists over trivialities - such as a brand of trainer - which can wind up leaving people dead.  And it’s a struggle which has to be faced alone. I found the most affecting section of the track to be the run  from 1:23 to 2:16, where the MC laments the way in which nobody impedes the progress of black people more than other black people, and in rap/hip-hop, you have to keep your aspirations quiet as you build them up, so as not to attract dangerous attention. Choose your time to flex, wisely, appears to be the message. 

And then there’s the pressure to succeed before life either makes other choices for them, or the streets end up claiming them, one way or another. The closing refrain of Time is running out adds another layer of pressure to the NSO Force’s mission. The track carries the weight of mental agony and it transmits the harshness of urban London life. NSO Force certainly had to put up with their share of setbacks, including the disappointment of seeing their one and only Peel Session, recorded in November 1989, go unbroadcast due to excessive swearing.

But it’s not all grim stuff. If nothing else, this may be the only hip-hop track to ever feature the words dilly dally in it.

Video courtesy of Sentinal One.

Guys and Dolls: Tsunami - Slugger (7 May 1993)

 

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Two tracks blogged about in a day! What madness is this? Well, they have a couple of things in common, such as:

1) Both Tsunami’s album, Deep End and Scrawl’s mini-album, Bloodsucker were issued by Simple Machines, out of Arlington County, Virginia.

2) Like Vi Ploriontos, Slugger made my list of inclusions - albeit with a question mark next to it - then I was going to pass on it, only to reprieve it.

I don’t think Slugger is as good a track as Vi Ploriontos, but this could be down to it being harder to get a handle on. I think it’s about outsiders trying to break into a clique, but doing a bad job of it, though it’s not easy to decipher that from the vocals. I was helped by the fact that part of the lyrics are included in the liner notes for Deep End:

Fly in to town on a saucer of gold.

You wouldn’t know cool 

If it crept up and slugged you in the nose.

I was probably guilty of giving up too easily, but I initially wrote the track off as being too insubstantial for inclusion. However, when I found myself thinking about Vi Ploriontos, I was convinced that the riff to Slugger was from Vi Ploriontos. The fact that that chugging riff had clamped itself to my brain convinced me to put it back on the metaphorical mixtape. Sometimes, you just have to go with the vibes.

Video courtesy of Brooks Wyrick.

Lyrics copyright of their authors.

Guys and Dolls: Scrawl - Vi Ploriontos (7 May 1993)

 

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Having recently written a post about what it felt like to be dumped after a long term relationship, it makes sense that within the same Peel show, we should also be able to enjoy a track written from the perspective of the one who has decided it’s time to pull the plug on a relationship. I think, in comparison to the subject of derision in Vi Ploriontos, I probably got off lightly as co-authors Marcy Mays and Sue Harshe firmly go in  two-footed on their soon-to-be ex.

One thing I didn’t mention in my break up post was the way in which, when you’re dumped after a lengthy relationship, you find yourself wondering why you bothered putting in all the time and effort that you did. Once you get over the end of the relationship, all the good times and happy memories become a comfort to you, and something to remember with pride. But when you’re in the immediate aftermath of the break-up, then every kind word, every happy time, every penny spent feels like it was a waste of time, given that it ultimately led to heartbreak.

What’s interesting about the dynamic in Vi Ploriontos, is that Scrawl feel exactly the same sense of disappointment and let-down. They reflect back on the trinkets that were bought: fine wines, Megadeth concert tickets, trips away etc; though there is a note of ambiguity as to whether these were things bought by Scrawl or by their ex. Regardless, at this point, it only counts as wasted money and poor taste. The key line by which Scrawl announce their intention to end the relationship is You’re not worth all the space that I let you use up. So, a point of no return has clearly been passed.

Given that Vi Ploriontos translates from Latin as “I forced them to cry” and with its ongoing refrain of You’re gonna cry, I suspect that the break up has come about because the ex has done something unforgivable rather than because they’ve simply drifted apart.

Despite it making my list, I had originally thought that I was going to pass on Vi Ploriontos, but what reprieved it was hearing some more of Scrawl’s music from Peel shows broadcast later in 1993, in particular a track called Your Mother Wants to Know, which showed me that Scrawl had a very nice line in tracks about romantic and interpersonal dysfunction. I want to enjoy them while I can because Peel stopped playing them after ‘93, though this wasn’t helped by them signing to Elektra and a three year delay between albums.

Video courtesy of Scrawl -Topic.

Lyrics are copyright of Sue Harshe and Marcy Mays.