Guys and Dolls: The Fall - Mother-Sister! (28 May 1993)

 

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Thank God that there is a dedicated Fall lyrics interpretation website up and running again to help clueless bloggers with providing some colour to Fall selections beyond what my notes record of this play of Mother-Sister!, which Peel described as a golden gasser featuring several Johnny Rottenisms. I initially felt that it was those that made the track interesting enough to include on the metaphorical mixtape. Whether Mark E. Smith would have liked it or not, if you were recording a vocal in December 1978 and you happened to lapse into a sneering tone or, as happens at the end of Mother-Sister!, you spit out the word Sad! in a manner that combines a shout, a scream and a retch, then comparisons to John Lydon would be inescapable.

Mother-Sister! was recorded for The Fall’s 1979 debut album, Live at the Witch Trials. The opening exchange between guitarist, Martin Bramah and Smith: Er, what’s this song about?/Er, nothing was, for several years, presented as the truth by Smith when talking about Mother-Sister! He just felt that the words  went well with the tune - which keyboardist, Una Baines, is credited as the co-author of. But according to Bramah, the song is about his upbringing and the house he grew up in. Bramah didn’t know who his father was and, as a child, Bramah lived with his gran during the week, and with his mother at the weekends. Up to the age of seven, he believed that his gran was his mum and his mum was his sister. This was quite a common arrangement in fatherless households, and appears to be the inspiration behind the lines: Astray/Our friends/And the fathers/ Are underground.

The oddest line comes at the end when Smith sings, Mother, sister, mother, sister/ Why did you put your head in the pylon?  Mother-Sister! was originally called The Pylon when The Fall started playing it in their live sets during March/April of 1978.  Again, the source of this is the life of Martin Bramah. When he moved in with his mum in Prestwich, their house was near to both the M60 motorway and between two electricity pylons. But these oppressive surroundings at least meant that the house was exceptionally cheap to buy. 

Bramah claimed credit for the arrangement of Una Baines’s melody on Mother-Sister!, which combines post-punk (the skeletal guitar, especially with its distress signal-like notes at the beginning. However, Bramah goes on to play a melody of great elegance as the foundation of the track), dub (the bass and keyboard motifs) and punk rock (the drum breaks leading into Smith’s spitting out of the track’s title). 

Considering the apparent inspirations behind Mother-Sister!, I would make a case for it being something of the title track on Live at the Witch Trials. In another age, the fatherless Bramah could well have seen his mother/sister denounced as being something evil for having a child out of wedlock, and it would have been straight from the courthouse to the ducking stool. Happily, we’ve left that behind, but as The Fall progressed through the remainder of the 20th Century, it would not have escaped their notice that single mothers continued to be judged harshly, both behind closed doors and in newspaper editorials. The trials continued unabated, but nowadays, the mothers didn’t drown in water, but under the weight of confected, public scorn.

Mother-Sister broken down by Annotating The Fall

Video courtesy of NeonMeateDream99.

All lyrics are copyright of Mark E.Smith

Guys and Dolls: J Church - Good Judge of Character (28 May 1993)

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For some reason, I overlooked Good Judge of Character when Peel played it as part of a trio of tracks taken from San Francisco band, J Church’s debut album, Quetzalcoatl*, on his 22/5/93 show.  Indeed, none of the three made it on to the metaphorical mixtape, but here we are with Good Judge of Character now taking its place. There’s a lot about its general style and demeanour that doesn’t move me particularly, but it reaps the benefit of being a generic punk/metal tune that has had the sense to equip itself with a killer chorus line. 

Doesn’t it get cold out here? has been rattling around my brain for the last 48 hours. As the video demonstrates, it lodged in enough Peel Show listeners’ minds to propel it to Number 34 in the 1993 Festive Fifty. And with that sliver of catchiness hooking me in, I’ve gone back to the track again and again, which has enabled me to discover layers of interest that aren’t immediately obvious on the first listen.

The song’s about Lance Hahn’s interactions with the kind of local character that we all recognise within our towns, but were always warned against striking up conversation with. Hahn’s oddball is a recovering junkie, previously of wealthy standing from Austin, now reduced to living in her car, but still with an eye to be taken out if possible (She asks me on a date that I can’t afford) and who clearly has affection for him, with her ongoing entreaty to Take care, baby. 

Hahn’s reaction towards her is affectionate too, but as that chorus line suggests, he’s also amazed/revolted that the woman can live the way she does. The reason why I think she may be a former junkie is because of the line, She’s been to whores’ hell but still manages to smile, which leads me to wonder whether their relationship is quite as innocent as it appears. Perhaps the date that Hahn can’t afford is the woman’s asking price for sexual favours. If she can find enough of those, maybe that’s how she keeps out the cold.

At the very least, it offers the intriguing, though unlikely possibility of Alan Bennett, sitting up late at home on this night, hearing Good Judge of Character, and it giving him a push of inspiration to write a play about the female tramp who lived on his driveway for 15 years.

*I really should have responded more warmly to them given that, with that album title, it was obvious they were fans of the movie, Q - The Winged Serpent

Video courtesy of June Grant.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Guys and Dolls: Tsunami - Beauty Pt.II (28 May 1993)

 

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Distributed as part of a 4 track EP on Simple Machines called Inclined Plane, which showcased the label owners’ band, Tsunami alongside 3 other bands (Superchunk, Rodan and Unrest), Beauty Pt. II is another track from this 28/5/93 show which takes jealousy of a popular girl as its theme - we were here with Picasso Trigger’s song, Queenie, a few posts ago.  However, the reasons for the jealousy in Beauty Pt. II may be more related to bitterness towards a former lover/crush than because of the anger at being ghosted by a friend you helped raise up to alpha status, as was the case in Queenie.

I’m running with the bitter romance angle mainly because Beauty Pt. II was originally recorded by the male, New York band, Flower, for their 1990 album, Hologram Sky. Because the vocals, in both versions, are quite muted - at least until the final 30 seconds, it’s easy on initial listens to miss just how rancorous the singer(s) mood is:

I want to watch her fall/See her change, see her fall.

Furthermore, the following line - I touch a piece of her/Reminds me of what I’ve learnt - implies that the fallout from this relationship is going to be spread around, making Beauty Pt. II into one of those chain reaction heartache songs i.e. “they hurt me, so now I’m going to hurt others.” Had it been Reminds me of what I’ve lost that would transform the narrator from avenger to victim.

If there’s one thing sustaining our narrator though, it’s that ongoing trope of seeing someone getting swamped in attention and it causing them to unravel as they have to keep so many hearts on a string that eventually they start forgetting which lie they’ve told:

She is a superstar/Falling fast, falling hard.

She’s shooting through the sky/Cool and hot, she’s gonna die*.

There isn’t a great deal to choose between the two versions, Tsunami’s is moderately faster, though I’ve found myself listening to Flower’s version more, possibly because it might be being sung by Ian James, who would go on to be a founding member of Cell. Where they diverge is in the thrashy outro that forms the last movement of the track. On Flower’s version it sounds like they’re screaming, I’ve got a gun in the car on three of the four refrains, before ending with One, two, three four, which Tsunami use throughout the last 35 seconds - though one of the women eventually melds this into something I can’t quite make out in counterpoint to it. Regardless, it causes a song called Beauty Pt. II to end on a rather ugly note.

A look at the John Peel wiki suggests that Peel only played two of the tracks on Inclined Plane. Three weeks before playing Beauty Pt. II, he had included Darjeeling by Rodan. This blog didn’t cover that show, but I would have probably passed on it. Of the others, I would have very likely included Winona Ryder by Unrest, which was an updated reworking of Debbie Harry by Family Fodder. Superchunk’s tune, Baxter, would have been a borderline choice.

Tsunami possibly owed their place on this show’s playlist to Peel having seen them play in the week at The Wilde Club in Norwich. He had enjoyed both the music and their onstage manner, so much so that he had sent them a note inviting them to meet him for a lunchtime drink in Great Finborough, the following day. They hadn’t taken him up on the offer, and we don’t know whether they were as un-nerved at the prospect of having a drink with Peel as Mark Arm had been.

The original version of Beauty Pt.II by Flower.

*There is a potential drug subtext in these lyrics too, in which case the song could be read as relief at having escaped a damaging relationship.

Video courtesy of Brooks Wyrick (Tsunami) and Famous or Forgotten Music (Flower).

All lyrics are copyright of Flower.

Guys and Dolls: Leroy Smart - Poor Man Struggle (28 May 1993)

 

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For some reason, this track had a question mark against it on my list of selections. Maybe I was a bit put off by the crappy synth pan-pipe/trumpet sounds of the Resistance riddim which underpins the song or, more likely, I was irritated by the period between 2:33 and 2:43, where Leroy Smart tries to throw in some soulful vocalisations, but sounds less like someone wilting under the pressure of poverty and more like someone getting hit by an attack of acute appendicitis.

Ultimately, Poor Man Struggle is too well made to be ignored though. The lyrics are standard “the-rich-get-the-pleasure-and-the-poor-get-the-blame” fare, but it’s all put together by people who so clearly know what they’re doing that it sounds fresh and invigorating. 

The only change I would make, especially if the song was being recorded now, would be to insist on a verse about how the poor man’s struggle is often made worse by a tendency to act against their own interests if they think it will make other poor people’s lives worse. Until this mindset is altered, or even better, until governments stop using it as a fallback strategy to stop people forcing genuinely effective changes, then the struggle will never end, and the rich will continue walking on water while the rest of us frantically try and stay afloat.

Video courtesy of Reggae Nineties (And Early 2000s).

Guys and Dolls: Shiny Beast - Texasatan/Picasso Trigger - Queenie (28 May 1993)

 

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Two tracks out of three played by Peel on this show from Pyloric Waves*, a compilation album featuring bands from North Carolina, distributed on D-Tox.  Shiny Beast and Picasso Trigger represented some of the sounds of Raleigh. Current Peel obsession, Polvo, from Chapel Hill, also featured, but I passed on including their track, Wild Turkey.

Of the two of them, Texasatan is the more musically accomplished. In 99 seconds, it packs in orthodox rock, thrash and funk, all while working to the ethos that your lyrics can be as disturbing as you want them to be, providing that you make the music around it catchy and surprising. The blank voiced vocal, pondering aloud the likelihood of surviving a self-administered operation, takes on the quality of an exhausted Jesus, labouring in the wilderness - the inaudible, shredded vocal between 0:40 and 0:49 sounds like the Devil encouraging him to an act of self harm. The funk rock break over the last 30 seconds sounds like someone trying to clear a distracted mind, while the ripping sound effects either adds a further layer of metaphor to stripping away un-necessary thoughts or, more disturbingly, tries to convey the start of the self-operation.  

Or perhaps Jesus just ripped his trousers.

Picasso Trigger’s track, Queenie, may lack musical savvy, but it’s probably the one I’ll remember most when looking back over these tracks in a year’s time. It appears to be a great example of what I call Heathers-rock, in that it takes female conflict/envy as its theme, in particular the importance given to popularity and homage paid to girls at the top of the social pecking order. I’m guessing on this a bit, given that, again, the vocal isn’t always clear enough to make out what is being sung**. My supposition is that  singer, Kathy Poindexter is addressing the song to a popular girl that she helped to make:

When your name is in lights.

Will you remember me.

I’ll cross your stomping ground.

And touch your royalty.

What really comes across in this song is how poisonous these positions of social eminence are. Queenie drips with paranoia (Don’t hate me), threat (Try to tie my hair and I will trip you), mockery - in these types of songs, the word “pretty” always comes across as an insult. Most of all, Queenie emphasises the essential transient loneliness which comes with being a venerated figure, especially if you’re a girl:

When you sit on the throne.

You must feel very high.

You must feel like a queen.

Alone and left to dry.

*Sounds very grand but just another example of American rock label scatology, given that it’s taken from the word, pylorus, which is a small muscle/valve connecting the lower intestine to the duodenum. I suppose calling the album something like, Shitgate, would have put people off.

**The vocals didn’t get any easier to decipher when Picasso Trigger performed the song as part of their final gig on 16 June 1995 (starts at 4:10).

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Videos courtesy of Mars Sigler (Shiny Beast) and Dream of the 90s (Picasso Trigger).

Guys and Dolls: Magazine - The Light Pours Out of Me (28 May 1993)

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Recorded for Magazine’s 1978 debut album, Real Life, a few years before a later remixed version was released as a single, Peel’s reason for playing The Light Pours Out of Me was because it had been covered by Molly Half Head and issued as a b-side on their new single, Toe to Sand. This made my list of original inclusions, though it had a question mark against it, because my notes say that I wasn’t impressed by their singer. Unfortunately, Toe to Sand is not currently available for sharing. Peel had thought about playing Molly Half Head’s version of the song, but ultimately decided to go with the original version.

The Light Pours Out of Me belongs to the euphoric end of Post-punk, despite Howard Devoto’s deep, drawling vocal. I’m reminded of a comment Peel made in Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds, where he said that people had forgotten how funny a lot of Post-punk music was, and there is something very amusing about that singing voice going, The light pours out of me.

I’ve read some analyses of the song which suggest that it’s about death and the crossing over to the realm of the spirits. My own feeling is that it’s about living, growing and developing new feelings and experiences. Granted, I’d say that the first verse deals with some of the less desirable aspects of childhood, such as those horrible moments when you’re all played out and bored - especially at bedtime - and time hangs heavy. But subsequent verses seem to touch on the fascination of learning new things for yourself  (The conspiracy/Of silence/Ought to revolutionise/My thought) and falling in love (It jerks out of me/Like blood/In this still life/Heart beats up love). 

And if you are still sceptical from listening to the lyrics, then the wonderful guitar sounds from 2:54 and 4:09 onwards offer confirmation that this is a song about living and those wonderful periods where we’re firing on all cylinders, mentally and emotionally.

All lyrics are copyright of Howard Devoto.

Video courtesy of I.Zurutuza.

Guys and Dolls: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Gentleman’s Lament (28 May 1993)

 

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Gentleman’s Lament was recorded by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 for their fourth album, Mother of All Saints, which was released on Matador in 1992. Reflecting on the band’s career in a recent interview with the Quietus, Brian Hageman said of the time leading up to the recording of Mother of All Saints:

We were writing stuff on the road a lot, and there was just so much, that’s how it ended up being a double record. We were loud and chaotic live - we wanted it to be overwhelming. (Hageman, The Strange World of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 by Sean Kitching for The Quietus, published 1 April 2026).

Listening to Mother of All Saints is to be overwhelmed by a band, who over the first half of that record at least, simply refused to stand still within any of their songs. Gentleman’s Lament was the first full track on  the album and gives an indication of what to expect. Noisy, atonal, constantly shifting tempo, never allowing the song to settle into any predictable pattern. It’s a relentless attempt to bludgeon the listener with new things every 10 seconds. And for nearly half of Mother of All Saints, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 manage to keep that evolving smorgasbord of sounds coming, until, eventually, the tracks do start to fall into a tonally consistent pattern, and the record runs out of steam in its second half.  Trumans Water are an obvious comparison, though Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 had been going for several years prior to them.

What engages me with Gentleman’s Lament is how all the chaotic music within it is used as a setting for lyrics which sound like a letter from a wealthy industrialist intending to make an escape to the country in order to try and cleanse themselves of the pollution that is clogging up the air of the city.  The tone of the lyric is formal and archaic:

James, I must retire to the country.

Should I linger much longer,

I shall surely expire.

It’s as if The Rolling Stones had chosen to set the lyrics to Lady Jane to the music of Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadow. However, it’s not too long until Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 start adding their own demented touches to the lyrics:

James, all I want are some horsies.

A nice river with fishies.

And a cold place to die.

And suddenly it starts to become clear that it’s not only the body and skin of the narrator in Gentleman’s Lament that has become poisoned but their mind too. The bouncing, juddering music that reflected the sound of the cars and chimneys mentioned at the start of the song now seems to be reflecting the disturbed mental state of the letter writer.

The lyrics, which become harder to hear from 1:40 onwards when the band decide to sing them as a high choral harmony, confirm that the letter writer has indeed been packed off to the countryside - possibly forever - due to a mental breakdown:

Viscous thoughts slosh slowly on through cluttered mind.

Fishies figure eight and horsies butterfly.

Butler scratches chin and sighs, slowly wonders why.

It’s possible that the country retreat is an asylum and that the butler is Mark E. Smith.

Peel dedicated the track to the American band, Polvo, who had visited him at Radio 1 earlier that day, and whom he was going to see performing an in-store set at Rough Trade, the next day. Peel felt that whenever he met American bands, he came across badly to them, and he cited as evidence an awkward encounter with Mudhoney’s Mark Arm at the previous year’s Reading Festival. When Peel originally told that story, he hadn’t gone into detail, which led me to believe that he’d probably been guilty of overwhelming Arm with babble, born out of nerves and admiration. But, he revealed tonight that he had spooked Arm by suggesting they have a drink together after Mudhoney’s set. Maybe Arm had felt this was someone getting too over-familiar, or maybe he was just desperate not to have to prolong a social encounter where he felt that he may not have enough to say. If so, then Arm was probably guilty of behaving in a more British manner than Peel was, who by contrast would have come across - unintentionally, I’m sure - as acting like a pushy American.

Nevertheless, as we shall discover when we get to the 29/5/93 show, Polvo were delighted to see Peel again, not least because they would both have a war story to share about spending that week performing to low numbers*

*More on that when we get to the Notes post on this show and the 29/5/93 one.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Video courtesy of lemminkainenn.