Guys and Dolls: Thule - Dynamo (22 May 1993)

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If you’ve ever thought that hard rock would be improved by the addition of party razzers* then this is the song for you.

That might sound like I’m trying to polish a novelty turd of a tune, but Dynamo, recorded by Thule for their second and final album, (321 Normal 2) has grown on me the more that I’ve heard it. If you read the Discogs or John Peel Wiki pages on them, they promise a banquet of eclecticism, with their music encompassing electronica, dub and ambient, while groups such as Kraftwerk, Tackhead and Chrome are all mentioned as influences. To my untrained ears, Dynamo owes more to Bauhaus and Joy Division - they even manage to rhyme the words control and dynamo for goodness sake!

It all starts out with a scratchy bassline followed by similarly scratchy guitar picking. I’ve always been a sucker for musical flourishes that sound like something eroding before your ears. And once the track gets started, it’s played in a key which dominates the environment so completely, it’s a struggle not to be drawn in. I’d rhapsodise even more about Dynamo if we could hear the lyrics more clearly. What I can make out from it makes the Joy Division comparisons even clearer given that they seem to be barking out a list of Ian Curtis approved bullet points: Obsession…isolation….etc. Alongside that is the post-punk ethos of embracing the mechanical/technical and working that into a crossover with the organic. I think Thule also managed to align this with early 1990s musical mores. For example, I originally heard the word, insulator - at 1:15 - as Catch you later, which given that it followed a line that sounded like it was saying, Young and tender had me wondering whether this was acting as some kind of deconstruction of Beverly Hills 90210 youth culture, but I’m more inclined to believe that, with a dynamo being something that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, the song is instead targeting the slacker generations and by extension, it projects a frustration that the angst and fury in grunge music isn’t being converted into something more positive and constructive. The squealing party razzers evoke the sense of an attempt to summon up energy, which in keeping with the spirit of the time, eventually peters out in a fit of audiopique.

That’s what I believe anyway, but I can’t be sure, so in the final reckoning, Dynamo ends up as a half-masterpiece.

Video courtesy of subunitfour.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

*The party razzers are probably broken saxophone reeds.

Guys and Dolls: Jimmy Reed - Hush-Hush (22 May 1993)

 

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There’s already a blogpost featuring this song, dating from the very earliest days of the blog in which I included it in a post outlining my favourite tracks from Peel’s final Radio 1 show. I put that up at the time without comments to mark the tenth anniversary of Peel’s final Radio 1 broadcast, but back then I was still figuring out how this blog would work and I didn’t want to focus too much on the end of Peel’s career. But, 11 years before his death, Hush-Hush, originally recorded by his beloved Jimmy Reed in 1960, was cropping up on this 22/5/93 show, and in doing so, finally ensured Reed took his place on the metaphorical mixtape.

I still hold to my earlier contention that all Jimmy Reed songs sound the same. Indeed, one of the reasons why Hush-Hush has been included here is because I briefly thought it was actually Too Much*, my favourite Reed song. But, as overused as it is, the rolling blues scale which underpins Hush-Hush and most other Reed songs, sweeps the listener in to shoulder-rolling-head-bobbing submission. 

Peel spoke once about how, as a live performer, Reed tended to sing more slowly as his set progressed, and there are moments here where he sounds like he’s singing a song called Hughe-Hughe, but with his lyrical parries to the attacks of a nagging, suspicious partner, he also manages to provide inspiration to future songs as diverse as Rabbit by Chas and Dave and It Wasn’t Me by Shaggy.

Samey? Pretty much, yeah. Influential? Obviously!

*Apologies for not doing a link to Too Much, but I’m sure it’ll turn up on a Peel show I’m covering at some point in the future, and I’d like to hold it back as a treat.

Video courtesy of Carlos Rasool.

Guys and Dolls: Eric’s Trip - Hurt (22 May 1993)

 

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Fans of the Canadian band, Eric’s Trip, would have been in heaven during the Spring of 1993 given that two different labels released an EP and a mini-album by them in that period. Peel had already played tracks from the mini-album, Peter, released by Murderecords (though it was also issued by Sub Pop in Germany). Now Sub Pop was issuing an EP called Songs About Chris. If you bought the maxi-EP and paired it up with Peter, you had 12 new songs with only Listen appearing on both records.

Hurt does exactly what it says on the tin, the only question is whether the lyrics refer to it being felt after an argument, a break-up or a bereavement. I think it may be the latter given that there are references to the other person having a stupid mouth and being someone who complained a lot. Hurt me with the words/Scream ‘em in my ears/Cause it’s OK implies that this person was a drag to be around, but that never hearing from them again is too upsetting to contemplate.  

The moral appears to be love and cherish those around you; even the ones who bug the hell out of you, because when those annoyances have gone for good, you’re going to miss them.

Peel played Hurt together with another track from the EP called Sloansong. This may have been a tribute to the band, Sloan, who owned Murderecords. One of the lyrics even says Get that Sloan song zooming through my head/Do the words relate to me?  I wonder if this was the one they had in mind?

Video courtesy of contraflow.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors,

Guys and Dolls: The Glory Strummers - Neglected ‘N’ Blue (22 May 1993)

 

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This was the final record that Peel played on 22/5/93. He admitted that when he received a copy of The Glory Strummers EP, Retrograde Steps, he had been unenthusiastic about listening to it, because he found the band’s name off-putting. However, he really enjoyed the EP, of which Neglected ‘N’ Blue was the opening track.

If you’re cynical about bands trying to do the whole 70s punk sound a decade or more after the original scene had happened, you may find it difficult not to snigger at Neglected ‘N’ Blue. Listening to the drum roll that accompanies the opening riff, you may find yourself thinking, “I bet the singer’s going to shout Hey! any second….now!” and you’d be right to do so. I confess that I blew hot and cold on it when initially re-listening to it, but I was finally won over by The poor little rich kid refrain and a gradual understanding about what the song was about. I say gradual because while some parts of the lyric ring out loud and clear, other parts are too garbled to fully make out.

If punk rock’s principal lyrical qualities were anger and piss taking, then Neglected ‘N’ Blue mixes a smidgin of the former with a dollop of the latter.  The target of the song appears to be affluent students who are able to delay having to go out and work by taking a year out. The line You don’t care about people suggests that The Glory Strummers have particular contempt for those who use their time out to have an ongoing holiday, rather than use the time to help those less fortunate than themselves. I could be misinterpreting the song, and in a way I hope I am given that my reading of it suggests righteous anger on one hand and unattractive envy on the other. 

Ultimately, I think it takes a slightly superficial line of thinking that money should insulate you from unhappiness, which it can in terms of not needing to worry about paying your next bill, but it also labours under the misapprehension that mental health anxiety is a myth when applied to the well off. If it wasn’t for the fact that the performance is so electric, I might have left Neglected ‘N’ Blue off on the grounds of a shitty attitude. Emotional uncertainty is no respecter of bank balances after all.

Video courtesy of Release - Topic

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Guys and Dolls: John Peel Show - Friday 14 May 1993 (BBC Radio 1)

My notes describe this show as being …at times, like a Peel Show version of Junior Choice. This is because at least two of the records played on the show were inspired by children. He played Open the Door, Richard! by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, originally recorded in 1947, in response to a fax he had received from James Turner, aged 6, from Cardiff. James wrote to say that he liked Peel’s show, that he had a tape of Jordan’s music and wanted to know whether Peel liked him too. Peel dedicated Open the Door, Richard! to James, claiming that this, and Silver Dollar, were the first songs in his life that he had learned the words to.

Meanwhile, Peel’s son, Tom, was away on a school trip to Normandy, so he dedicated 33% Free by Ford to him, just in case he was able to hear the programme on a long wave frequency. According to the John Peel wiki though, Peel ended up playing the other side, Friendly, which ended up delaying the 11:30pm news by an extra minute.

Other dedications included Enna Garrib by Harram, which went out to the taxi driver who had taken Peel from Stowmarket to Colchester earlier in the week. This was the longest journey he had ever done by cab, though he didn’t specify which roads he’d been taken on. 

A14/A12 covers 28.6 miles, A14/A12/A134 would have been 28.7 miles, with the A14 alone offering the longest journey of all at 30.2 miles.  If he was using “Stowmarket” to encompass a pick up from Peel Acres, then the distances increase to 31.2 miles via A14/A12, 31.4 miles if using Combs Lane before the A14/A12, but the quickest journey of the lot - in terms of distance - would have been via the B1115, which was only 26.2 miles, though it was the longest journey in terms of time, at 48 minutes.

Perhaps Peel had needed to use the taxi in order to take him to see The Fall, who he had seen in Cambridge, earlier in the week, and whose performance he described as at their most non-commital. He opened the show by playing Everything Hurtz, which would have made a nice partner to a similarly named REM hit which was clogging up the airwaves around April/May 1993.

This show was also to have featured the naming of winners for a competition relating to Sebadoh, but he had received no entries for it. Peel blamed himself for this as he had given out what he termed a silly address for the entries to be sent to and realised in retrospect that this may have put people off.

The show was notable for Peel being thrown into a state of alarm when he realised, halfway through the programme, that he had mistimed the music he was going to play through the various hours of his show. One hour had 75 minutes’ worth of music programmed in, while another hour only had 45 minutes’ worth. This was problematic because he also had to ensure that the news bulletins came in at the right time.

One record which was unaffected by all this was Ritmista! by Astrospider, which was the first fruit of Peel’s hookup with the Belgian label, Wonka Beats. Peel had made contact with them during his Grand Tour of Europe, the previous autumn, and they had promised to send him all of their future releases.

The selections from this show were taken from a full 3 hour programme. Everything which made my initial list of selections was available, but five choices fell from favour on relistening:

Blade - Keep It Goin’ On - UK rapper, Blade, made history in June 1993 when he released the double-album, The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength. This was one of the first albums ever to be released via crowdfunding:

The original crowd funded album, just goes to show how far ahead of the game Blade was. I sent off my cheque (for £25 from memory) to Blade months before the album was released and my name is in the album. Every mail order piece of vinyl I bought from Blade had a hand written note from him included. Absolute legend of the UK rap scene. (A messageboard comment by sskelly on Discogs, 13 August, 2021).

Keep It Goin’ On was the opening track on The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength. It always had a question mark against it, because it was OK, but not OK enough to make me want to keep it. I then did that thing I occasionally do where I listen to an album that a track has been taken off to see whether it would ultimately make my mind up for me - see Gallon Drunk on the previous Friday’s Peel Show. I need to stop doing this, because, apart from setting it in context, it really isn’t a particularly relevant method of choosing whether to include a single piece of music by comparing it to potentially better pieces of music by the same artist. Make no mistake, some of the tracks I heard from The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength (I didn’t listen to the whole album) were very good indeed. For instance, Gripper the Pitbull (The Approach) would have got on without any problems at all. But ultimately, doing this only caused me to wish that Peel had been playing that instead of this. As I listened to the other tracks I became quite beaten down by the aggression and attack, it all seemed to become rather one note. Hence, why my summary of  For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hyper, which I listened to after some prolonged exposure to Blade, was so succinct. After all the moaning, it was a necessary blast of effervescence. Still, I have a Blade track down on my list of selections from Friday 28 May 1993, so maybe he will end up in the mixtape after all.

Ohio Players - Walt’s First Trip - 1970s funk and a track recorded for their 1972 album, Pleasure, which appears to have been a companion album to another album they released the same year called Pain. A look at their album covers suggests that the team behind This is Spinal Tap may have had both them and Roxy Music in mind when it came to the idea around the Smell the Glove album cover.  I sometimes get blindsided with surprise when Peel plays a funk/soul track because of a misconception I have about him not being keen on the genre. This is palpably untrue and is most likely down to me constantly making the touristy mistake that because Peel preferred the output of labels like Stax over Motown, that any soul based record appearing on his show is a surprise. As a result it means that I’ll initially include pleasant if unremarkable instrumentals like this one. It’s only on re-listening that I find myself thinking less about how I would dance to the tune and more about what I would be ordering for a starter if it was playing in a restaurant. And speaking of pleasant but wholly unremarkable…

The Edsel Auctioneer - Philled/Summer Hit [Peel Session] - Oh lads, lads, lads….another name to add to the list alongside Stereolab and The Hair and Skin Trading Company of artists who regularly make my initial list of inclusions but who fall from favour at the moment that I would be pressing the record button on the metaphorical mixtape. This is the third occasion that I’ve left The Edsel Auctioneer out in the cold. I’m not going to lie, their name is a big turn-off for me, but ultimately they are far too bland for me to want to keep hold of. My notes say that I agreed with Peel that Summer Hit was the best track of the session.  

Both Philled and Summer Hit ended up on The Edsel Auctioneer’s second album, The Good Time Music Of…, released in 1995. Looking at the track titles, my interest was piqued by it including a track called 11th September ‘94*. Morbid curiosity provoked me to listen to it to see whether the band had any kind of foresight for the terrible events that would take place on that date, seven years later. But all I got was, what d’you know, a pleasant but inessential instrumental track, which is notable only for the fact that it has commentary from Leeds United’s 2-1 win over Manchester United, which was played on the same day, in the background.

The full session is available including two additional songs called Simple and State of Grace.

Candy Machine - The Merchant’s Square/Macrobot - Peel played three tracks from the Baltimore band’s eponymous debut album on this show. These two made my initial list, The Constant didn’t. Having listened back to the tracks, I see now that the only reason I chose them to start with is because I liked the band’s name. The Edsel Auctioneer were always up against it, and ultimately they missed out because the quality wasn’t good enough. Candy Machine’s name promised sweet treats, but the music was gnarlier and lumpier than I thought it would be or that I could stand it being. The Candy Machine album is available for listening. The Merchant’s Square and Macrobot are the first two tracks.

Admiral Bailey - Can’t Keep a Good Man Down - This started out quite promisingly, but I lost patience with it when halfway through, the Admiral abandoned what he was doing and started to perform Psalm 23 - The Lord Is My Shepherd instead.

Full tracklisting

*By curious quirk of fate, the Peel Show that I’ve just finished listening to for this blog was the one from exactly a year before The Edsel Auctioneer recorded that instrumental.

Guys and Dolls: Hyper - For Whom the Bell Tolls (14 May 1993)

 

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I’ll elaborate more in the next post, but sometimes all a man needs is a trance techno record which sounds like Evelyn Glennie working in a studio after ingesting her own body weight in cocaine.

Video courtesy of onlyraretracks.

Guys and Dolls: Meat Beat Manifesto - Radio Babylon/Soul Driver/Fire Number 9 [Peel Session] (14 May 1993)

 

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Having failed to bill the first airing of Meat Beat Manifesto’s one and only Peel Session when it was broadcast on Saturday 6 February 1993, the Radio Times tried to make up for it when the repeat went out on this 14/5/93 show. Unfortunately, they spelled the band’s name as Meat Ball Manifesto, a mistake which Peel felt moved to apologise on air for. But, all things considered, the Radio Times error wasn’t so far off the mark because the quality of 3/4 of the tracks in this session really was different gravy…

Listeners were treated to past, present and future in this session. The three tracks that would have made it on to my mixtape all differ stylistically from one another, but contain little offcuts and sprinkles that offer moments of familiarity amid the strange melange of sounds and atmospheres in each track. 

Radio Babylon grabs me for slightly more synesthistic reasons than it might to do others. Primarily an exercise in breakbeat, what I like are the samples of Babylon that ring out throughout the track. I had initially thought it was taken from some high-minded, ecstatic reggae record, but why should Meat Beat Manifesto have to reach into the deepest corners of their record collection, when they can just lift the word straight out of the chorus of Rivers of Babylon by Boney M, drench it in reverb and in doing so, transport me back to a mental space where I’m watching exotically filmed adverts on sunny curtain drawn afternoons in the mid 1980s -  The Art of Noise did that to me once. To my ears, what Meat Beat Manifesto did with that sample moved it from the realm of drunken family parties and instead evoked sun blasted landscapes and the bleat of a car horn as a crowd of millions takes to the streets, chanting for something better than the wretched normality they’re served up with as their everyday existence and hissed at to be grateful for.  It’s retro, it’s the sound of Rastafarian New Yorkers playing their mixes on the ghetto blaster on a hot day in the West Side as the fire hydrant plumes its water upwards.  This isn’t bad going for two men - Jonny Stephens and Jack Dangers - from Swindon.

As it progresses though, it becomes slightly stranger, as though the radio is picking up subconscious thoughts and feelings on its frequencies. One of these appears to be a sample of the panicked cry of Oh no! which opens I Can’t Control Myself by The Troggs. It leads me to wonder whether, when Meat Beat Manifesto recorded the session on 13 December 1992, they were trying to warn the world that 18 months later, a cover of a Troggs song was going to be completely inescapable for the whole of a summer. By the end, the track has descended into something which sounds like it’s trying to fuse together the sentiments of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft with the mood of the final 90 seconds of Bike by Pink Floyd. 

 If Radio Babylon represented the past - it had originally been released as a single in 1990  - then Soul Driver points to the immediate future. Starting out of a trip hop beat, we’re then taken into a lyric in which Dangers details various stages of paranoia, to which music seems to be the only cure:

Soul driver, the beat improviser.

Soul driver, the rhythm organiser.

Soul driver, the beat provider.

Soul driver,  can you turn the lights up on the rhythm.

Which it then does as Meat Beat Manifesto try to take us inside the rhythm, garlanding it with noodling guitar lines of such gentleness, that it feels like the music is trying to cocoon the listener from their troubles. Even the repeated verse of paranoia and worry finds itself being subsumed into the music as it tries to filter out the bad vibes. And from 2:33 onwards to the end of the track, Soul Driver plays out with a repeated Mellotron line which leads the listener down to Eden, to the accompaniment of an aural winding down, which encourages the listener to let go of all feelings of struggle and stress. In a year’s time, this would start to become a dominant sound in dance music, just within a brief window, but long enough and distinctly enough to mark it out as an original 90s scene.

The sense of something winding down also permeates the last 90 seconds of Fire Number 9, which was a remix of a track called #9 Bad Acid, that had originally been recorded by Dimensional Holofonic Sound on the original version of House of God. Jack Dangers’s remix was put out by DHS on a record called LSD3D Acid Mixes. The only real difference between the record mix and the Peel Session version is that the record opens with someone saying It only has to be heard to be absorbed rather than the more hypnotic refrain of You’ve eliminated any interruptions or distractions. For the rest, the track remains dominated by a driving drum beat waiting for Primal Scream to swoop in, take it away and titivate it up for use in Rocks, later that year. It also brings together two of the definitive found sounds of the year 1968:

1) Arthur Brown bellowing I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you at the top of his Number 1 hit, Fire.

2) The most famous use of the words Number 9 in Western culture; namely as part of the refrain heard at regular intervals throughout Revolution 9 by The Beatles. 

For me, it’s that juxtaposition that makes the track essential to keep. 30 years on from this session, Meat Beat Manifesto and DHS would come together again to collaborate on an EP called Man From Mantis.

The fourth track in the session was Drop, a discordant electronica track which had an additionally atonal vocal thrown in for added annoyance. But three out of four isn’t bad and in many ways Meat Beat Manifesto were only getting started. With Jack Dangers as the only constant member, they have continued to issue singles, albums and collaborations up to the present day. But Peel, whose support had only been occasional since they started issuing records in 1988, didn’t go with them. Barring a single play of one of their tracks on a 1997 compilation album called Sally’s Photographic Memory, they never featured on a Peel Show again after this session repeat.

 

Videos courtesy of Dub Records.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.