Oliver: John Peel Show - Radio 1 (Sunday 9 February 1992)

Selections for this show were made from two separate sections - the first 45 minutes and part of the last hour.  I've just checked and had an anally retentive spasm because I may have broken the "no selections from a file under 44 minutes" rule.  Combine this with us now having full Peel sessions here to showcase individual tracks from them and things are becoming quite anarchic after 18 months of discipline.  Consider this our Rubber Soul phase...

From the parts of the show I heard, there were two tracks I would have liked to share but which I couldn't track down:

Mind Sirens - Head-Stomach-Highway - a rather dissonant, melancholy guitar number with a number of striking time-changes.  Thrillingly, it was followed by one of my favourite tracks of the year.

Kat Bjelland - Bruise Violet - the Babe makes a solo excursion from Toyland to provide an acoustic version of one of the group's best known tracks on the Guitarrorists compilation.

The shows covering late 1991/early 1992 co-incided with the transition of many countries in Eastern Europe moving towards their first democratically elected governments after the break-up of the Soviet Union, but Peel's postbag served a reminder that chaos is only ever waiting for a new town to breeze into.  Before playing the Kat Bjelland track, he read a letter from a Croat called Synesha, who was anxiously waiting to see when or if he would be called up to fight in the war with Serbia, one of innumerable conflicts that broke out after Yugoslavia was dissolved.  The letter was postmarked November 1991 and Peel found it sobering to read, wondered what had happened to Synesha etc.  Not only that, but he didn't fully satisfy Synesha's request at that moment. He'd written in for a Nirvana record, but would have to wait until the end of the show for it.
Also writing in were a couple of lads from Georgia who wanted to know about his relationship with Queen.  The rarely seen but always present Peel ego popped up after playing a track by  Cell. He thanked people who had voted for the show in music polls, but wished more people would listen to the show and thank him for playing such good music.  Let's not be too harsh though, a person's judgement is always likely to desert them as they get closer to 2am.

Thank you for tonight's good records, John.