Thursday 30 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: Llwybr Llaethog - Osmosis (1 May 1992)



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On what would have been his 79th birthday, it’s a pleasure to serve up a slice of genre that John Peel was, for many years, the only real outlet for - Welsh language music.  Until the BBC started to throw its weight behind their BBC Introducing strand on both Radio 1 and its local radio networks, it seems unthinkable to imagine it but for many years, Peel was the only person playing Welsh language rock and rap on the radio, a fact confirmed in this interview with one of Llwybr Llaethog’s founder members, John Griffiths from 2013.

Not being a Welsh speaker, I can tell you very little about what the track is about, although given that it’s called Osmosis, it may refer to how the Manchester-born Griffiths learnt Welsh after moving to Blaenau Ffestiniog when he was 12, learning words from friends at school and in and around his local environment.  I clearly picked out “Tom Jones” and “curriculum vitae”, but it doesn’t matter much because this ends up being possibly my favourite Welsh language piece on the blog so far.  I’ve spoken about Welsh language rap either falling into two camps: Paul Gascoigne on helium or Bernard Bresslaw on mogadon.  But the vocal here avoids either of those.  It’s silly, sexy and disarmingly confident.  Wrapped around it are fast dub-guitars, manipulated bass lines and what my notes describe as “calls to prayer” transposing Mecca to Blaenau Ffestiniog.  Towards the end, David R. Edwards from Datblygu contributes a guest rap.

Pen-blywdd hapus, John!

Video courtesy of ffarout

Monday 27 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: Morrissey - We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful (1 May 1992)



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Judging by his splendid autobiography, Morrissey’s post-Smiths career has essentially gone in five phases:
1) The early fumbling years of trying to adjust to solo life after hoping that the Smiths would make “thirty albums”; continuing to work with Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce.

2) The developing confidence of the early 90s as records like Kill Uncle and Your Arsenal hit big; surrounding himself with new musical playmates like Boz BoorerAlain Whyte and Spencer Cobrin; US tours produce scenes of utter carnage as he sells out venues faster than anyone ever has.  Fans invade stages, Morrissey sings from behind police lines and is whisked through airport kitchens for his own safety, “I am Fabian in 1960”

3) The gloomy years as he finds himself accused by the NME supporting racism/fascism for draping himself in a Union Jack during a gig at Finsbury Park and Mike Joyce successfully manages to sue him and Johnny Marr for hundreds of thousands of pounds in royalties through a judgement which sees Morrissey described by the judge, John Weeks as “devious, truculent and unreliable” -
“‘...devious, truculent and unreliable’ in legal parlance means ‘evil, aggressive and a liar’. What was the reason for this attack on me, so aggressively fuelled and so overdone, that it seems to want to bring a life to an end? Surely judges have no need to unleash thoughts more violent than anything done or said by either defendant or plaintiff.  What then was John Weeks thinking of?  In the quiet room of his final years, he will be delighted that his potential was realised by a famously recurring quote.  It is a quote fit enough to poison everything. Weeks could have merely said that someone was right and someone was wrong - or that both parties were wrong. Instead, he leaves a quote that might be rancid and powerful enough to cause one subject to be unable ever again to conduct business, to never again be trusted or - even better - to kill oneself with the brandishing shock of it all.  It doesn’t take much to force one over the edge, but Weeks’s statement in and of itself could have constituted manslaughter” (Morrissey p.287 Autobiography ibook, Penguin Modern Classics, 2013)
Meanwhile the self-same Union Jack now adorns the guitar of Noel Gallagher and the dress of Geri Halliwell, but no one’s throwing sharpened pound coins at Maine Road or at the Brit Awards.

4) The American exile years where Morrissey moves to Los Angeles - labelless but still pulling in the crowds as a live act and when not onstage, he’s in a relationship with an Iranian born woman
discussing the possibility of having a child with her - like any white racist would...

5) The triumphant return with a slew of chart-topping albums and wall to wall hero worship wherever
he plays.  The adulation feeding him towards happiness and contentment - or at least as much as these feelings can be enjoyed by him.  Who needs a Smiths reunion, certainly not Morrissey on the evidence of the extended travelogue from the mid Noughties that makes up the final 100 pages of the book, as he climbs the mountain again. It’s as if Alan Partridge’s Bouncing Back were ghost written by a hybrid of Phillip Larkin and Alan Bennett.  It was impossible not to feel pleasure for Morrissey by the end of the book.

Autobiography is wonderful for its evocation of Morrissey’s childhood and life in Manchester, the minutiae of life in the music business, his appreciations of his cultural loves (The New York Dolls appear to be the band he always wanted to be in - and probably still does), the duplicity of the music press - brought home most forcefully when Morrissey receives a horrified letter from Julian Casablancas in which he explains that an interview with a music journalist has seen a quote attached to him in which he calls Morrissey “a faggot”, which according to Casablancas did not happen - the Joyce court case etc.  He’s generous to others - even Mike Joyce is praised for his drumming on Smiths records - though his teachers, the judiciary, Geoff Travis of Rough Trade and...erm... former Game for a Laugh/Going for Gold host, Henry Kelly all come in for heavy criticism.  John Peel is also viewed with jaundice with Morrissey feeling that it was John Walters interest that got The Smiths on Peel’s radar more than the man himself.  The book also, for me, refutes the charge that Morrissey may be racially prejudiced.  His relationship with Tina Deghani brings him nine years of domestic happiness and she is among the four people he dedicates the book to.  He takes genuine delight from having his songs sung back to him by predominantly black audiences in places like Fresno while he detests the way Americans behave towards Mexican immigrants, comparing US
customs checks unfavourably to European ones on the grounds that:
“The infantile panic with which American Immigration officials shout loudly and humiliate gleefully
is designed to exert strength yet it trumpets cowardice and fouls notions of patriotism... Throughout Europe, borders of strength lead you on your way with admirable calmness; there is no need to destroy the soul at security checkpoints and there is no need to make travellers feel defiled simply because they have turned up with their passports.  This trigger-happy vacuum, so terrified of human touch, feeds every high school shooting - an unfortunate link that no American politician can
understand....The US government boasted Zero Tolerance and implemented the scheme with zero intelligence.” (Morrissey, p.408 Autobiography iBook, Penguin Modern Classics, 2013). Oh, just 5 years ago and yet it seems another century in so many ways.

Where the book is a dead loss is in providing any context to his songs or creative process.  There’s no mention of inspirations, meanings, targets, motivations for any of his lyrics beyond the odd pop at a judge.  For example, all we learn of We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful is that the video was shot in Wapping and is one of Morrissey’s favourites, “capturing one of those lost British
afternoons of timelessness” and that Tony Blackburn, in his marvellously blank way of thinking, once said, “I’m not a Morrissey fan, but he was right when he said we hate it when our friends become successful”.
For a while, I had assumed that We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful was just a standard, if entertaining piece of Morrissey griping - a lifetime disposition formed out of things like his comparison of school facilities when running for his detested secondary school, St Mary’s, Stretford - at another school, Wellacre, Flixton: “Wellacre are roughish posh boys with Garden-of-Eden facilities and none of the shut-up-and-put-up regimented mildew and mold of St. Mary’s.  I am jealous and I stay jealous.” (Morrissey, p.98, Autobiography).  But considering that the song was recorded during phase 2 of his post-Smiths life I see it now as a mockery of those who he feels are jealous of him, starting to gain traction in his solo work and pushing ahead with his career, while they - and his book suggests that during those chaotic US tours of the early 90s, his former band mates were nowhere in sight both personally and professionally in comparison to where he was - lament about how much better looking they are and how much better their songs are.  Like Eddy Ainsworth in Stags and Hens comparing himself to Peter the musician, “Y’ think he’s good because he plays guitar, well he’s not. He can’t play, y’ know. I know about guitars. I play the guitar.  Chords, I play. G and F and D minor...” (Copyright Willy Russell) and if only the world would notice their brilliance. It’s a joyous song, shot through with melancholy only because of what we know happened next.  Forces, hatched that very year, tried to destroy him, just as he predicted.  And the la-la-la refrain in the coda sounds like a star waltzing up Denmark Street unaware of the the sinkhole ahead of him.

Video courtesy of MorrisseyVEVO.

Thursday 23 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: PJ Harvey - Rid of Me [Live] (1 May 1992)



1 April 1999 and I’ve just finished a rehearsal, quite early on in the schedule, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which will be staged at the Minack Theatre in 2 months time. Rehearsals are in a village called Madron, just past Penzance.  It’s 45 minutes to get home to Falmouth and John Peel’s show is turned on the minute I start the drive back.  Best of all, I’m leaving early enough to catch the very start of the show, although given that I won’t continue listening to it when I get into the house, I can’t think why it matters.  Things are a little different tonight, the show is forming part of a four hour double bill with Lamacq Live as part of Radio 1’s week of Live in London shows - it’s nice to know the poor loves were being catered for.
Peel’s show, which is being broadcast from The Improv Theatre will later showcase a live set from Echo and the Bunnymen and Ian McCulloch and friends have their work cut out for themselves, because PJ Harvey is opening the show, accompanied by John Parish.  I’m thrilled about this as I begin the drive back, but although Polly Jean announces her set as “wheeling out all the old faves tonight, in case you hadn’t noticed”, she’s caught out latecomers to her party like myself who only came in on To Bring You My Love by opening with a trio of songs from Dry  and Rid of Me.  I recover my bearings as she goes into Angelene and C’Mon Billy from Is This Desire? and To Bring You My Love.  50ft Queenie is a vague memory from when I had first heard her name, but hadn’t been interested enough to get involved in those scuzzy 1993 days.  And then comes the standout performance of the night, the title track of Rid of Me which seems to pull all of Polly Jean’s personalities together at once: the needy pleader, unable let go of what she most desires, the dangerous hydra swooping down to suffocate her feckless love (“Don’t you wish you’d/never met her”) and then most staggeringly and frightening, the insatiable sex fiend - bellowing out in echo drenched ferocity to her paramour “Lick my legs and I’m on fire/Lick my legs and I’m desire” and on it goes until the music drops away and all that’s left is Polly Jean in full-on banshee mode demanding that the lover who struck for freedom get down on their knees and service her “injuries” and give thanks to his bad luck.  When she stops singing, the audience reaction is an explosive release of delight, appreciation - all simultaneously shooting their loads like a football crowd celebrating a 96th minute winner.  I know everything else that’s performed in the rest of the set, but that performance of Rid of Me overshadows it all. Peel, stuck in a radio van at the back of the venue references the astonishing audience reaction with pride and wonderment in his voice.  He perceptively remarks that Polly Jean seems to be bringing multiple voices out of herself when she performs, and that this all serves to heighten her brilliance.

By 1999, Rid of Me was an acknowledged jewel in Harvey’s catalogue, but I’m pretty sure that its first radio performance comes seven years and, for me, umpteen shows earlier.  Peel had spent most of his show on 1/5/92 trailing a mystery guest for that evening’s show and in the last hour, Polly Jean turned up, sans her band mates, to perform two tracks.  Opening with a cover of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, she went at in the only way she knew how - full bore, but the end result left her glumly complaining that she couldn’t hear what she was singing.  After a break for another record, she was back again to perform Rid of Me, which even in the embryonic form presented here demonstrated that whatever Polly Jean did next, it would be rawer and more jagged than anything done on Dry.  The take is everything that Peel would have hoped for - teetering on the edge of collapse, slightly disjointed (not surprising given that it appears that the idea for her to come in was probably hatched earlier that evening).  Although, we are treated to a quality display of domestic sound engineering from Peel’s engineer, Julie, who having obscured Polly Jean’s voice on the first track now reduces the guitar so it sounds like it’s playing in another room, but Peel didn’t mind.  Neither did I and I hope you won’t too.

You’ll have to wait many years before I chronologically blog about this concert, so here’s the 1999 performance of Rid of Me to tide you over until then.  Check out the crowd reaction - everyone there will still remember it to this day.





Videos courtesy of agile elefantus and stepintothegalaxy

Sunday 19 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: Cornell Campbell - The Gorgon (1 May 1992)



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When Peel played this sweet title cut from Campbell’s 1976 album, I found myself intrigued that a reggae record could be made about a creature from Greek mythology, but then again why not?
However, a bit of elementary research into Carribean patois shed a new light on things.  Gorgon in this context meant the best of the best and a well respected man, although more modern interpretations have thrown criminal meanings onto this especially in terms of the respect angle.  But let’s give Campbell the benefit of the doubt and call it an outburst of confidence rather than an expression of arrogance.
Peel never needed an excuse to spin some retro reggae, but in this instance The Gorgon was used as an interval tune between 2 live tracks played by a surprise guest who popped into the studio on 1/5/92.  More on them in the next post.

Video courtesy of Reggae2Reggae.

Thursday 16 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - I Hate CDs (1 May 1992)



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Norman Carl Odam AKA The Legendary Stardust Cowboy has two particular claims to musical fame:

1) He had a surprise hit with arguably the worst song to be placed in the Billboard Hot 200.  Paralysed (1968) is a blatant attempt to try and set The Legendary Stardust Cowboy up as a musical idiot savant in the style of Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fischer, Moondog and others. It won him a
slot on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, but apart from the trumpet mid-section and T-Bone Burnett’s insane  drumming, my reaction to it is similar to Dick Martin’s. But Dick and I were in a minority considering that it sits between The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix in the very first Festive Fifty and...
2) He inspired David Bowie so much that his most iconic creation was named after The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.  Bowie became enamoured of Odam after signing to Mercury Records in the late 60s.  In keeping with record company generosity to new signings, Mercury gave Bowie records by other acts that they had, one of which was The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.  Bowie, by his own admission, loved the idea of the music that Odam was making more than the content itself, but his appreciation was genuine and enduring.  On 2002’s Heathen album, he would cover I Took a Trip (On a Gemini Spaceship), which with its wonderfully dislocated spaced out ambience could be described as the arresting runt of the litter which produced Space Oddity. And in 2007, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy performed at a New York festival curated by Bowie.
Just as Bowie’s star was starting to rise in the late 60s, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy went into a near 20 year absence from recording until, perhaps due to his influence on the Psychobilly movement which arose through the late 70s/mid 80s, he was back with the Rides Again album, which presaged a 3 year spell of albums and singles ending in 1992 with I Hate CDs, after which there would be a 10 year gap till 2002’s Tokyo album, on which The Legendary Stardust Cowboy repaid his most prominent acolyte with a cover of Space Oddity that would have made Bowie’s year.

One of the great pleasures of John Peel’s playlist was the occasional record which showcased quality shouting.  Not in the skilful manner of a death metal record, but just simple, unhinged bellowing.  In the glut of articles I read about him after his death, one that stuck in my mind was of a female writer whose first exposure to Peel’s show was hearing someone shouting, “THERE’S A MAN OUTSIDE!” for 2 and a half minutes only for Peel to calmly announce it as a Tools You Can Trust song.  I Hate CDs is a masterful example of the shout song, following its own logical course, which would have held huge appeal to a vinyl lover like Peel, who regarded CDs as an overpriced occupational necessity rather than a major aural advance.  The slagging off of Bruce Springsteen would surely have tickled Peel further.  More than anything, it’s a great example of an extreme artist in charge of his material rather than benefitting from people laughing at perceived craziness.  It also shows just how durable the riff of Tequila is, which the track appears to take as its basis before concluding on the start of a Two Minute Hate outside Tower Records in Lubbock, Texas.

Bowie gets the kids clapping along to a Legendary Stardust Cowboy song.  Nothing less than its writer deserves



Videos courtesy of peelsmusic (Legendary Stardust Cowboy) and gracexakane (Bowie)

Sunday 12 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: Traumatic Stress - No Fortuna! (1 May 1992)



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This was a further example of dance records on Peel’s playlists of early summer 1992 quoting from or basing themselves around choral classical music - see also A House and Prudens Futuri.
Opening out of some major tape manipulation which may or may not be parts of Carl Orff’s O Fortuna being run backwards, the grandiose spell is briefly broken around 1:04 by the presence of that deadly squelching underwater saxophone sound that so much Euro dance music of the early 90s packed into its grooves. I blame Yello for this.  Happily, this doesn’t stay long and the piece drives on relentlessly, perfectly managing to showcase what YouTube user Shadegat3 referred to as “Pure energy that lasted beyond the party”.

Video courtesy of TraumaticStress.

Tuesday 7 August 2018

The Comedy of Errors: Kalaeidoscope - From the Other Side (1 May 1992)



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Once Oliver! was done and dusted, my attention for the summer of 1992 shifted towards 2 things: my GCSE exams and playing for Falmouth Cricket Club.  I had substantial ground to make up for the former, given that I had failed all of my mock exams in November; while a developing interest in cricket, helped by Graham Gooch’s England side reaching the final of the 1992 World Cup had seen myself and a group of my school friends attend winter nets at the latter with an eye to playing for their Under 16 side.  I had an inside track on this as my mother worked at a solicitor’s office in which virtually every partner and solicitor that made up the practice played for either the 1st or 2nd XI.
Acting, on the other hand, was pretty dependent on my getting 4 GCSEs so that I could stay on at Falmouth School and take my A-Levels.  If I did that, I would include Drama as my one of my A-Level choices and would audition for the school’s main show for 1993, Carousel.  As far as I was concerned, it would be nearly 6 months at least before I went near a rehearsal room.
So, having settled on this plan of action, it came as a wonderful surprise to me when I went back to school after the Easter break to be approached about appearing in a production of William Shakespeare’s 1594 farce, The Comedy of Errors, which was being staged in late June by the school at Pendennis Castle.  Ostensibly, this allowed for both A-Level and GCSE Drama students to work at a smaller piece for public performance than having to appear solely in the main musical production.  My invitation had come through Michelle Rogers who was studying drama GCSE, but had not appeared in Oliver! though she had appeared in a production of The Innocents staged in the drama studio the previous year.  She was going to play one of the Dromios in this production.  I was offered two small roles, and once I had established that the amount of time required to rehearse it could be worked around study leave and cricket, I accepted the invitation with great excitement.

I’d been introduced to Shakespeare two years earlier when I had to study Macbeth for English.  My tutor in that module, Gary Matthews, did a wonderful job of bringing the text to life, but the language held no great fears.  Most of it was understandable, and for those moments where the text did veer off  into 16th Century pop culture - what celebrated Cornish am-dram director, John Frankland, used to refer to as “anything about Hecate” - I would tune out until the script got back on course, which never took too long.
More fundamentally, and relevant to this blog and an affinity with John Peel, the chance to do a Shakespeare play as my next experience of acting offered me something which I very quickly realised that I wanted in order to get the maximum out of amateur drama, and that was variety.
In my mind, amateur drama when I started doing it, meant 4 genres:
1) Musicals
2) Pantomimes
3) Comedies/Farces
4) Murder mysteries/thrillers

Even before I got involved with it, those were the kinds of things I saw advertised by various groups in Falmouth - revues were also popular.  But as far as I could see, variations of that kind of fare was what there was on offer.  I resolved to try everything I could, but to be discerning and to vary up what I did.  Wherever it was possible, I wanted no 2 productions I did to be stylistically similar.  If I did something light, I would look to follow it with something heavier or more gutsy; if I did something avant-garde or leftfield, then my next show would be something traditional and (awful word) safe.  By doing this, I hoped to retain interest in the hobby not only for myself, but also for my parents who would be coming to see me.  And while, I’m sure that they had their preferences in terms of what they came to see, at least it was never predictable - for them or for me.  This got even more important to me when they would bring friends along as the decade progressed.  It kept things fresh and interesting.  I was fortunate that at the point I started to get involved, Cornish groups started to gradually push their boundaries a little more in terms of what they did.  This allowed me to  experience all the different genres mentioned above and other ones besides and decide which ones I got more out of, but by being discerning, I also got to try ones which I felt were outstanding examples of their type.  It was impossible to say “Oh, I hate Shakespeare”, or “I hate pantomime” or “I hate farces” and so on, because I got to sample them all and hold up different examples as ones I had liked and believed in.  John Peel’s radio world  was a perfect match for me in the same way.  It offered that breadth and depth of choice.  There was stuff I liked and stuff I hated, but it meant it was impossible to dismiss any form of music he played, because there would always be something to catch your attention, draw you in, seduce you to its possibilities- and once you found it, you wanted to share it with other people.

To follow a West End musical like Oliver! with a Shakespeare comedy gave me that first opportunity to compare and contrast different forms, to try different challenges.  I think I actually started rehearsals later than 1 May 1992, but I know that the final performance was on 1 July 1992, so let’s be good to ourselves and indulge in two months of Peel content.  We pick up the action 3 weeks after the last Peel show that ran alongside Oliver!, but it’s a familiar name that greets us.  Bedford’s Kalaeidoscope provided one of the top tracks of the Oliver! shows but if I’m Gonna Get You sounded like an encapsulation of female fronted dance music, then From The Other Side returned the favour with a male centred approach.  I haven’t been able to trace where the “Oh-ee-oh - Eeah” vocal refrain comes from but it was pretty damn ubiquitous as I remember.  Garlanding it are some pretty full on drum’n’bass beats and the clincher, a gloriously ethereal synthisizer line which sounds like a rave held during a seance. From the other side, indeed...

Video courtesy of chuwingsoup.