All the selections from this show came from a complete 3 hour file.
T’was the night before Liverpool were due to play in an FA Cup final and all through Radio 1 not a creature was stirring...except a cantankerous John Peel who had failed to get a ticket for the match and spent large parts of this evening’s programme moaning about extortionate ticket prices of up to £250 for a seat (though whether he meant via tout value was unclear) and in a precursor to Roy Keane’s “Prawn sandwich brigade”, showing contempt for people who would be at the game who had no interest either in the sport or either Liverpool or their opponents, Sunderland. By the early 90s, the aldermen and their wives from the length and breadth of Britain who often used to find invitations to Cup finals in their in-trays were being edged out in favour of more lucrative corporate accounts and customers. Simon Hughes, in his superb cricketing memoir A Lot of Hard Yakka, writes of meeting someone in a corporate box at Lord’s Cricket Ground who worked for Siemens, a German conglomerate who sponsored Middlesex CC in the late 1980s. “...sporting a large cigar and a ghastly beer gut [he] turned to me during a match and said, ‘By the way, do they still have sixes in cricket?’ (Hughes, A Lot of Hard Yakka, 1997, p.209, Headline)
It seems as though all the exciting stuff was due to happen on the following day: the FA Cup final, the Eurovision Song Contest (of which more when we cover Peel’s 9/5/92 show) and of more immediate relevance a live studio session from Abana Ba Nasery (aka The Nursery Boys) who would be playing over from Andy Kershaw’ show into Peel’s programme. It was trailed, in the words of Peel by, “Andy and I being terrifically amusing”
Cue an Abana Ba Nasery track playing in the background
Kershaw (a la Dave Nice): Hi mate.
Peel (a la Mike Smash): Hi mate.
Kershaw: This week, the Andy and John shows on 1FM are linked by the guitar and bottle kings of Kenya, Abana Banasery.
Peel: I think that’s Abana Ba Nasery, mate.
Kershaw: Saturday night, 1FM, live in the studio - Abana Banasery.
Peel: Nasery. The Nursery Boys on the Peel and Kershaw programme.
Kershaw: From Kenya.
Peel: Keen-ya!
Jingle - 1FM!
Peel (back in studio): Zany or what? The Action Swingers...
I was pretty fortunate that everything I wanted to share from this show was available. There were only two exceptions:
2wice as Hard - Give it 2-em - a storming dance track on Livin Large Records out of Chicago.
Calton Sounds - Tsi Tsi - more lovely Africana, but this group are like the yeti when it comes to finding them online. While researching an Oliver! appendix, I came across some of their recordings on YouTube, but the trail went quiet again.
There were plenty more selections which made the initial list, but when listened to subsequently were found to be rather boring. Certainly, stuff I can live without, and in several cases from acts who have other tunes slated for inclusion in future programmes:
The Wedding Present - Come Play With Me (More of the usual from Gedge and co.)
Fast - Brain Swirl (Apollo 440 passing themselves off as German brothers at 155bpm)
Stereolab - Orgiastic (Peel really liked their Peng! album, giving it plenty of airplay in May 1992. The harmonic dynamics of tracks like this are intriguing, but I haven’t quite fallen for them yet.)
Jane Pow - Get By (Brighton based band who could have cleaned up had they reached the Britpop years. This track fizzed on first hearing but fizzled on second one).
Duh - Transformer (Duh? Dull more like it),
Full tracklisting
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