The Comedy of Errors: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy [Peel Session]/Yardstick - Post Murder Tension (9 May 1992)

Videos courtesy of Vibracobra23 (DHHH) and Hammer & Head (Yardstick)

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A quick housekeeping note for completists before I start.  The order of tracks on the video of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy session is not the same order in which Peel played them on 9/5/92.  On the show the tracks ran as Positive/Traffic Jam/The Language of Violence/Exercise our Right.  We’ll cover them here in the order they appear on the video.

Given Michael Franti’s status as the drill sergeant of hip-hop, a Peel Session from The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy could have been a wearying experience.  How nice to report that it turns out to be a cracker - lyrically rich and diverse and wrapped up in a number of fascinating musical ideas and settings. In typical DHHH style, the four tracks cover all the major thematic bases: politics, violence, the environment and sex but with a sure touch and a sense for the dramatic that avoids cliche.  Even the didacticism, a real bugbear when it comes to previous DHHH recordings is dialled down and comes across as good sense.  Franti is still urgent and full on, but it feels more like an adviser or counsellor rather than an overzealous lecturer.

The session was recorded on 24 March 1992.  This has a direct bearing on the get-out-and-vote theme behind Exercise our Right with its reference to “April 9” and I can’t believe an advertising firm has never run with “Remember your vote before you get your pint”  slogan.  By the time the session was broadcast, the UK election had been run and Peel perhaps still sore about the result was reflecting about whether democracy was a good idea.  For Franti, the refusal to vote is not a noble act but one of
self sabotage: “Some sucker still gonna get elected”.  He doesn’t make a call for revolution, but instead makes the plea that our vote is all we have and if we use it to back people who will have our interests at heart rather than sitting it out or registering a protest vote, we just might see the system work for us.  It resonates as much in 2019 as it did in 1992, though the search for those worthy of the vote seems even harder than it was then.  With the 1992 US Presidential election campaign well under way by May 1992, Peel was intrigued as to who DHHH would vote for.

Had I heard the session when originally broadcast, I think that The Language of Violence would have spoken to me most.  Against jazz guitar stylings (possibly played by Charlie Hunter) Franti takes us to the most violent place all of us will spend a substantial part of our lives at - school.  In particular he hones in on the one thing that I remember as being the ultimate taboo at secondary school, the one thing that boys in particular could never endure being thought of as. It was a mindset I freely admit that I shared with my contemparies  Call me stupid, call me clumsy, mock me for being bad at sport, for having a face covered in zits, for being a swot, for talking with a posh voice - all of that is fine and can be endured.  But for God’s sake, don’t be thought of as gay.  To be regarded as that in school would be hell - in precisely the ways that Franti outlines at the start of the track.  I’m aware that there is no sight more clodhoppingly hamfisted than a straight man writing about homosexuality, so to be clear, I’m talking about the perception of homosexuality as it was regarded within the bearpit of secondary school rather than in adult life.  Because, until the advent of social media, school was the one unified environment in which every participant would be bound together in a setting where, on a whim, people could willingly choose to be as nasty, unpleasant, cruel and vile in thought, word and deed towards their fellow man as they wished.  It was always so and will always be thus. As much as we seek to educate and enlighten, we will never be able to remove the spite gene from a child.
In fairness, my school, Falmouth Community School was not as bad as the one painted by Franti in The Language of Violence.  I certainly don’t recall hearing about any of the kids who were suspected of being gay ever being beaten up for it but there were definitely a small group of kids who were considered fair game in having homophobic slurs thrown at them in rows or disagreements.  I’m ashamed to admit that I did it myself to one boy from this group not long before this Peel show went out.  In my defence, if such a thing can be defended, I blurted it out in surprise at him interrupting a conversation I was having with a friend of mine so that he could tell me that I had a face like a lemon (damn zits!).  There was also the case that however low down the pecking order I was at school (and believe me, there were plenty of times when I felt like I was sitting right on that dotted relegation line), this kid was even further down it than I was - he was in the year below me, as well, for God’s sake.  But I still remember the look of shock on his face when I said it to him.  He had no comeback at all.  If you’re reading this, Anthony, I’m sorry.
In DHHH’s world, homophobic language leads to homophobic action as the poor subject of the 10 strong gang’s wrath finds himself cornered outside of school and battered to death.  There is though a delicious twist in the tale once one of the gang arrives for their first day at prison...  What really makes the track stand out for me is how Franti brilliantly breaks down how language is used to dehumanise the target and lays the groundwork for violent actions to override compassion and empathy.  Listening to it I suddenly felt very glad that the language Franti rails against here can now be prosecuted by the law.  It all seemed like a pipe dream in 1992.

In the early 90s any song that tackles traffic congestion feels like it’s angling for a place on the
Falling Down soundtrack. The jazz-samba of Traffic Jam takes swipes at the rise of the automobile
against cuts to publictransport services and the resultant fall out both in terms of environmental pollution, industrial cartels, road safety and driver courtesy.  Certainly the backing track with its brilliant manipulation of female harmonies and saxophone to sound like shrill car horns all too successfully gets across the feeling of dread and anguish that being stuck on a slow/non moving freeway can inspire.  It would have made for a less portentous video than REM cooked up in the same circumstances.

The highlight of the session for me though is Positive which melds together a story of a young man going for an AIDS test with Stevie Wonder-tinged harmonica.  It brilliantly captures the feelings of fear, confusion, guilt, regret and worry that Franti’s protagonist goes through while journeying down for the test and reflecting on women slept with and all the times that the protected option wasn’t taken - indeed the “magic/prophylactic” rhyme is the one groaner that Franti inflicts across the four tracks, which isn’t a bad strike rate.  That duet with the harmonica is never more affecting though than on the chorus line, “How m’I gonna live my life/if I’m positive?” The downbeat tone reflecting the facile nature of imploring people to “stay positive” after receiving life changing news. The fade out means that the session ends on more of a downer here on the video than it did on the original broadcast which ended with the up and at ‘em dynamics of Exercise Our Right, but that’s quibbling when set against the fact that such a glorious session is available to be listened to and pored over.

But how, I hear you ask, have we gone from the hip hop vibes of San Francisco to the meat and potatoes rock of Whitehaven’s Yardstick?  Well when Peel played Post Murder Tension - a track from their album, Self Relaxation for the Insane - he felt that it made a nice companion piece with The Language of Violence.  Certainly both tracks take bullying behaviour as their starting point, though Post Murder Tension seems to be within a domestic setting rather than a school one.  There are also heavy hints that the abused ends up murdering the abuser.  “Shed all the hatred” indeed.

All lyrics are copyright to their authors.