The Comedy of Errors: Arrested Development - People Everyday (15 May 1992)

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As soon as I became aware that Peel was playing tracks from Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of... album, I asked myself one question, “Will he play People Everyday?  Or was it Everyday People?  God, it’s so confusing sometimes.  And not just for us poor listeners.  After all, Roger Daltrey still keeps singing “We DON’T get fooled again”.
There’s something about the possibility of Peel playing an enormous mainstream hit at the same time that everyone else was playing it that provokes quizzically raised eyebrows and mutterings of respect towards the artists involved, “Damn, you must have been doing something right if Peel wanted a piece of the action alongside the daytime playlists.”
Well, second track of the night on the 15/5/92 show and Peel cues in People Everyday.  I, metaphorically, sit down,  ready to point and coo at this intermittent phenomenon, but something brings me up short.  Yes, it’s definitely People Everyday - listen, there’s vocalist Speech talking about his day at the park with his date being spoilt by a group of rude brothers who mock him for his outlandish dress-sense.  One of them takes it too far and gropes Speech’s date.  Our hero responds to this challenge to his manhood by beating the guy up in such a frenzy that it takes several policemen to break up the fight (would Speech be alive to even tell the tale in 2019 America?).  But where’s all the call-and-response chanting and that sunny guitar line that I remember from all those years ago?  Touches which led me to regard Arrested Development as good, but purveyors of Sesame Street hip-hop.  And I don’t remember all this thuddingly oppressive but effective brass on the track.  What’s going on?

People Everyday was a huge hit in 1992, it may have claims to being one of the most shockingly confrontational Top 10 hit singles ever released (it was a Number 2 hit in the UK, Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 US charts). Sexual assault and intra-racial violence are not obvious subjects for a big, singalong chart hit.  Tributes to its victims would, within 5 years, lead to Number 1 singles, but People Everyday jumped right down into the heat of the battle and record-buyers lapped it up.  Why?
I have a deep (well, shin-deep) theory and a dull theory.  The song is essentially presented as a confrontation between the civil in the form of the “African” and the crude in the form of the “Niggaz”.  The fear that this latter group inspired, especially once Gangsta rap started to gain wider commercial and artistic influence has arguably been the longest lasting “controversy” in popular music. It may have gained more respectability as its leading exponents got older and were recognised as the legends that they are, but the fact people have been murdered for this music lends it a volatility that will never truly dissipate.  People Everyday offered people a chance to identify with the civil side against this dangerous sub-culture who we were told would poison the minds of our children and lead to the collapse of civilised values and behaviour.  And it does this by offering the chance for us to cheer on the supposed peace-lover as he beats up the barbarian near to death?  Deeply troubling stuff. Would the record have done as well if a gangsta rap group had presented from the other side of the argument?  Speech doesn’t even sound remorseful for what’s been done.
The dull reason why People Everyday hit big is that the track which Peel played on the album was remixed to incorporate the guitar line from Tappan Zee by Bob James, the tempo of the whole thing was sped up, extended by over a minute and for better or worse, the track was made fun.  In business terms, this was all completely justified.  It’s difficult to imagine the album version of People Everyday hitting quite the same commercial heights, but the album version is at least more honest about the context in which the song is set.  For this listener at least, it has more balls than I would usually associate with Arrested Development and it elevates it beyond the usual “take it or leave it” feel I have towards their output.  It remains to be seen whether Peel went back to the remixed single when it eventually came out.



Videos courtesy of DJ ViLLY Berlin (Arrested Development) and 1mistaGROOVE (Bob James).