Equus: John Peel’s Music - Sunday 17 January 1993 (BFBS)

This was something of an error strewn edition of John Peel’s Music, as evidenced by, amongst other things, Peel messing up the beginning of a play of Mara by Soukous Stars. Peel acknowledged the chaos of the evening’s show but put it down to a lack of sleep from the night before. After finishing that night’s Radio 1 show, he had gone to spend the night at his late mother’s house, only to be startled to find a guest of his brother, Alan, who was identified only as Eric from the Yemen already staying there.

Not all of the mistakes in this programme were made by Peel. At Christmas, he had been sent a 5-disc Best of 1992 releases by R & S Records. Unfortunately, one of the discs was missing and two of the discs were the same. From it he played The Dream by Music of Life Orchestra, which made my initial list of selections for this show but fell from favour as I realised that its strong start gives way to a forgettable middle and ending.

The Frontier Trust EP, The Highway Miles which I’d been unable to share a track from on the 2/1/93 show had caused Peel some minor irritation as he had been sent a copy which had a wooden nickel included in it as a promotional gimmick. This affected the depth of the record when it was placed in a pile with other records and often caused piles to tip over. Peel was not impressed, Not to be repeated if you’re listening in Omaha.  In his good books though were Trumans Water and a play of Silver Tongue Please had him talking excitedly about the possibility of them touring the UK during the coming year. Of course if you’re listening to this in Belize this will be of very little consequence to you.  But then you probably aren’t listening,

Peel could always rely on his old friend, Bombardier Gerald T. Fox to write to him and this show duly included a postcard from him, but Peel was still desperate to hear from more of the BFBS audience and put out a plea to receive more letters in 1993.

Of my selections from this full two hour show there was one track I would have liked to share but couldn’t  and that was a reggae record, War and Crime by Mackie Ranks.

Apart from Music of Life Orchestra, one other track was slated for inclusion only to fall from favour:

Klute - Nothing to Hide - I was initially drawn to the relentless industrial drive of this rocker, but it didn’t bear out repeated listens. This is not the same Klute which was responsible for the last record Peel played on Radio 1.

Full tracklisting