Equus: The Fall - Pay Your Rates (7 February 1993)

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It’s 1980. The UK is in its first year of a Conservative Government under Margaret Thatcher who is using this time to see who will be with her and who will be against her as she seeks to reshape Britain for a new decade. The UK music scene will use Thatcher’s government as an inspiration for possibly the most sustained burst of political songwriting over the last 60 years in Britain*.  Through the 1981 England riots, The Falklands War, The Greenham Common Campaigns and the 1984/85 Miners Strike, it all provided grist to the songwriting mill. It’s an era of protest, benefit concerts and Red Wedge. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie/Out! Out! Out!” and all that.

But any age of protest needs a contrarian - social media and Fox News/GB News means we’re swamped with the bastards now - and in 1980, that role was inevitably filled by Mark E. Smith, who kicked off The Fall’s album, Grotesque (After the Gramme) with Pay Your Rates, a non-ironic demand to pay your water and council rates.  I feel that Smith was broadly sympathetic to Thatcherism and as a compulsive workaholic himself, may have found Norman Tebbitt a like-minded individual, at least in terms of sharing a pulling yourself up by the bootstraps philosophy to get through hard times.  Smith’s politics were generally unsentimental. He acknowledged himself as both an artist and a businessman. The Fall was both his artistic outlet and a means not just of supporting himself but his band mates. Although he was not stingy in apportioning credits for songs and as a result, spreading the royalties, he was also a boss. Bills had to be paid and The Fall had to work both in terms of getting records out and playing live in order to ensure that they could meet the commitments that we all have to meet.  Smith never lost sight of the fact that The Fall was his job. It had perks that other jobs don’t have for sure, but it was still work and woe betide anyone who worked with him that forgot that.

There was though, a smidgin of altruism in Smith’s worldview on Pay Your Rates.  He refers throughout to being sent to Debtor’s retreat estates which reflects his loathing of both the idea and execution of council estates. The extract from the interview below, conducted in the mid-1980s highlights this further. As far as he was concerned, to be evicted from your home and to wind up on an estate was a fate worse than death and he had nothing but contempt for the way the estates had been implemented. Reading it, his thinking appears confused because it seems to suggest that the tenants who moved from the slums into the estates were suckered in by mod-cons like refrigerators and central-heating (I mean who wants them, right?) but he laments the loss of privacy, the concentration of crime and the conformity of the flats all looking the same, with people unable to impose their own personality on them. This isn’t capitalist thinking, but utopian, even vaguely hippyish.

In a sense, releasing a song which advocates following the law, especially in an art-form which lionises outlaw behaviour, is a pretty balls-out move. Tie it in to the dismissal which Smith had for a fundamentally socialist policy, and you have a style of song which isn’t immediately associated with The Fall’s oeuvre: an aspirational, motivational song.  Had Tory H.Q. been listening closer, I wonder if they would have dared make overtures to entice Smith to form Blue Wedge. What chaos it could have been…

Given the theme of the song, I did check to see whether John Peel gave it a cheeky airing in his first show after the Poll Tax riots of 31 March 1990, but he didn’t. Though he did play it a week after the 1997 General Election.

Mark E.Smith on council estates. Taken from The Annotated Fall

*I use “political” here to mean songs about the actions of government rather than in its wider, social terms.

Lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Video courtesy of The Fall - Topic

Equus: John Peel Show - Saturday 30 January 1993 (BBC Radio 1)

 If you’re a long-standing football fan, there are dates you can look at and identify as turning points in your team’s history which either led onto a period of achievement and glory, or a period of decline and failure. As an Ipswich Town fan, writing this blog has allowed me to relive the memories of the glorious period in the club’s history which began on Saturday 23 November 1991, when a 2-1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux heralded the start of a run of a form which would see Ipswich win the 1991/92 Second Division Championship and with it, promotion to become one of the founding teams in the FA Premier League. It was a journey which John Peel and various members of his family had witnessed at close quarters.  If I took my going from school to college as symbolic of a fresh start and exciting new surroundings, there is a parallel to be drawn with Ipswich’s early season form as they returned to the top-flight of English football after a gap of 6 years.  For the first two-thirds of the season, Town carried over the momentum gained from their promotion. They were fiercely hard to break down and gained a reputation as draw specialists, but crucially, on the weeks they didn’t draw, they won. By the time Saturday 30 January rolled around, Ipswich’s league record for the season looked like this: 

Played 25

Won 9

Drawn 12

Lost 4

They were in the top 6 of the Premier League and in both domestic cup competitions. Life was like an ongoing happy dream if you were an Ipswich fan, and their fine form reflected my own happy stroll through life in the winter of 1992 as I made new friends and enjoyed new experiences. 

Contrast that with Peel’s beloved Liverpool, who had gone from perennial English champions to a fading force as many of those players whose success the club had been built on began to age out or were moved on as the club began the process of rebuilding. Always a tricky task and one which becomes much harder if your transfer business starts bringing in more flops than successes. Liverpool had struggled over the first two-thirds of the season and went into the weekend sitting 10 points behind Ipswich in the league table. On this show, Peel gloomily previewed their Sunday game at Arsenal by sarcastically warning any Arsenal fans who were listening that Liverpool haven’t lost for two weeks, you know.  In the event, a goal from John Barnes gained Liverpool a 1-0 win and topped off a happy footballing weekend for the Ravenscrofts and for me, as goals from Chris Kiwomya and Frank Yallop secured a 2-1 win for Ipswich over Manchester United at Portman Road. The win took Ipswich to 4th place in the table behind United, Aston Villa and Norwich City. I can’t remember if I thought that we had a chance of winning the league after that game, but I do know that I recognised it as the peak of the seven years I’d been following the club. I’m glad that I had that awareness, because the following week Ipswich lost 2-0 at Aston Villa and began a dreadful run which saw them lose 10 of the final 16 games, winning just two.  They plummeted down the table to finish 16th, seven points behind Liverpool who finished 6th.   And if we want to look at parallels, through the spring and early summer of 1993, I saw so many of the friends I’d made on my performing arts course drop out, until only a hardcore remained. It started to become less fun and the grind  had started to set in.

That Saturday at the end of January 1993 was both an apotheosis and the end of era. Over their next 100 league games, up to the end of the 1994/95 season, Ipswich registered only 18 wins over a 2 and a half year period.  The second half of the 90s would see the club rebuild in the second tier, but I must confess that listening to the selections from this 30/1/93 Peel show has brought memories of how unaware I, and all the other Ipswich fans probably were of the slow, curdling eclipse our club would suffer after reaching such a high.

Meanwhile, Datblygu continued with their attempt to get back into Peel’s good graces after their self-indulgently shoddy Peel Session of 6 months’ previous by writing to ask him for information on those who had tried to fix a place for Pop Peth on the 1992 Festive Fifty. Peel reassured David Edwards that the campaign wouldn’t have worked anyway given that Pop Peth was released in 1991, and anyway, he’d thrown the addresses away in a fit of pique.  The Phantom Fifty had reached Number 41, So What About It by The Fall.

 The other session guests on this programme were Dr. Oloh and his Milo Jazz Band, popping into Maida Vale from Sierra Leone. And of that sounds a flippant way of summing it up, well according to Peel, it wasn’t too far from the truth: I never know anything about Dr. Oloh. I mean, I know nothing at all actually. He just suddenly appears in the studio, records a session, and then just disappears again. Whether he’s doing gigs or not, nobody tells us and nobody warns us that he’s coming, except a couple of weeks in advance. I should like to have more information to pass onto you, but I do not.

The show featured a track from the Gallon Drunk album, From the Heart of Town. It didn’t do anything for me, but Peel really got it, feeling that, You know how sometimes there are tracks included on LPs just for you? That’s one of those. And it has to be said that Paying for Pleasure does feel like a perfect fit for John Peel’s ear-heart.

Peel also played Psycho Tavern by Zuzu’s Petals. The single included their cover of Brand New Key. Peel had been tempted to play this but demurred as he felt that most of his audience may not have heard of Melanie and that this was probably an instance where ignorance would be bliss.

The Little Richard Cover Search not only caused Peel to play Hell and Fire, but also Easier to Say Than Do by Charles Hodges - not that one.

The selections from this show were taken from a complete 3 hour recording. I was pretty fortunate in that virtually everything I wanted to share for my selections was available, though Mass by Calvin Party is still unavailable. Also missing was Source of Possible Ignition by Medicine Ball, the opening track from their LP, Sandwich Full of Lies.  Peel passed on his thanks to Rustic Rod, for sending him a copy.

There were two tracks which fell from favour:

Eggs - The Obliviist: I’ll always have time for this band after the brilliance of Ocelot, and my notes are quite positive about it, particularly “the jazzy trombone”, but I think it ended up being too impenetrable either to write about or ultimately enjoy.

Mambo Taxi - Prom Queen: On first hearing, there’s much to laugh about and enjoy here. But as I listened to it again, I began to see it as a record which the 17 year old me would like more than the 47 year old me. Which is fine, I’ve included tracks which would have charmed me 30 years ago, which I now can’t abide here before. But it dawned on me that, even 30 years ago, I would have recognised the shooting fish in a barrel limitations of Prom Queen soon enough, and passed on it.

Full tracklisting to celebrate the apex of the Lyall/McGiven era at ITFC.

 

Equus: Hell & Fire - Pointless Killing (30 January 1993)

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Peel found this beautiful 1976 reggae record while trawling through his collection of singles as part of his ongoing search for the Little Richard cover.

Although written from the perspective of despair over the pointless killing driven by crime in the Caribbean, anyone who has watched on, appalled, at the atrocities committed in Israel and Gaza since October 7 will find much to agree with in the music here.

Video courtesy of Rufdymond.

Equus: Captain Beefheart - Click Clack (30 January 1993)

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I must confess that when I first re-listened to this track from Beefheart’s 1972 album, The Spotlight Kid, I had severe doubts over whether to include it here. Click Clack is by no means an example of Difficult Beefheart, but I found the Howlin’ Wolf cosplay that Don Van Vliet engaged in here rather bothersome to deal with.  The theme of the track - no good man finds that his woman has finally had enough and is on her way to the railway station to make good on her threat to leave him, at which point, he’s desperate not to lose her - wouldn’t win any points for originality either.  

But what drew me back to the track was the way in which the performance served as a good example of what I call tactile audibility; the way that the musicality of certain tracks evokes an actual thing or experience.  One of the best examples of this is in the “Dogs begin to bark/Hounds begin to howl” section of The Rolling Stones recording of Little Red Rooster, where Brian Jones uses his slide guitar to evoke both the barks and howls.  In Click Clack, Beefheart and The Magic Band work the same trick using both a persistent three note piano figure and positively industrial rasps of harmonica to evoke the sound of the approaching train. I found that the effect of this wouldn’t leave my subconscious alone. And then as I listened to the song more and more times, I found myself being drawn into its groove and appreciating Beefheart’s vocal as more than just an imitation of Howlin’ Wolf, but a rawly, sincere moment of self-realisation about the consequences of treating your loved ones badly.

I found myself wondering whether the track had been any sort of influence on Jarvis Cocker when he was writing the lyrics for O.U. (Gone, Gone) some 20 years later.  But whereas Pulp’s song ended on a superficially optimistic note, Beefheart finds himself staring after his lover’s handkerchief as it waves goodbye from the departing train to “Nawlins”, where she intends to find herself, and his breaking heart finds itself beating in sync with the metal of the railroad line as she heads away.

No such sadness for Peel, who was always delighted for any opportunity to play Captain Beefheart on his show. The playing of Click Clack took him back 22 years to a gig at Newcastle City Hall where he saw Beefheart and The Magic Band play this very song.  He described it, as he was wont to do, as one of the great moments of his life.

 

Video courtesy of Revnalation.

Equus: Breed - Phantom Limb/Woah, Woah, Woah/Wonderful Blade [Peel Session] (30 January 1993)

 

Why aren’t Breed on the front of Melody Maker and NME rather than some of the posturing ninnies who are usually on there?  John Peel, 30/1/93.

If I was to try and make linked, curated compilation albums out of the tracks I’ve selected from John Peel shows over the last 9 years, I think I would have two themes from the early 90s that I could base them around so far:

1) Celtic techno dance music as exemplified by the likes of Bumble, Aphex Twin and Astralasia/Suns of Arqa

2) Northern drama music such as Red Hour, Wonky Alice and Some Paradise.

Just as I was reflecting that it had been some time since I had heard any of the latter genre on a Peel show - the three examples cited above were all posted during 2017 - I came upon a repeat of a Peel Session by Breed, the second of four which they recorded for him between 1991 & 1994.

If I was to try and summarise the mood of the three tracks selected here, it would be through the phrase A Storm is Coming. There are links running through each of them, binded together as they are by loss and death. Session opener, Phantom Limb audibly conjures the stormclouds into being as it reflects on wider themes of loss, while relating the dark deeds which took place “across the water” one terrible November 9th.  Frustratingly, it doesn’t go into great depth on either subject, but as Simon Breed admitted in this 2008 interview, he sometimes used narrative structures more as a way to try and get a song on to its feet rather than as wish to tell comprehensive stories through song.

However, the second track, the unpromisingly titled Woah, Woah, Woah takes Phantom Limb’s theme of loss and over 6 superb minutes spins a tale that shows the human face and cost of loss. Imagine if a remorseful Pied Piper, burnt by his demonic gift and lovesick, went back to Hamelin to throw himself on the mercy or otherwise of the mothers of the town. However, the townswomen want neither to kill him or forgive him, but instead have him drawn into the dance of grief and loss which they have gone through since he led their children away. As an example of a song in which someone has to confront the consequence of their actions for life, I can think of few better.

As suggested by its title, Wonderful Blade, is a song about a knife, which seems to be both literal and hallucinatory, a la Macbeth.  Lovers of McGonagall-esque writing will find much to enjoy with Simon Breed’s fruity delivery of an ongoing set of couplets which all end with different “-ust” rhymes, but what distinguishes Wonderful Blade from the intensity of the other two tracks is the delightfully decadent feel to the performance. Whether the knife is going to be used on himself or someone else, it conjures an inversion of similar debauchery from a scene in The Man Who Fell to Earth. There, David Bowie used a revolver; here I can picture Breed stirring his martini with a knife and then lasciviously sucking the blade dry of alcohol. So seductive is the vibe of Wonderful Blade, it feels positively irresponsible. Almost an erotic anthem for self-harmers.

There was a fourth track in Breed’s session, but while Shaking the Bone pulsed with a higher level of energy than the other tracks, it somehow felt inessential compared to them.

Videos courtesy of Vibracobra23 Redux.

Equus: Roy Head and the Traits - Treat Her Right (30 January 1993)

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Politically incorrect to the nth degree. From 1965, before we knew any better. - John Peel after playing Treat Her Right on 30/1/93.

This is the second post in a row on this blog where a piece of music played on a John Peel show, 30 years ago, ends up having resonance in 2023.  

At various points, over the last year or so, on social media, I’ve seen people post a meme of Tom Jones, circa 1969, wigging out to a piece of brass music and driving his audience crazy.  The clip’s usually accompanied by someone posting something like, “Out of office on; let my holiday begin!”  I never knew what the music was that Jones was rocking out to, until my blog notes led me back to Treat Her Right, a 1965 hit for Roy Head and the Traits. 

Based on this record, Head was a difficult man to pin down musically. Born in Texas, and a future inductee into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, Treat Her Right was his signature song and is a million miles away from rockabilly. Simply put, it’s 2 minutes of sex talk soul which fused the phrasing of Elvis Presley with the energy of James Brown, though it has to be said that the iconic closing brass figure has me wondering whether Head and his co-writer, Tony Montalbano hadn’t been caning a copy of You Really Got Me by The Kinks given its resemblance to the central riff of that song. It may have been a canny attempt on Head’s part to try and woo lovers of rock ‘n’ roll, soul music and devotees of The British Invasion.  If so, it paid off big time as the song peaked at Number 2 on the US Billboard Single Chart, though it only reached Number 30 on the UK Singles Chart. It was kept off the top spot on the US chart by Yesterday by The Beatles. Both songs went on to be widely covered, including by Tom Jones on his This is Tom Jones TV show….where 50 odd years later, it would celebrate weekends and holidays the world over.

I’ve never kissed two sisters. Hmmm…I bet that probably wasn’t true back in the day, was it, Tom?

Videos courtesy of Roy Head and the Traits - Topic and  Tom Jones.