Having reached the halfway point of his week covering for Jakki Brambles, Peel may well have been putting in a request for the BBC to carry out some professional audience research to truly establish whether he was flying or dying with the lunchtime audience after he opened this show with a message from Barry Warren, who wrote to say that he was enjoying Peel’s efforts, but…Big Dave behind the bar at the Railway Tavern in Barnet has bet me 50p that they won’t let you last the week. Whatever Peel’s own feelings on the week were by the time he signed off at 3:30pm on Friday 9 April, he could at least take heart in the fact that Barry had won his bet.
Most of my choices from this show, as you’ll see, come from the Peel record box, but he was still trying to reach out to any avowedly beige listeners by including today, 9 to 5 by Sheena Easton, a record which he classed as both a guilty pleasure and - to his ears at least - one of the greatest pop songs ever made. However, Peel was still trying to expose the listeners to music which would wrench them out of their comfort zone. This included a play for Machine Gun by Cybersonik, which my notes claim was the most confrontational record that Peel had played for Brambles’s listeners so far, and clearly too confrontational for me as well given that I didn’t include it as one of my selections.
The recording I heard of this show including the first couple of records played by Gary Davies, who was also providing holiday cover that week, in his case for Steve Wright. Davies opened his show with Losing My Religion by R.E.M and followed it with Money’s Too Tight to Mention by Simply Red, presumably to chase Peel out of the studios.
As for tracks from today’s programme, which I would have wanted to keep, we start with one which was about to become very influential on the tone of British music over the next couple of years, even though no one seemed to admit it at the time:
The Members - The Sound of the Suburbs
Video courtesy of John Jurgens.
A Number 12 hit in 1979, what distinguishes The Sound of the Suburbs from its 1990s reproductions is the undertone of menace which Blur and other 90s acts who used suburbia as their inspiration were unable to convey. There’s plenty of humour and satire in The Sound of the Suburbs, not least in the verse which takes the piss out of youth club punk bands, but it’s the references to jets from Heathrow flying over houses, the sirens at Broadmoor Hospital and the figure of Johnny, locked in his bedroom, alternately annoying the neighbours by playing loud punk rock or giving the thousand yard stare from his window - potentially looking all the way to Broadmoor - that provide an unsettling counterweight to the thrashy, Woolworths nihilism, which could be made into a palatable, recycled pastiche in the mid-90s, but which was very much the mood de jour of the late 1970s.
Jeff Mills - Phase 4
Video courtesy of Waveform Transmission Vol 1
Peel was certainly doing everything he could this week to showcase Jeff Mills to his temporary expanded audience. Having played a track from Mills's X-103 project on Tuesday, he now played this barnstorming cut from Mills's Waveform Transmission Vol 1 set of EPs.
This is every bit as uncompromising as the aforementioned Cybersonik track, showing that by this point in the week, Peel was done with trying to shield Brambles's audience from hearing stuff that might not be thought palatable for a lunchtime audience. It's also probably guilty of the same charges of repetition that I levelled at the X-103 track, Curse of the Gods on Tuesday 6 April, 1993. But I'm seduced by the transitions from the drum 'n' bass patterns that form the core of the track into the squealing, angry, painful bursts of noise that run over the top, like a dentist's drill touching a raw nerve. I know that doesn't sound particularly attractive and on another day, I'd probably have sidestepped it as well, but sometimes, I need my aural nerves pressed and I suspect I want to celebrate that this was played on Radio 1 at 1pm, and straight after Peel had had to play Whitney Houston's cover of I'm Every Woman. Although in fairness, he did praise Houston's singing voice when he did it, and we should never forget that she was responsible for one of his few outbreaks of public dancing.
Aerosmith - Livin’ On The Edge
Video courtesy of Aerosmith VEVO
Aerosmith became something of a guilty pleasure of mine in the mid-90s, when I worked at a cafe where the owner had their Big Ones compilation album playing on constant rotation. I regard Love in an Elevator as one of the greatest rock songs ever written, while my wife feels the same about Dude Looks Like a Lady. Livin’ on the Edge was always one that I could take or leave, though it’s caught me in a benevolent mood here. Possibly it’s because it remains a timely piece of music. Back then it was inspired by the Los Angeles riots, but also works in references to school shootings and The Greenhouse Effect as we used to refer to climate change in the analogue era. 30 plus years on, all the things mentioned in it remain a problem, while America itself has got sicker and more polarised. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination for the US Presidency in 2028 - assuming they’re still allowed to have elections then - could do worse than try and get the rights for this as a campaign song at their rallies.
Peel had occasionally included Aerosmith records on his playlists in the 70s, but they were long dead to him now, not least given that after playing this, he said that his favourite moment on the record was when they stopped playing in the middle.
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me
Video courtesy of PJ Harvey
Included here for completeness. This blog has already included the live solo version that Harvey played for Peel, a year earlier. Now, it was acting as the title track to the PJ Harvey trio’s imminent second album, due for release at the end of April.
Ugly Kid Joe - Cats in the Cradle
Video courtesy of Ugly Kid Joe VEVO
It’s so good in fact, that a friend of mine, who would usually never sing at a karaoke evening, even if you paid him, once made an exception for this song, simply so he could sing that line. And that line was the only one he sang, the rest of it was sung by my future best man, who also loves the lyrics in this, especially the third verse’s climax of What I’d really like, Dad is to borrow the car keys/See ya later, can I have them, please? Syd Barrett couldn’t have done it better. The record peaked at Number 7 on the UK charts, giving Ugly Kid Joe their second and final Top 10 UK hit. They seemed to be a band who people liked most when they were being gentle. In their native America, they had two big Top 10 hits with this and Everything About You, but nothing else registered at all over there. In the UK, they had 5 Top 40 hits, but raunchier, rockier tunes like Neighbour tended to wash around in the lower reaches of the chart.
Sonic Youth - Sugar Kane
Video courtesy of IZF
Peel dedicated this to John Elvidge who was organising a Gang show for Scouts and Guides in Thanet. He wished Elvidge luck with the show, perhaps suspecting that Elvidge would need some of the stimulants alluded to in Sugar Kane, in order to get everyone organised and get himself through the show.
Billy Bragg - A New England [Peel Session]
Video courtesy of TchikiSteph.
The second track from Billy Bragg’s first Peel Session, broadcast on 3 August 1983. I listen to Bragg so infrequently that it’s always a surprise to remember that he writes about love even more incisively than he writes about politics. Here he plays the lovelorn friend/sometime lover who has so much love to give but is torn between waiting for his heart’s desire to commit to him, or whether to bite the bullet and try find someone new and - based on what we learn in A New England - someone more deserving of his affection. The chorus marks a moment to show that for all the dreams and hopes of achieving a fairer society, we’d all take the love of our lives ahead of that. The frustration being that what the heart wants often seems to be even more difficult to gain than what the head wants too. In that moment, Bragg speaks for all of us.
As one of his best known songs, it made perfect sense to play this to Brambles’s audience, who may well have remembered Kirsty MacColl’s version of it. Listening to the other tracks from the 1983 session, I’d have been equally pleased to have heard the mixed race romance tale of This Guitar Says Sorry or Bragg’s Essex coastal road travelogue, A13, Trunk Road to the Sea, which borrowed liberally enough from (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 to merit a co-composer credit for Bobby Troup, when the session was given a release by Strange Fruit.
Marxman - Father Like Son
Video courtesy of MaroWon
As they proved in their Peel Session, when The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy tackle this kind of subject matter on a track like Positive, they grab you by the throat and emphasise the need to listen and learn in no uncertain terms. Marxman’s skill is to address these weighty topics with a lightness of touch, which Goldie Looking Chain subsequently ran with into even broader comedy.
The first verse of Father Like Son plays up Marxman’s choice of combining Celtic instruments with hip hop, which suggests that if they were singing from experience about their own fathers, then Matt Molloy’s inspirations must have been serious playas back in the day.
David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise
Video courtesy of David Bowie
Such is the case in this song, which served as the title track to his latest album. The sense of pleading desperation that we learn - in this case from the circumstances that led to and exacerbated the Los Angeles riots - is heightened here by the fact that Bowie sings this song as a duet alongside the soulful voice of Al B. Sure! (and with a ridiculous alias like that, his voice better be “soulful” in order for any of his credibility to avoid evaporating when we see the exclamation mark in his name.). While the city burns, Bowie and Al consider how this seismic event could jolt both races out of their mutual suspicion of each other, Reach out over race and hold each other’s hands….I look into your eyes and I know you won’t kill me etc, but before anyone thinks that this is nothing more than a tastelessly atonal retread of Ebony and Ivory, set against the backdrop of a major civil disturbance, Bowie comes out with the line which gets to the crux of the issue then, and now: But I look into your eyes and I wonder sometimes. And until that temptation dies out, then the riots and the things which cause them will always be bubbling under the surface, waiting to erupt again.
Peel played Black Tie White Noise alongside Bowie’s 1975 US Number 1, Fame, co-written with Carlos Alomar and John Lennon. I originally included it on the metaphorical mixtape, almost as an automatic response, but after listening back to it a few times, I found myself thinking that it’s really nothing more than a halfway decent funk workout, which I appreciate was in keeping with the aesthetic of the record Bowie was making at the time, but in the final analysis, I found the Bowie of 1993 more compelling and vital than the Bowie of 1975. In a way, I think that’s something he would be happy about.
Queen and George Michael - Somebody to Love
Video courtesy of Queen Official
A year earlier, Bowie had been among the artists performing at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium. He performed Under Pressure, “Heroes” , All the Young Dudes and finished by reciting The Lord’s Prayer in tribute to all those who had either died from AIDS or were living with it. He then handed on to George Michael, whose short set won the greatest acclaim of all those that were performed at the show. So much so that his rendition, with the surviving members of Queen, of their 1976 song, Somebody to Love was chosen as the lead track on an EP credited to Michael and Queen called Five Live. It was a Number 1 hit when it was released a couple of weeks after this programme went out. Even Peel was moved to say after playing it, Does make you wish you could have been there.
I’d always assumed that the EP featured five tracks from the concert but, it only featured two. As well as Somebody to Love, it included Michael’s duet with Lisa Stansfield on These Are the Days of Our Lives. The other tracks were a short Queen demo from the 1970s and two Michael concert performances from a 1991 show at Wembley Arena, neither of which had any connection to Freddie Mercury. Five Live does what it says on the tin, but not entirely honestly.
Oui 3 - Arms of Solitude
Video courtesy of Nickee Nick
Peel wasn’t flying completely solo during this week. At around 2pm each day, he would link up with The Man Ezeke, Radio 1’s reggae specialist DJ, who was spending the week on a nationwide Easter egg hunt, and who would breeze on to the show for a couple of minutes to whip up the crowds he had attracted and carry out brief interviews with various bands/acts that he met along the way. I’m presuming the bands were performing showcase sets or doing meet & greets because otherwise they were going considerable distances simply to be asked by him, “What’s your name?” and “What do you do in the band?”
Over the course of the week so far, Ezeke had travelled from Dumfries to Nottingham, via Huddersfield. Joining him today were two groups who both had a new record ready for release: acid jazz act, Perception and soul/hip hop combo, Oui 3. It was the latter who had their record played on the Brambles programme today, and their paean to the benefits of solitude makes for an attractive listen. They had me at the corner/Jack Horner rhyme, personally. Oui 3 were one of those acts who were perpetually to be found hanging around the lower reaches of the Top 40, especially in 1993, but never had that big hit to push them to greater attention.
The Nottingham jaunt did neither band much good in terms of record sales. Arms of Solitude became the only Oui 3 single in 1993 to miss out on a place in the Top 40, peaking at Number 54. Perception’s cover of the Barbra Streisand/Barry Gibb song, Guilty failed to chart at all. As for Peel, he was so impressed at the way that Ezeke could get the crowd to say anything he wanted back to him, that he asked Ezeke to get the crowd to shout the word “polytechnic”. Somewhat hesitantly, they obliged.
It’s Immaterial - A Gigantic Raft in the Philippines
Video courtesy of Mehefinheulog1
Released in 1981 and periodically reissued several times in subsequent years, my suspicions are that A Gigantic Raft in the Philippines is about the sinking of USS Indianapolis (CA-35), which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in July 1945. The Indianapolis was en route to the Philippines having previously delivered supplies of uranium which were shortly to be used in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1195 crew were aboard the ship of which just under 900 managed to evacuate before it sank. However, the vast majority of them found themselves in open water due to a shortage of lifeboats. Problems in getting SOS messages sent out before the ship sank meant that the crew spent 5 days out at sea before being rescued. In that time, many of them succumbed to dehydration, exposure, saltwater poisoning and, most notoriously, death by shark attack. Ultimately, 316 crew were rescued, but it remains the largest loss of life suffered by a vessel in the U.S. Navy.
After playing this, Peel uttered his customary line that In a better ordered society, that would have been a Number 1 record. With its rockabilly rhythm, vaguely tribal beats and echo drenched production, it certainly could have been a hit at the time. If only we could hear the words clearly, then who knows how big it could have been. Not hearing them clearly, matters here because we don’t know if we’re being invited to observe, sympathise, glorify or experience the predicament of the crew. When It’s Immaterial did have a Top 20 hit in 1986, they made sure we could hear every word.
The Frank and Walters - Fashion Crisis Hits New York
Video courtesy of June Grant
The last time I mentioned The Frank and Walters on this blog, I described them as pointless and anodyne. To be fair, I was comparing their Peel Session version of Happy Busman to my second favourite track of 1992, so my patience for their brand of whimsy was not high. But having dismissed them in no uncertain terms seven years ago, it’s only fair to say openly that Fashion Crisis in New York is an absolute peach.
There’s whimsy in it, for sure, but somehow it’s less teethgrinding than usual with this band and they do make a serious point about the disproportionate attention given to high end fashion trends and fads considering that the vast majority of people can’t afford to buy the clothes being marketed as essential wear. What really makes this record cut through with me though is how wonderfully it rocks. They played a blinder in the recording of this and given that it was the follow up record to the band’s biggest hit, After All, which had reached Number 11 in December 1992, hopes must have high of another potential Top 20 hit. It would have been a deserved one, but disappointingly, the record stalled at Number 42.
This may have caused a loss of confidence or a concerted decision to step away from the limelight for a time given that, after releasing this, it took four years for The Frank and Walters to release further material. After Happy Busman, I wouldn’t have cared less if they’d taken forty years off, but Fashion Crisis in New York showed just how good they could be, and was a hell of a tune to sustain their fans with while they were away.
East 17 - Slow It Down
Video courtesy of London Records
It’s a shame that East 17’s legacy appears to be either their dreary Christmas hit, Stay Another Day or jokes about Brian Harvey running over himself with his car while being sick. While Take That may have marginally had the edge in terms of good pop songs over 1993-95, I always thought East 17’s records were more interesting, and they seemed more willing to take risks with their music. I still remember listening to Dave Pearce, sitting in on Drivetime in late 1995 and him playing Looking For, a drum ‘n’ bass track written by Terry Coldwell, one of the arm wavers who stood in the background behind Harvey and principal songwriter, Tony Mortimer, from their Up All Night album. They’re also the only boyband from that mid 90s period who were booked to appear on Channel 4’s live music show, The White Room. Who knows what they might have gone on to achieve had they been able to stand being in the same room as each other.
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