Mecano was the lead track on an EP called Mekanix, and it makes for a wonderful listen with its blend of techno, tribal and musique concrete. As the video shows, Peel made another of his invariably inaccurate attempts to identify the distant voice at the start of the track. His guess at Mark E. Smith may well have been due to over-excitement given that this 16/4/93 show, which the video is directly taken from, featured Peel’s first plays of tracks from the new Fall album, The Infotainment Scan. It quickly becomes clear that the voice wasn’t Smith’s unless he was working for NASA on the side, which provides quite the picture come launch day: Commencing countdown. 10-ah, 9-ah, 8-ah, 7-ah, 6-ah, 5-ah, 4-ah, 3-ah, 2-ah, 1-ah. Lift off! Lift off! It’s cleared the tower. Oh…that’s fucked then, isn’t it?
“Spacey” best describes the vibe around Mecano, and the collection of voice samples from Mission Control, tribal cries and I am a mechanical man refrain sounds like a dry run for a concept album where robots from the future land on a planet/time populated by primitive man. I’d have bought that record, but isn’t it curious how yet again in this show, we find ourselves back in the milieu of Planet of the Apes.
Placing at Number 22 on The Phantom Fifty and completely unconnected to The Beautiful South’s hit single of the same name, this is something of a damp squib for its first two minutes. That’s not because of the content, despite the fact that it breaks no new ground. It’s a Wedding Present song, so obviously David Gedge is lamenting the latest piece of miscommunication which has left him grovelling apologetically to a woman. She feels sad, and he feels bad for making her that way. I wanted you but not the way you think. We’ve heard it all before and perhaps because of this, the producer of the track, Steve Albini has decided that we don’t need to clearly hear what Gedge is singing. It isn’t quite John Lennon yelling the final chorus of Yer Blues into a dead microphone, but you have to strain to hear what Gedge is singing and it doesn’t help the song given that Gedge’s singing voice has always walked the line between distinctive and unprepossessing. My notes from this show had a question mark next to Rotterdam, and when I listened to it again for the first time in a year, last week, I was all ready to keep it off the metaphorical mix tape, based on those first two minutes.
And then, at precisely 2:00, the reason for sticking with Rotterdam makes its entrance. Peter Solowka’s multi-note guitar riff encapsulates a choked sob of such distress that it can’t fail to move the listener. Over the last minute, the whole band move in on this as the riffs and drum fills get more urgent, taking the sound from sobs and tears to the metaphorical smashing up of the room. It could be Gedge taking out his regret on anything that isn’t nailed down, or his friend breaking everything in sight while he sits cowering in the corner. Either way, it’s the closest thing to violence that I’ve ever heard on a Wedding Present song and pulls the dollars out of the fire in fine style.
Rotterdam was recorded for The Wedding Present’s 1991 album, Seamonsters, which marked Solowka’s last work with the band, before he devoted himself full time to The Ukrainians.
John Lennon demonstrates how dead mic singing should be done from 3:17.
Videos courtesy of The Wedding Present - Topic and The Beatles - Topic
Lyrics are copyright of David Gedge and as we can’t hear them, please feel free to read them.
NOTICE - This post contains mild spoilers relating to Planet of the Apes (1968). I mean it’s a twist that’s quite widely known, but I don’t want to make assumptions.
The world was a simpler place when The Mummies recorded (You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes. In 1993, one could listen to this piece of lumbering, yet enjoyable slice of garage metal and conclude that singer Trent Ruane and friends had completed a binge watch of the five Planet of the Apes movies released between 1968 & 1973, and chose to mark the occasion by writing a song, most likely told from the perspective of Charlton Heston’s character, George Taylor, an astronaut who finds himself on a future version of Earth, where in the centuries following a nuclear holocaust, apes became the dominant, intelligent species, while man was reduced to mute animals. The lyrics describe some of the authoritarian stratas seen within that society with gorillas as the military class, orang-utans representing the religious orders and chimpanzees as the scientific elites. It’s through striking up a relationship with a pair of scientists that Taylor gets into a position where he can escape and try to live as a free man.
Alternatively, we could have looked at this as an allegory of an allegory, with the broader context being about the way in which man’s cruelty to man - in ways both large and small - sees us treating others as though they were animals. The fight to live on this planet of apes could relate to the struggle to get from one end of the day to another. The great strength of the Planet of the Apes series is that it’s open to so many interpretations and packs in so many concepts: slavery, the science/religion debate, nuclear dread, genocide, cultural shift, fear of the outsider and so much more. It is, to my mind, one of the greatest series in 20th Century film.
But in 2025, (You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes feels like a state of the nation address on politics in the United States. Characters from the films can now be replaced by current symbols of authority which are running unchecked in the United States. For example:
And where in Trump’s America are the figures that Ruane could strike up a relationship of mutual understanding with? Either intimdated into silence or tacitly accepting of the new reality in America.
With two members of their band having South East Asian heritage, The Mummies would not have been unaware of the conflicts and prejudices that their friends went through in early 90s America and how vulnerable they would be if the events of the Planet of the Apes films ever bled through to the real world, but back then, such things seemed the work of fantasy that they were. It’s the certainty of a world and a time which was still a layer or two removed from the venality of 2025 which people lament and pine for when they talk about “how great the 90s were” on any message board or set of YouTube comments. I appreciate that it’s lazy writing on my part when I say that songs from 30+ years ago speak more to the times we live through now, than they did when they were originally recorded, but I can’t be the only one who misses the days when songs like (You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes were fables instead of documentaries.
A pleasant time passer from the session recorded by Zimbabwe Cha Cha Cha Kings on 24 November 1992. The session had Peel promising to catch the group if they came to the UK in 1993, as he had missed them last time they had toured here.
My lists initially included another track from this session called Naome, but I suspect if I was making up a mixtape, I would be more eager to replay Shanduko, so I’ve just gone with that one. The other tracks on the session were Dear Maideyi and Makandiramba. The whole session, together with Peel links from 16/4/93, can be heard here.
Balle Balle Balle is a Punjabi phrase which translates as Hooray Hooray Hooray. The vibe of the track is celebratory and upbeat, though as ever I retain a trace of concern as I don’t know what it is the track is cheering about. We’ll have to take it on trust.
I think what I respond to in particular are the leaping passages first heard around the 55 second mark, which recur throughout the track. The interconnected nature of music shows itself as those tightly strung Eastern guitar lines sound surprisingly close to the Celtic jigs and reels of Matt Molloy.
Sky’s the Limit seems to have struck a chord with Peel as he played a number of tracks from the album up to June 1993. It remains to be seen whether any of them turn up here, but Balle Balle Balle makes me hopeful.
Video courtesy of Akash - Topic (so enjoy it while it’s here).
Given the name of the artists, both Peel and I missed a trick by not pairing this up with Dirty Robber by The Sonics from this same 16/4/93 programme.
Tommy McCook formed the Supersonics in 1965 after the dissolution of his previous band, The Skatalites. They would serve as the house band for Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle label. In general, Treasure Isle singles in the 1960s operated on a split single principle. They would feature the Supersonics backing a featured artist on one side of the disc, with a performance by McCook and the Supersonics on the other side. The title, Second Fiddle, potentially offers an insight into what McCook thought of this arrangement. However, it’s a jaunty, jazzy rocksteady instrumental which showcases McCook’s saxophone work and the skills of his flautist. It was issued in 1968 as the flip to I’ll Be Lonely by Jay and Joya (John Holt and Joya Landis).
I never went to a rave. I wasn’t well connected enough to know where any of them in Cornwall were taking place, and if I had known, I don’t think I’d have been too enthusiastic about trying to get out to a remote beach on the arse end of the coast, especially given that I would have been too nervous to do any drugs in order to make the long night pass by more beautifully.
I don’t tend to think of this as a major omission in my life experience until I hear a tune like Going All The Way by the free party collective, Spiral Tribe, and then I know that with its hypnotic, eddying runs of sound - I especially like the part around 1:37 which sounds like it’s remixing Tuesday by Milk Cult at 128bpm - and banging tribal drum beats, I’d have been set to dance way beyond dawn and all the way up to lunchtime.
Unfortunately though, if I’d wanted to do so in 1993, I’d have had to take a crossing to France given that Spiral Tribe moved their operations over there due to increasingly repressive UK legislation - sparked off by the vastly over attended Castlemorton Common Festival and culminating in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 - which sought to stamp out unlicensed raves and festivals. Once again, the UK’s loss would prove to be Europe’s gain. At least Spiral Tribe put out a steady stream of official and unofficial releases throughout the 90s in order to bring the raves to those who couldn’t get to them.
