Guys and Dolls: Admiral Tibet - Tell Me Why (23 April 1993)

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Exciting news, readers! After four months of redundancy, I’m starting a new job on September 29th. And with exquisite timing, here comes the exquisite Admiral Tibet asking why it is that working men - in this case sugar cane cutters - cannot earn enough money to pay the rent or feed themselves. The track is very good at highlighting the issues - namely that there are some branches of work which haven’t advanced much beyond the days of slavery, and that full and fair redistribution of wealth is something which isn’t a priority of those who could do something about it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t put forward much of a solution to these issues. There’s no call for revolution, just a plea for the brethren to keep their heads down and wait for Jah to lead the many to their just reward. We can only hope that Jah has a good accountant given the claims that could be made. But, they’re disappointingly wishy-washy sentiments in the face of the problem. Were it not for the beautiful way they’re delivered, I’d almost be tempted to write Tell Me Why off as an example of Centrist Dancehall, a genre where you enjoy the grooves and make no waves. But then isn’t that the case for most working people?

Video courtesy of steppkel.

Guys and Dolls: John Peel Show - Saturday 17 April 1993 (BBC Radio 1)

Here’s a really nice letter that I discovered as I was going through the mail, and it comes from Manchester, Chorlton. I won’t give the names out to save on embarrassment. It says, “A friend of mine has just started nurse training in Dumfries. She has a boxy room in a staff residence and we agree that whenever you move house and you’re sat there feeling crap and alienated, turning on the radio and getting Peel in your room, gives you a feeling of being at home and no matter how many times you move house, turning on to the Peel show softens the blow.” Well that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be all about and that’s cheered me up a lot, reading that. 

John Peel on 17/4/93 and in answer to a request in the letter for a Sebadoh record, he played them Two Years Two Days.

My selections came from a full 3 hour show. I was able to include everything I wanted to keep, but 3 selections fell from favour:

Luke Slater - Amil [Remix] On the Discogs review of Slater’s X-Tront EP Vol 1, which this track comes from, one reviewer puts forward the theory that Amil has nothing to do with amyl nitrite, but instead links to amiloride, which is used to treat high blood pressure. The music certainly does enough to convey the body working with the various beats and lines evoking the pumping of blood, heartbeats and crackling synapses. However, once the track moves into skronk territory with frequencies and modulations which sound like a migraine developing into a stroke, I had to make a decision, and if this was to end up on a mixtape, I think I would end up regretting it. The type of track which, if heard in company, you end up talking to the other people all the way through it, so as to distract them from the lapse in taste. All that being said though, it’s only a near miss. As is….

The Fall - A Past Gone Mad: Rejecting The Fall is generally something I can do without too much guilt, but I do feel genuinely conflicted here.  According to Mark E. Smith, the central idea that drove several of the tracks on The Infotainment Scan album was a rejection of cultural nostalgia which had started to become an industry in the early 90s.

The Infotainment Scan (1993) was all about regressive idealism. You can’t live in the past like that. It’s a lot more dangerous than you think. Kids growing up hearing their mams and dads talking about how great 1976 and 1981 were - it’s bullshit! There have never been any great years. You get the odd moment here and there but never a clean year of wonder….and then all of a sudden you’ve got those ridiculous list programmes like One Hundred Great Horror Films and whathavya. (Mark E. Smith, p.197/198, Renegade, 2008, Penguin).

From what I can hear - and definitely from what I can read - A Past Gone Mad is a pure embodiment of that idea, with its swipes at Spangles, old football annuals, the glorification of murderers and, oddly, Ian McShane. Even the instrumentation makes clear that this is a track with its eyes fixed firmly on the future - there isn’t a dual drum kit to be heard. The problem is though that everything I’ve learned about A Past Gone Mad’s reason for existing has been learnt away from the actual recording itself. As Smith unleashes his screed against the things he would rather die than become, the production overwhelms his vocal almost to the point of inaudibility. What we end up with is a fairly inessential sounding techno track. The lo-fi cackling laughter at the end of the song could be a deliberate comment on this, but if we can’t hear the points being made, and it strikes me that this was a lyric which was intended to be heard, then who is the joke ultimately on? The 2025 me thinks that A Past Gone Mad is great, but it’s on behalf of the 1993 me, who would not have had the supporting information to hand, and who would have been wondering, “What’s so funny?” that it misses out.

Blast Off Country Style - Hey, Hey, I Love You, Bitch: For the second week running, Blast Off Country Style made my shortlist, only to be left off when working back through the programme, and unlike the other two tracks to miss out, I feel no guilt.

I think that the reason why I initially react positively to Blast Off Country Style tracks is because it’s always nice to hear skinny guitar in amongst the growlier, abrasive guitar sounds that tended to be on Peel show playlists at this time. The problem invariably comes once Evelyn Hurley starts singing….

I was, however, able to place what her voice reminded me of, and why I suspect I may not be able to take  them seriously in the future - although Peel gave them plenty of exposure during the 90s.  Nevertheless, listening to Hurley I found myself transported back to 1992/93 and evenings spent watching the erotic drama, Eleven Days, Eleven Nights (1987), which I rented on a few occasions from a video shop in Penryn. 

The story of Eleven Days, Eleven Nights revolves around an affair which an architect has with a romantic novelist who he meets by chance, 11 days before he is due to get married. Unbeknownst to him, the novelist is using their relationship as material for her latest book, which chronicles relationships with 100 lovers, and the architect is Lover Number 100. The second half of the film deals with the emotional fall out as the architect’s guilt begins to battle with his lust, the novelist’s detachment starts to turn into love and the architect’s fiancée begins to suspect that something is going on with her husband-to-be. The first half of the film details several of the lovers’ assignations, one of which takes place at a recording studio, where they get up close and personal in order to provide real heavy breathing for the soundtrack of a porn film. Before that though, the architect is waiting in reception where a dippy looking woman, channeling Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall look is strumming an unplugged electric guitar, while tunelessly singing an utterly dreadful song that she’s written about her pet dog. She’s convinced it’s going to be a hit, and that she’ll be a star. I suspect that Blast Off Country Style had more self awareness than that character, but if I hear them on future Peel shows, it’s going to be a struggle for me to see much beyond the Dog Song lady.

A tracklisting to make Dumfries more homely. 

Pictures you can hear: The inspiration for Blast Off Country Style?

Guys and Dolls: Thriller U - Drive (17 April 1993)

 

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If you find The Cars original version of Drive to be a bit too po-faced and solemn, then this Steely & Clevie production, which served as the title track on Eustace Hamilton’s seventh studio album might be for you. The original is treated respectfully, Thriller U provides an impassioned vocal and there’s no big bwoy Carribean toasting rap dropped into the middle of it (I’ll drive ya home/Be ready ta go etc), but the synthesisers are, in typical dancehall style, a good deal more jaunty than they were on the original.  The key difference is probably that you’d play Thriller U’s Drive in the middle of a party, and The Cars Drive at the very end of one.*

Peel felt that Thriller U’s version had a chance at being a hit single, which given that this show was being broadcast a few weeks after the top 3 singles in the UK chart were Oh Carolina, Informer and Mr. Loverman, and while the chart also contained other reggae flavoured songs like Sweat and reggae covers of 80s material such as Jamaican in New York, seemed a decent prediction. In the event, Thriller U never had a UK hit single, but my checking of the UK Singles Chart website provided me with a lightbulb moment that I hope I’ll be able to go on pursuing for as long as I enjoy listening to music.

My Friday evenings tend to be quiet these days. Nobody seems to rehearse plays on a Friday night anymore, and I don’t go out on the town. Instead, my wife and I sit at home and watch Gardeners’ World, while I might also have a football match on mute on one tablet, while scanning Bluesky to read people’s pithy remarks about the Top of the Pops repeats showing on BBC Four. I’ve been disengaged from the singles charts and contemporary music for nearly 20 years, I reckon. It’s a mixture of me growing older and the market changing. Given that the charts now include downloads of any song ever released, I wrote off any attempt to follow them given that it struck me they would be stuck in a perpetual version of the charts circa 1972, with contemporary releases jostling alongside re-releases of tunes that could be 10, 20 or 30 years old. 

In this environment though, I found myself wishing that Top of the Pops were still around now. The great thing about it was that it gave viewers - whether they were in the target demographic or not - a snapshot of what contemporary pop music was like. Parents, grandparents, those who feel that music was better when they were young could all get some kind of handle on what was happening now. They wouldn’t necessarily rush out to buy any of it or namedrop it to try and appear cool, but it would at least keep them in the loop. That seemed to be gone now, and the consequence of it is that if you asked me to sing any hit song from 2010 onwards, I couldn’t.

But looking over the chart yesterday, with its blend of songs both modern and ancient, it struck me that in the age of YouTube, it would be easy to do your own version of Top of the Pops each week. Just choose 7 songs, all of which have to be climbing in the chart, regardless of how old they are - but skew more towards the newer releases than the older ones - and Bob’s your uncle, you have your contemporary pop music snapshot.  My list from last night was:

Rihanna - Breakin Dishes (old)

Sombr - 12 to 12 (new and the tune I liked best)

Twice - Strategy (new)

Lady Gaga - The Dead Dance (new)

Ed Sheeran - Sapphire (new, I think. Had to be done with the Ipswich Town connection)

Sabrina Carpenter - When Did You Get Hot? (New)

Golden - Hunter/X, Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami (Current Number 1)

I liked them all, though it’s a good thing I like electropop which seems to be the dominant style now. I intend to pick seven songs each Friday in order to give me that snapshot and in the case of the older tunes, educate myself on what I missed. I won’t do anything with this, except to maybe link contemporary tunes that I hear post-2010 with things that the artists themselves may have heard in Peel-aligned artists. In the main, it will serve to keep my head in the musical present, while my heart and soul remain in the musical past.

Video courtesy of All Reggae.

*In case you’re wondering, Thriller U sings “Mm-mm” instead of “pork pie”.

Guys and Dolls: godheadSilo - Nutritious Treat (17 April 1993)

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This blog is now reaching the stage where I could make playlists of tracks based not just on genre of music, but on specific subjects. Nutritious Treat would take its place on the Intense Driving Songs playlist alongside tunes such as Potvan by The Werefrogs, Bow Hitch-Hiker by Rollerskate Skinny and the pinnacle of the genre, Pacific Coast Highway by Sonic Youth.  But, Nutritious Treat shares a sound closer to the blues rock rumble of Two Tons of Chrome by Gear Jammer. Indeed, it’s probably the first song I’ve heard since that record to produce what feels like the movement and life of a motor engine in full, ominous effect*.  Using only bass and drums, godheadSilo create a thunderous wall of noise which serves to remind us that cars can be exceptionally dangerous things. The track roars and judders along like some kind of mechanical/beast hybrid. 

The line Is it the alcoholic or the alcohol? provides an ominous extra layer of darkness, albeit one working with a clever degree of subtext.  Those souped up Thunderosa Cadillacs could be dangerous enough to control at anytime, but they become lethal weapons when driven by someone who’s been drinking.  

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1993, there were 17,461 traffic fatalities which were alcohol related. These accounted for 44% of the total number of traffic related deaths in the USA for that year**  The subtext comes in the way that godheadSilo use drink driving as a way to expose the hypocrisy behind the assertion that guns don’t kill; people do. Which is true, but giving them access to the tools which allow them to do so is a moral puzzle that America shows no sign of being able to solve. In the case of driving under the influence, what Nutritious Treat suggests is that we are fundamentally weak creatures, unable to resist the sweet temptation of alcohol, which then opens the door to behaviour and actions we were either always capable of, or thought we could get away with. However, there will always be a price to pay.

And yet, the song also feels upbeat, alive and excited as it jumps behind the wheel. If American Graffiti were set in 1992 Washington State, instead of 1962 California, then I can just picture the opening 50 seconds of Nutritious Treat soundtracking the journeys of Richard Dreyfuss and friends. Although the line referring to putting Chachi in charge suggests that godheadSilo were thinking of Happy Days rather than American Graffitti. Maybe, Chachi was the designated driver?  Regardless, with cries of Thunderosa, Cadillac worm, we career into the final 20 seconds watching godheadSilo drive off, picking up speed, passengers hanging out of the windows, engine growling, exhaust exploding and on a journey towards their fate.

Video courtesy of Stars Kill Rock

*I’m discounting Tuesday by Milk Cult because its automobile music was produced from samples.

**Full statistics from between 1982 and 1993. Read them before RFK Jr. makes them take it all down.

Guys and Dolls: Chubby Chunks - Testament Two (17 April 1993)

 

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The dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation - John Peel after playing Testament Two on 17/4/93.

And indeed, it’s very easy to picture walking into any club in Britain over the last 32 years and hearing a clued in DJ playing any one of the three Testament tracks that make up Chubby Chunks (Vol 1).  The disco swing and the house beats on all three tracks sound utterly timeless, and I have no hesitation in recommending Testament Two as perfect accompaniment either for a party or while doing work around the house. 

Going by the John Peel wiki, Testament Two appears to be the only one of the tracks that he gave any airtime to. Listening to them all, this morning, it seems just about the right choice though I think that Testament One would have been in with a shout as it’s an absolute banger for the most part, but is let down by a piano piece which seems to have been lifted from a school music lesson. It’s clunky enough to lift the listener out of the track, whereas Testament Two is seamless in comparison. I’m also a little surprised that Peel wasn’t tempted by Testament Three, which is a little jazzier and more sonically interesting than the first two Testaments.

A year later, Chubby Chunks Vol. II came out - as with Vol. 1, on the Cleveland City label, out of Wolverhampton - and brought us Testaments 4, 5 & 6. While still focused on the dancefloor, they were a little more quirky and playful than the previous year’s tracks.  Testament 6 is a good representation, I think, but there is no record of Peel playing anything from Vol.2, nor from the remainder of Chubby Chunks’ output. Nevertheless, the early Testament tunes appear to have stuck in the memory, with Testament One receiving fresh remix releases in 1994 & 2021. Testament Two was paired with Testament One on a 2003 re-release through S12.

 Video courtesy of Javi’s House 90s.

Guys and Dolls: Fluke - Spacey [Original Version] (17 April 1993)

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I’ve spent the last couple of days soaking up the relaxing, dreamy, ambient tone of Spacey, which was presented on this 17/4/93 show, courtesy of the compilation album Volume Six, as a dry run for the overhaul which it would receive when it was recorded for Fluke’s second studio album, Six Wheels on My Wagon, later in the year.

The chilled feel on this first version is a perfect setting for lyrics which read as a counselling session set to music. Amidst the burbles of rainforest-like keyboards and descending piano scales, vocalist Jon Fugler delivers some gentle thoughts on the process of maturing and accepting that the certainties of youth can and should evolve with greater life experience: Everyone changed, always the way and always the same.

Perhaps, this was because he had turned 30 during 1992? All that being said, the lyrics suggest that change is good, providing you maintain some kind of link to your younger ideals: You can’t stop the love in you.

It makes for a calming, yet exciting mixture, and I think it’s superior to the album version, Spacey (Catch 22 Dub), which dispensed with the homilies, only retaining the various You can’t stop the fighting…refrains. The version on the Volume compilation outdoes the final recorded version, which wasn’t always the case, and in one infamous example threw a spanner in the works of this blog’s 1992 Festive Fifty.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Video courtesy of Dub Records.

Guys and Dolls: PJ Harvey - Me-Jane (17 April 1993)

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Me-Jane sounds like it shares its lead riff with 50Ft Queenie, which gave PJ Harvey her first Top 40 hit, but it’s much the better song.

I’ve got so used to hearing Harvey songs where she’s either prostrating herself to a lover (Oh My Lover), or trying to dominate them (Rid of Me) that’s it a bit of a shock to hear one where she’s so viciously giving up on her man. During 1992, Harvey went through a relationship breakdown, which appears to have provided inspiration for the lyrics to a number of the tracks on Rid of Me. In the case of Me-Jane, the contempt and hatred is on full display as Polly reaches the end of her tether with her brutish, alpha-male other half. She may have fallen for the John Greystoke figure of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels, but the song suggests that he has now morphed into the apeman figure of the films, but without any of his redeeming values.

We know that there’s trouble brewing thanks to both the riff and Rob Ellis’s drum pattern, which very effectively convey a sense of foreboding within the tribe, which can be heard from one side of the jungle to another. While Polly starts out by conveying her contempt in coldly, unemotional tones, things quickly start to build to a more violently upset conclusion.

It’s not just a break-up song though. There’s a thread of self-affirmation running through the track, highlighted by the reversal of the famous line, Me Tarzan, you Jane (though this apparently was a misquote), which now sees Tarzan left out entirely and Jane foregrounding herself around who she is and what she wants. If it inspired one other woman to get out of a similar situation, it will have justified its existence.

Video courtesy of PJ Harvey.

Guys and Dolls: Lloyd Hemmings - Heartical Decision (17 April 1993)

 

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Heartical is patois for genuine or sincere and this 1990 recording sees Lloyd Hemmings getting straight to the point on nothing less than the key tenet of Rastafari: The time to pack up, leave behind the everyday world of Babylon and make the journey to Zion to reconcile with Jah. The problem is, as Hemmings notes, too many people are obsessed with fighting wars or fighting with each other, to set their differences aside and make the collective move. Whether it’s warring countries or warring family members, Heartical Decision is a lament for the time and energy wasted on negative emotion. 

It’s just unfortunate that it’s only in its last 20 odd seconds, from 3:00 to 3:25, that Hemmings really seems to get animated with a message to the older generation about how they may be able to persuade their children to accompany them, instead of being bidden off by them in ill grace. Typical that just as we start to get some detail on how this split could be avoided, the fade out kicks in - though the video segues on to the dub side of the single which was overseen by Augustus Pablo and Rockers All Stars.

An obituary for Lloyd Hemmings (1959-2022)

Video courtesy of vital sounds.

Guys and Dolls: Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations - Moment of Truth (17 April 1993)

 

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Welcome everyone to another edition of A & R Officers’ Corner, where we once again try to answer the thorniest of questions about the mechanics of the music industry. Today, we go back to a real doozy, a point that’s been debated for as long as the marriage of art and commerce has existed. And that question is: Should singles released from an album serve as a gateway to what listeners can expect from an album, or should they purely be focussed on getting the public’s attention as a means of potentially luring them into buying the album, even if that ends up being something they didn’t expect?

If Kurt Cobain had been happy to write and record three Smells Like Teen Spirit-alikes alongside 9 or 10 tracks of whatever noisy, discordant, abrasive music he wanted to make on subsequent Nirvana albums, then maybe the course of his life would have taken a different turn.  I’ve not been able to establish whether Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations were deliberately trying to fool record buyers with the single releases that led up to their second and final album, Hypnotwister, or whether they were following a plan to put accessible material out there ahead of unleashing the ball of fury that large parts of the album are made up of. I’ll be posting again about some of the tracks that best summarise the vibe of Hypnotwister, in the coming months, but having first suggested that they were trying to channel a spacier Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe with the November 1992 single, Misdiagnosedive, Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations now stepped on to The Verve’s * territory with the spacy and contemplative Moment of Truth. 

Anyone who missed Misdiagnosedive - as I appear to have done on this blog - would have been tempted to hear Moment of Truth and think, “Ah! They’re going ambient.” And that’s no bad thing here. The track is far less tedious than The Verve could sometimes be in similar compositions. Indeed, the 9 and a half minutes fly by, despite the languid tone, and even when the track tries to up its tempo and energy levels in the last 2 minutes, the band maintain wonderful control over things. There’s never any sense of impatience or impetuosity, they know exactly what sounds they want to make and where they want to take the listener to.  The rock solid rhythm section keep things perfectly moored as Howard King Jr. coaxes atmosphere and moodlines from his guitar.

Three times the track coalesces around a scat-mantra from King Jr., which sounds like it’s describing a process of transition. Does Howard’s reference to resurrection soulicide or worlds colliding refer to the moment that the consciousness passes from straight to high, or perhaps from life to death? In contrast to most of the material that the band recorded for Hypnotwister, this manages to be quite supportive and comforting. An oasis of calm in what ended up sounding like an emotionally incendiary record; and all put out in a single to lure in the unsuspecting.

I can only think it must have been a sales masterplan, especially given that neither the band nor John Peel followed the advice I would have been frantically giving to put out or play the album’s best track, Real World.

In other Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations News, I’m pleased to be able to reupload on the blog their live performance of Mr. Phantasy recorded in 1992 for Mark Radcliffe’s Hit the North show, and which is now available in the format it was played by Peel on 29/5/92.

All videos courtesy of invinciblesticks.

*To clarify, we’re talking about The Verve of 1992 rather than the 1997 vintage.

Guys and Dolls: Fats Domino - Blue Monday (17 April 1993)

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Apart from a comment that Fats Domino didn’t seem to get much contemporary radio play, Peel didn’t add anything else about his playing of Domino’s 1956 recording of Blue Monday on this show, but I’m wondering whether he was subconsciously inspired to do it by the fact that Sting’s new single, Seven Days had been released earlier that week, and maybe he felt that his audience deserved to hear a better example of a song about the stresses of a week.

For myself, I call an honourable draw between them, especially given that Seven Days deals with Sting spending his week contemplating having to genuinely fight a rival for his lover’s affection, who is bigger and stronger than he is; whereas Fats deals with the standard blues lamentations of having to face the horror of Monday morning and then dragging his ass through the working week to get to payday on Friday before a day of debauchery on Saturday, and a day of rest on Sunday. You’ve heard those themes a million times but Fats’s style carries the day.

In case you’re wondering, after playing this version of Blue Monday, Peel chose not to follow it up with an obvious open goal.

Listening to Seven Days again, I can imagine Fats Domino absolutely smashing a cover of this.

 

Videos courtesy of Jazz Everday! (Fats) and kirtww (Sting).
 

Guys and Dolls: Shindig - Spunky Marimba [Marimba Mix] (17 April 1993)

 

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A classic case of misdirection in the title as there’s nothing particularly jazzy - or indeed jizzy - in this mix of Spunky Marimba.  The Spunky Mix does feature some keyboard parts which sound marimba like, but is a less interesting track than the Marimba Mix, which, curiously, doesn’t feature anything resembling a marimba.

Instead we have a perfectly serviceable piece of techno electronica, which with its whistle refrains and drum breaks intermingling with pulsing rhythms and shadily, melancholic synth lines does a good job of taking the listener to the Shindig club nights running in Newcastle at the time. Shindig started as a duo (Lee Mellor and Scott Bradford).  On subsequent releases - though not this one - they would be joined by Chris Scott, who would go on to enjoy a top 10 UK hit with I Believe as part of Happy Clappers. That record got its initial release on Shindig’s own label.

Video courtesy of The Space Cadet 90s House and Techno.