A repeat of Voodoo Queens’ first Peel Session, which was originally broadcast on 22 January 1993. The video captures the songs in the order they were first broadcast. On the file I heard from 1/5/93, the first three songs were broadcast as Kenuwee Head (Dude Idol), Princess of the Voodoo Beat and Supermodel - Superficial. Summer Sun wasn’t included on the file I’ve heard, but I would have definitely included it on the metaphorical mixtape, so I’ve stretched the rules a little and included the full session in this blogpost.
It’s an all-female British* band, playing in a sloppy, punky style and delivering four songs dripping with humour, attitude and power, so inevitably Peel found himself comparing the effect that the session had on him to the one recorded for him by The Slits in 1977. It doesn’t quite touch those heights for me, but I love this session for its range and scope. In a little under 12 minutes, Voodoo Queens touch on lust, self-confidence, sexual awareness and contemporary feminism, with four songs which sound to me indicative not just of attitudes and fashions in the early 90s, but of something closer to young adult experience.
Session opener, Kenuwee Head (Dude Idol) spends most of its time venerating Keanu Reeves. The sleeve notes of the single describe him as …at present (ruling) hornyville, hunksville & any other yummyville. And the lyrics lift references from some of his films with mentions of how bodacious he looks (Bill and Ted), as well as talk about how good he looks in a wetsuit (Point Break). However, he appears to have broken Anjali Bhatia’s heart by cutting his hair, presumably for his performance as Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What really seems to mark Keanu out is that he wears his attractiveness so naturally. The sleevenotes for the Kenuwee Head single go on to attack men who wear their handsomeness like a badge of honour, as if demanding instant respect and acclaim. I wonder if there’s a version of the song somewhere that marries the two viewpoints together. Nevertheless, the Keanu, Kananoo, Kenuwee, Kanu-nu. How do you say your name? refrainserves to remind us that back in the day, Reeves was the original Tiffany Chevrolet….
Summer Sun is my favourite track from the session. Listening to it today, it sounds like a piece of enjoyable sunshine pop, but had I heard it in May 1993, it would have felt like something that was plugged directly into my psyche at the time. I was really enjoying life back then. Although my college course was seeing people drop out of it like tenpins, I was still happy to go in each day. Joining The Young Generation had expanded my social life, and we were working on a wonderful show. I was still soaking up the first flush of being able to do things that had previously been out of bounds - and in legal terms, still should have been until March 1994 - like going to pubs and nightclubs. I’d even made peace with where my family was living. In short, I felt comfortable in my skin at this time and lines like:
Summer sun, look at me
I’ve got the world
Here I come.
Stars in the sky
You think you’re special,
Well, so am I.
really chimed with me. It’s a seize the day tune from a period of my life when I genuinely related to those sentiments. However, while they’re spreading these good vibes, Voodoo Queens are savvy enough to realise that this can be a transient state: The world is waiting for me/Roll out the river carpet is a warning that the minute we start to think we’re able to walk on water is when we’ll end up plummeting underwater. I was a way off that in May 1993, but due to various incremental factors, I found myself desperately having to swim for around 18 months from September ‘93 onwards - which by strange coincidence is where my Peel listening is currently up to…. But that’s for another time. For now, as it was then, nothing can dilute the lifeforce which Summer Sun provides.
The good times keep coming in Princess of the Voodoo Beat, which sees Anjali Bhatia make a journey of sexual self discovery, as she realises that being a young woman she can exercise power over young men, hypnotised by the power of female voodoo. If I may be permitted a brief moment to speak on behalf of all heterosexual men, if the girls practice their enticements, the boys will fall into line, 9 times out of 10:
They call her the Princess of the Voodoo Beat.
She’ll lure you into her den of heat.
And all the boys will cry…
Voodoo Princess, she’s a natural high.
You can just hear the brotherhood, bleating, “It’s not our fault, we simply couldn’t resist!” While Anjali does seem quietly amused at being able to metaphorically, bang the drum to make the little boys run, there’s an undercurrent of Riot grrrl disdain just below the surface. The scowled You…in some of the lines suggesting that she’s responding to the role of sexual temptress because men are too blinkered to cast her and every other woman as anything other than a potential sexual conquest. Ultimately, the song is about sexual control, but with a mutually beneficial strain of desire running through it. Whereas a song like Blow Dry by Huggy Bear uses female sensuality as a means of trapping men in their lust and harming them, Princess of the Voodoo Beat makes it clear that the voodoo of female sensuality is something which can offer the high of sexual release to the men, but that will be subservient to the high of sexual control enjoyed by the women.
