Although it would furnish him with some good stories in subsequent months and years, Thursday 27 & Friday 28 May 1993 were - on a professional level - extremely trying days for John Peel.
He opened this show by reporting that he was barely recovered from a sensational night in Sheffield. Unfortunately, he was being sarcastic. He had taken the John Peel Roadshow up to the Steel City and arrived to find that his show was the coldest ticket in town. As he explained:
It was in a hall where about 850 people can be gathered together. And there were three bands playing and they all did darned well under the circumstances. Sugar Drive, New Speak and The Love Birds. But there were only about mmmh well let’s say 80 people, 90, let’s go for 90, 90 people in the hall and it was all a bit embarrassing. The greatest number that was on the dancefloor at any one time was 19 when I played Teenage Kicks at the end of the evening. But some of the people that were there anyway will have enjoyed it or came up and said they had done. It was one of those evenings, which quite clearly, I shall be able to dine out on for quite a long time and I don’t doubt that they will as well.
The people who had organised it were very generous and spent most of the evening trying to think of excuses why there wasn’t anybody there. It was that kind of rather fixed and unnatural smile with which they greeted me at the door that told me that things were not going particularly well. I eventually ascribed the shortage of people there to spontaneous street parties that were going on as the result of the arrival of John Selwyn Gummer at the Department Of The Environment. That may have been the case it may not.
It was mentioned on Mark Goodier’s programme as well, during his sort of gig roundup and had been mentioned on local radio earlier in the week when I was interviewed by Tony Capstick. The reason I mention all this really is because it gives me the excuse to play a record that Tony Capstick made in 1974, as a feller who used to do sessions for this programme millions of years ago.’
And with that, Peel segued into Capstick’s recording of Laszlo Faher. So, a disappointing night for Peel, but perhaps he should have been expecting it given what had happened to him on previous visits to Sheffield.
If he thought that returning to the safety of the Radio 1 studios was going to offer him any protection from bad luck, he got a nasty surprise during the final hour of the programme when one of the turntables in the studio broke down. The situation was complicated by the third turntable, which acted as a back-up, being missing. The incident is referenced at the very end of the Tindersticks session video, where Peel threatens his own unique style of vengeance on whoever took the third turntable out of the studio.
Even with all the equipment being present, Peel was still capable of making mistakes, such as playing the wrong mix of a track called Time to Dream by Fortran 5. He stopped the version he was playing and replaced it with a mix called Up Your Bum With a Bicycle Pump. Personally, I would have preferred it if he’d just ploughed on with the original version.
The selections I took from this show were taken from a full length recording of it, which included the news bulletins. The most eyebrow raising story covered criticism by Labour’s Shadow Home Affairs Spokesman, a certain Tony Blair, of an anti-immigration speech made in Bolton by the Conservative MP, Winston Churchill (grandson of the better known one). When Peel was promoting a bhangra gig being held in Hammersmith to mark the end of the academic year, he felt that Churchill would be unlikely to attend.
Alongside Toe to Sand by Molly Half Head, there were two other selections from this programme which were not available for sharing:
Agony Polish with The Mighty Diamonds - Roof Over My Head: Dancehall rapper, Polish (as in Poland if we go by Peel’s pronunciation) speechifies over the top of The Mighty Diamonds utterly gorgeous 1975 tune, I Need a Roof. I suspect I was interested more for The Mighty Diamonds half of this track than for Agony Polish’s.
Sex Clark Five - Gothic Go Ahead - Enjoyably bouncy pop from their third album, Antedium, though Peel’s turntable issues meant he put it on with his fingers crossed and his heart pounding. The central beat on Gothic Go Ahead put me in mind of Tyrolean Knockabout by Half Man Biscuit, albeit without references to Paul Ross or any yodelling.
Three tracks in my original list fell from favour:
Blade - Hold Your Own - I feel a bit mean doing this down, because any research I’ve done on how early crowdfunding played its part in enabling Blade to record and release The Lion Goes From Strength to Strength always highlights how generous* and grateful he was in acknowledging everyone who sent money in support of the project. But Hold Your Own always had a question mark against it, and when I listened back to it, I got about two minutes in before turning it off, worn out by being bellowed at.
Boyracer - I’ve Got It and It’s Not Worth Having: The lead track on their B is for Boyracer EP. Great title** but a rather meh track on re-listening. Peel wondered whether the sleevenotes were playing a joke by claiming that the EP was recorded in Bristol, the vocals in Louisville, Kentucky and that the band’s PR were based in Spofforth, North Yorkshire. An unlikely mix, but probably true given that the EP was issued by the Bristol based label, Sarah Records. That Boyracer’s first album release was a split LP with the Louisville band, Hula Hoop*** and that Boyracer themselves came from North Yorkshire, though they would later relocate to America.
Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations - Burning Cross: a borderline miss, given that Dr. Phibes and the House of Wax Equations never made a meh track in their life. But having previously posted about how thorny a lot of the material on the Hypnotwister album could be, I suspect that I just wasn’t able to meet the challenges Burning Cross set for me. The failing is mine, not theirs. Peel promised a new session from the band, soon.
*Donors received personalised handmade thank you cards, their name in the album credits, and most distinctive of all, a free 12-inch record consisting of tracks that have never been issued on any other Blade releases.
**However, it’s not the best track title on the EP. I would award that honour to Jesus Suzanne Christ.
***Tracks from Hula Hoop’s Peel Session, first transmitted in January 1993 and how they reminded me of various 1970s films.
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