I spent some time last week listening again to this blog’s Festive Fifty for 1992. As always when you come to look over a cultural list that you made, I spent time picking it apart and asking myself the usual questions: why did I include that? Why did I rank that so high? etc etc. One track, though, which never loses its power or lustre is the hip-hop track, A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die by Scarface (Number 11) which provides a hard-hitting but lyrical tour through the pointless cycle of violence perpetuated by young black men drawn into gang lifestyles and how this leaves dead men being mourned by abused women, holding babies that their fathers will never see because they pissed off the wrong people.
Leave Out the Badness is the PG certificate, PIF, Dancehall equivalent. It tries to ape the documentary realism of Scarface’s tune by providing a case study of two, out of control brothers, Johnny and Charlie, whose propensity for gunplay and robbery leaves one of them dead and the other on the road towards it, but not before they’ve made other people’s lives a misery first. Yami Bolo’s concern is that these people will be seen as role models to be followed into lives of crime - albeit he recognises that many in the ghettos may see it as their only option due to the poverty that they live in, Where is shoots and rice… etc.
Leave Out the Badness is a poor relation in comparison to A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die. The whole badness/madness/sadness rhyming scheme is pretty anodyne and Bolo conjures a picture of such hopelessness that his imploring of young people to turn away from violence and crime seems unlikely to have much of an impact on the people it is trying to reach. But, its sincerity is genuine enough and acts as a reminder that if we regard goodness as the weaker of two impulses, then we are lost.
This anti-drug screed from the Anglo/Irish hip hop crew, Marxman, is a beauty. I’ve been caning it since the weekend simply because it’s one of those instances where everything about it just seems right. From the brilliance of the arrangement through to the lyricism of the storytelling, whereby across four verses, we’re taken on the journey of:
1) Newly minted drug dealers who revel in the influence and contacts their new business brings them.
2) Feckless institutions, such as universities, which allow drugs to be bought and sold on their premises. Meanwhile, the rap community itself, despite its own entreaties to its audience to stay clear of drugs, has also allowed Crack to enter its bloodstream both as a recreation and a business opportunity.
3) Drug addicts who see their lives start to shrivel up in front of them as they damage themselves and alienate their families.
4) The concerned circle of friends who come to mourn their drug dealer/addict friend who has over-reached himself and ended up dead. The only thing worse than the death is the way in which the lifestyle has influenced their younger brother who wants to follow in big brother’s footsteps and perpetuate the cycle of bling, illegality, degradation and ultimately death.
They may be straying on to the turf of Scarface, but Marxman more than match him with Do You Crave Mystique. My only complaint is that all that proximity to drugs may have had something to do with them not including a question mark on the end of the title. Music can be such a force for good, but its sloppiness towards using accurate punctuation remains one of its principal blindspots.
It’s been just over six years since I did one of these for 1991. That was made up of 2 months’ worth of selections, this 1992 list was comprised of 9 months’ worth. 1993 was the first year in which I did a full year’s worth of plays/shows, so at current rate of progress it could be 8 or 9 years before we get a Festive Fifty for that year. Before unveiling the list, a few personal observations:
Out of that 9 months’ worth of selections, 84 were in contention for a place in this Festive Fifty. I appreciate that it was a case of needs must for my 1991 list (which took 2 November 1991 as its starting point) but the fact that I had 54 potential tracks from that 2 month period suggests to me that 1992 wasn’t as good a year, musically, as the previous one had been.
Comparing it to the 1992 Festive Fifty which Peel’s listeners voted for, there are 14 tracks which turned up in my 1992 posts, but only 3 of which made it onto my 1992 Festive Fifty. Luck of the draw/timing quirks on the recordings I heard meant that there are plenty of tracks on that list I never heard, maybe they came out while I wasn’t doing any plays between July-September of 1992. For instance, Sugar have three entries on that list, but in all the years I listened across Peel shows from 1992, I don’t remember hearing anything by them.
Furthermore, when looking at his choices for the 1992 Peelenium, only Tempo [Fever Pitch Riddim] by Anthony Red Rose was included on this blog, and despite my raving about it, when it came to looking back over all the choices for the year to whittle down for our Festive Fifty, it didn’t register with me enough to make the longlist, let alone the final 50.
The final 50 are all personal choices with the top echelon of tracks being those that most stayed in my memory or which were cast-iron earworms for me.
As with the 1991 list, all the selections are tunes which were released in 1992 (although there may be a little elasticity on that with some of the soukous selections.) Had I included favourite tunes played by Peel, but not released in 1992, I’d have made space for Hot Burrito #2 by The Flying Burrito Bros. (1972), Smile on your Face by Dangerous Birds (1982) and MotorCity by Age of Chance (1985). So, with all that said, here is the Smell of the Greasepaint and the Sound of John Peel’s Festive Fifty for 1992:
So farewell to 1992. Coming soon: John Peel gets to indulge in some very odd horseplay as he soundtracks the first modern drama I ever performed in, Equus by Peter Shaffer (January - March 1993).
So after four years and 400+ posts, the blog is ready to move on from Oliver! But having used a mix-tape idea as the basis for my selections so far, I’m going to complete the Oliver! era selections by rounding them all up into a definitive Best Of, as if I was making a mix-tape to give as an opening night present to fellow cast members and crew from each show that this blogs traces.
I have chosen one favourite track from each of the Peel shows that selections were taken from, in order to present THE definitive John Peel soundtrack over the rehearsals and performance of Falmouth Community School’s April 1992 production of Oliver!
So, four years, eh? Where did they all go? The next couple of years on this blog will see Peel soundtracking not one, but two Shakespeare plays and that will still only take us to the end of 1992! But then, who’s in a hurry with a musical guide like John Peel to take me through the plays of yesteryear.
It’s been a fascinating journey so far in which I’ve learnt a lot and heard music ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, just as Peel set out to showcase. My thanks to everyone who commented on posts, supplied videos and most of all to those who make Peel shows available for people like me to trace such a niche “I wonder...” in this way. There is so much still to hear and share, so let’s keep going.
Dedicated to all those acted in or helped put together Oliver! at Falmouth Community School performed from 7-10 April 1992.
As I write this (28/8/17), the city of Houston in Texas is currently experiencing serious flooding due to Storm Harvey. It remains to be seen whether this reaches Hurricane Katrina proportions, but the world will be watching to see if the level of response from the authorities is sharper than it was in New Orleans, 12 years ago - and if it isn't then expect Houston's very own Brad Jordan AKA Scarface to tell us all about it. In his 2015 memoir, Diary of a Madman, he has plenty to say about where America found itself at the end of Obama's tenure and his words take on even greater resonance after 6 months of Donald Trump:
"America is always looking for something to blame for the reason it's destroying itself. First it was jazz that was destroying America, then it was rock and roll, then it was disco, then it was rap. But you know, I think America is destroying America. Our country is built is built on a foundation of rules and laws and belief systems that date back to the 1700s and 1800s, back to the time of slavery and it's fucking us up. It's breeding hate. It's deeper than a record. Hate goes deeper than that." (Page 37, iBooks - Diary of a Madman: The Geto Boys, Life, Death and the Roots of Southern Rap by Brad Jordan with Benjamin Meadows-Ingram; Dey St through Harper Collins, 2015)
In March 1992, Peel visited an exhibition of photography by rapper and TV presenter, Normski. He didn't say whether he bought any of Normski's work, but he certainly picked up this 12" release taken from the Geto Boys alumnus's official solo debut, Mr. Scarface is Back. Peel put the track on heavy rotation over March/April 1992 and deservedly so. Using samples from Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues and the greeting at the top of What's Going On, this is an outstanding take on the realities of gang violence which weaves its way through three different viewpoints - the hustler who ends up dead leaving behind a daughter who he will never see grow up; the thankless lot of the women who love the dealers and criminals, thinking that they'll get to enjoy the fruits of their money, only to find themselves targets of abuse for spurious, paranoid reasons and ultimately left holding the baby; and lastly there's the foot soldier who recovers from a shooting, but instead of using his good fortune to take a righteous path pursues vengeance and takes it in shocking directions before finally being taken down for good.
For Scarface this track would crystalise two of his obsessions - the hold of the streets and death. He witnessed it several times growing up, having been working in a convenience store as a child when a
cashier was murdered in a bungled robbery; seeing a neighbour come out of her house and die on the street after being shot inside the house by her husband and losing a number of friends and associates both to heat of the moment rows that escalated or cold-blooded executions.
"When I write about death on my records, it's almost never from a rapper's standpoint. I write about what I know, what I experienced, what I thought, or what I saw. But when you've had the opportunity to see life come into this world, and you've seen it taken away, you start to look at life in a different way. I know I did. Just watching somebody who's getting ready to die who doesn't want to die fight for his life even though he knows there's nothing either one of you can do and all you can do is watch him go...To look them in the eyes and see life there before it's gone and then to watch it take off and to see those eyes turn into a blank stare.... I can't describe it. It's like watching a birth. That instant of life and death and creation and destruction -...I've seen a lot of people go out. And it's a cold feeling. It will give you a whole new respect for life." (Page 69, iBooks - Diary of a Madman).
The fragility of the human condition that Scarface talks about here underpins this track beautifully just as it does in all of Scarface's best work. Although he himself talks about confrontations in his own life, he says that he's always ready to stand down if the other person will, but if they won't then he's ready to die. A Minute to Pray and A Second to Die looks at the consequences of those who are only prepared to die. It pities rather than glorifies, but as Scarface says, he and his contemporaries never sought to glorify violence, they only related what they had seen. And in doing so here, he created great art.
Far and away the most compelling of the various reggae tracks I've heard in the Peel shows so far, False Alarm offers a masterclass in vocal phrasing wrapped around a fascinating narrative. Within the urban crime drama that plays out here, with its clear mentions of cocaine, smuggling, battles with criminal rivals, and the indefatigable belief that "Prince Charm" will come through all his challenges, Robinson and his crew do a fantastic job of simultaneously updating the danger of classic "underworld" reggae (see and watch The Harder They Come for instance) and repackaging the Scarface influenced spirit of hip-hop for a reggae audience. It's no co-incidence that within a few years, every hip-hop record worth it's salt, featured a toasting cameo from a dancehall/reggae act.
It's plausible that Robinson named this track in tribute to a song with the same title released by Dancehall artist, Nitty Gritty in the mid 80s. The man born Glenn Augustus Holness was shot dead in June 1991 outside a Brooklyn record shop, lending an eerie undertone to Robinson's reggae crime drama.
Videos courtesy of blazesector74 (Robinson) and Killa Selector (Nitty Gritty).
