Oliver: The Blofelds - The Dog is Dead (10 November 1991)

It's the sound of 1981 in 1991!
This marvellous tune from the cross UK four piece brings to mind the sounds of bands who ruled the Peel show playlist a decade earlier.  Post punk marvels like Orange Juice, Jozef K, The Subway Sect and others whose "skinny guitar" tunes were not cut from muscular riffs of rock the shape of Marshall stacks in luxury studios but instead were cut in garden sheds in such a way that you could hear the plectrums scraping over the strings as strikingly plangent riffs were chocked out.  The basses still sounded like they were being recorded on a single amp over the producer's shoulder and the drums were tucked behind makeshift baffles so thick, it meant they could only be picked up the singer's microphone.  And through it all came tales of everyday woe and poetry; year 11 poetry but poetry nonetheless about broken relationships, miscommunication and all round hopelessness.
The Dog is Dead has all that in spades and I love it for it.  How ironic that two of my Festive 50 contenders should follow one another in quick succession.  When he played this, Peel read a spoof press release from the band claiming the title of the song came about when the bassist's dog, Voluptua  had died during recording it.  Peel claimed that in the late 60s/early 70s he used to write "fantastically sexist pieces for Sounds Magazine" about an imaginary woman called  Voluptua and this may be what inspired him to play the record.

The excellent blog, Cloudberry Cake Proselytism has an interview with Blofelds singer and guitarist, John Hodgson including a link to their SoundCloud page.

Video courtesy of Doc Cortex.

Oliver: Tar - On a Transfer (November 10 1991)

Video courtesy of

Before playing this, Peel instructed his listeners to play it "stupendously loud".  I have little more to add except I'm writing this with a hangover and wonder whether it may serve as a potential cure...

On a side note, I'd like to put on record my thanks to whichever YouTube bod has set up the topic generators which have lead to me being able to share clips of songs which weren't available when I was planning this blog.  The Dodgy, Eton Crop and Tar tracks have all come up in the last few weeks and a few of the future selections have also been readied because of the topic generators.  I keep hoping with all my heart that 44 Long by Rufus Thomas is generated by the time we reach the show for December 8 1991.

Video courtesy of Irresponsableful.

Oliver: Duane Eddy - Forty Miles of Bad Road (10 November 1991)

A filler instrumental from Peel's favourite Titan of Twang.  This track was included on his playlist for 10/11/91 due to him playing a track called The Place of Dead Roads by The Becketts, which didn't make the cut for my hypothetical mix tape. He was a great one for making links from a contemporary record to a vintage one in such ways which will see tracks from such diverse sources as Cliff Richard and Joy Division pop up on this blog in the months to come.
Forty Miles of Bad Road isn't a bad track, though it doesn't really represent Eddy at his best in my opinion.  Nevertheless, it's inclusion in this blog means I get to eventually review the brilliantly titled 1960 Eddy album, $1,000,000 Worth of Twang, which as album titles go, is up there with 12 Inches of Snow.

Video courtesy of carlsoldrecordclub.

Oliver: Lee Perry and the Upsetters - Return of the Super Ape (10 November 1991)

Our first reggae selection on this blog comes courtesy one of the genre's most revered practitioners.  Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Upsetters had worked together over a period of some nine years when they came to release their final album together, 1978's Return of the Super Ape, which was a sequel to Super Ape, released two years previously.
It's a thin line between pioneer and crackpot.  Perry's dub techniques walk that line expertly.  It takes a singular mind to think, "I know what will work on this track.  We should make the whole thing sound like it's being played on a radio which can be heard at the end of the street and which the listener will try to hear though squelches, blamps and the sound of someone doing some greivous bodily harm to a set of water pipes."
It's typical of Peel that he played this track in response to a listener request on the November 10 show, rather than some of the album's more palatable cuts like Tell Me Something Good or Jah Jah Ah Natty Dread.
What draws me in is that aforementioned distance on the saxophone, bass and drums - the melody being carried woozily in another section of the mind and heard through the fuzz of other sounds - chased like a through line on an Escher pattern where all else is minor chaos.  It's these threads of sense that can be held onto while listening to the "strange stuff" that can be the difference between retention and rejection on a mix tape.  The album as a whole is a wonderful piece of work.

Video courtesy of jam1tune.

Oliver: Teenage Fanclub - December (10 November 1991)

Coming in late in the year, Glasgow's Teenage Fanclub grabbed a lot of attention in late 1991 when their album, Bandwagonesque, beat out Nirvana's Nevermind to top several best of the year polls.  Kurt Cobain was a fan, Nirvana covered some of their songs and great things were predicted of them.  In commercial terms, they never quite delivered on the expectations that Bandwagonesque aroused, but they remain a byword for top quality guitar pop and I look forward to reviewing Bandwagonesque and other Teenage Fanclub records on this blog in due course.

December (blogged in December, how cool is that!) serves as my introduction to Teenage Fanclub.  The first thing to say about it is that could only be the product of a Scottish band.  It's hard to imagine that violin featuring on something coming out of Seattle.  It even sounds pitched to a particular blend of melancholy that could only be born in Glasgow.  And as the Christmas mania takes over, which of us hasn't wanted to "assassinate December"?

Video courtesy of joevideo65.

Oliver: John Peel Show - Radio 1 Saturday 9 November 1991

Unfortunately, I've not been able to find a working recording for Sunday 3 November 1991, which is a shame as that show featured Peel sessions from Nirvana and PJ Harvey.  So we shift on to the following weekend and another Saturday show.
In session that evening were Dr. Oloh and his Milo Jazz Band all the way from Sierra Leone and whose performance prompted Peel to try and get issued through Strange Fruit though he suspected that economic reasons would stop it happening (he was right). Subsonic 2 were the other session guests.

The recording I've made my mixtape selections from is about 90 minutes long and again was heavier on the guitar based stuff rather than giving a full overview of what was available on the programme.  In all, I would have added 6 tracks from the recording to my mixtape, 5 of which I present below.  The only choice of mine which I cannot currently share is:

Pay the Man - Popeye

I am considering setting up my own YouTube channel so that I can play unshared tracks when I get hold of the records themselves, however this is such a minefield, so I make no promises just yet.

You can make your own decisions over what you would have put onto a tape by going to the tracklisting.

Oliver: Eton Crop - Hey Hey (9 November 1991)

You've almost certainly heard Hey Hey by Eton Crop, or at least you probably think you have.  That piano figure that runs throughout the song was in many ways the signature sound of so much dance pop in 1991/92 and soundtracked the early to mid 90s end of season retrospective videos of football clubs the length and breadth of Europe.  It's a  surprise to see it turning up on an Eton Crop record, but the Dutch band were astonishingly perceptive to pop trends throughout their career - reeling from punk to post punk onto indie pop and by the turn of the 90s incorporating samples and numerous other delights into their work.  Having had a cursory listen across the ages, I think I'll be coming back to this band sooner rather than later.  Hey Hey is fairly unrepresentative of most of what they did in their first incarnation.  Apart from the reference to Hank Williams, there's none of the lyrical invention of songs like Cocacolanisation or Gay Boys on the Battlefield.  But it's a good dance song that will transport you back to any shitty nightclub you attended on a non party night when you were 17.  As I say, it's worth it for that of it's time piano piece.  And the vocalist sounds like a bloke I act with in Hayes, Kent.

I had thought of doing a load of research about Peel's support for Eton Crop but the band beat me to it.  Erwin Blom talks about discovering Peel, gaining his support and friendship and how he inspired the band to reform this year, especially for a Peel related festival.

Video courtesy of Wim Hofstede.