Oliver: Loketo featuring Diblo Dibala - La Joie de Vivre (21 December 1991)

It was unthinkable that Peel would let any celebration of 1991's best moments go by without playing something from the man he classified as guitarist of the year.  Diblo Dibala and Loketo's stunning track, La Joie de Vivre was the perfect pick me up to anyone listening to the original broadcast on 21/12/91 as it was played after an 11.30pm news bulletin which included stories about an IRA shooting and an appeal for information about the perpetrator of an acid attack on an elderly lady.
Keep your ears attuned for the glorious passage from 2:36 to 3:55 where the playing all too accurately reflects the title of the track.  Distilled joy in every note and a more worthy inclusion on the 1991 Peelenium than Lambada.

At some point in the next decade, this blog will alight upon the week in April 1993 when Peel did a daytime stand in for Jakki Brambles.  He ended his first programme on the day shift by playing La Joie de Vivre.  Something which only makes his presence on Radio 1 all the more cherishable.

Video courtesy of Loketo - Topic

Oliver: The Thing - Blu 4 U/Kiss the Sun [Peel Session] (21 December 1991)

Blu 4 U - taken from the Peel Session.



Kiss the Sun - Re-recorded by Electric Frankenstein, the band who rose out of the ashes of The Thing, but this is pretty much a dead ringer for what The Thing recorded for Peel.

Peel's selection of sessions over his "Best of 91" shows was typically democratic and eclectic.  There was plenty of giving the audience what he knew they wanted (Nirvana, The Pixies, The Fall, The Farm), some sessions celebrating new faces who would go on to future prominence (PJ Harvey, The Boo Radleys) and a handful of sessions that were strictly personal choices from the man himself (Babes in Toyland, Ragga Twins, Dr. Oloh and his Milo Jazz Band).  New Jersey based acid rock band, The Thing also fell into that latter category and the two tracks that I heard were immediate choices for inclusion.

The first thing to say about The Thing is that their sound is massive.  In some respects, they remind me of Catherine Wheel but much louder and without the reticence that characterised some of the British acid rock bands of the time.  The riff on Blu 4 U sounds like a planet being spun off its axis.  There's not just big sound but real anger in these tracks.  Blu 4 U sounds as though it's been written from the perspective of a heartbroken shooter, carrying out his massacre because he's been dumped.
The lyrics allude to dark concepts and deeds.  "Assassinating beauty in a parking lot"; How "The
ends justify the screams"; "Her true love kills her again and again.  Exercise the power to dominate her dreams". There's a quiet midsection, where the pace slows down, the musical equivalent of a gunman stalking more victims after the first wave of massacre, or the aural opposite of My Bloody Valentine's "holocaust" section from You Made Me Realise.  But the calm is deceptive, eventually the love manhunt restarts "Loving the curse I'm alone!" And off it goes again, with singer Jesse Ostbaum getting more and more maniacal and obsessive ("I can see you when you're asleep.  I'm always with you.  I can put out your light....Just like you murdered me!") as the music rises in intensity behind him before it concludes with a final death scream.  Perhaps his metaphorical loaded gun has found its ultimate target.

The suicide/spirtual allusion isn't so far fetched when you consider the themes of Kiss the Sun.  Starting out of the relative serenity of a drum pattern, and with lines like " In the secret place within.  I first passed away.  And there was no more sin.  I saw the holy city.  Coming from within me."  There are further meditations on the after death form which see the protagonist move in successive lines from angel to vampire to zombie.  It's obvious which one Ostbaum wants to become judging by his impassioned cry of "I wanna believe!"

Sadly, despite demonstrating such obvious appeal, belief was in short supply for The Thing in the following year as they went through that most soul sucking of experiences - recording an album which went unreleased.  Maybe grunge made them sound passé but on this evidence they made murder and purgatory sound a good deal more enjoyable than it should do.

Videos courtesy of  MarsHottentot and Various Artists.

Well, this could be awkward....

David Cavanagh wrote one of my favourite books about music.  Now it seems he's turning his attention to John Peel.

I shall look forward to reading this book.  It'll be very helpful with research and given how good a writer Cavanagh is, I'm only glad that he can't include music clips with it.

Oliver: LFO - Tan Ta Ra [Moby Remix] (21 December 1991)

There's nothing worse in pop music than the redundant mix.  As the years have gone by, I've become more receptive to "reimaginings" of tracks; remixes which take the listener off into completely new worlds with tracks you thought you knew.  I wasn't an immediate convert to these things in my youth.  I remember being bowled over by the New Order song, Regret when it came out in 1993. I liked it so much that I bought the 12" version of it, as I didn't have a CD player at the time.  Unfortunately, the radio edit wasn't on there, so the two versions out of four which didn't include the vocals passed me by in a glaze of boredom.  But I'd always back complete reinvention over simple audio boosting.

Moby's remix of Leeds electronic duo LFO's track, Tan Ta Ra, falls somewhere in the middle.  The original, as heard on their debut album, Frequencies, is quite ambient and full of space despite the minimalist soundscape.  It's electro dance for the head, quite meditative and no floor filler.  It put me in mind of a minimalist electro act I heard Peel play during my mixtape year of 2002 called Meta 83
and his track, Metalgroove.
Commissioned to do a remix for LFO's What is House EP, Moby injects a blast of energy but with enough subtlety to hold the interest of those who would have got into the original.  There's a vocal sample ("Are we doing it?"), periodic, Marioland keyboards and a constant vibration which sounds like a distilled energy source, all giving the effect of a re-decoration rather than a reimagining, but it works at creating an undeniable ear worm.



The original.  Moby's just wins out, doesn't it?

Videos courtesy of Indiedancepop (Moby) and LFO -Topic (LFO).

Oliver: Cutty Ranks featuring Wayne Wonder - Lambada (21 December 1991)

This track nearly went the same way as the Peel Session version of Some Fool's Mess by Gallon Drunk, a selection which after getting on the initial list of selections, didn't do enough on subsequent listens to stay on it.

My problems with Lambada revolve mainly around the fact that the source tune is such a piece of tat.  I know it comes from the Brazilian-Portugese musical tradition and wasn't meant to become the early 90s novelty tune that it did, but nevertheless that is how it's remembered in 2015.  However, had I been making a mixtape in 1991, this version would have got on mainly due to a personal memory.

I'm getting married next month.  Out of the children that my mother's siblings had, I'm the penultimate one to get married.  25 years ago this September, the first wedding for my generation took place when my cousin, Karen tied the knot with her husband, Darren.  I was 14 at the time and for many years, my memory of the day was sustained by the copious amount of video that I shot that day.  By 1990, video cameras were reaching a halfway house phase between the hernia inducing units of the early 80s and the mini-cams of the late 90s.  The most memorable footage was shot at the reception disco.  Playing the role of "drunk uncle at a wedding" on that day was my Uncle Pat, who having got suitably refreshed through the day, took to the dancefloor with his shirt half open and cut some rug to Kool and the Gang's, Celebration.  It was incredible to watch, but he wasn't done yet.  The dancefloor eventually cleared to allow him to dance the Lambada with Dorinder, one of Karen's friends.  What no one had reckoned on was how long the Lambada was; it positively reached American Pie levels.  After 5 minutes or so, Dorinder could be heard saying, "How much bloody longer!"

Sadly, ill health means Uncle Pat isn't able to come to my wedding, so for him and Dorinder, here's Cutty Ranks and Wayne Wonder's take on the tune.  Sentiment may be motivating my inclusion of it, but Peel evidently saw more in it as it was one of his four choices for the 1991 Peelenium.



I think the wedding DJ played the 12" version of this, it certainly felt a lot longer than 3 and a half minutes.

Videos courtesy of Zuluonedrop2 (Cutty Ranks) and ClubMusic80s (Kaoma).

Oliver: Gang Starr - Check the Technique (21 December 1991)

Strictly speaking this track shouldn't be here because it was on a file which I didn't use when making the selections from this show, but I was so struck by the incredible string sample, taken from Marlena Shaw's version of California Soul, that I decided to accept such glorious serendipity and include it.

Another reason why this track shouldn't be here is that its subject is one of my bugbears: music about making music.  Authenticity seems to be the beef here as Gang Starr's MC, Guru checks out the competition and finds it wanting.  He speaks of "respect" for the form and as with the very best hip hop, he comes with a mission statement:
"Cos I'm chopping, punting punks just like footballs
Cos I'm gonna put y'all back in the mess hall.
To clean up the slop and stop all the bull crap
Your rap's crazy wack, so don't try to pull back.
You're lacking the vernacular, I'm slapping ya and capping ya
And closing your jaw, cos you can't mess with Gang Starr.
The cool, the premier, always going with blessed beats.
Dance ya ass off, Homes, check the technique."

Gauntlet thrown down emphatically!  In its final verse, the track goes on to curse those who have ended up bringing hip hop/rap to how it is widely perceived in the public eye today:
"It makes me violent, man, to see all these PMC wannabes
Making some cheese for dumb companies.
They've lots of money but no idea what is rap and what is rope.....

...I've got a brain cell so I can stay paid well."
(apologies for any misheard lyrics)

It's marvellous stuff which does full justice to its source material and throws genuine insight into the creative process.  Sadly, many of the things within the genre that Guru rages at here, have only got worse in the quarter of a century since he wrote this.



One of Ashford and Simpson's many finest moments.

Videos courtesy of Supa Graph (Gang Starr) and Gnaf Utopie (Shaw)

Oliver: Katch 22 - Cynical World (21 December 1991)

This was one of my mixtape recommendations after reviewing the album, Diary of a Blackman Living in the Land of the Lost.  Many of Cynical World's concerns reflect those found within the album.  White hypocrisy ("You call me mate, but you hate what I stand for"); black inertia ("The black race.  We're so forgiving"); the limits that society places on black people, forcing them to become like sheep and which Hunt Killbury FiNN and co exhort them to fight against ("They arrest the body, but they can't detain your brain") and the abiding fear that it will be the black man in this society who gets the shit end of the wedge, every time ("They've got the handle and I've got the blade"). It all plays out over a horn refrain which Katch 22 never credited on the record, but which sounds like a ghoulish lift from a 50s U.S. Police TV series, just to top off the cynical, hard bitten world that Katch 22 suffer in and encourage us to confound, every day.

Video courtesy of LordInfamousYattaro.