The Comedy of Errors: Kalaeidoscope - From the Other Side (1 May 1992)

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Once Oliver! was done and dusted, my attention for the summer of 1992 shifted towards 2 things: my GCSE exams and playing for Falmouth Cricket Club.  I had substantial ground to make up for the former, given that I had failed all of my mock exams in November; while a developing interest in cricket, helped by Graham Gooch’s England side reaching the final of the 1992 World Cup had seen myself and a group of my school friends attend winter nets at the latter with an eye to playing for their Under 16 side.  I had an inside track on this as my mother worked at a solicitor’s office in which virtually every partner and solicitor that made up the practice played for either the 1st or 2nd XI.
Acting, on the other hand, was pretty dependent on my getting 4 GCSEs so that I could stay on at Falmouth School and take my A-Levels.  If I did that, I would include Drama as my one of my A-Level choices and would audition for the school’s main show for 1993, Carousel.  As far as I was concerned, it would be nearly 6 months at least before I went near a rehearsal room.
So, having settled on this plan of action, it came as a wonderful surprise to me when I went back to school after the Easter break to be approached about appearing in a production of William Shakespeare’s 1594 farce, The Comedy of Errors, which was being staged in late June by the school at Pendennis Castle.  Ostensibly, this allowed for both A-Level and GCSE Drama students to work at a smaller piece for public performance than having to appear solely in the main musical production.  My invitation had come through Michelle Rogers who was studying drama GCSE, but had not appeared in Oliver! though she had appeared in a production of The Innocents staged in the drama studio the previous year.  She was going to play one of the Dromios in this production.  I was offered two small roles, and once I had established that the amount of time required to rehearse it could be worked around study leave and cricket, I accepted the invitation with great excitement.

I’d been introduced to Shakespeare two years earlier when I had to study Macbeth for English.  My tutor in that module, Gary Matthews, did a wonderful job of bringing the text to life, but the language held no great fears.  Most of it was understandable, and for those moments where the text did veer off  into 16th Century pop culture - what celebrated Cornish am-dram director, John Frankland, used to refer to as “anything about Hecate” - I would tune out until the script got back on course, which never took too long.
More fundamentally, and relevant to this blog and an affinity with John Peel, the chance to do a Shakespeare play as my next experience of acting offered me something which I very quickly realised that I wanted in order to get the maximum out of amateur drama, and that was variety.
In my mind, amateur drama when I started doing it, meant 4 genres:
1) Musicals
2) Pantomimes
3) Comedies/Farces
4) Murder mysteries/thrillers

Even before I got involved with it, those were the kinds of things I saw advertised by various groups in Falmouth - revues were also popular.  But as far as I could see, variations of that kind of fare was what there was on offer.  I resolved to try everything I could, but to be discerning and to vary up what I did.  Wherever it was possible, I wanted no 2 productions I did to be stylistically similar.  If I did something light, I would look to follow it with something heavier or more gutsy; if I did something avant-garde or leftfield, then my next show would be something traditional and (awful word) safe.  By doing this, I hoped to retain interest in the hobby not only for myself, but also for my parents who would be coming to see me.  And while, I’m sure that they had their preferences in terms of what they came to see, at least it was never predictable - for them or for me.  This got even more important to me when they would bring friends along as the decade progressed.  It kept things fresh and interesting.  I was fortunate that at the point I started to get involved, Cornish groups started to gradually push their boundaries a little more in terms of what they did.  This allowed me to  experience all the different genres mentioned above and other ones besides and decide which ones I got more out of, but by being discerning, I also got to try ones which I felt were outstanding examples of their type.  It was impossible to say “Oh, I hate Shakespeare”, or “I hate pantomime” or “I hate farces” and so on, because I got to sample them all and hold up different examples as ones I had liked and believed in.  John Peel’s radio world  was a perfect match for me in the same way.  It offered that breadth and depth of choice.  There was stuff I liked and stuff I hated, but it meant it was impossible to dismiss any form of music he played, because there would always be something to catch your attention, draw you in, seduce you to its possibilities- and once you found it, you wanted to share it with other people.

To follow a West End musical like Oliver! with a Shakespeare comedy gave me that first opportunity to compare and contrast different forms, to try different challenges.  I think I actually started rehearsals later than 1 May 1992, but I know that the final performance was on 1 July 1992, so let’s be good to ourselves and indulge in two months of Peel content.  We pick up the action 3 weeks after the last Peel show that ran alongside Oliver!, but it’s a familiar name that greets us.  Bedford’s Kalaeidoscope provided one of the top tracks of the Oliver! shows but if I’m Gonna Get You sounded like an encapsulation of female fronted dance music, then From The Other Side returned the favour with a male centred approach.  I haven’t been able to trace where the “Oh-ee-oh - Eeah” vocal refrain comes from but it was pretty damn ubiquitous as I remember.  Garlanding it are some pretty full on drum’n’bass beats and the clincher, a gloriously ethereal synthisizer line which sounds like a rave held during a seance. From the other side, indeed...

Video courtesy of chuwingsoup.

Oliver!: The Best of John Peel (2 November 1991 to 10 April 1992)

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!

Katch 22 - Mind Field [Peel Session] (2 November 1991)

Eton Crop - Hey Hey (9 November 1991)

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

Smudge - Don’t Want to be Grant McClennan (16 November 1991)

Lethal - Techno Stylin (17 November 1991)

Orchestra Maquis Original - Ngalula (23 November 1991)

Home T, Cocoa Tea & Cutty Ranks - Another One for the Road (24 November 1991)

Krispy 3 - Don’t Be Misled (28 November 1991)

Bleach - Wipe It Away (30 November 1991)

The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds [Cumulo Nimbus Mix] (1 December 1991)

Milk - Claws (2 December 1991)

Mono Men - Right Now (7 December 1991)

The Field Mice - Think of These Things (8 December 1991)

Sam Dees’ Beauty and the Beat - The Homecomings [Peel Session] (14 December 1991)

Culture - Life (15 December 1991)

The Pixies - Complete Peel Session (21 December 1991)

D-Nice - To Tha Rescue (26 December 1991)

PJ Harvey - Dress (28 December 1991)

Silverfish - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal (29 December 1991)

Roshney - Ag Tha Wondi Juway (5 January 1992)

Lucien Bokilo - Leonore (12 January 1992)

The KLF - America: What Time is Love? (18 January 1992)

Bongwater - Love Song (25 January 1992)

Manifesto - Walking Backwards (1 February 1992)

WC and the Maad Circle - Out on a Furlough (2 February 1992)

Kicks Like a Mule - The Bouncer (3 February 1992)

Chumbawamba - I Never Gave Up (8 February 1992)

The Fall - Sing! Harpy (9 February 1992)

Mr Ray’s Wig World - Elvis Begins With an E (16 February 1992)

Aphex Twin - Digeridoo (22 February 1992)

Material with Shabba Ranks - Reality (23 February 1992)

Spitfire - Wild Sunshine (29 February 1992)

The Soka Band - Linga Linga (1 March 1992)

Daisy Chainsaw - Pink Flower (7 March 1992)

Moonshake - Secondhand Clothes (8 March 1992)

A House - Endless Art (Female Version) [Peel Session] (13 March 1992)

Big Black - Il Duce (14 March 1992)

The Werefrogs - Forest of Doves (15 March 1992)

The Misunderstood - I Can Take You To the Sun (20 March 1992)

Scarface - A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die (21 March 1992)

Swell - Down (28 March 1992)

Kalaeidoscope - I’m Gonna Get You [Remix] (3 April 1992)

Po! - Look For the Holes (4 April 1992)

PJ Harvey - Victory (6 April 1992)

Marina Van-Rooy - Complete Peel Session (10 April 1992)


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.

Reflections on Lionel Bart’s Oliver!

NOTE - This post will contain spoilers about both Oliver! and its source novel, Oliver Twist.
All lyrics quoted in this post are copyright to Lionel Bart.

As the 1950s rolled into the 1960s, Lionel Bart was the hottest popular composer in the UK. Having either talent scouted or written for any of the big UK rock ‘n’ roll stars of the 1950s, Bart ended the decade by doubling up his success in a different medium - the theatre.  Having served as lyricist on the 18th Century set romp of Lock Up Your Daughters (1959) and the contemporary Cockney petty crime “play with music”, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (1960), Bart was ready to take on all three roles of lyricist/composer/author and in transforming Charles Dickens’s second novel achieved the feat in the eyes of such luminaries as Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber of creating the contemporary British musical.

Before looking at the score, credit must be given for the editing that was carried out in whittling down a book which, in its original serial form in Bentley’s Miscellany covered three volumes over 2 and a half years (1837-39).  Bart keeps the action confined to London, dispenses with some trivial romantic subplots and loses a host of characters that include Oliver’s aunt, Rose Maylie and his villainous half brother, Monks - whose attempt to have Oliver returned to the status of a low criminal with Fagin and Bill Sikes pretty much drives the second half of the novel.  From page 200 onwards, the only things that Bart really carries over into his book are the comically unhappy marriage of Widow Corney and Mr. Bumble (who are seen as the de facto heads of the workhouse in which we meet Oliver) and the murder of Nancy, the prostitute, by her lover, Bill Sikes.  Bart’s instincts are sound - the novel essentially resolves itself around conversations in rooms and cells - a little blackmail here, a hanging there.  But the musical gets back to where it has lived and breathed - the streets of London.  In his introduction to the 2002 Penguin Classics edition of Oliver Twist, Phillip Horne described Oliver! as “a celebration of cockney life in the 1960s as it was collapsing...” and just as Dickens does as his novel proceeds, so Bart finds more to engage his gifts when dealing with the likes of Fagin, Nancy and Sikes - all of whom get solo songs in the second half, while Oliver, who gets increasingly sidelined in the book and reduced to a chattel to be rescued in the musical has to share his only song of the second half with market traders and half the residents of Islington.

But how do we get here?  In creating a musical which opens with a children’s chorus, Bart grabs the audience with Food Glorious Food a song which takes us into the misery and mediocrity of the Victorian workhouse, which could function either as care homes for the ill and ailing poor, or as institutions promoting hard work and industry created on the back of “healthy” paupers and contrary to the impression I had always carried that these were for children and orphans only, adults could just as easily find themselves spending their lives in these organisations.  Woe betide you if you fell into poverty from a previously “respectable” standard of living as befalls Mr. Bumble and Widow Corney in the novel.  This potential lifelong drudgery at the leisure of the local authorities is all too well conveyed through the thrumming opening lines of the song:
Is it worth the waiting for?
If we live till eighty-four.
All we ever get is gruel.
Everyday we say a prayer
Will they change the bill of fare.
Still we get the same old gruel

And so it goes on until bursting into Technicolour joy at the dreamlike prospect of feasting on the culinary possibilities afforded by being able to eat what you want, when you want.
We then reach perhaps the most commonly remembered moment from the whole story of Oliver Twist - namely him timorously approaching the front of the dining hall and asking for another helping
of food, “Please, Sir, I want some more”.  In the novel, it is explained that the boys have become so
hungry and wretched over their miserly rations that they draw lots to decide on who should approach the servers and ask for second helpings and Oliver draws the short straw.  It leads to a sequence of songs to brandish at anyone sneering that Bart’s show doesn’t contain enough of the grimness of the novel.  On the face of it, Oliver, Oliver is a comedy song made up of threats to Oliver for his temerity in asking for a little more food when he could be taking part in friendly workhouse tasks like unpicking ropes:
There’s a dark, thin, winding stairway without any bannister.
We shall throw him down and feed him on cockroaches served in a cannister.

However, the following song, Boy For Sale, catches the laughter in the throat. And while the previous two numbers often implement impressive, extensive choreography - Boy For Sale often uses the stark  vision of the fat, bullying Mr. Bumble standing next to the diminutive Oliver calling his merits and deficiencies out to prospective buyers looking for a boy to work in factories or, as nearly happens  in the book, as a chimney sweep.  The lyrics show how children like Oliver were regarded as something equal to the status of dogs to be controlled and used as necessary:
Small boy
Rather pale
From lack of sleep.
Feed him gruel dinners.
Stop him getting stout.

Oliver ends up being sold for £5 to the undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry, who sees great potential in his use as a child mourner for children’s funerals.  I’m going to take this moment to rescind some of the self-criticism I poured on my performance on this blog, a couple of months ago.  I listened to the soundtrack recording of the 1960 West End cast in which Sowerberry was played by the exquisitely, immaculate Barry Humphries whose clipped tones I would be listening to while the Sowerberrys’ song, That’s Your Funeral was being set in rehearsal.  So, what audiences got was a 16 year old trying to impersonate Dame Edna Everage on his (or her) day off.  The scene at the undertaker’s parlour offers up one of the songs from Oliver! which became a standard.  Oliver’s one moment where he’s not being sung to/at or playing a pure-voiced straightman to more rough-house character - namely the affecting Where is Love?  Bart claimed that this was the first song he wrote for the show and that its inspiration was not Oliver but Dickens himself.  If the song seems a trifle cloying to some, it’s worth remembering that it’s one of the few moments in the piece when we get any kind of sense of what Oliver feels or thinks.

After getting into a fight with Sowerberry’s loutish apprentice, Noah Claypole - who returns to play a huge part in the fate of Nancy at the end of the book, but disappears from sight after the funeral parlour scene in the musical - Oliver takes to the streets and kicks off a lengthy sequence which bears out Phillip Horne’s point about Oliver! as a celebration of disappearing Cockney life in the 1960s.  Oliver makes the acquaintance of the Artful Dodger and while he has to wait till the second half before finding love, instead finds cameraderie and companionship through tunes like Consider Yourself, It’s a Fine Life, I’d Do Anything and Be Back Soon.  It’s an odd suite, something close to
15 minutes of songs designed to introduce Fagin, Nancy and Bet like they’re regulars at Cheers and
to attempt to reassure Oliver that crime can give a young man a chance to find status, wealth and the chance to get ahead, especially through the signature tune of this sequence Pick a Pocket or Two.
Finally, the show regains some dramatic impetus as Oliver goes out with Dodger to try his hand at
pickpocketing.  Unfortunately, he’s lousy at it and ends up getting coshed over the head by a Bow
Street Runner.  But what good fortune that the one man in the whole of London that Oliver tries to pickpocket turns out to be his wealthy grandfather, Mr. Brownlow, who takes pity on Oliver (offstage) and puts him up at his house.  Bart clearly didn’t fancy writing a scene at the assizes, as
happens in the book, and including a comic song for the maniacal magistrate, Mr. Fang, who is only
prevented from sentencing  Oliver to three months’ hard labour by the appearance of an eye witness
relating that Oliver was a bystander to the pickpocketing - carried out by Dodger.
Indeed, why would Bart want to do that when he can take us to The Three Cripples pub and open the second half with the one-two punch of Nancy’s raucous paean to alcoholism, Oom Pah Pah followed
by Bill Sikes calling card, My Name (sadly the bloke who sings this song in the link makes a complete dogs’ dinner of it).   Oh, when I was auditioning for Oliver!, I so wanted to play that part, just to sing gloriously vehement lines like:
Rich men hold their five pound notes out
Saves me emptying their coats out
They know, I could tear their throats out
Just to live up to, my name.

Fagin arrives to report that Oliver has been taken into protective care and tries to hatch a plan to have the boy abducted back into their care, lest he inform on them. It is this plan that proves the turning
point in the piece.  Skies agrees that Oliver could be dangerous to them if left where he is, but Nancy feels that he is well out of it and objects to the idea.  This leads to a row ending in Sikes striking Nancy and clearing the pub as a result.  Martin Veale who played Sikes in the Falmouth School production found this turn of events hilarious considering that if he tried to do the same thing in real life to Rosie Hughes, who played Nancy, she would have knocked him out with one punch.  But Rosie was dedicated to her art and bounced back to bring the house down by singing As Long As He 
Needs Me.  Even more than Where is Love?, it’s this song that seems to owe a lot to Bart’s pop
sensibilities.  With its torch-song feel and in-built massive ending , it was a sure-fire Top 5 hit for someone - Shirley Bassey since you ask (No.2 in 1960) - but it also belongs to that troubling sub-
section of popular songs that take blind love in the face of domestic abuse as its subject.  In the first half of the show, when singing, It’s a Fine Life, Nancy (and Bart) laugh all this off:
Though you sometimes do come by
The occasional black eye.
You can always cover one
Till he blacks the other one
But you don’t dare cry!

The Nancy of the first half of the musical is a different beast to her literary equivalent in that she actively seems to enjoy her life and circumstances.  In the novel, they are things to be endured and
what’s more, Nancy feels she deserves her lot in life for the things that she has done. It leads her to decline offers of help from Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow, leading ultimately to her death.  But As
Long As He Needs Me, and the scenes around it, see a closing of the gap between the two iterations of the character.  Loving someone, even a dangerously violent criminal, gives some meaning to the deprivations suffered by a Victorian prostitute.  She’ll love you for your money, but loving another means she’ll always regard herself as a lover, not a whore.  Annoyingly, the musical fails to reflect the hints of mutual affection that Sikes also has for Nancy. Regardless, I’m certain that As Long As He Needs Me must have been influencing Gerry Goffin and Carole King when they wrote this for
The Crystals a year later.

For Oliver, ensconced as a guest in Mr. Brownlow’s home and indulged and mothered by the maid,
Mrs.Bedwin, the answer to Where is Love is encapsulated in Who Will Buy, which I consider the true
jewel in the score.  Building over three distinct stages - the street vendors’ cries selling their wares;
Oliver’s verse of wonder at his new surroundings and security and finally the up-tempo free for all that brings the whole street out singing and dancing.  It’s joyful, life affirming, real seize-the-day writing.  I loved being the Knife Grinder so much that in my head I wanted to form a close harmony band with the three girls playing the Rose Seller, Milk Maid and Strawberry Seller and call ourselves
The Vendors.  The song was rehearsed so carefully and thoroughly so that the harmonies and timings could be worked out accordingly, that I still remember the smiles on our faces the first time that it all came together and we realised that we were fortunate to be singing something so exquisite.  So much musical theatre revolves around pizazz and getting the audience on their feet, but never underestimate the power the form has when it concentrates on beauty.  Just like John Peel would often do amidst the sound and fury

While running an errand for Mr. Brownlow, Oliver is abducted by Sikes and Nancy and taken back to Fagin’s den.  It’s here that book and musical decisively part ways as Bart skirts round the botched house robbery in Chertsey that Oliver is made to take part in by Fagin and Sikes, which via agunshot wound and being left for dead eventually sees Oliver come under the care of Rose Maylie and from
there back to Mr. Brownlow.  Indeed in the book, Oliver is effectively safe from harm some 150 odd pages from the end of the novel, which concerns itself primarily with the steps that end in Nancy’s murder, Sikes’s accidental death as the mob close in, Monks’s banishment, Dodger’s sentence of transportation to Australia and Fagin’s hanging as an accessory to Nancy’s murder by Sikes.
The musical is unable to square the circle that sees most of the advancement of the drama caused by
conversations on deathbeds, above canals and by river steps. So as revelations about Oliver’s parentage come out - in the musical he’s Brownlow’s grandson, whereas in the book Brownlow was a friend of Oliver’s father and mother who were - gasp! - unmarried, and these are offset by Nancy and
Brownlow’s clandestine meeting to get Oliver away from Fagin and back to safety, the action descends into reprises of earlier songs, apart from Fagin’s showstopper, Reviewing the Situation,
which is  reprised as he makes his mournful escape  at the very end of the show. Although the curtain calls will bring the audience to their feet with reprises of the likes of Consider Yourself and I’ll Do Anything, I think that the lack of fresh songs in the last quarter of Oliver! should not be held against
it. In keeping with Dickens’s take, by it’s end our sweet young hero is safe, but it’s one life that is improved set against other lives cut short (Nancy and Sikes) and another ruined (Fagin). There were always winners and losers in many of Dickens’s works, Bart stays true to that in his ending too.

In future years, I did musicals either because I liked them or for the social aspect.  Oliver! though was something different. After dickering about for a year or two, I finally took the plunge to get on stage because I felt it was something I would enjoy doing, and that I may be able to do reasonably well.  Hanging out with new and old friends and witnessing how the piece was put together drew me in, but I wouldn’t have stayed with it had the piece itself not been so fun, so joyful, so exciting.  It was a great first piece to act in and just right in terms of the size of the role she and level of involvement for a debutant.  In the video below, taken from a 1994 South Bank Show profile of Lionel Bart, the then musical theatre critic, Mark Steyn talks about Oliver!’s popularity and number of revivals being down to the sheer enjoyment people get out of singing those songs.  They travel from stage to audience and back again with a verve and goodwill, quite unlike any I ever knew in any subsequent musical I did.  It’s a score which, regardless of any second half sag can, at its most exuberant, inspire as Bart remembered in the South Bank Show, 35 curtaincalls and audience members coming up on to the stage.  If you can’t be in  it, then see it.



Video courtesy of Steve Okoniewski.

Oliver! appendices: Whipped Cream - Whatever [Peel Session] (17 November 1991)

We jump back to 1991 for this appendice.  Alas, the Peel Session version of this track by Swedish group, Whipped Cream has never turned up on YouTube, so we must make do with the studio version  here, though the Peel version can be heard here from 24:55.  In and of itself, Whatever isn’t anything too sensational.  If you wanted to be cruel, it could be accused of being a mid-tempo dirge.  What makes it for me are the gorgeous harmony vocals between Elizabeth Punzi and Jorgen Cremonese that wend their way through the song.  However, it really owes its place in my affections to something that will become apparent if you hear it via the link a few lines further up.  It was placed between a lovely piece of Peel rambling and the sock it to ‘em thrills of Clipped by Curve.  Peel’s linking teed the crashing opening to Whatever up perfectly:

“I got a phone call from one of the people who runs Watercolour Records and I thought in my naieve, innocent way he was ringing to say, ‘Thank you for playing our nice records’ all the way from Ironbridge, but I made some mistakes apparently.  I played the wrong track by The Lean-Tos and The Field Trip don’t come from Derby, they come from Birmingham, so there!  Well, I won’t get it wrong again, that’s for certain. [....] Actually, it’s been that sort of a day, to be honest with you because some friends of mine came in to see me and I thought I’ll show them round Radio 1 - there isn’t that much to see to be honest.  And as I’ve said to you before, when people say, ‘Can we come and watch your programme?’ I always say, ‘Well you can do if you really insist upon it, but it’s not interesting.  It’s not a spectator sport, it’s like watching somebody typing.’ But they didn’t even want to do that. What they really wanted, in their heart of hearts, was to meet Phillip Schofield - which they did - and Andy Kershaw - which they did.  And I always say to Phillip Schofield, ‘Look if any of your listeners want to come and meet me, I’m perfectly happy for that to happen’, but so far it hasn’t.  Anyway, Whipped Cream and Whatever.”

Video courtesy of Amigo Arhsam who has also introduced me to Anna B Savage for which I am most grateful.

Oliver! appendices: Love Battery - Foot; Silverfish - Jenny (3 February 1992)

This blog doesn’t often go down the awards route except when looking at bands who should have been Oasis before Oasis, but these two appendices from Peel’s Nachtexpress show of 3/2/92 both earned something imaginary, but heartfelt, from me to put on their mantlepieces.

Peel opened his Nachtexpress show with Love Battery’s new single on Sub Pop Records.  Amidst its punk/garage rock scratchy opening, brawny hard-rock chorus and swamp rock bridge, Foot weaves a touching and vulnerable lyric about the hurt and sadness felt when a trusted relationship falls away.  The chorus sees singer, Ron Nine, weighing up the options of giving himself over to an intimacy of some description with a new companion, but riven with doubt about whether to “put my foot in” before having full confidence in the recipient “Don’t follow blind” being admirable advice.  In 1992, the sonic wallop of Love Battery’s performance would have swung me.  In the words of YouTube commenter Maggie Marl, “Now we know where Foo Fighters steal their songs from” and it has that wonderful sense of joy that the best hard rock singles can put across.  But of more prescience to me in 2018, it put me on a road to hearing the album, Dayglo, which has remained on YouTube
since I blithely commented about it when reviewing the Nachtexpress show just over 2 years to this day.  If I listened to Dayglo at the time, I clearly didn’t “hear” it in any great depth back then and certainly not enough to comment about.  But having taken the opportunity to do so while preparing this post, I found myself stunned by it.  Like all great guitar records, it sounds like the best bits of all your favourite records cooked up with Love Battery’s own unique touch.  I think it may be the best, or at any rate, most compelling record I’ve heard from any Sub Pop act.  Bear in mind, it took me a while to embrace any of Nirvana’s material from their Sub Pop days and although I went for all of the selections that Peel chose from Smells Like Smoked Sausages, I still think he left the best tracks out of his playlists, or at least on the recordings I heard.  But, as the blog prepares itself to cover a new play through the summer of 1992, I’m praying discreetly that Peel was taken by Dayglo as I was - though knowing my luck, he probably played the tracks from it that I merely liked rather than those I could rhapsodise over at great length.  Time will tell, but in the meantime, and if you’ve never heard it before, get to YouTube and seek out “Love Battery Dayglo album”.  Then go to Discogs and buy it.  You have 2 weeks before I get paid - I urge you to make the absolute most of this opportunity.  I will console my own sense of loss, should it come to pass, with happiness that new ears are falling in love with Love Battery and Dayglo.  Best Sub Pop Act?  Based on what I’ve heard so far, the jury went home weeks ago

The other award for this evening is the Best Female Fronted Band of the Oliver! Rehearsal and Performance Period.  This is not tokenism on my part.  Looking back over the 400 odd posts clocked up so far, when it came to guitar music across Oliver!, it was woman-led bands who offered up the greatest range of multiple selections.  PJ Harvey probably should win this given that over 1991-93 it was the name given to a band rather than just Polly Jean herself, but she dominated the visual look of that band so much that, with no offence intended to Rob Ellis or Stephen Vaughan, I regard Dry and Rid of Me as PJ Harvey solo records in all but name.  It wasn’t either of them swanning around in their pants for 4-Track Demos, for instance.  Hole’s splendid Peel Session had me feeling for a time that Courtney Love was the talented one in that turbulent relationship with rock’s most unprepared messiah.  I had plenty of love also for the likes of Bleach and Curve but ultimately, I could only keep coming back to be flogged and abused by Silverfish, a band which consistently and brilliantly placed the listener lips first to the leather of Lesley Rankine’s DMs and had them saying, “Thank you, mistress.  May I have another?”.  Jenny may well be their masterpiece out of the slew of Silverfish tracks that Peel played over early 1992.  Who was Jenny?  If she was a real person then it’s terrifying to think that Lesley Rankine knew someone even more vengeful than herself.  As was typical in Silverfish’s world, Jenny was forged in blood and violence but quickly spots an opportunity to turn her brutal genesis into something beneficial to herself, “Will I taste and will I feel/If I lie and if I steal.  This is mine/Dip it in greed and set it on fire!” she squawks like a kingpin.  Previous Silverfish tracks on this blog have dealt with overthrowing the patriarchy, childbirth and woman as avenging angel.  Jenny is an extension of Vitriola but applied to terrify whole communities rather than just cheating lovers.  The band play out with the intensity of exploding buildings and flames burning, while Rankine’s refrain of “I’m so pretty when I’m angry” turns her protagonist into nothing less than a She-Hulk. Mad, bad and dangerous to know...but thrillingly irresistable with it.

Videos courtesy of Lance Vance (Love Battery) and skawashers (Silverfish)

Oliver! appendices: A.E.K - Dead Stock (25 January 1992)

WARNING- the video for this track is virtually unwatchable due to the uploaders applying a strobe effect for the whole duration.  You may want to minimise your screen or go to a new tab while it plays.

Although I appear to have left it out of my notes for Peel’s show on 25/1/92, I could not shake off a memory of this piece of cheapcore techno and found myself regularly checking YouTube to see whether anyone had uploaded it.  I was thrilled to see that it had been put up since March 2017, but then found myself thrown into doubt when I heard it about whether to include it as an appendix to the Oliver! selections, as it seemed a good deal less essential than I remembered.

What swung it ultimately was what had first attracted me to include it on my lists and that was the cheap sound that it had.  I can’t bring myself to describe it as minimalist, because so much of Dead Stock seems to be bolted together from whatever dance tropes that the four producers who made up A.E.K had to hand at the time - a tambourine here, a low bassline there, in this corner an “ughn” sample, in that corner a bit of reverse tape sound and Bob’s your uncle.  It’s unfussy and slightly beige, but what sells it is that pitter-patter popcorn riff.  In the land of mixtaping, it has the quality of a way station - a place where the listener can stop for a breather and tune out before engaging their faculties in something more substantial.  Like most stop-off points on a Peel playlist, I would often skate past it 95% of the time, but it must be doing something right to persuade me to stop by.  Though not for too long, with that video, I’m afraid.

Video courtesy of Northern Electric Recordings who have repeated the “magic” with other A.E.K recordings if your retinas can stand it.

Oliver! appendices: Zimbabwe Cha Cha Cha Kings - South Africa (12 January 1992)

Through January/February 1992 Peel and Andy Kershaw caned tracks from Vimbiso the 1989 jit album by Zimbabwe Cha Cha Cha Kings.  My selection lists from Peel shows over that period regularly saw Zimbabwe Cha Cha Cha Kings tracks on there, but it seemed that every selection I wanted hadn’t been shared to YouTube.  However, this seems to have changed over the last year or so, for which I am grateful.
Another change has occurred in my choices as well.  For so long, I had the sing-along Ambewe as my most desired ZCCCK track, but in listening to some of the newly uploaded tracks, I found that it was South Africa, with its naggingly insistent and persisistent riff that held my interest more.  At this point, I must send out a request for anyone able to provide translation of the lyrics.  Given that it was recorded at a point when apartheid was still in place - albeit shortly to fall apart - I’d love to know whether the song was political in nature.  Or maybe it was praising the country’s wine trade?  It was the penultimate track of the night on the 12/1/92 show and with 2am beckoning and his Radio 1 shift nearly over for another week, Peel wasn’t giving out much in the way of details.  Any help gratefully received.
For Zimbabwe Cha Cha Cha Kings, as had been the case with their countrymen in The Kasongo Band, the success brought about by Vimbiso would lead to upheaval and infighting for control and money .  They came through it to record a Peel Session in November 1992 and hopefully this blog will cover that, but four years elapsed between Vimbiso and its follow-up, Ndiri Muvhimi which translates as I am a Hunter.

Video courtesy of Juan Andres Gonzalez Sanjuan.