Reflections on Katch 22 - Diary of a Blackman Living in the Land of the Lost. (1991)

Katch 22 bring that What's Going On vibe to Stockwell

Label: Kold Sweat

First referenced via Mind Field [Peel Session] - 2 November 1991

I want to start by making a confession: this is the first hip hop album that I have ever bought.  I was not a part of its natural constituency when I was a teenager, and at nearly 40 years of age, I'm not going to change that now.  However, I found plenty to admire in the form from the poetry to the technical competence in putting it together.  The wit and or the anger of many of the tracks appealed to me as well.  However, the celebrations of violence, casual misogyny and crass materialism were turn offs for me, not to mention the amused contempt I still feel for young white men from the shires trying to pretend they're gang members from Hackney.  After a while it felt to the casual observer like these topics began to dominate the form, which became bloated and morphed into a Grand Theft Auto parody.

I think John Peel felt the same way, over time. By the time I started listening to him regularly in the late 90s, hip hop didn't feature too much - same for rap as well.  Instead it was the hybrids of those forms such as jungle, garage and grime that got more prominence.  However, in listening to the 1991 recordings, it's surprising just how much hip hop and rap was on his playlists.  Not just from America but from the UK too.  I've already included selections by Krispy 3 and am gutted that I can't include their Peel session tracks from 7 December 1991.  Red Ninja also cut an exciting Peel session on 1 December 1991 and I only just put up a storming piece of social commentary from Hackney's influential, Shut Up and Dance.

Coming out of South London, Katch 22 were the brainchild of Andrew Ward aka Huntkillbury FiNN. Ward's bio reveals that he was educated in the Carribean before coming to England at a young age.  Jamaica features heavily in the background of Diary of a Blackman Living in the Land of the Lost as Ward together with his associates DJ Brainiac, DJ Kill-a-Man Twice and producer Mad Marga reflect on racism in the UK and a system which, in the words of one sample, forces "My sons to become thieves and my daughter get pregnant at 16."  This track, Son of Shem, is indicative of the album which takes as its focus, not a blame culture, but frustration over the lack of opportunities available to young black people, in particular how, "We have fallen from pyramid builders to council tenants".  Over two thirds of that line comes from a sample of Louis Farrakhan, who crops up so frequently on
this album, he should get a band credit. "I have to tear the lie from your tongue and slap you with the
truth from this microphone!"

The black community don't get off lightly either.  Tracks like Brown Clown turn the spotlight on those who are "black to the core but white in the mind so therefore he is unsure".  Despite the slinky
grooves and Philly style flute, there's real rage in these rhymes towards those who try to integrate into white culture in order to get on.  Despite that, the track acknowledges that "Respect will never be given until we hold the mantle of power and become the master of our own destiny".  Such separatist talk was depressing enough to hear in 1991, but over 20 years later, in another race row, it became clear that the issue still burned in the black community albeit under a different label and by people who should know better.

While it's depressing that things have not moved forward much in 24 years, this is an essential record - intelligent and clear sighted in stating its case, packed with good rhymes and danceable samples.  I was particularly delighted to hear Lalo Schifrin's Dirty Harry theme in Service With a Smile and Tenor Saw's Ring the Alarm in Rogue's Gallery.

Mixtape selections: Service With a Smile, Son of Shem, Diary of a Blackman in the Land of the Lost, Who's Business?, Brown Clown, Cynical World.

Discogs link



Katch 22 invites Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan to take part in a special edition of Question Time.

Video courtesy of UK Stand Tall

An excellent track-by-track review of the album

Oliver: Sam Dees' Beauty and the Beat - Child of the Streets [Peel Session]; Shut Up and Dance - Autobiography of a Crackhead (14 December 1991)

Sam Dees minus Beauty and the Beat in 1975.



Shut Up and Dance gets its hands dirty.

These two "interesting contrasts" as Peel described them were played back to back on the 14/12/91 show and are presented together here for the same reason.
While their methods of delivery are very different, the two tracks share the same theme: urban deprivation and its effect on the individual.  But whereas Dees is singing about someone growing up and learning the seamy side of life courtesy of their "pusher man" father, prostitute mother, slutty sister and heroin addict brother ("it's mother like daughter, father like son"); for Shut Up and Dance, the rot has already set in as the titular crackhead goes about their business.  There's not much hope here.  Dees lays out the situation and ponders where the child will sleep tonight, but offers no solutions or hope that the child won't wind up like the rest of the family.
Shut Up and Dance's crackhead knows he's in a bad place ("I steal from you/my brothers too/I lost my morals/ and my brain is chewed"), knows that he's ill ("I look at my body/my face is
shrinking/What's that smell/I must be stinking") and being driven to some desperate dealings ("I'm the guy who nicked your car stereo") but ultimately, the fix is all that matters here.

They're both fine songs, though the beats and poetry of Shut Up and Dance cut through more memorably.  The verse about how the crack addiction started is particularly affecting.

Sam Dees will crop up again soon as one of his other Peel Session tracks also made my list of selections from this show, but it's a long way away from the desperation conjured up in Child of the Streets.

Videos courtesy of Nicholas Reboux (Dees) and Bluefrog73 (SUAD)

Oliver: Cutty Ranks - The Builder (14 December 1991)

There's a man who's pretty much near the top of my list of people I'd like to get in for a session.  Not much chance, I fear.

It wasn't just Bryan Adams who was ubiquitous in 1991.  According to Discogs, Ranks released 5 albums that year and featured on 10 singles.  That doesn't include examples like this track which turned up on compilation albums.
This doesn't quite hit the heights of the last Cutty Ranks selection on this blog, but still plenty to enjoy.

Video courtesy of Jarrett Mc.

Oliver: John Peel Show - Radio 1 (Sunday 8 December 1991)

As you'll see when you get to the Field Mice track, everything on this day was subservient to me finding out whether the girl that I'd fancied for two months felt the same way.

The selections were taken from a 90 minute mixtape made by someone who only wanted guitar music.  Fortunately, there was plenty of good stuff to choose from.  I had another 4 selections that I couldn't include and they were:

Precious Sons - Chiari (No record of this has turned up anywhere).
The Alvy Singers - Footsteps (a snip at just £78.20.)
Rufus Thomas - 44 Long
Transmisia - Noise

Talking about records, I haven't given up on my plan to buy and review records that I select.  I have albums by Katch 22 and Wenge-Musica awaiting write ups but must confess to taking my time before I review hip hop albums.  With such a range of themes and meanings, it won't do just to say, "I like this because it's dramatic".  I attempted to bone up a bit more with some suitable reading, but while Lloyd Bradley's Sounds Like London - 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital shone a lot of light on such disparate forms as calypso, funk, reggae, sound system, lovers rock and grime, it didn't help me much with hip hop.  I suppose if you want a job done, you have to do it yourself!

As always, you can make your own selections and choices from the tracklisting.

Half Man Half Biscuit's iconic All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit was covered in the seasonal tunes post.   A feature on how Dukla Prague are currently faring can be found in the current issue of When Saturday Comes.

Oliver: The Telescopes [Peel Session] (8 December 1991)

Splashdown




To the Shore



The Presence of Your Grace

Not knowing any better, my initial reactions upon hearing the three tracks that the Telescopes
recorded for Peel at this, their second session, ran something like this:
"This is nice"
"Spacey shoegaze but very well done and rather more nuanced"
"Vocally sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but easier to hear and appreciate the harmonies"
"Splashdown sounds indebted to Primal Screen circa Movin' On Up"
"Presence of Your Grace is the standout"
"Yeah, all of these would go on a mixtape"

And that I thought would be that, until I did a little more research about this Burton Upon Trent five-piece.  Had I become a fan of them during their initial releases which included a debut album, Taste, released in 1989 (the year of their first Peel session), I would have been gobsmacked at what I heard on this Peel session.  When a band is in its formative years, which if they're lucky enough to get that far usually covers their first three albums, there is a pressure on them to develop their music within that time.  Within three albums a number of different scenarios play out:
A) They don't develop and are written off as one trick ponies, comdemned to play to a diminishing fan base for time immemorial.
B) They do develop but no one's interested hence cultdom or obscurity beckons.
C) They develop and lose all their old fans, but don't gain enough new ones so their development is written off as artistic suicide.
D) They develop to the delight of the critics but not to the fans, so their development is heralded as a brave step but written off as commercial suicide.
E) They develop and have their cake and eat it - attaining commercial and critical success.

A-D is what keeps the wheels of the music industry in all its facets turning.  E is the rarity, it's bloody hard to do.  Sometimes it's derailed by the band themselves.

The Telescopes of 1989 were a wall of sound rock band, who could go head to head with the likes of
My Bloody Valentine and come out with their heads held high.  Tracks like The Perfect Needle, Suffercation and There is No Floor marked them out as a rawly exciting band in the mould of early Jesus and Mary Chain.  Indeed, in this clip, their attempts to look and sound like the Reid brothers border on the ludicrous.  I cannot imagine that anyone who got into them in this period could have foreseen that when they came back with their eponymous second album on Creation Records in 1992, it would feature acoustic guitars, harmony vocals, piano, vibraphone and an altogether mellower vibe.  But looked at another way, all they were doing was progressing.  In an interview at the time, singer, Stephen Lawrie, spoke of the band's idea of "perfection" changing in the time between the two albums.

It would have been interesting to see how the Telescopes would have continued through grunge and Britpop, but instead they went into hibernation for a decade.  When they resurfaced in 2002, with the album Third Wave, they had again changed the face of their music, going in a more electro direction but with diversions into spacey folk including violin and organ.  They have certainly made up for lost time, releasing five studio and two live albums since 2002.  It's nice to see that, even belatedly and sometimes only in limited edition form, a creative and vital musical entity is still going strong.




The Telescopes in 1989, recording for Peel and a year or so away from letting loose on the vibraphone.

Videos courtesy of #TheTelescopes and monsmartyrium

Edit as of July 2015 - a review of The Telescopes latest album, courtesy of The Quietus.

Oliver: Unsane - My Right (8 December 1991)

Buy this at Discogs

In December 1991, no band held John Peel in greater thrall than the New York noise rock trio, Unsane.

They weren't strangers to his playlists, he had been playing them since 1989 at least.  but the release of their eponymous debut album at the end of November 91, saw them reach Fall levels of ubiquity through the course of December and deservedly so.

How to describe Unsane to anyone who has never heard of them?  I would say that they are the aural equivalent of a gaping, bloody wound, and that isn't so far-fetched given the luridness of their cover art.  If that sounds unattractive, it's important to ask you to imagine someone injecting shots of pure adreanalin into that wound - bursts of excitement that keeps the listener moving forward through the onslaught.  They're harder than Big Chief but slightly less "Rawwwwwwwgh" than Raw Noise and better than either of them.

As with Milk there's drama and ideas galore here and it's that aforementioned "adreanalin" that makes the difference.  A willingness to take diversions and remember that there is an audience out there to engage.  Any noisecore band that takes the time to lift us out of the storm and put us into the eye of it will always find a place on my mixtape.

My Right wasn't featured on the Unsane album that Peel gave such heavy rotation to, instead it was included as part of a triple A-side single with the tracks Jungle Music and Blood Boy.

Video courtesy of Unsane - Topic

Oliver: Shonen Knife - Making Plans for Bison (8 December 1991)

Buy this at Discogs


By late 1991, the Japanese girl trio had gone from underground, cult favourites to being name-checked and courted by some of the most important bands of the era.  Kurt Cobain was a fan, declaring his opportunity to see Shonen Knife play live as the moment he turned into a nine year old, screaming at the Beatles.  Cobain followed through on his love for the band by inviting them to support Nirvana on their late 1991 UK tour.  In the week that this show had been broadcast, Shonen Knife had broken off to perform a few headlining gigs of their own including one at Kilburn National which Peel attended.

The attention surrounding Shonen Knife and the credit that was being given to others for raising their profile caused the rarely seen, but always present, Peel ego to rear its head before playing this track from their 1986 album, Pretty Little Baka Guy:

And I was reading in the Melody Maker today an extended piece about Shonen Knife, and it was always nice to see that sort of thing.  And of course, it was one of those few occasions where you always think, 'I'd like a little bit of credit here' you know, because the impression you got from reading it was that they'd been discovered by a series of American bands and then made famous, or notorious by Nirvana.  And you'd like someone in the course of the article to say, 'Of course, Peel has been soft-pedalling the Shonen Knife stuff to the huddled masses since 1984 which would have been true."

It's an interesting outburst because over the years, Peel often rejected the notion that he'd played much of a part in helping bands and artists to break through, feeling that it was the music rather than the messenger that had resonated with people.  Nevertheless, he was clearly aware of his place in the scheme of things and while still a number of years off being restored to his former prominence by Radio 1 and the BBC, wasn't slow to let people know that he had been ahead of the curve on so many things.

As for this present track, it would within a month, be presented in re-recorded form on Shonen Knife's first major label release, Let's Knife.  However, whereas the Let's Knife version made them sound like shiny, kareoke novelties, the original (which is not exactly poorly recorded) cuts through with greater warmth and immediacy, especially on the chorus harmonies.




Awful isn't it?

Videos courtesy of isabella s and TheUsed1995.