'Well look here Jack/There's something down the track/He's got rhythm in his feet/But nothing in his sack.' What can she mean?

John didn’t like working Christmas Day, understandably, but to cheer himself up when doing the second part of the 2003 Festive Fifty, he played today’s ditty from a woman who varied her style from gospel to cabaret to blues shouters, Mabel Scott, who was once married to Charles Brown, he of Please Come Home For Christmas fame.

She debuted in professional entertainment at the age of 17, singing at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem alongside Cab Calloway. In 1936 she relocated to Cleveland, and then toured Europe, even visiting England and recording for Parlophone. Returning to America when the war situation in Europe escalated, she became a headline act at the Club Alabam in Central Avenue, NYC, making an early connection between her jump style and rock’n'roll by performing alongside Wynonie Harris (who recorded what many regard as the starting point of the genre, Good Rocking Tonight). This was her ticket to a recording career with Exclusive, and Elevator Boogie and Boogie Woogie Santa Claus were big R’n'B hits in 1948. It is the latter named that Peel played, and its infectiousness make it an unfairly neglected masterpiece of the Christmas canon.

Mabel’s career lasted until 1955, after which she escaped an abusive relationship and returned to her first love, gospel, singing only in church until her death at the age of 85 in 2000.

Mabel Scott, Boogie Woogie Santa Claus

Some people are lucky enough to have a childhood that is happy and carefree, every detail of which they clearly recall with affection and nostalgia. But there are others who have such a bad start in life that the early years are divided from the rest of their existence by a grey, metallic curtain of pain. Some can block this off so that it does not touch the rest of their lives. Luckily, Giles and Sarah no longer remember those dradful beginnings, which is fortunate, since they involved being brought up in a slate-grey monolith of a children’s home, tucked away in the wilds of some forgotten land, with drab moorland for a neighbour. At that time, the children wore a constant look of misery, as though the stern regime of the building had worn them down like water torture.

Yet all this is commensurately buried under a blanket of forgiving time, for their lives began anew when a mysterious directive from the governor of the home caused them to be collected in a dilapidated horse and cart one day in November by a ruddy-faced man who never spoke until they disembarked one and a half hours later. Hehad een announced by one of the matrons as “Mr. Asher”, though they were to know him during their short acquaintance as “Growler”, due to his terse instructions or equally terse forays into conversation being uttered in a low mutter. On this particular day, he turned to them, and fixed them with what Sarah later described as a “glass-eyed stare”: she remembered him somehow being able to fix both of them with this stare at the same time.

“I ‘opes yer’ll be be’avin’ yersels now for me an’ the missus ain’t used ter kids, an’ we won’ be too pleased if yer upsets us. Know wot oi means?” The children nodded dumbly, too scared to do anything else. As he swept them moodily from the seat at the back of the cart, Giles gave Sarah a kind of ‘out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire’  look, which she coukd not return, for her eyes were swimming with tears. Instead, she turned to look at what would pass for their new home, being totally unaware of what lay in store for them both.

Sting, Gabriel’s Message (1985 version)
Sting, Gabriel’s Message (2009 version)

'O Jesu parvule/I yearn for thee alway.' Just the music, Mike, please.

Mike is best remembered, of course, for the elephantine tribute to the studio mixing desk, Tubular Bells, which found great difficulty in getting itself released in 1973, such was its experimental nature. However, it came to roost on Richard Branson’s then fledgling Virgin label (optimistically catalogued V2001), and gained a sympathetic ear from our John, who described it in the Listener as “the first break-through into history that any musician has made…without borrowing anything from established classics or decending to the discords, squeals and burps of the determinedly avant-garde, Mike Oldfield has produced music which combines logic with surprise, sunshine with rain.” It had taken Oldfield two years and 2,300 overdubs to come up with this, and the rest is massive record sales and a scad of rehashes and forages into similar territory.

However, he was capable of producing dazzling miniatures that were of sufficiently concise length to be released as singles: Portsmouth, Guilty, On Horseback and his Yuletide effort for 1975, a version of the macaronic carol In Dulci Jubilo. I sang lead on the original with a church choir about ten years ago, and remember being thoroughly let down by the hymn book’s translation of the Latin words, which included the embarrassing phrase ‘best of boys’. Luckily, Mike treats us to a recorder-led instrumental version which captures the joy of the inspiration, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It made number 4 in the British charts, and JP added it to his favourite singles of the year programme on 19 December 1975 (which, if anybody out there has a copy of and would be prepared to share, would guarantee you entry into the Kingdom of Heaven…or at least a big thank you from me).

Mike Oldfield, In Dulci Jubilo

In the years that came after their respective eighteenth and twenty-first  birthdays, Giles and Sarah Harrow invariably had a kind of reunion a few days before Christmas each year (though how one can call a meeting between a brother and sister that live only two miles apart a reunion is open to question).  This reunion took the form of a few glasses of rum punch round the open fire where their strange and fantastic story (as some people might think of it) took place. Giles had always made a speciality of this drink: consequently, there was always plenty to go round, served in the florid crystal bowl in which he had often seen warm, glowing reflections of the fire: the flames formed all kinds of creatures in its glistening shudders; elves, goblins, sometimes stars and comets; in fact, anything his imagination would provide.

Twenty years on, and Giles, standing on the hearthrug, recalled the effect as he swirled his punch round and round in its glass, its faded red softening the fire’s bright glow. He turned, with a nostalgic smile, to Sarah, who was in a daze of warmth and sleepiness, startling her somewhat with the loudness of his voice cutting through the crackling logs and the gentle swish of the snow brushing against the window.

“You know, Soz,” (his pet name for her since those days),  “we were sitting here, weren’t we? Or was it over by the table? Help me out with this one, please! My memory’s going. And at such a tender age”, he added, with his usual attempt at roguish humour, which rarely impressed. This year was no exception. However, this gambit was enough to drag Sarah’s attention away from the reverie by the fire, and she smiled with recognition in spite of herself. He never got it right, even though they talked over this story in the same place and at the same time every year. She did not hesitate to remind him, as ever.

“It was over at the window seat! You always get it wrong.” Sarah cast her eyes over the little room, from the burnished oak door with the dent on the right hand bottom panel (just below the slight crack that was all that was visible of the repaired lock); to the deal mantelpiece framed with holly and berries, where she had first seen the vision; to that scrubbed kitchen table, replete with carving knives, cutlery, and the skeleton of the goose they had recently devoured; to the window seat, at last, with its dull velvet cushions no doubt carrying some of the same dust as they had done all those years ago…yes, each feature of the room, each piece of furniture, had its own resonance, its own memory, some painful, but most leading to that bright, shining  ending they experienced all those Christmases before, and which set their seal on their own happiness.

Giles blinked, frowned, then he too grinned and said, “Yes, you’re right. I’ve got a good memory for a lot of things, but details like that tend to elude me.” Sarah laughed. “Details? I would have thought something like that was very important. It was the seat where I first saw it…I mean, Him…in that fireplace…on Christmas Eve…”   (To be continued).

Choir Of King’s College Cambridge, O Come O Come Emmanuel / The Lord At First Did Adam Make

Jimi Hendrix listened to his records for hours on end. Fact.

It’s the Yuletide month, and welcome to the first of a new series (and a new theme…like it?). This year, in lieu of the poll that nearly caused me a nervous breakdown last year, we will revisit the music that JP played for Christmas. First up is one that seemed to start most of his Festive programmes. Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins was born in Canterville, Texas in 1912, and after a meeting with Blind Lemon Jefferson, he felt that the blues was ingrained on his soul (and in fact it appears that he was the only person Jefferson would let play with him). A spell in prison in the thirties was followed by a move to Houston to attempt to break into the music scene, but it didn’t work out and he moved back to his hometown to work as a farmhand.

A second attempt at fame was more beneficial: he began to record for Aladdin in LA after the war, but grew homesick for Texas and moved back to Houston, recording shedloads of spellbinding blues for Gold Style, and after that for Sugarhill. His album A Riot In Blues featured the classic Merry Christmas, which was issued as a single in 1953 backed by another festive tune…but that’s for later on. His appearance alongside Pete Seeger and Joan Baez at Carnegie Hall cemented his burgeoning fame, and recognition was finally his after years of striving.

Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins, Merry Christmas

"What a good place to be/They speak a different language, but it's never really mattered to me". Superb.

To say that this post has been a long time in the making would be, I think, the understatement of the century, but I hope you’ll agree it’s been worth it. Given the material, let’s call it an early Christmas present from me (and a fairly hefty sized one, so have patience with the download).

The Housemartins have appeared here previously, as their immortal song Flag Day was their sole Festive Fifty entry in 1985. However, they recorded  four Peel sessions, which have infuriatingly turned up over the years piecemeal on different compilations, the most recent of these being Live At The BBC. What is worse, none of these did the job properly, and left out a fair chunk of material. Therefore, the fourth best band in Hull have never had all their recordings for Peel available in one place.

Until now. The zip file below contains all of them, the quality of some better than others, but all listenable. The reason why I waited so long to make this available to you was that I have only just managed to get hold of the one track that has never been released from their first session. So enjoy a healthy dose of pop (two versions of ‘Happy Hour’, thier glorious condemnation of yuppy culture) mixed with rather more than a little Christianity (‘When I First Met Jesus’. a cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Heaven Help Us All’, ‘Sunday Isn’t Sunday’ and so on).  The second session includes the first recording of what nearly became their Christmas number one for 1986, Caravan Of Love, and the third is entirely accapella, and is an example of their Fish City Five alter ego.

Peel repeated all of these over Christmas each year, but then when the band fragmented, showed no interest in the work of any of them save Norman Cook, who of course hit the dancefloor and had monster smashes with Beats International and as Fatboy Slim. Presumably The Beautiful South was just too commercial for him, but you can hear the roots of that style in these recordings.

Housemartins, Peel Sessions

#1 (recorded 1985-07-21)
Drop Down Dead/Flag Day/Stand At Ease/Joy Joy Joy
#2 (recorded 1986-04-06)
Happy Hour/Get Up Off Our Knees/Over There/Caravan Of Love
#3 (recorded 1986-06-03)
Pickin’ The Blues/Happy Hour/When I First Met Jesus/Heaven Help Us All/He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother
#4 (recorded 1987-11-03)
There Is Always Something There To Remind Me/Sunday Isn’t Sunday/Build

Seems to be taking a bloody long time to snuff it.

If the logo that seemed to accompany every A&M LP I ever bought was true, then this piece would never have been written. The sad fact is that the BBC is the least responsible guardian of its own enetertainment output. It’s enough to make one weep when we see lists on Wikipedia and elsewhere of entire series of Doctor Who, the odd Hancock show, the original A For Andromeda or even Peel’s appearaces on How It Is (check out my link to the Wiki page I wrote to see what I’m on about), all apparently wiped just to reuse (at the time) costly videotape.

And that’s just the TV shows. How many countless hours of radio would never be heard again were it not for the unseen heroes who sat woth their fingers hovering over the pause button to capture their heroes like Andy Kershaw, Peel, Alan Freeman and pirate radio with little idea of the value they would have for future generations? Before we get too misty-eyed and anally retentive about all this, I will tell you my purpose. It’s to give a voice to all those people who have decided to share their precious bits of oxide-covered paper in the form of digital recordings of Peel sessions for the Internet massses. I realise that I have allotted plenty of space to my own efforts, so this is the best of the sessions currently available at other locations on the Net in one handy place.

Special mention must be given to the noble Adam at Fades In Slowly, Stuart at The Peel Sessions (who puts up so many tracks and has so many blogs it makes my head spin) and Dave at Fruitier Than Thou, who have really put themselves out to trumpet the cause of these recordings. However, all these blogs are fine pieces of work, and some make me gasp with their inventiveness. So, hats off to all, and go to it. Keep It Peel! N.B. The numbering system follows that of Ken Garner’s The Peel Sessions: if you never buy another book about the man, make sure the one you do is this one.

Sessions 0-9

999: 1978-10-25 (Mondo De Muebles)

Sessions A

Autechre: #1, 1995-08-30 (mUsistenZ)

Sessions C

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: 1984-03-28 (dark circle Room)
Cherry Boys:  #2, 1982-08-16 (music..isms)
Cud: #1, 1987-06-16 (Sir Charlie Palmer)

Sessions G

Godspeed You Black Emperor: 1999-01-19 (Big Fat Satanist)

Sessions I

Icon A.D.: 1982-09-25 (Disorder By Design)

Sessions J

Jass Babies, 1981-10-19 (Fruitier Than Thou)

Sessions L

Lung Leg: #1, 1995-01-21 (Fruitier Than Thou)

Sessions M

Madness: 1979-08-14 (Fades In Slowly)

Sessions N

Nico: #1, 1971-02-02 (dark circle Room)

Sessions P

Pastels: #1, 1984-01-17 (Shoegazeralive2)

Sessions R

Rodan: 1994-06-03 (Big Fat Satanist)

Sessions S

Sabres Of Paradise, 1995-03-13 (Ripped In Glasgow)
Shellac: #1, 1994-07-14 (Big Fat Satanist)
Michael Smith: 1982-04-24 (P.A. To Da Reggae)
Smog: #3, 2001-12-10 (Sir Charlie Palmer)
Son House: 1970-07-06 (Sir Charlie Palmer)
Sonic Youth: #2, 1988-10-11 (Sir Charlie Palmer) and here (dark circle Room)

Sessions T

Tanz Der Youth: 1978-08-02 (Always Searching For Music)
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282:  1994-02-13 (YoungMossTongue)

Sessions U

Unsane: #3, 1994-06-07 (shiny grey monotone)

Sessions W

Western Promise: 1985-05-19 (music…isms)

Widescreen not available in this cinema. Obviously.

A new session and a terrific Festive Fifty track for you today: I’m typing this while England sleeps, but I strongly urge you to put the egg soldiers to one side  while you give this great music a blast. I needed to put this up straight away for two reasons: 1. This band are terrific. 2. I had to get rid of the picture below that at least one of you found objectionable (understandably).

Well, a recent crop of latterday Peel shows has yielded the one and only session by Rock Of  Travolta, recorded on Remembrance Day 2001.  They came from Oxford, and somewhat inevitably ended up supporting my old chums (sic) Radiohead on their South Park tour and the quite wonderful …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. Not a bad start for a band that had their first gig playing in a cowshed to 50 people. They have something of an obsession with the increasingly flabby-faced film star’s surname. Their members were: John Travolta (basses),  Phil Travolta (keyboards/bass), Handsome Dave Travolta (gtr), Stumpy Joe Travoilta (drums), Roz Travolta (cello), and Deadly Dave Travolta (keyboards). Their website also claimed two extra members were Death Travolta (scythe) and Darth Travolta (light sabre). Unsurprisingly, the latter were not available for this session. The album My Band’s Better Than Yours (Juggernaut) featured one standout track in Giant Robo (FF 2001 #48), an  irresistible little post-rock miracle that has a beautiful structure, tight and almost rondo-like in its perfection and sporting a tune that you will be humming for weeks. This also appears on the session in a slightly tighter version, lacking the spoken additions and squalling keyboards, but hell, either would be a proud addition to any band’s repertiore.

The remaining session tracks tread pretty much the same path, but what strikes the ear first and foremost is the singular lack of vocals througout. Purely instrumental bands have a hard time of it coming up with memorable and intriguing material, which is what makes their achievement here all the more striking. The final track, The Body Is Still There But The Mind Is Gone, made an appearance in another version on the memorably named compilation When I Wank On My Guitar, The Whole World Wanks With Me. Right. I don’t really know what the band have been up to since their third album release, Uluru, which saw them transfer to a new label, Tablature, but it would be a real shame if they are not still forging a path they have very much made their own: shorter and tighter than Mogwai, but with a sense of air and freshness around the instruments that betrays real musicianship. Could have done without the overheated female samples on track three, though…

Rock Of  Travolta, Giant Robo

Rock Of Travolta, Peel Session 2001-11-11
Lukewarm Skywater/Giant Robo/Oxygen Assisted/The Body’s Still There But The Mind Is Gone

Gorgeous, eh? Pass the sick bucket.

It’s a long time since I’ve treated myself to a rant, one of my previous efforts being to show up Michael Henderson’s pathetic dissection of John. This time I turn to a much older article, one written by that fat, smug, self-satisfied cunt Julie Burchill for the Guardian in 1999, but one that I’ve been waiting to attack for a long time. Apparently, being something of a so-called iconoclast herself, she welcomes negative attention, so I hope she is reading this. Steph, one of my commenters, seemed to think that it was written just after John’s death in 2004: actually, unlike Henderson, she at least had the respect to do it while he was still alive, but that doesn’t make this one-sided tirade any easier to stomach.

"We are entranced, spellbound." Couldn't have put it better myself, Ms. Ballion.

As a kind of lapsed Baptist of some 10 years standing, it’s not in my nature to give any credence or support to Halloween, but I guess many of you will be digging out the Friday The 13th, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street and  Candyman DVDs for tonight, so as a little soundtrack to part of all that, here’s the fourth Siouxsie and the Banshees session from 1981. By this time, Siouxsie had renounced the abrasive yet thrilling punk persona for the prototype Goth, and any of these songs could have come straight out of  a slasher movie, so dark and sinister are they. This time around, the archetypal line-up of Siouxsie on vocals, black make-up and scary hair and Steve Severin on pulsating bass was augmented by Budgie on tribal drumming and ex-Magazine wallah John McGeoch drafted in to contribute the screeching and fragmented guitarwork. The overall result, with its slight tinges of melody to bring light to the darkness, puts it miles away from their early material but poles apart from the competition. As usual, this is stunning, unforgettable, plangent, and a throwback to a more musically adventurous and resonant time in my life.

The set was intended to showcase their eopchal turnabout, Juju, and three of the songs from that appear here. In case you’re expecting samples from the excellent Voices In The Air set, you may be disappointed (or alternately thrilled) to hear these as they were first broadcast on the 18 February 1981, atmospheric, chilled, and bloody to the core (but still smashing quality). So the radio cuts are what I’ve gone for. Look behind you at every opportunity.

Siouxsie And The Banshees, Peel Session 1981-02-10
Halloween/In The Light/Voodoo Dolly/But Not Them