The John Peel Archive: B

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It took me a while to get around to this week's instalment, which consists of the first 100 alphabetical 'B's. It's fairly slim pickings in terms of what I have from this lot. In fact it's a 3-3 tie between Babes in Toyland (I have 'Spanking Machine', 'To Mother' and 'Fontanelle' on vinyl) and Baby Bird (I have 'Fatherhood' on vinyl and 'Ugly Beautiful' and 'Happiest Man Alive' on cd).
I have none of the others!
So I scrolled through them and with the help of Spotify I listened to quite a few more...

One that rung a bit of a bell was Babyland's 'You Suck Crap' album, which is from 1992 and firmly in the vein of industrial noisemakers Revolting Cocks, Ministry, Consolidated, etc. I think this music has dated quite badly but their tune 'Mask' brought back memories of early 90s Peel shows. I definitely had this taped off the radio, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest samples at the end are what I remember most. Now you can hear it yourselves via Spotify



I had almost forgotten Bad Dream Fancy Dress, but their album 'Choirboys Gas' is included here. Again this sounds a bit dated, and it belongs firmly to the early '90s fanzine scene. Shades of Helen Love and c86, this pre-dates the likes of bis by a couple of years. This is one of the tracks I can recall hearing around then.



Another curio is the Bad Livers album 'Horses in the Mines'. I think this lot are still going, playing their punky style of bluegrass. I can't pick out a familiar track from this one but here is 'Shot at a Bird, Hit Me a Stump'.



Of the ones I know,the pick of the bunch for me would be Babes in Toyland 'Spanking machine' which brings back a lot of memories, most specifically of the time they played Richardson's Social Club in Belfast on a summer night in 1991 or 1992 with a band called Therapy? in support. What a show.



1 comment:

  1. The B.A.L.L. album is worth investigating

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