Come #2, repeat first broadcast 12 February 1993. Recorded 1993-01-21. The track 'City of Fun' is available on the Beggars Banquet CD Single - String .
(JP: ‘Older viewers might have been reminded slightly of the work of Leonard Cohen in the course of that, I certainly was. Tindersticks the first from them.’)
(JP:’I have to be honest with you now. I mentioned my gig in Sheffield last night. Even the most generous person would not of described it as being a triumph. It was in a hall where about 850 people can be gathered together. And there were three bands playing and they all did darned well under the circumstances. Sugar Drive, New Speak and The Love Birds. But there were only about mmmh well let’s say 80 people, 90, let’s go for 90, 90 people in the hall and it was all a bit embarrassing. The greatest number that was on the dancefloor at any one time was 19 when I played Teenage Kicks at the end of the evening. But some of the people that were there anyway will have enjoyed it or came up and said they had done. It was one of those evenings, which quite clearly, I shall be able to dine out on for quite a long time and I don’t doubt that they will as well. The people who had organised it were very generous and spent most of the evening trying to think of excuses why there wasn’t anybody there. It was that kind of rather fixed and unnatural smile with which they greeted me at the door that told me that things were not going particularly well. I eventually ascribed the shortage of people there to spontaneous street parties that were going on as the result of the arrival of John Selwyn Gummer at the Department Of The Environment. That may have been the case it may not. It was mentioned on Mark Goodier’s programme as well, during his sort of gig roundup and had been mentioned on local radio earlier in the week when I was interviewed by Tony Capstick. The reason I mention all this really is because it gives me the excuse to play a record that Tony Capstick made in 1974, as a feller who used to do sessions for this programme millions of years ago.’)
(JP: ‘And I know that several hundred thousand of you at the very least can hardly sleep during the week for excitement at the thought of discovering what’s in the Phantom Fifty at the weekend. This is number 11. And I’m not quite sure if this is the mix that you intended, but this is the one that you are getting anyway.’)
(JP: ‘I just hope there are no Kenyan listeners who are going to write in and tell me that I’m pronouncing all of these things incorrectly. Unlike Adrian Davies, who isn’t actually Kenyan, but he does write from Ferryside to say in the wake of the Anhrefn session of last weekend. "John I’m sorry to inform you, you’re Welsh sounds like a mixture of French and German". I put this insolence down to the fact that he is going through the agonies of GCSEs at the moment. And incidentally Adrian there’s no “h” in rifts. Ha!’)
L453b
Molly Half Head: ‘Toe To Sand (CD Single)’ (Playtime Records)
Unknown. Dance song with a sample of Mark E. Smith's intro to The Fall's "Cruisers Creek" (John stops the next track mid play as the sound from the record deteriorates. ‘Well as you can tell listeners we have interesting technical problems here.’)
(JP: ‘Between now and two o’clock I shall be trying to work out who it was who arranged to have the third turntable taken out of this studio. And I shall go to his or her house and sing selections from the Student Prince in an unnatural baritone to keep them awake all night.’)
Sex Clarke Five: Gothic Go Ahead (LP- Antedium ) (Skyclad)
(JP ‘I’m back under control now, no more hysteria, everything’s OK, the turntable is going to work perfectly. What would John Arlott have done? He wouldn’t have panicked.’)