Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub
The John Peel Session
1995, Strange Fruit
It’s a 1960s rock ‘n’ roll dance party! This fast and loud 4-song EP bridges the gap between screamin’ Frank Black and screamin’ Freddy Cannon. It burns up the dragstrip. It rips into old school sounds that Black tastefully hinted at in past moments such as his “Duke of Earl” cover for the 1993 Hello Recording Club EP and his own starry ballad “Sir Rockaby” from Teenager of the Year. It’s rough and wired with no synthesizers or UFOs anywhere.
The time was May 1994. Teenager of the Year was brand new. Black was in Europe doing promotional stuff. Like the Pixies several times before, he got invited to record a set for John Peel at the BBC, which is always cool, BUT… he didn’t have a band. He would soon have a band for the upcoming tour, but at the moment, no hay banda.
So he asked Scottish guitar pop heroes Teenage Fanclub to back him up. They said yes and everyone got together to bang out four exclusive tracks fueled by classic influences. It was a performance worth savoring enough that Peel’s own label Strange Fruit put it out on disc the following year.
The first thing you notice about it: NO Teenager of the Year songs. Not even any of the B-sides. What you get instead are two covers and two Black originals that hadn’t yet appeared anywhere else.
First up is “Handy Man” and its opening bass line is hyperactive right away. The song is best known as a hit in 1960 for singer and co-writer (with Otis Blackwell) Jimmy Jones. That version is an R&B charmer with a classic bounce and some memorable falsetto all perfectly arranged for malt shop jukeboxes. In their take, Black and Teenage Fanclub speed up the tempo to juuuust under the point where the whole thing could fly off the tracks. They approach this old stuff by way of punk, but with zero irony. When Frank Black shouts and twitches through “Handy Man”, it means the exact same thing as when Jimmy Jones crooned it.
Slotted next is Black’s own “The Man Who Was Too Loud”, a sweet pop song written in praise of Jonathan Richman. It relates the story of a rock ‘n’ roll maverick who made his name laying the groundwork for punk rock only to later pursue a different vision for music that wouldn’t hurt the ears of babies (seriously, that’s how Richman described it). Frank Black thinks that’s cool. He portrays Richman as a guy who’s figured out a few things in life and risen above such petty matters as music business expectations and rock star ego. Black would record this song again a few years later for the first Frank Black and The Catholics album.
On third base sits “The Jacques Tati”, which pays tribute to two things at once: A) the great French comedy filmmaker (director and star of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle) and B) the kitschy old dance song that attempts to start a new fad and that rock musicians don’t do anymore. Last summer, maybe you did The Twist or The Loco-Motion; now all the kids are doing The Jacques Tati, don’t you know? “You kinda lean your head/ You kinda get on your toes/ Try to take big steps/ And when you start to coast/ Take a look on down at nothing particularly”. I tried to do The Jacques Tati in my backyard. I hurt my hip and had to go to the emergency room. Still, it’s a great song that comes from a goofy, innocent place. Silly songs are very important to Frank Black’s music at this time and this is one of the silliest.
(As of this writing, “The Jacques Tati” has never been released in any other studio version. All we have are this BBC recording and some live performances from the ’94 tour.)
In the end, things get dark with “Sister Isabel”, a powerful Del Shannon song (co-written with Brian Hyland and released in 1970) about a guy who gets dumped by his girl for the convent (“Isabel, am I really going to lose you?/ Isabel, does He need you more than I do?”). The title is spelled differently here (the original is called “Sister Isabelle”), but the band don’t stray too far from the original arrangement or its serious, heartbroken mood. They do bring a more menacing wall of guitars. The whole song sounds like big, black cloud. Or like Teenage Fanclub turned into Crazy Horse all of a sudden.
Black would stay hooked on “Sister Isabelle” for awhile. It popped up in his live show for years. Frank Black & The Catholics later attempted it in the studio, but Black felt that they never quite nailed it so their take sat unreleased until their 2015 box set.
Bottom line: When you see the words “Peel Session” on a record, you know it’s probably pretty good and this disc keeps that up. Don’t overlook it.