Coursing Through The Wires #19 - Forgotten Favorites?

Continuing a meandering path through the early 90s... I'm trying to get more contemporary (as I did last time out), but sometimes you have to go back to get ahead.

• World of Pooh -- "Someone Wants You Dead" (K, 1990)
  

San Francisco-based World of Pooh was where many people (including me) first heard of Barbara Manning.  This recording comes from an early entry in the K Records "International Pop Underground" series of singles.  I love this song because it's a hummable, perfect little minor-key ditty with dark lyrics that cut without causing a bloody mess.  Belatedly (as ever), I'll join the chorus of those hoping for a World of Pooh retrospective release.

• Adorable - "Homeboy" (Creation, 1992)

This song is a throbbing blast of britpop that never hit as big as it should have.  Maybe it just missed its moment ... we were still recovering from the trauma of New Fast Automatic Daffodils and Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Madchester wankery, Blur were still convinced that "there's no other way," and Oasis hadn't yet begun its assault on the Beatles discographies of well-meaning listeners.  Adorable combined a bass line too powerful for pop with lyrics and vocals too weak for rock, in a package that might be too derivative of The Wedding Present's "Dalliance."  I don't mean to damn this song with faint praise -- it's stuck with me long after its exile from the main library of my old stomping grounds. 

• The Fall -- "Kimble" (Strange Fruit, 1993)

The Fall reinvented Lee "Scratch" Perry's "Kimble the Nimble" in a 1993 session for John Peel. The original is early reggae (not a dub plate), while the Fall version is drenched in reverb -- perhaps borrowing from the Skatelites' "Kimble Dub."  I remember this song as a monster standout on one of the first episodes of "Peel Out In The States," a 30-minute radio program that was offered to US college radio to bring a touch of class in the person of John Peel and his impeccable BBC programs.  While there's better reggae, better dub, and better Fall, there's no better combination of the three.