King of the Slums Peel Session

A name from the distant past springs to mind - King of the Slums. In particular, their amazing Peel session from the mid 1980s (?). Few people have sought to develop the electric violin in rock music after John Cale in the Velvet Underground. But Sarah Curtis is one of the few. All four tracks of the Peel Session - Big girl's blouse, fanciable headcase, leary bleeder and venerate me utterly - are excellent, and all with the discordant droning electric violin overlay. I used to have this at a cassette tape - one of the 210 Peel extract tapes I produced from 1978 to around 2000. But as so often is the case, I have found a copy on a download site as part of a huge download just called "Peel Sessions", containing 270 session from 1967 to 2002. No doubt some excellent stuff that I haven't heard for years, for instance the Altered Images Peel Session with Dead Pop Stars, Loop's session featuring Afterglow, but sadly not Yeah Yeah Noh's session from 1984 which I would really like to hear again



A "new" release from King of the Slums is available on Amazon. It features a new version of one of the Peel session tracks. I have a quick listen to the sample available but it is terrible - the wild, out-of-control violin is dropped own in the mix, when it should be highlighted. A great disappointment I thought