The Only Ones - Peel Sessions

One of the great things about working in a record shop (along with thinking that life couldn't get any better - I was 18, in a band and had a job that meant I could dress how I liked) was that I got to hear music that might otherwise have passed me by.

A case in point would be the Only Ones. At the time they were a forgotten band and their back catalogue deleted, but in 1989 they were afforded a Peel Sessions release. Guitarist John Perry says on the sleevenotes that they were his favourite Only Ones recordings, and to this day it tends to be the album I play most often. The original release kicked off with a great version of 'Oh Lucinda', which bears little resemblance to the Baby's Got a Gun recording and alone makes the album worth hearing, the picked chords having been replaced with Pete Perrett at his amphetamine-fused best (think of the energy of 'Another Girl, Another Planet').

I was eventually able to track down their three LPs in various branches of the Record & Tape Exchange, and The Immortal Story helped to fill in a few more gaps in their output and in 2004 their complete recordings were released as Why Don't You Kill Yourself. More recently of course 'Another Girl, Another Planet' (by now a staple in indie clubs) was used in a Vodafone commercial and the band reformed shortly after. Seeing them at Shepherd's Bush Empire last year meant that along with the New York Dolls and Hanoi Rocks I finally got to see a band that I thought would never grace the stage again (and unlike the others with all original members in place - Pete Perrett having survived despite certain lifestyle similarities to Johnny Thunders).

(For similar reasons Perrett has also been referenced as a forebearer to Pete Doherty - flattering for the ex-Libertine.)

The Peel Sessions have also resurfaced as Darkness and Light: the Complete BBC Recordings, along with a second CD of live recordings (although much of the Peel Sessions can be considered 'live', recorded as they often were in one take) and I'd recommend this as a great starting point to anyone intrigued by the Only Ones - no longer the forgotten band.

See also:
Johnny Thunders - So Alone