Fades in Slowly

This post has actually been more than a year and a half in the making, for that’s how long it has been since Colin Ellis emailed me with a the back cover of a John Peel compilation I’d never heard of. I thanked him for his effort, promised to put it on the blog and then promptly forgot all about it until the other day when I saw the following message from the mercurial Duff Paddy over on the JP discussion group:

From time to time, I have a search for this old, rare-as-rocking-horse-pooh collection of the BBC archive tracks featured on Peel’s Night Ride programme. Invariably I either come up with nothing or a record collector’s site asking £100 plus for an original copy. For once though, I came up trumps just now and saw it available for download on a Dutch blog.

Finally the rear cover I had had an album to go with it, and what an album it promises to be, maybe the first example of a ‘World Music’ compilation. ‘Sadly, the cover scans aren’t of sufficient resolution to read the sleevenotes,’ lamented Duff Paddy, ‘which Peel has admitted to being embarrassed about on one or two of his programmes, but it’s nice to have this at all. JP ahead of the game yet again, playing ‘World Music’ before the term even existed.’ Hang on a minute, I thought, I can help out here, remembering Colin’s email.

So, here we are then. The album can be downloaded from the sexy-looking Club Cortez blog and the high quality cover here.