Archive for the ‘John Peel’ Category
- My choice for Christmas number one
Good old Steve has made a compelling case against the Cowell-crap that has polluted the Christmas chart over the past few years (at least that’s how I’ve interpreted his post). Hence, I recommend popping over to the suitably Festive Teenage Kicks and read what he has to say on the issue, but only after listening to my choice for this year’s #1.
- The Rolling Stones at the BBC: 1963 and 1964 (Part 1)
Like The Beatles, the Stones’ early ’60 s gigs were ruined by howling, screaming teenage girls who’d drown out any attempt to record the shows. What exists are – still never officially released – studio sessions the band recorded for broadcast on BBC radio. While the Stones were never as prolific as the Beatles at the BBC, there are some gems.
The Rolling Stones at the BBC: 1963/64
The tracks ‘Memphis Tennessee’, ‘Roll over Beethoven’ and ‘Come on’ were recorded for Saturday Club on September 23rd, 1963 and broadcast on October 26th of that year.
These four songs, ‘Mona’, ‘Route 66’, ‘Cops and robbers’ and ‘You better move on’ were recorded for Blues in Rhythm on March 19th, 1964 and broadcast on May 9th.
‘2120 South Michigan Avenue’ was recorded for Blues in Rhythm on October 8th, 1964 and broadcast on October 31st, while ‘Not fade away’ was recorded for Saturday Club on April 13th, 1964 and broadcast on April 18th.
The final four songs for today, ‘High heeled sneakers’, ‘Little by little’, ‘I just want to make love to you’ and ‘I’m moving on’ were recorded live on the Joe Loss show on April 10th, 1964.
This is only part one, when a few people have left a comment to tell me how lovely the music is, I’ll post part two.
While we’re at it, here’s one of my favourite versions of ‘Not fade away’ by the Scotch Video Tape Skeleton:
- TOTP classics: JP introduces Orange Juice, 1983
The year is 1983 and TOTP has become one of the biggest and most prominent endorsements for Thatcherism imagineable. You can learn a hell of a lot about the spirit of the time by watching the audience for this performance from one of the most famous non-festive 50 bands of them all. JP is typically magnificent in his ‘while all around you lose their heads‘ attitude…
- Holidays in the sun
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Today I offer a totally obvious tune to mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. However, it has not been all fun and games since the wall came down:
‘Everyone had a job, school lunches were free, after-school care was free, people were generally happy, necessities were extremely cheap, and there was more community spirit than there is nowadays. In those times, there were no Joneses to keep up with.’
The poster to the right was made to commemorate 30 years of the GDR, in 1979, thus contemporary to the tune you’re going to listen to.
The following documentary was made 10 years after the fall of the Berliner Mauer and makes for very interesting viewing.
What we see in the aftermath of reunification is quite clearly idealogical and cultural imperialism. I like the idea that someone would get upset about the little flashing red and green men at traffic lights being changed to Western design. Why did everything have to change to meet the West?
[caption id="attachment_421" align="alignright" width="210" caption="'The GDR: The socialst state of workers and farmers'"]
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Medicine made out of Berlin Wall granules?
Some of my students, all of whom were born in the early ’90s, grew up in the old East and remember posters like these on the walls in their schools, even years after reunification. I guess that although people were happy to see the wall go down, not everyone enjoyed having their culture usurped.
Now, on to the greatest Sex Pistols song of the lot, this being taken from the 1978 Festive 50 broadcast.
Sex Pistols – Holidays in the sun (1978 Festive 50)
The subject matter may seem obsolete but the song itself sounds as fresh as it ever did. I hope you agree with me that this is the pinnacle of the Pistols’ work.
- John Peel’s Archive Things LP, 1970
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.
- Classic session tracks: ‘Then I kissed her’ by The Lurkers
For me, the biggest indignity suffered by The Lurkers was being the centerpiece of Mick Wall’s abominable John Peel biography which appeared in time for Christmas, 2004, despite JP’s death only two months previously. That he met Peel and had a discussion about this band is considered Wall’s main qualification for having been handed the responsibility for churning out the dreadful, dreadful book in question.
The band themselves are worth far more of your time, however, having recorded four sessions at the legendary Maida Vale studio for John Peel between October, 1977 and January, 1979. Indeed, their debut single ‘Shadow’ was voted by John Peel as his twelfth best track of the year in the 1977 Festive Fifty (with “Love Story”, the B-side, at number 31).
Basically, this is one and a half minutes of good, pumping pub rock at its best. Here is a classic cover version from their first Peel session:
‘Then I kissed her’ by The Lurkers
Listen now…
As ever, if you want more, let me know.
- John Peel in Dallas
Thanks to Dave (Fillerzine) for this little gem. another very lazy post, I’m afraid, this info taken straight from YouTube. Some great footage, especially good to finally see exactly where JP was standing when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot:
John Peel, recorded June 23,1996:
‘I went over there the beginning-to-middle of 1960. The first radio programs I did were on a station called WRR in Dallas and they had a rhythm & blues program called Kats Karavan, spelled inevitably with two K’s. I’d gotten some British LPs of blues and rhythm & blues stuff that were only available in Britain, or in Europe anyway, so I went along and played them some of those records and they put me on the radio to talk about them. I thought they’d probably put me on there because of my extraordinary knowledge of the music, but I think in fact they probably put me on there because they found my accent very entertaining because in those days I used to talk a bit like Prince Charles.
This was not the day that Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby; it was a few days before that. It was when he was kind-of presented to the press as the man who’d been arrested and charged. And, I mean, it was just one of those things that — Earlier on when the assassination first happened, and I’d been – I used to work here for an insurance company on Central Expressway, so I was able to get into town pretty quickly. I was an office boy, so I could come and go as I pleased, and so when I heard about the assassination, it was announced on the P.A. in the office, and I just drove into town and went to the police cordon and told the policeman, I said, “I’m from The Liverpool Echo” and instead of telling me to piss-off, he let me through. It’s one of those things which sounds so bizarre. And I walked down – I didn’t go to the grassy knoll – I just stood on the other side of the road and kind of watched what was going on until frankly it became boring. It’s hard to imagine that it did, but after I stood there about 40 minutes and watching people scurrying about, so I then went and made what I’d said kind-of retrospectively true and phoned The Liverpool Echo, and funnily they weren’t terribly interested. I thought, Cripes, here’s my chance because I’ve always wanted to be in journalism, so I thought, hey, this is my chance to get into journalism. I could be The Liverpool Echo’s “Man in Dallas”, but they really didn’t care. So I was a bit wounded by that, but then that night a mate of mine and I had been driving around and were trying to figure out what to do, and at the end of the evening I said, why don’t we go down to the police headquarters and see what’s going on. And we got down there, and I said to this policeman, I said “what’s happening?” And he said, “Well, actually there’s a press conference down here,” pointing to a flight of steps into the basement of the building – “there’s a press conference in here in a few minutes.” And I said, “Well, actually I’m from The Liverpool Echo and this is my photographer,” and we went down there. I mean, we didn’t have a pen or paper or camera between us, but we went in there anyway. It’s a story that I’ve told so often that you get to the point where you don’t really believe it yourself, it just seems so unlikely. But then in one of the bits of film of that press conference, we were all standing in this room and they had the identification parade in the basement of this building and they said – Henry Wade said – that this is the man that’s been charged in the assassination of President Kennedy, and they brought in Lee Harvey Oswald. And he stood there looking slightly puzzled and alarmed for a while, and then was taken away again. In one of the films of this, which they showed on British television, they showed that Jack Ruby was in the room as well – which I didn’t know he was until I saw this film they sort-of panned across the room and in the last few frames you can see me and my friend Bob standing there looking like tourists.
None at all, no. I wish, I don’t know, y’know, I think, I mean, everybody else does, but I think we’ll probably never know the truth.’
John Peel, interview recorded June 23, 1996. Published Sept. 1996 (Filler #5). Soundtrack music “Comment Naissent des Meduses” from “Science is Fiction,” written & performed by Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, James McNew (Yo La Tengo).
- 70 songs (Vol. 2)
Download the bugger or listen now…
- Peel and Star Trek
musical careers of various Star Trek folks:
- Andy Kershaw: 10th March, 1988
Here’s an old Andy Kershaw show courtesy of the one and only Ken Garner. According to Ken, ‘It’s a stormer featuring the Frank Chickens, plus Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in session.’
Work is manic, hence the lack of posts. Bear with me, I’ll be back.
