John Peel Sessions
davestrickson.blogspot.com
davestrickson.blogspot.com
For as long as I've been aware of it, Radio 1 has followed a format of playing mainstream pop music during the day, with more specialised and esoteric programming in the evening. When I was a teenager, Peel's show was on at 10pm on weeknights, and his main focus was on championing new and undiscovered bands, across many genres. The Peel sessions were part of this show, where a band would come in to record a live performance of a few songs.
I imagine a lot of bands can credit their success to John Peel playing their records and inviting them to record a session.
That dramatically understates the importance of Peel during his heyday. Before the internet, Peel was the way for bands to find an audience outside of their home town. For an entire generation of musicians, sending off a demo tape to Peel was a peculiar act of secular benediction, a message in a bottle cast into the waters in the hope that someone might read it.
His death in 2004 left a void that has never quite been filled. Despite the stalwart efforts of Tom Robinson and the BBC Introducing team, nobody has been able to replicate Peel's unique eclecticism and his remarkable ability to sniff out new talent. His peculiar alchemy attracted a wide audience while also offering an open door to the unknown, the unsigned and the unhinged.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/how-john-peel-...
I think that if you wanted to try and come up with a simple way to describe what connected all the music that Peel championed over his long career, it would have to be something like "new energy". He didn't seem as interested in what a band actually sounded like as where their energy came from and what level it was on.
http://www.thepeelsessions.co.uk/bands.html
I am struck by (a) what a range of extraordinary stuff there was and (b) just how many times he had his favourites on! I don't think i have ever heard of Loudon Wainright III outside the context of John Peel. I don't think i'd ever heard of The Fall outside of John Peel, and that's despite the fact that i was a regular listener to Mark and Lard!
He was a regular guest on Jasper Carrott's UK show in the late 80s. It was most strange context-switching from a genial Brummie comedian to an acerbic American singer.
Edit: Song for Loudon Wainwright III by his daughter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdvk7O3Tz6A. Don't know if he deserves it or not, but it's a remarkable song.
Apparently!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5gqg7lDzj9n7mJWsJs...
He didn't waste words, he didn't (that I recall) ever 'chatter on'. Every word seemed to count.
Maybe my memory deceives me but I do remember this, and it's something I try to emulate.
Anyway, I'll check all this out. I did love the variety of stuff he played. Thanks, article poster.
Recommended for fans of shoegaze, dreampop, etc.
Edit: Just noticed that list doesn't include the VG session. You can listen to it on YouTube:
[1] Edit - found a link: https://www.discogs.com/Various-1989-1993-The-John-Peel-Sub-...
Quotes remembered by listeners:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070712092327/http://www.ilxor....
When he died, I remember hearing on the day and I was not that effected by it. When I got home, I think maybe seeing the radio or something, it made it very real. I sat on the bed and wept in a way most unlike me (relatives and close friends excepted). I've certainly never even come close to this kind of emotion for any "famous" person before or since. He was a wonderful DJ who introduced so many kinds of music. A real loss for the UK.
And yet clearly here his work lives on, which is great to see.
If you're into psychedelic, space, stoner rock, shoegaze, noise rock etc, check out Bardo Pond, Bailter Space, Band of Susans, Lush, Loop, Sonic Youth, Spiritualized, Stereolab, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Jesus Lizard, My Bloody Valentine (missing from the list)
Some other interesting bands: Broadcast, Galaxie 500, The Chills.
And of course there were a ton of popular bands worth checking out.
Some 'Peel Sessions' got released on 'Strange Fruit' including the seminal 'the orb' epic track "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Loving You)" that was put together by Jimi Cauty, who subsequently left 'the orb' to be one half of The KLF. Hence the Peel session of The Orb and the original pressing of the aforementioned track were the only truly awesome stuff they released.
Incidentally this excellent blogpost of Peel Sessions does not include this particular 1989 classic.
Note that first time round you would wait until Thursday 11 p.m. to tune in to John Peel on FM radio and record the good stuff with a spare cassette. You might record over that cassette a week or two later. Everything could be ordered through an independent record shop if you wanted it for real, expect one of a thousand pressings though.
You would need to remember names of artists and their tracks from the radio, no rewind unless you had that tape running. Discographies didn't exist like now so you never knew if an alias of an artist was the artist you knew already or a new one.
I respect people that piece all of this together today, however, somewhere in the BBC they have this archived and they could sort out the licensing problems the way it works on streaming platforms.
Licensing problems are mostly due to defunct labels and who gets the royalties. For instance, if in 1988 'A Guy Called Gerald' was part of '808 State' on the 'Creed' label, then, in the Peel session, if it get replayed, where does the money go? The other members of the group went to be signed by ZTT leaving A Guy Called Gerald to do his own stuff in a different direction. The Peel session fell in-between albums with tracks from the old and the new. Sorting out the monies is tricky for the BBC to do but YouTube manage monetisation easy enough.
The Orb can certainly be a bit weird at times but there are some absolute gems lurking in the back catalogue and at least Alex Paterson is still releasing music, what has Cauty done recently?
Also there is an online radio station inspired by Peel: http://dandelionradio.com/
I listened to these as a teenager in the 1990s. Very nostalgic to hear this now. Also sad to think of the defenestration of radio 1, however at least radio 6 got some of their remit.
Obviously there are loads to listen to, but just to highlight one I'm enjoying right now that wasn't what I expected
Kenickie https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qv987NMRCoY?autoplay=1
Much more melancholy than Hey Punka, which is really cool. I hope that these remain on youtube as all these are links to youtube, which seems a bit brittle.
Edit... just found out that the song in question (Teenage Kicks by the Undertones) was played at his funeral.
My biggest gratitude to him is for doing everything in his power to bring my favorite band (and also, his favorite band), The Fall, to a greater public recognition. Without him, who knows if they would have ever got a national TV spot - and for my money it still goes down as one of their best live outings. The video of their national performance on The Tube (1983) is below. As John Peel once said of the Fall: "They are always different; they are always the same". Rest in Peace to both John Peel and Mark E. Smith - both have added an non-quantifiable value to my life.
Brings me back the glory days of labels like Too Pure and Strange Fruit :)
(link from another comment)
I'm running it as I type this to back them up before they all get removed.
Edit: ah I think it was because of some whitespace getting inserted, so actually not a problem.