A GUEST POSTING by WEBBIE
It will be the last time I will commemorate the passing of Peelie with the thing I created all those years ago – #keepingitpeel. A day to remember Peel and to play that artist you discovered when he played their music on his programme.
It was a couple of years after the BBC commemorations for John Peel day that I noticed there wasn’t one planned for that year. The mentions and memories about him were slowly disappearing and as a listener, wanted to make sure we remembered the impact he had on our musical lives. If the BBC were going to do nothing, we would. Thus the hashtag (remember when Twitter was the place to be back then) #keepingitpeel emerged and on the 25th of October we posted on our blogs (remember when everybody used to…etc), on Twitter and everywhere else with our favourite music first played on the John Peel show.
It was 7 years after his passing that it really peaked. As well as everyone joining in by posting online, there were a few articles in the press, I was interviewed on Irish radio and most importantly – there were promoters in various venues who put on new bands under the John Peel day banner. And a few years later, there was even a night in Aberdeen for local unsigned bands that took place on 25th October 2014. I have a copy of the promo poster. (JC adds……see above!!)
But now it is time to raise a glass for one last time.
Please mention your favourite music that you discovered via Peelie in the comments below. I want to just mention one – a song which wasn’t actually played on his show but was scheduled to be part of a Peel Session, aired in memoriam.
mp3: Shellac – The End Of Radio (live at Maida Vale) – 2nd December 2004
Webbie – Keeping It Peel
JC adds………
Webbie is someone who dates back to what many of us refer to as ‘the golden age’ of blogging. By that, I mean it was a time, dating from the mid-2000s for about a period of a decade or so, prior to the increasing use of podcasts and the growth of streaming services, when enthusiastic music fans were kind of omnipresent and offering up thoughts, views and opinions on music to what was a decent sized community of like-minded enthusiasts. There aren’t anything like the same number of us as before, and certainly the ‘audience numbers’ are much smaller (not that this matters, as none of us do this to earn any money from our efforts), but I’d like to think the quality has remained high.
Football and Music is Webbie’s unique creation, and it’s quite unlike any other blogs. It was through the blog that he came up with the idea of keeping the legacy of John Peel at the forefront of people’s minds, and for that I think many of us owe him a huge thanks. He is asking today that we use the comments to mention our favourite music that we discovered through John Peel. I am taking that a stage further.
mp3: The Smiths – What Difference Does It Make? (Peel Session)
mp3: The Smiths – Handsome Devil (Peel Session)
mp3: The Smiths – Miserable Lie (Peel Session)
mp3: The Smiths – Reel Around The Fountain (Peel Session)
Recorded on 18 May 1983 and first broadcast on 1 June 1983. It was so popular it was repeated just three weeks later and then again on 24 August and 29 December. The requests continued to come in, and it was repeated further on 28 May 1984, 27 May 1985 and 3 November 1986.
I had a cassette copy of the session, taped from the first repeat on 21 June 1983. The quality wasn’t great, but that was irrelevant. It was the only way to hear the band’s songs, as all that had been released at this point in time was the debut 7″ single.
The Smiths used to feature on this blog a great deal, but not in recent times. I stopped knowingly listening to the band a long time ago, but there have been occasions when a song has come on when I’ve been somewhere else, and I’ve found myself enjoying it.
I couldn’t deny that I missed them, but I remained determined not to put any records on the turntable, far less on the blog. The thing that has changed my mind?? It’s all down to enjoying the fact the that increasing numbers of people have recognised Johnny Marr as being the true creative genius. The music of The Smiths is very much part of Johnny’s legacy and doesn’t deserve to be ignored.
The decision to go with this particular session was also inspired by some words Webbie wrote in the email which accompanied this guest posting. But I’m keeping that to myself, if you don’t mind.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I have a lot of Peel Sessions records but, being a Yank, didn’t get to listen to his radio show live. Except once: it was the summer of 1984 and I was doing a summer college program in London. A band called Screaming Blue Messiahs played a few songs, including ‘Someone to Talk To,’ which was excellent. Bought their album later on, but it wasn’t as good as that Peel broadcast. Not sure what became of that band.
Two lesser-known bands immediately spring to mind: Bhundu Boys were first heard on Peel’s show when he played one of their first songs released in the UK. And a Frank Chickens Maida Vale session. Both of these groups led to amazing adventures in my life including thanking Peel from a West London pub stage.
Well, I must admit that my record collection consists SOLELY of artists I first heard on Peel’s BFBS shows from 1984 onwards. There might be a handful of bands I found elsewhere, but in comparison those lose big time!
So it’s too difficult to name a favourite band Peel came up with, but I will never forget when he tried to convince me of the greatness of the Four Brothers and/or the Bhundu Boys by playing their records at immense volume when we sat together in his garden. This was in ’87 or ’88, I was too young, too stupid, too bigoted and punk-minded to understand. Years later I did, of course, and I found all that Soukous stuff just marvellous! So, at least there was one satisfied customer – and to my understanding this always was Peel’s intention by and large: to open minds.
Alas I am too fat these days for my shirt which reads: “John Peel – Legend. Hero. Good Bloke.”
This sums him up pretty well, at least it does for me – if possible, I’d wear this shirt every day, with pride.
And to Jonny: the Screaming Blue Messiahs’ Peel Session is available on 12″ on Strange Fruit Records, I can recommend it without reservation! I don’t know what became of them, but I can tell you that the band they grew out of, Motor Boys Motor, is worth checking out. Although their album’s cover still scares me to death …
Dirk
While I can appreciate John Peel and understand his extensive, undisputed influence, I rarely listened to his show. On the occasions when I did, I think it was more because my peers were. I generally found the show to be too eclectic, or just too challenging to listen to in places – music has always been my happy place; a challenge was not required.
As anyone who knows me knows… I’ve rarely listened to radio full-stop. Even in those heady youth-filled days of listening to the chart run down (to tape something) I hated (a strong word but honest for the time) DJs who talked over songs. I just hated it. John Peel didn’t do that and that was his, ahem, appeal, for me. Even so, I always found myself doing something else when his show was on.
I know I will have missed out on hearing a lot of great music, not just from Peel, e.g. Janice Long, Andy Kershaw, Annie Nightingale, Billy Sloan. etc. however, ‘I can exclusively reveal’ the latter is the only DJ I listened to regularly before spurning the medium.
Peel is deserving of the praised heaped upon him and when fans such as Webbie took action, where there was inaction, and continued the legacy by bringing together a genuine musical fan-base, well, that lightens my step considerably. Quite some time ago I attended a local #keepingitpeel ‘disco’ the mood was celebratory from the off and was one of the best nights I spent at said disco.
Given the above I’m not equipped to know too much about Peel’s show (apart from the more famous incidences) but, if I had to choose a session, then that session would be the one chosen by JC. I, of course, missed The Smiths session and had to wait for Hatful of Hollow – I couldn’t even find a copy of the session at the ‘Barras’ – known for its under-the-counter-not-at-all-legal cassette industry. While the eponymous LP was good, this compilation – following hot on its heels – was a game changer for me.
So, in my usual long-winded way… I’m with JC.
Flimflamfan
Surrounded at my school by idiots who liked heavy metal or ludicrous prog bands, I quite liked the sound of the punk stuff. Peel was the only place to hear it in 77-78, and I listened religiously for a few years until that age when I was usually out for the 10pm to midnight slot. I’d say about 60% of the bands on my shelves were heard on Peel first, obvious names like The Fall, Raincoats, Echo & B, Joy Division, New Order, Smiths, Teardrops, Orange Juice, James, but also New Age Steppers, Nightingales, Scritti, Ivor Cutler, Slits, Au Pairs, Wah, Vivian Stanshall . . . At that age, I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of LPs, so taping sessions and album tracks was often the only way to hear the music. Somehow I still think of 78-83 as the richest era of British music, and that’s down to soaking up everything Peel had to offer.
I can’t really offer anything as to a band I “discovered” through Peel. Like FFF, I rarely listened to radio. I’ve subsequently heard loads of Peel sessions but would find it very difficult to choose a favourite. What I do love is how some bands took the opportunity to do something completely different, safe in the knowledge that Peel would be happy to play along, like when Chumbawamba did a session covering cheesy novelty songs. So for me it has to be the Wedding Present’s Ukrainian sessions. They wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, and if they had, no one else would have played it!
I think the reason the waters have to a certain extent closed over John Peel is due to the sexual abuse he admitted to having carried out when he was younger.
See, for example, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11816499/John-Peel-cancelled-Glastonbury-RENAME-stage-dedicated-BBC-DJ.html from that bastion of journalism Daily Mail, but also on his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peel
Here’s an extract that is obviously particularly concerning from the Mail version.
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Peel added: ‘Oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember. One of my, er, regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older.’
An interview originally published in The Herald in April 2004 stated that Peel admitted to sexual contact with ‘an awful lot’ of underage girls.
In an interview with The Guardian in 1975 while discussing women, Peel said: ‘All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do.’
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Peel had made the transition from left-field, eccentric, beloved BBC Radio 1 presenter to mainstream beloved BBC Radio 4 presenter. Especially in the light of Jimmy Saville and other troubling stories regarding imbalances of power and sex scandals, the BBC seems to be giving him a wide berth. A search of BBC Sounds (holding archive content from BBC Radio) reveals very few items at all featuring him. I suppose it’s also fair to say that 20 years on they have found other ways and other presenters to bring new music to eager ears.
Everything. All the music I listen to/have listened to owes a debt to John Peel – from the obvious Wedding Present/Smiths/Fall/Pixies etc to Underworld/Orbital etc. And I think listening to JP gave me the desire to always seek out new music and shy away from the mainstream.
I can only contribute a little to this, as BFBS, the station for British soldiers in southern Germany, was unfortunately not available. In the mid-80s, I had a friend from the Ruhr area who was in a relationship with the sister of my girlfriend at the time. At that time, he lent me some recorded programmes so that I could at least get a small overview of what music was played there.
I can still remember a programme in which Peel played a session with The Red Guitars. I was so impressed by this band that I immediately bought their first long-playing record, which I still play over and over again. So I’m grateful to him for introducing me to this wonderful band.
Almost. my entire record collection, nay, my entire musical taste was sculpted from what I listened to on Peel’s show in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It is entirely his fault that my life has been “blighted” by an admiration for The Fall!!
I also discovered my love of Joy Division through his sessions and his Festive 50 programmes, (which I always taped) went on to form a significant part of my record collection.
I also have to add that The Wedding Present and The Smiths were also bands that he directed me to as well. The longer that I think about this, the more artists that I recall.
Peel, much missed.
Darren 157
There’s a post about an unrepentant paedophile.
Enough sanctimony – the only appropriate song I can think of (with apologies to Derry’s finest) is Teenage Kicks.
WinterInMaypark
Thanks for keeping Peel alive, Webbie. I was one of those old bloggers that participated in Keeping It Peel for years. In 2014, I managed an interview with PJ Court from Primitives for his remembrances of the man. That was a real highlight. As for me, I’m in America and was only able to listen to Peel regularly through a shortwave radio I had while living in Japan in the early to mid ‘90s. What a treat. I have many Strange Fruit releases, and my favorite might be TWA Toots. Having them participate in the program is so Peel. – Brian
You worship a nonce; praise an adult who married a 15 year old girl and after her suicide wrote repeatedly about schoolgirls and deflowering virgins. But Morrissey is the bad guy somehow.
If Satan came to me and asked me if I wanted to trade my wife for the 15 year old version of her, I would ask Satan what I should talk to my wife about then. Radio plays by Enid Blyton? [sk]
P.S.: I have never listened to a John Peel show. I think that’s a pretty normal statistic for someone who grew up in the worst country in the world. “Mr Blue Sky” by the Delgados is pretty good, right?
I would like to add that I will love the music of the Smith and especially Morrissey’s voice until the end of my days. Regardless of what Morrissey turns into. If I’m not mistaken, three of the songs can be found on the compilation “Hatful of Hollow”. [sk]
Rather than any specific bands I’d probably say that my abiding memory of what Peel introduced me to would be the entire genres of dub reggae and Irish folk. And overall the idea that nothing is off limits just because of the label it has or the trousers it wears. Changed my life, not inconsiderably, did Mr Peel.
Coming to this one very late but I thought it hilarious that there’s a band named after the bold Vic, who’s a mate of mine. I’m meeting him for a pint this weekend, so I shall wind him up relentlessly about it..