When you were a kid, did you record the Peel show? I did. Dozens and dozens of cassettes, all made – at least to begin with – by Sellotaping the crappy microphone from my cassette recorder to the crappy speaker of my Sanyo transistor radio. Of course, those cassettes are long gone (this is 25 years ago) but I bet you kept yours. You should dig them out, encode them and stick them on your weblog – that would be a good way of remembering him, wouldn’t it?
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I remember recording one particular David Bowie session that was being revisited and like a muppet made a real effort to edit out Peel’s voice with the pause button. Now I wish I had the bits of him talking – the Bowie session’s available on a CD and it’s not as good as I remembered.
One of the JP highlights was hearing “Hellhound on my trail” by Robert Johnson (the totally legendary Delta Bluesman – not in session as he’d been dead for 200 years) as the opening tune on a Peel show. I was 14 or 15. It was the first time I’d heard old time blues as opposed to some Birmingham pub rock band at the Barrel Organ, the Fighting Cocks or the Monkey’s Nuts (I made that last one up) and it does still send shivers down the spine. Borrowing the record from the library the next day just didn’t have the same effect.
I’m going to go and look in the shed and see if I still have the tape. I doubt it.
Thinking about it, where would I get dozens of cassettes? I probably had *one* cassette recorded over repeatedly. Also, I think you’re right. I’m sure I tried to cut Peel out of the tapes too… Juliet says she has some old cassettes somewhere…
I know I’ve definately got one from around 1979/80. It’s got the Poison Girls on it singing ‘Persons Unknown’ and quite alot of punk stuff. I particularly remember a song called Violence Grows sung by a girl who sounded really bored and about twelve. I loved it. My mum caught me listening to it and told me that if I continued to listen to music like that then I would end up on drugs. I didn’t end up on drugs but continued to record in secret under my pillow for some months after! I’m going to go and find it – its on an old WH Smith C90 in a battered doctors bag with all my other tapes of the top 40 I used to tape on Sunday nights instead of doing my homework. Can’t believe I’ve carried them around all these years. Unfortunately I also have a vague memory of clunkily editing old JP’s voice out but I’m going to go and find it now.
I’ve got lots of bits of Peel, and loads of Festive Fifties, taped, but I also tended to cut out the talking.
However, I did tape a Peel show around 1995, when he had Dick Dale and The Fall (or some other favourite) in session, and I thought “Some day Peel’s going to die and I’ll want to have at least one show taped for posterity”. Thankfully it took him a while longer to go. Hopefully I’ve still got the tape somewhere…
Violence Grows
Fatal Microbes
Thank you – I had forgotten the name of the band. I have just discovered that you can get it as a Nokia ringtone. Bloody hell! I feel REALLY old all of a sudden.
Crikey, what a ringtone!
I just listened to it on ringtonesgalore. It’s a truly terrible monophonic piece of cack . I can’t believe that anyone would pay the fee of ?4.50 for the pleasure. I’d much rather listen to Peely introduce the real thing any day. And I will do when I find my old tapes.