Kind of Peel

Courtesy of Streetsy


OSCILLATE WILDLY
Badly Drawn Boy
Going Solo - The Peel Sessions 2000
[Download It]

UNTITLED #1
Aphex Twin
Peel Sessions I 1992
[Download It]

EFFERVESCING ELEPHANT
Syd Barrett
Peel Sessions 1970
[Download It]

LARGE NUMBER
Add N to X
John Peel Sessions 2003
[Download It]

KANDY KORN
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band
Recorded for the Peel Sessions - BBC's Top Gear 1968
[Download It]



First, a quick note: Si1ent K and I have figured out the secret to slowing down time, and thus have been able to figure out just how to post almost every single day. It's a necessity in keeping the good music flowing, because, after all, how many DJs can take the day off? Music must flow forth regularly, and heaven knows if it can be listened to, it can be posted. So, what this all boils down to is that beneath this long-winded entry, there is a ton of other tunes fresh off the last week. Each week will appear on one page more or less, so don't think for one small second that the wonderful newness stops here at the end of this post. Scroll down a little ways for further aural rewards. It is our service to you, ourselves, and the music at hand, so digest away and keep on perpetuating the grand music share.

Thanks for reading, and now back to regularly scheduled programming.

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John Peel's been dead for quite some time now. Sadly so, but the longtime BBC Radio beacon/DJ, whose recommendations and acute musical tastes have fueled a thousand rock careers, was an absolute god of the airwaves. Before I moved to the US, I listened to as many of Peel's shows as I could get my hands on. In the era of radio de-diversification, where DJs were replaced with machinery and human contact between host and listener devolved into a crude morning-talk/gross-out format, Peel kept the fresh music flag flying.

I've lost count of the number of legendary recording sessions at the hands of Peel and the Maida Vale studios. It's hard to even fathom the number of them - between his days on 'Top Gear' and his own sessions, John Peel managed it all. A voracious, indefatigable consumer of sound and trends, John Peel gave his life to music, something we could all aspire to do.

So here, today, because I'm in one of those English-pride moments (given our early-morning cricket victory over Australia, a victory I witnessed in an Lower East Side bar having pulled an all-night bender, and one from which I'm still recovering), John Peel gets center stage today. This is not a memoriam or a belated obituary; just an honest salute to a personal hero. Posthumous as it is, his work remains, and here's just a small diverse smattering from some Peel sessions that are personal favourites of mine. I'm not going to ramble on about them all, because, for once frankly I'm going to let them speak for themselves.

Enjoy, let me know which you like and which you don't, and we'll be back tomorrow with some other tributes in a week full of memories.

Final Note: some of the sound quality ain't that hot. Captain Beefheart's session, recording in the late 60s and long since wiped by the BBC archives, is crackly as all hell, but that in some ways makes it better, you know? It's more authentic now, right? It's also incomplete, but there's still more than enough to enjoy. Such is a rarity of it that it's all imperfect and beaten-up, just like little old me.