28 April 2007

A wave of nostalgia is coming up as the 40th anniversary of the Summer of
Love approaches. Let's look back at one of the events that truly changed
music. Forty years ago right now, John Peel had only been back in the UK for
a few months, after spending several years in America. A wonderful synopsis
of the story along with audio samples of early John Peel can be found at
http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/peel.htm. He was hired by a pirate radio
station based in the North Sea called Radio London, and filled in where he
could. Until he was given his own show, called the Perfumed Garden (hey, it
was the 60's). What he began to do on this show in May of 1967 is what he
would continue to do throughout his career: play what he liked and look for
what he hadn't heard, bucking convention for what sounded good to him. Even
towards the end of his career in this century, his radio show on BBC1 was
not like anything else on the whole of the radio. BBC executives let him
keep going, because, well, he was John. It was sometimes, to be fair, hard
to listen to. He would play anything. But you knew you would never hear
these songs anywhere else, and his record collection surely, to paraphrase
Indiana Jones, "belongs in a museum." He'd play the craziest futuristic
breakbeat thing you've ever heard followed by some local noise-thrash demo
he just got in the mail followed by some obscure countryish track from the
thirties followed by the Fall followed by African pop. It was forty years
ago that he started playing what he wanted to play, changing the world of
music more than he would ever realize.

Here's a few tracks from New Order playing Joy Division songs at the John
Peel tribute a couple of years ago. Your homework for this history class
will be to listen to these songs and further research John Peel (and the
history of these tracks if you're a youngin').

http://funeralpudding.blogspot.com/2007/04/john-peel-started-40-years-ago.html