The Furtive Fifty

2007-03-27T16:32:00.000+01:00

OK, another long break. My apologies for adding to the global slump in blogging, but I have been rather busy...

However, a couple of weeks ago I went to see The Fall, which is always something worth writing home about.

Lucky for you, I had a new toy to try out, an Edirol R-09 solid-state recorder, which I've been 'evaluating' for work, and despite my fears that I would be frisked senseless on the way in and end up losing it to some suited monkey, it seemed that everyone and his kid brother was photographing/recording/filming this gig, so I felt a bit of pratt pulling it out of my underpants at the bar at the beginning.

As usual, Mark E. kept us waiting, then when the gig did start, it was with a long droney ambient piece, acompanied by some projections of icons such as Elvis & Martin Luther King (and, somewhat bizarrely, Annie Lennox) looping in disturbing ways, which gradually built up to some gut churning sub-bass (alas, not captured on the recording). I'd lay good money on the whole thing having been created with Max/MSP/Jitter. The band, which featured two bass players, then broke into the inevitable thumping riffs and incoherent shouting, and then finally Mark E. ambled in and you knew that everything was going to be OK.

Like many Fall fans, I'm at a loss as to explain what it is about Mark E. Smith that is so special, but within seconds of his arrival on stage, you just know that you're in the presence of genius. My Mrs. bumped into him whilst trying to find the Ladies, and managed to get a 'hello' out of him - I'm so jealous!

Despite tales in the press of on-stage fisticuffs, the band seemed pretty comfortable with one another and remained remarkably impassive as Mark E. wondered around fooling with their instruments, re-arranging the mics etc. and just let him get on with it. Needless to say, the overall effect was pure magic, which will never quite be captured on tape, but have a listen anyway.

Once again, I'm afraid the mics were nothing special, and the acoustics at The Point (which is, after all, a converted church) are not ideal for this kind of thing, but all things considerd, the recording quality is not bad at all. as always, it's neatly edited into a gapless CD format, but I haven't attempted to name any tracks, as I only recognised a couple.
At some point I was also handed a camera, so I managed to get a couple of snaps too...

Get it here

FF '00 20-1 (again!)

2007-01-25T12:54:00.000Z

I was pleasantly surprised to find this whilst looking through my DATs for something else last night. I thought I only had the cassette copies I posted not so long ago, but here's the Fifty from 2000 nos. 20-1 from DAT; you may consider it rather anal to bother re-posting this so soon, just because it's a bit cleaner, especially as it's presented as an .mp3 anyway, but hopefully there may be some other purists out there who will appreciate the difference (or at least think they do, and that's all that counts, eh?).
Actually, I'm posting this to mask my utter frustration at being unable to post the Festive 50 from 2003 in it's entirety (also from DAT) because, after four hours of digitising, I found that I'd done so at the wrong sample rate, making John sound unpleasantly castrato (and what it does to Mark E. Smith's voice is just plain nasty). So Im going to have to do it all again, and I don't have the tapes with me today...blah, blah, woof, woof....
So here's part 1 and part 2.
Hopefully tomorrow I can try again with FF'03...

2007-01-16T09:57:00.000Z

Xmas Special 2000

I got hold of a copy of 'Billy Bragg - The Complete Peel Sessions' the other day, and was slightly dissapointed to find that it wasn't quite complete. To be fair, I'm probably being a bit picky here, because one of my favourite sessions was actually part of an Xmas Special, so I guess it doesn't quite qualify as a session.
Anyway after much rummaging around in the increasingly dusty tape box, accompanied by some swearing (bad back, you understand), I managed to find my copy, so here it is.
And I think you'll agree it was worth the pain - along with Billy in the studio, we have David Gedge and Gary Numan (about whom John gets quite excited), and Peely is in fine form, playing a number of top tracks from past Festive 50's and well as the usual eclectic fayre.
On the down side, we are back in cassette days, and whilst the recording quality is pretty good for analogue tape moving at a poxy 1 7/8 ips, I was a bit tight on the pause button in places, so whilst there is a fair amount of John talking, some of it is rather rudely clipped, for which I apologise.
Of course if I'd known that he was only going to be with us for a couple more Festive 50's, I would have spent all my xmas money on tapes, and recorded his every broadcast breath, but then we all thought he'd go on for ever, didn't we ? Let's not get maudling now, I almost lost it listening to Billy singing a wonderful rendition of Brickbat a minute ago, and I am at work as we speak...
This recording does rather sound like two completely different programs, but I have both sides of the tape marked as being 'pre ff special '00', so I'll just have to take my word for it. Come to think of it, I'm sure there was at least one more track each from messrs Bragg and Numan, so maybe I have the rest on another tape somewhere - damn, more rummaging to do when i get home ....
Btw, whilst this recording is, IMHO, nigh indispensable, it's not, the 'something rather special' hinted at in my last post; that may be a long time coming, so no breath-holding, please.
Here's part 1
and here's part 2

Incidentally, I am barely able to contain my excitement atm, because I have just discovered that someone has finally built the piece of dream technology that have been waiting for, and once I get the Xmas bills paid off, i am almost certainly going to be buying one of these. Not only will this will be a great boon to organising my sprawling audio collection, but I'm hoping it will also simplify the process of digitising my Peel stuff to share here.

2007-01-08T15:09:00.000Z

FF '02.

No chatter this time, just the goods - because I'm busy preparing something for you which is a bit different and, IMHO, rather special. Watch this space...

OK, today's offering is the Festive 50 from 2002: FM > DAT > Peak > .Ogg @ 256k. No Peel, just music because (and we've been through this before) they we're edited to make CD's for the journey to/from work. I think I still have the original of this somewhere, and if that's the case, I'll post it sometime.

Yer 'tis:

Disc1.pt.1
Disc1.pt.2
Disc2.pt.1
Disc2.pt.2
Disc3.pt.1
Disc3.pt.2

I've just noticed that Track 10, disc 2, The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song, which is not to be missed in my opinion, appears to be missing so here it is.

Have fun.

2006-12-22T13:23:00.000Z

The Magic Band and the Band from Utopia.
Probably just procrastinating again, to avoid the inevitable horror that is Xmas without the Festive 50, but I suddenly found myself racked with guilt about having not posted anything here for so long.
Being away from work, I have no access to the old tapes I've been pateintly digitising, but as I was watching a wonderful performance by Frank Zappa last night (is there any other kind?), I got to thinking about a DVD rip I did a while back of 'The Band from Utopia.'
If you haven't seen it, it's a posthumous performance by one of the Zappa band's finest line-ups (OK, there's plenty of scope for debate on that point), which is so good you can almost forget that Zappa is not actually there.
...which got me to thinking about a session the The Magic Band did for Peel, not long before he died, which was also notable for being totally wonderful despite the absence of the main man.
So here it is (part 1) & (part 2)

Tracklist:
01 intro
02 Diddy Wah Diddy
03 Circumstances
04 a woman's gotta hit a man
05 Bass solo
06 Unknown Track
07 Steal Softly through Sunshine
08 talking
09 Abba Zabba
10 My Human Gets me Blues
11 Alice in Blunderland
12 Hair Pie
13 Evening Bell
14 Electricity
15 Floppy Boot Stomp
16 Mirror man
17 talking
18 Moonlight on Vermont
19 Big Eyed Beans from Venus

Broadcast 07/07/04, recorded to DAT, Ogg Vorbis @256k

And damnit, because it's New Year, here's The Band from Utopia too

Tracklist:
1.Bamboozled by Love
2.Lucille has Messed my Mind up
3.The Bebop Tango
4.Easy Meat
5.Uncle Meat
6.Sofa
7.Andy
8.On the Outside
9. The Illinois Enema Bandit

The band:
Tommy Mars, Robert Martin, Ike Willis, Arthur Barrow, Tom Fowler, Bruce Fowler,Kurt McGetterick, Ed Mann, Chad Wackerman, Jay Dittamo

DVD rip, AAC @ 128k

PS. Just to waste a few more minutes, and whilst we're on the subject of Zappa, I want to ask a question; apart from some early Mothers stuff which he played on The Perfumed Garden, does anyone ever remember Peel playing any Zappa on his show ? Either I've been very unlucky and I've missed it, or he never did, which, considering Zappa was one of the most prodigious musical talents of the last Millenium, is pretty strange, don't you think ? I was wondering if it could be because John was very fond of Beefheart, and that Zappa & the Cap'n were famously not the best of friends following some contractual wrangling way back when. As John would say, 'answers on a postcard, please'....

2006-11-15T16:36:00.000Z

I am so crap; it takes me weeks to get round to uploading anything, and often, by the time I do, I've forgotten exactly what's what...
I found this little gem lying in a drawer the other day, digitised and roughly edited it, then promptly forgot about it. Now I've had to listen to most of it again, to work out which way round it all goes, (not that that's a terribly odious task, but hell, I am supposed to be working) and somehow, I've found another completely unrelated session, recorded in the middle of it, that I don't even remember recording! If you see what I mean.... No? Ah well, I think I have it sorted now.
What it should be, is a session from Dave Clarke, which I think was recorded in Feb 04, and even though I think I've largely grown out of techno now, I still love this session; just pure, raw techno, the kind of stuff that still sounds good today, when most of the rest of it's ilk has gone the way of old cheese. I have a Dave Clarke recording from Glastonburger somewhere, that also sounds pretty damn fine - if I find it, I'll bung it your way.
There was some discussion on the Peel Yahoo list recently about the digitising og old vinyl, during which someone mentioned how utterly hit-and-miss some of yesteryear's music of the 'dance' genre is when you re-visit it today.
I guess a lot of us Peelers went through that crazy pill-poppin' club scene for a while, and thought at the time that the music was great and the scene would last forever, only to find a few years down the line, that the music was largely shite, and thank Christ it's all more or less over.
Sure, some of the 'IDM' stuff still sounds good - I'm still pretty partial to most of what came out of the Warp satble, for instance - and I can still get off on a good Drum n' Bass mix now and again. But either I'm getting too old to dance, or my missus is right, and you can't beat a good tune; a voice & a guitar, that kind of thing.

Anyway, back to the tape. There is a great footballing discussion at the beginning, betweeen Peel & Lamo, and, talking of good tunes, that wonderful Hitchers track about I guy trying to watch the football whilst his girlfriend is arguing at him. A bit lo in the fi stakes, I'm afraid, but life does indeed have surface noise, and even tape hiss sometimes...
Get it here

2006-10-13T13:22:00.000+01:00

...and here's CD 2 (part 1 and part 2).
I made a few more of those editorial decisions, because although I'm not totally averse to a little Springstien now and then, I've always felt that once you've heard one of his live blockbusters, you've heard 'em all, so I've traded 9 minutes worth of Rosalita, for a couple of country gems off the first DVD.
Which says something about growing old, I guess, because 10 years ago I thought I didn't like anything that called itself country, whereas nowadays I find the sound of the pedal steel and a misty-eyed Southern twang strangely alluring.....

A word about the file formats. I've recently re-discovered Ogg Vorbis, after downloading something the other day which really blew me away with it's quality. The hippy in me loves the whole open-source thing, but I'd given up on .ogg's largely due to lack of available Mac software. But when I recently found out that not only can you drop them straight into Toast 7 to burn audio CD's, but that the Xiph QuickTime component for OS X actually works in iTunes now, I was chuffed to bits (btw, this is also available for Windows). So if it's OK with everyone else, I'll be sticking with this format from now on.
Which brings me to plug another great bit of audio freeware, a thing called Max - no, not the totally wonderful Max/MSP, that's another thing entirely, but a high quality audio encoder which does just what it says on the box.

I think If Peel had had the faintest idea of what software was, he might well have applauded the idea of freeware too.

CD 2 Tracklist
1. Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
2. XTC - Statue of Liberty
3. Blondie - Touched by Your Presenc
4. Meatloaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Light
5. Tom Petty-American Girl
6. Iggy Pop - I'm Bored
7. Bonny Rait-Too Long at the Fair
8. Emmylou harris-Amarillo
9. Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric?
10. The Specials - a Message to you Rudy
11. The Ramones- Rock n' Roll High School
12. The Damned - Smash it up/ I Just can't be Happy Today
13. PIL - Careering
14. The Teardrop Explodes - Reward
15. Japan - the Ghosts of My Life
16. REM - Moon River/Pretty Persuasion
17. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding

Missing talking Heads track here (Thanks to Psychedelic Vulture for pointing this out)

2006-10-11T10:35:00.000+01:00

Happy Peel Day! It's just a shame that the BBC seems to have such a short collective memory...
More than a shame really, when you stop to think how much John gave to them over so many years, and just a couple of years on, they offer such paltry commemoration playlist that you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd got the wrong day....ah, well.
My sincere apologies that I haven't got anything more Peelish for you myself today, but John often joked that he was forever being mistaken for Bob Harris, so maybe he would enjoy the irony of this offering on Peel Day.

Anyway, I was listening to (watching) the first of the Beeb's OGWT compilation DVD's this weekend, and decided that there were one or two performances therein (notably Tim Buckley's 'Dolphins', Robert Wyatt's 'Shipbuilding' and Tom Waits' Tom Traubert's Blues) that I had to have on CD, so I could l blub along to them in the car on my way to work. And as ripping audio from DVD's and compiling them onto CD's is a fairly lengthy task, I thought I might as well share the results.
I had to make a few editorial decisions, in order to fit it all on 2 CD's, but I'm assuming that no-one here would really miss Simply Red (though fair play to the man, he does have a fine voice), and I've never really cared much for the Police, and have never been able to understand what people see in U2 either. And classic or no, 12 mins of Freebird, I can also live without. And Elton John, and...OK, there's probably enough material for a 3rd CD, but I'm just too busy right now.

There are some truly wonderful performances on these discs, including the inevitable epic version of Skynyrd's Freebird (is there any other kind?), and a cracking piece of theatre from Meatloaf, which I can still remember watching as a kid, probably because there is a bit where you get a flash of tit from Loaf's co-performer (sorry, but what was her name ?).
Apparently, there were a number of complaints received at the BBC after it was shown, not so much for the tit content, but for the fact that it showed some big, ugly fat bloke getting it on with a skinny lovely on stage - I would have thought that it should be applauded for bringing a ray of hope into the lives to fat bastards everywhere, but there you go.
Actually I think the real reason for the complaints may well have been because Meat shouts "FUCK YOU" at the top of his voice at the end of the song, and presumably the Beeb's technicians were just too stunned by the performance to notice, or too impressed to edit it out afterwards.
A note for the Nerds; if you want to rip audio from DVD, then you need the mighty MPEG Streamclip - a wonderful piece of cross-platform freeware, which you'll find at Squared5.com . The author truly deserves your support, even though he/she doesn't seem to be asking for it - no 'Donate' buttons on the site! So that's 'free' as in "as a bird, babe"...

Here's Disc 1 part 1 and part 2 (tracklist below) and disc 2 will follow shortly...

1. Alice Cooper - Under my wheels
2. Curtis Mayfield - We Gotta have Peace
3. Randy Newman - Political Science
4. Bill Withers - Aint no Sunshine
5. Focus -Sylvia
6. Rory Gallagher - Hands Off
7. John Martyn - May you never
8. The Wailers - Stir it Up
9. Roxy Music - Do The Strand
10. Edgar Winter - Frankenstien
11. New York Dolls - Jet Boy
12. Tim Buckley - Dolphins
13. Captain Beefheart - Upon the My Oh My
14. Little Feat - Rock n' Roll doctor
15. Dr.Feelgood - Roxette
16. John Lennon - Stand By Me
17. Alex Harvey - Give My Compliments to the Chef
18. Tom Waits - Tom Trauberts Blues
19. Otway & Barret - Really Free

2006-09-27T11:25:00.000+01:00

FF 2000. Because you demanded it, a Festive Fifty in it's true, raw state, complete with our John, tape hiss and songs cut off in their prime - yes, dear listener, this one's off a cassette.
A truly classic Fifty though: plenty of Delgados, Hefner, PJ Harvey, etc. The Cuban Boys and Cow Cube - what fun! Funny just how many 'Golden Eras' of Peel there seem to have been when you look back on it though, isn't it ?
Btw, you might like to know that as well as being on the Beeb's own Peel pages, you can find also full FF playlists at http://www.rocklist.net/festive50.htm ,and as they're presented in nice clean lists, all on a single page, they're easier to copy/paste from for compiling those all-important CD labels.

Anyway, here's the gear:

2006-09-15T12:18:00.000+01:00

Boy, that was a long holiday, wasn't it? Or perhaps I've just been too lazy/busy recently... Anyway, I'm going to try to upload various random Peel tapes on a more regular basis now, and having recently returned from a wonderful couple of week in France, I thought I'd start with this , which is a session from Stereolab from '97.
Sexy French accents with just the right blend of electronics and old skool guitars n' drums - what more could you ask for ? Works for me, that's for sure...

Track List (according to the BBC - I haven't checked it):
Brakhage
Flower Called Nowhere
The Light
Refractions In The Plastic Pulse
Miss Modular
Metromonic Underground
John Cage Bubblegum

2006-08-10T09:25:00.000+01:00

Apologies.
What with family crises, illness and work, I've been a very busy bunny over the last few weeks, with little or no time for blogging; and as if that's not enough, I'm off on holiday next week, so I thought I'd best upload something quick...
...trouble is, I find myself with only two days to go, and not much that I can upload immediately.

As a stop-gap, I found a random Peel show on my hard-drive, or at least a bit of one; I recorded it on the occasion of my son's second birthday, and, joy-of-joys, Peely played a song for him. This is only half the tape, ie. one side of a C90, so I don't know if this is the half in which my secret identity is revealed - and I haven't got time to check it now - how exciting!

Needless to say, as an analy retentive Peel taper, I will have to find the second half (first half actually, as this is labeled 'side 2', so I'll assume it is) and upload it when I get back from mes vacances (catch the clue as to where I'm going?). The audiophiles might be disappointed, because it's very much an analogue affair, but at least the Peel purists will be happy, because it is entirely un-edited. Um, except that it starts half way through a Laura Cantrell song...sorry.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating; I have work to be completed before I go away, and I don't want to do it, so I'm wasting as much time as possible by typing to you, dear reader; ah fuckit, it's only 2.30 - I'm not going to get away with it, am I...?

Ok, it's here

A plus tard!

Stop press: recording the second (well, first) half, I realised that the reason I taped this one (apart from it being my son's birthday, of course) was that the lovely Cat Power was in session. A good reason not to miss this one, then.

Here's side 1

Btw, anyone catch that, "And today's only headline is..." on News 24 yesterday, referring to the alleged terrorist threat ? Sorry ? The only headline ? Israel vs. Lebanon, anyone ? Blimey, that worked, Tony; remember to tell your mate across the Atlantic...

2006-06-28T09:53:00.000+01:00

The All Time Festive 50 (1999/2000)
If Peel was the arbiter of all that was Good Music during his lifetime (and I think we all agree, he was), and the Festive 50 were the best 50 tunes from his show for a given year, then surely the All Time FF represents the best 50 tunes of our time ?
Actually, the preponderance of Joy Division tunes, especially in the top 10, leads me to believe that it says more about our generation than I feel quite comfortable with, but leaving that aside for a minute, these three CD's do contain some pretty damned essential material.
I listened to the first one in the car on the way to work this morning (VERY LOUD) and had trouble getting out of the car when I arrived - there are some tunes that it's just downright rude to turn off before the end, and with so many of them on one CD, you'd be well advised not to listen to these in your car if you plan to get anywhere on time. As Peely once said during the course of a show "D'you know, I think I've given myself a headache - and I don't care!"
As mentioned below, this is a reconstructed FF (sorry Peel purists - just the music again), because I was round at a friend's house during at least part of it's broadcast, so I didn't get to record all of it. And anyway, tunes like these deserve better than cassette quality (even if they do end up getting .mp3'd, but that's a debate for another time...)
I happened to have most of these tunes already, and those that I didn't have weren't that hard to find, with one notable exception, which was My Bloody Valentine's "You Made me Realise"; damn that was hard to find! Or at least it was hard to find a decent copy of the original - there are quite a few live versions out there, but without exception, they turned out to be 10+ minutes of serious noise n' grunge, which is OK when you're in the mood for it, but wasn't what I was after.
You can find the track list here (yeah, I know you can get them at the Beeb's Peely pages too), and you may notice that this is actually the second 'All Time' FF that Peely did, the first being back in 1982 - and check out that track list! It reads like one of those "The Best Punk CD Ever" tracklists (actually, I have that CD, and it's awesome). I feel another reconstruction coming on....
I have included CD case inserts as .pdf's and you will have to compile the tracks in reverse order (ie. starting at no.50) if you want to use these. I recommend also that you burn the CD's with zero gaps between tracks, and note that depending on what software you use to compile & burn, you might find that the track numbers are taken from the .mp3 tags, which, of course, are not the same as their respective position in the ATFF. Wtf, it's worth the effort.

Disc1(50-32) pt.1

Disc1 pt.2

Disc2(31-15)

Disc3(14-1)

2006-06-19T12:36:00.000+01:00

OK, so I'm new to this game and obviously missing something... My download stats are not exactly spectacular, and I'm guessing it's because nobody knows I'm here. So I'm all ears to any experienced blogheads who want to tell me how things work.
For one thing, I'm assuming that if you link to other pages, they are more likely to link to you, but try as might, I can't see a way to add a side bar to put links on. I'm no web whizz, but I can muddle by with HTML & Dreamweaver, but then I thought all this blog stuff was meant to be for idiots and technophobes anyway ? So where's the Easy Peasy Add Links Here template, eh ?
In the meantime, I am busy sorting out stuff in the background, so it's not all wasted time. In particular, I'm recompiling the All Time Festive 50 that was broadcast on the eve of the Millenium - I did record it, but a) didn't get all of it and b) what i did get is only on comcrap cassette, so I've been chasing up quality recordings of all the tracks, and have just one left to get now - can ya guess what it is yet ?

2006-06-15T11:37:00.000+01:00

Of course Peely's wasn't the only show on Radio One to ever play good music - not quite, anyway; there was (and still is) One World, though like all good music shows on the Beeb, it's been pushed into ever later and more obscure time slots, presumably on the basis that only weirdos listen to this kind of stuff, and they probably don't sleep much anyway.
The upside of the Beeb's candle-burning is that you have to set up a recording in case your other half wont let you stay up half the night listening (they just don't get it, do they?), and with One World being a two hour show, the only way to guarantee you record the lot, is to use a two hour tape, which of course means DAT.
Sadly, on the occasion of this particular broadcast (05/04/02), which was a fantabulous set from Peter Holdsworth and Adrian Sherwood, of Pressure Sounds and On-U respectively, atmospheric conditions weren't perfect in my part of Wales (insert Welsh Weather Joke here), so there's a dose of FM noise on the recordings. At the risk of irking the purists however, I'm not totally opposed to a bit of noise, whether FM or surface, on reggae recordings - somehow it seems to work better than with other genres.
It was a great set anyway, and just right for this time of year - after all, we're nearing end of the second week of my Hawaiian shirt collection.
The first CD is the Pressure Sounds half - edited, as usual, into one seamless mix, but including the odd rather irritating station ident. It will be followed by the On-U set, which, well, more On-U than reggae, but still contains some fine material.

Track List - Pressure Sounds

Heptones - 'Revolution' (Pressure Sounds)
Donovan Carlos - 'Be Thankful' (Pressure Sounds)
Burning Spear - 'Travelling' (Pressure Sounds)
Big Youth - 'Cool Breeze' (Pressure Sounds)
Earth & Stone - 'That's The Way You Feel' (Pressure Sounds)
Little Roy - 'Christopher Columbus' (Pressure Sounds)
Ken Boothe - 'Who Gets Your Love' (Pressure Sounds)
Wayne Smith - 'Time Is Moved' (Pressure Sounds)
Half Pint - 'Mr Landlord' (Pressure Sounds)
Lloyd Hemmings - 'Rude Boy' (Pressure Sounds)
Burning Spear - 'Spear Burning' (Pressure Sounds)
Johnny Osbourne - 'Purify Your Heart' (Pressure Sounds)
Garnet Silk - 'Mystic Chant' (MPCD 001)
Junior Tucker - 'Praise His Name' (MPCD 001)
Far I - 'Psalms for I' (Pressure Sounds)

1 World Pressure Sounds CD

And Adrian Sherwood's half of the show :
(I have the tracklist somewhere, but I'm not sure that it corresponds exactly with what's on the disc...)

1 World On-U CD

2006-06-12T15:59:00.000+01:00

Festive 50 '04 ? Not so festive really. What with there being no Peel, I barely managed to force myself to make a recording. In fact I only seem to have nos. 20-1, but seeing as how it's not True Peel, no-one will mind that I've edited out the chatter, whereafter it fits very neatly onto a single CD - and there are some stonking good tracks on it too, which somehow manages to at least lend it the feel of the Festive 50.
You've got to feel sorry for Rob Da Bank, because Peel was, and still is, an impossible act to follow; I guess you just have to enjoy the massive kudos of being allowed to attempt such a task, and accept that no-one will ever truly love you because you're just not Peel.
Tech note; this year I tried to record the FF directly from my newly aquired digi box, on the assumption that as it is in effect DAB, the quality should be top notch - I coupled it directly to my DAT via SPDIF, so it should have sounded pretty damn shit hot; sadly however, there is a subtle but annoying little digital 'pop' every few seconds throughout the recording, which, other than going down to sample level and individually drawing out every damn one of them (and I am not quite that sad), cannot be shifted. Technology, eh ?

Festive Fifty 04 20-1 pt.1

Festive Fifty 04 20-1 pt.2

2006-06-05T09:02:00.000+01:00

To Peel, or not to Peel ?
There's been a couple of comments about the lack of Peel on my Festive 50 CD's. I'm not sure what John would have made of the whole Cult of Peel thing - probably been rather embarrassed by it all, though I suspect that, ethics of music sharing aside, he'd at least be pleased to know that there were folks still discussing (and even listening to!) his kinda music.
I also have a feeling that his response to the 'wot - no Peel?' posts might have been a resounding chorus of 1/2 Man's "Hang the Purists", but as I confess to having been a big Home Truths fan too, it must have been about more than just the music...
Anyway, to reiterate my excuse, I originally edited the FF's to fit onto CD's so I could listen to them in the car on the way to & from work; having recently moved a bit closer to work, I only get time to listen to half a CD each way, so much as I love the banter, it had to go - and let's face it once you've heard John say "and at that all-important no. 23 slot..." half a dozen times, you can just about live without it.
But in the spirit of sharing and lilly-livered compromise, I will dig out the masters and make torrents of 'em, Peel and all, and post links here. However, as my CD's are already compiled complete with meta-tags & all that, you'll forgive me if I continue to post them as they are, I hope ?
So watch this space...

In the meantime, here's something Peel, but not Peel; the first of 3 CD's that I made from the tribute programs that appeared on Radio 1 shortly after we so tragically lost our John; the DJ's were just the usual Beeb underlings, so you wont mind me editing them out (howl in protest if you like - I actually can't remember who hosted the shows, so apologies if it was anyone worth remembering), but there's a good, if rather predictable selection of some of John's fave raves. CD's 2 & 3 to follow...

Peel Tribute CD1

Peel Tribute CD2

Peel Tribute CD3

A couple of peely highlights (from the poignant to the rediculous): last track on CD 2, John's last 'phone call back home, asking the home team to check out the Peruvian dance music scene for him, and on CD 3, track 15 is Peelie himself singing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" ! Listen, and weep...

2006-05-31T14:25:00.000+01:00

Xmas '03 saw the last 'proper' Festive Fifty, and it was for me, a particularly hard-earned one.
Myself, my ex, my son and a couple of friends, planned to spend Xmas in a cottage in Pembrokeshire, and naturally my first thought was "How am I going to record the Festive 50 ?" What if they didn't have a decent tuner in the cottage ? Of course I'd have to take one with me, but my own, hailing from the glory days of Hi-Fi, was the size & weight of a well-packed trunk, and I just didn't fancy trying to shift the thing.

To save myself the driving, I was to be getting a lift with a mate, so I thought perhaps I could persuade him to take his, which after all, had originally been a gift from me. However, when I arrived at the house I soon realized he was in no mood for de-rigging the hi-fi, and there followed a furious row, which ended with me saying that I would drive there in my own car, fuck-you very much, and take my own sodding tuner.

Of course, it being the season of goodwill to all men, we eventually made up over a few bottles of red, and I managed to rig up the tuner & DAT in my quaint little Pembrokeshire bedroom and record the Fifty in all it's glory. Here's the first CD's worth, nos. 50 - 30.

By a strange coincidence, the cottage turned out to be in a little village where some 25 years earlier, I had spent a disastrous week trying to earn some money picking spuds. To cut a long & rather miserable story short; we crashed the car on the way there, had trouble finding work when we got there, earned piss-all when we did; crashed the car a again, got sacked for telling the farmer that we were working for that we'd witnessed his dog worrying sheep; the car broke down, we spent a week waiting for spares, living off nothing but potatoes; I pulled a muscle in my leg and had to limp for miles before managing to hitch a lift from a dodgy redneck, who offered to find me work, then took me to a pub where no-one spoke English, and I couldn't afford a drink, before taking me only as far as Swansea, where I hoped to borrow money off my girlfriend's junky sister, who of course had none, so I ended up jumping a train home, and was late signing on.

I have a strong suspicion that the only thing that kept me alive whilst waiting for the car bits to arrive, was listening to Peely on the radio.

If someone had told me then, that 25 years later I would be spending Christmas in a holiday cottage nearby, I would have laughed, or more likely wept bitter tears at the irony of it all; back then, holiday cottages were things you set fire to, not spent Christmas in - "Give the anarchist a cigarette", and all that....

FF03 CD1 pt.1
FF03 CD1 pt.2

...and here's disc 2

FF03 CD2 pt.1
FF03 CD2 pt.2

...followed, almost inevitably, as John would say, by disc 3

FF03 CD3

A word about the discs - they run in the proper order (ie. starting at no.50 and ending at that thrilling No.1 spot) and I've edited them so that as far as possible the tracks segue seamlessly, as John would have no doubt done himself; to appreciate the full artistry of the thing, burn the CD's with no gaps between tracks.

2006-05-16T15:54:00.000+01:00

Does the world need another Peel sharing blog ? You bet your bum it does...
I'm going to be posting some Festive 50's here, of course, but first, Billy Bragg:

I first heard Billy on John's show, in a muddy field in Herefordshire, way back when. I was picking apples at the time. I can even remember the tune, it was A13, Gateway to the South, and I think it may well have been Billy's first session for Peel, which probably means his first radio appearence anywhere.
I can remember thinking, "Hmm, solo bloke playing an angry guitar & singing - excellent, but there can't be a lot of mileage in it". Of course I was completely wrong, and a couple of weeks ago, some twenty-something years after I first heard him, I found myself sitting in St. David's Hall, Cardiff, part of an adoring crowd watching Billy thrash his guitar in anger, and singing his heart out - and loving every minute of it.
But of course, that was the genius of Peel - he could spot something brilliant light years before the rest of us caught on. How I miss him...

Confession time (no1). I went to Peel's funeral.
I have never had any truck with the repulsive circus that is today's Cult of Celebrity (Big Brother lovers, leave NOW), and at the time of John's funeral, I was not a well man (OK, let's get this out of the way now - I have been suffering from ME/CFS for a little over four years; I'm a lot better now, but still not rudely healthy). So attending a funeral across the other side of the country (I live in S.Wales), was roughly the equivalent to a 'normal' person running a marathon up Everest, wearing wellies filled with cold treacle. I went with a friend who also has ME, and we queued for a couple of hours, and just as we got to the door of the cathedral, they stopped letting people in. I didn't care. They could have hung me from the rafters, I just had to be there.

There was a wonderful atmosphere, and an audience as eclectic as John's music itself, everyone swapping tales of what John had meant to them. I stood next to a guy who had raced in the TT, who found out during the course of the converstation with the complete stranger next to him, that he had raced with the guy's dad, (or somesthing like that). There was this incredible feeling of community there; folks who had no more in common than a love of Peel - and that's really all you needed. You know that feeling, like at the end of a rave, when everyone's all loved up and grinning like twats ? Like that but without the gurning and the cramps.

Confession 2: Billy Bragg makes me cry. Songs like Levi Stubbs Tears, World Turned Upside Down, Valentine's Day and Brickbat get me every time, I have to listen to them in private. Just listening to him talk (and God knows he loves to do that!) on a recording I have of a Joe Stummer tribute gig he did, has me reaching for the snot rag (you can get the recording at http://tinyurl.com/gmwpn ).
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I went to see Billy at St. David's Hall, Cardiff with a minidisc recorder tucked down my pants, and here's the result. I know BB has a 'open-source' policy about recording his gigs, but I was worried the goons at St. Davids might not be quite so enlightened and confiscate the MD recorder, which I'd borrowed from work. Apologies for the quality - cheesy little stereo mic, big hall acoustics etc. And like a pillock, I only took one disc with me, so I didn't get the encore, which was an absolute stormer, but hey, it's better than nowt.
And, Billy - gutted to hear about the BNP getting in down in your neck of the woods mate, but we'll see the bastards off again, eh ? Hope, not Hate.

http://rapidshare.de/files/21435286/part1.zip.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/21435504/part2.zip.html