- The Eno / Fripp backwards blunder: 18th December, 1973

Jupiter, circa December, 1973

The time is December, 1973 and as a no-doubt grizzly three-month baby, I am shocked as Chile breaks diplomatic contacts with Sweden. Elsewhere, Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia. The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its DSM-II, meaning that being gay is no longer a mental illness.

Good news for lazy buggers in the United Kingdom; due to coal shortages caused by industrial action, the three-day-week electricity consumption reduction measure comes into force. Pioneer 10 sends back the Earth’s first close-up images of Jupiter, finally giving us a decent look at the giant spot.

Here we see Patrick Troughton, by this time usurped by Jon Pertwee as TV’s Doctor Who, interviewed on Pebble Mill at One by Marian Foster, transmitted on 21st December, 1973. YouTube commenters on this clip allude to a certain degree of drunkenness, both on the part of the interview and the filming crew.

In case you were still wondering, British TV was a bit dodgy back in those days, to prove it, here is a festive except from the ‘classic’ Generation Game show, starring Frankie Howerd and Bruce Forsyth at their best, originally Broadcast on 25th December, 1973.

TOTP was at the peak of its powers, celebrating its tenth anniversary. Here are the opening two songs from the 1973 Christmas special presented by Peel colleagues Noel Edmonds and Tony Blackburn, with music from Slade and ‘little’ Donny Osmond.

Almost no shows exist from the period 1971 to 1974; in fact, this long-lost show is one of the very few examples of Peel on the radio during that time. It is also the show in which he unwittingly played a session by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno backwards, with Eno being regarded as a crank caller by the switchboard operator when he tried to phone Peel at the BBC to inform him of the error.

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Tracklisting


-Paul McCartney & Wings, 'Jet (LP-Band On The Run)' (Apple/Emi)
-Fripp & Eno, 'Heavenly Music Corporation' (Peel Session)
-Faces, 'Maybe I'm Amazed (7 inch)' (Warner Bros)
-Jack The Lad, 'Back On The Road Again' (Peel Session)

JP: 'It's around this time that we collect a whole handful of listeners that we wouldn't normally get if the television was working, and I'd like to tell you that, I'm very very sorry, but there's no television on. I'm very disappointed that you can't watch it, but, seeing as you can't, you can either listen to us, and we don't talk very much but we do play quite a lot of music. Or you can turn over to Radio Four, where they've got a talk on spinach or something like that.'

-Queen, 'Liar (LP-Queen)' (EMI)
-Bridget St. John, 'Curious & Woolly' (Peel Session)
-Travis Wammack, 'Scratchy (7 inch)' (Sonic)
-Pink Floyd, 'Bike (double LP reissue-A Nice Pair)' (Harvest)
-Bridget St. John, 'Choosing, You Lose One' (Peel Session)
-Jackie Brenston, 'Juiced (LP-Chess Golden Decade Vol. 1)' (Checker)

(11 p.m. news bulletin)

-Ian Carr's Nucleus, 'Caliban (LP-Roots)' (Vertigo)
-Bridget St. John, 'Jumble Queen' (Peel Session)
-Jack The Lad, 'Fast Lane Driver' (Peel Session)
-Ann Peebles, 'I Can't Stand The Rain (7 inch)' (Hi) (omitted from this recording)
-Bridget St. John, 'Sparrowpit' (Peel Session)
-Roy Buchanan, 'After Hours' (LP-Second Album) (Polydor)
-Jack The Lad, 'Where The Action Is' (Peel Session)
-Fripp & Eno, 'Swastika Girls' (Peel Session)

JP: 'I'd like to see what they make of that on Come Dancing...Opinion in here is divided...I think it's great, I really do, magnificent in fact, in the Tangerine (Dream) tradition, I suppose. Very very good, and well worth having the LP, incidentally.'

-Bridget St. John, 'In The Bleak Midwinter' (Peel Session)

- Lucky, Lucky, Lucky: Faust Session, 1973

"It's really impossible to say which is my favourite… Perhaps Culture - I wish they'd done more. The Slits was something of a classic, and I liked several by The Wedding Present. There's been a few American bands that it would have been nice to have - The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead - for a while it was difficult to get American bands into the country in the Sixties and Seventies."

John Peel in an interview with Interzone magazine

JP may not have got biggies like the Doors or Jefferson Airplane, but he did manage to get this a bunch of beary weirdy Krautrockers. Ostensibly active as a band between 1971 and 1975, Faust have in fact plodded along quite happily in various guises to this present day. On a somewhat unconnected theme, I've finally managed to watch Life on Mars, and am eagerly awaiting the torrent of Ashes to Ashes to finish downloading.

What are you listening to that for, you nonce?

As those of you who drag yourselves to this blog on an alarmingly frequent basis will know, I'm still sans Ken's book and rely on the gap-laden Keeping it Peel website, from which I can find no mention of the three tracks you're about to download. Please leave comments if you can enlighten me. Apparently, this session predates my arrival on the planet by six months or so, being from March, 1973 (dubious connection to Life on Mars now becomes obvious).

Track listing:

- The lurcher
- Krautrock
- Do so

Download the session: