- Yank Sizzler UPDATE #2

It took me a while to get round to it but finally I'm letting you know about the latest Yank Sizzler broadcast and, as ever, it's a belter:

-Diana Dors - So Little Time [1964]

-Gogol Bordello - Not A Crime [2005]

-Basement 5 - Heavy Traffic [1980]

-Katja Khudolej - Katja [2002]

-Grinderman - Love Bomb [2007]

-Alhaji K. Frimpong - Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu! [199?]

-The Shackeltons - Your Movement [2007]

-Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia - Blind Spot/Invisible Bend

-Blood on the Wall - I Feel Better Now [2004]

-The Krunchies - Lost Confused [2006]

-Cat-Iron - O, The Blood Done Signed My Name [1958]

-Suzanne Vega - Stay Awake [1988]

I had the chance to literally watch Gogol Bordello from the window of my office a few weeks ago when they did an open air gig at my university but missed them due to the birth of my second son. Pretty good excuse I guess.

Here's the promo ad that appeared on MTV Turkey:



Maybe next time. Anyhows, I'm on my summer vacation throughout the month of July, so can't promise there'll be too many posts over the course of the next month. I'll try my best though, so keep coming back for more goodies.

- Big Ozine UPDATE #4

More new offerings at the ever excellent Big Ozine:

- Tetuzi Akiyama: Belgium 2005

- White Stripes: London 2007

- Sonic Youth: Paris 2006

- Elvis Presley: Desert Storm

- Black Sabbath: Asbury Park 1975

- Radiohead: Black Tuesday 2001

- Dewey Redman: Unreleased Blue Note Session 1969
West 1970

- Spirit: Ebbet's Field 1974

- Janis Joplin: This Is Janis Joplin

- Marc Almond: London 2007

- Procol Harum: Dallas 1974

- Depeche Mode Session?

I've been reliably informed by Rowen Smith that this Depeche Mode session is not a Peel Session but one recorded for the Richard Skinner Show on 11/06/81 and was broadcast on 17/06/81. He found this info on Ken Garner's "In Session Tonight" & this is the only DM BBC session listed.




All I found was this information at the Depeche Mode World website. Although it's not Peel, it's still of interest as it's the only session they did for the BBC.

- Monkey Magic: Ian Brown

OK, so why is this bloke known as being some kind of monkey? I've never really understood that.

I loved the Stone Roses. They made a big difference in my life, one of the main reasons I stopped trying to look like Axl Rose being just one good example. The debut album may well have laid the foundations for the future of British music, however, to quote from the BBC documentary you're about to download, 'it was Ian who made the blueprint for a generation of swaggering, cocksure Britpoppers.'

Having said that, the break up of the band in 1996 was really a case of us all being put out of our misery, and, 'should have also marked the end for the frontman but the following public fued with former band mate, John Squire, a spell in Strangeways prison and onstage fights at his own gigs, only seemed to further cement King Monkey's legendary status.'

This documentary Features interviews with Ian Brown as well as the Arctic Monkeys, Noel Gallagher and James Lavelle.

Broadcast on BBC radio in February, 2006.

- Great new blog discovered: Rare Indie Classics

Is there something about being an English teacher abroad and having a Peel blog? I'm starting to wonder. Anyhows, here's a great new blog, offering downloads of forgotten classics taped from Peel shows of the past.

I strongly suggest you pop over to Rare Indie Classics now. Oh, and by the way, I will be posting something new here soon rather than just telling you what's on other's blogs!


NB: Onion Terror, the owner of the blog, has been in touch and we've been sharing some mutual blog love (couldn't resist the chance to use the present perfect continuous).

- Teenage Kicks UPDATE #1

Lots going on over at the Teenage Kicks blog while I've been away. Some great posts and fabulous mp3s to download. I love this site and only hope we get to read the entire history of the Festive 50 as time goes on!

Here are some of the latest posts:

Joy Division: Don't walk away in silence

Led Zeppelin: The stores are all closed

Veruca Salt: Anger management


 

- Sgt Pepper must die!

There's a theory that the only reason 'Citizen Kane' is considered the greatest films of all time is because people who compile lists need a film to stick in at number one. I've only seen it once myself, don't feel the need to sit through it again and really don't care what rosebud is. 'Star Wars', on the other hand, is a different matter (shame about the most recent three).

Music is very much the same if you ask me. How many of the so-called classic albums can you sit through on a fairly regular basis? I can't honestly say that I've listened to Sgt Pepper even once in the last 20 years, and don't even get me started on Pet Sounds. Consequently, I was really happy to stumble on this article in The Guardian the other day, that goes some way to debunking the myths of these apparently untouchable albums. In fact, going through the list of albums discussed, the only ones I wanted to defend were the ones I'd grown up listening to, and so the connection is more to do with the time and place I was in when they came out, rather than because they in some way transcend musical genres or define styles in any way.

Please take a look and see if you agree with me, here are the classics that are discussed:

Tupac Shakur, All Eyez On Me: Nominated by Mark Ronson, producer

Nirvana, Nevermind: Nominated by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips

The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds: Nominated by Luke Pritchard of the Kooks

The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses: Nominated by Eddie Argos of Art Brut

The Strokes, Is This It: Nominated by Ian Williams of Battles

Television, Marquee Moon: Nominated by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand

The Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Nominated by Billy Childish, prime mover of British garage rock

Abba, Arrival: Nominated by Siobhan Donaghy, former Sugababe turned solo artist

Arcade Fire, The Neon Bible: Nominated by Green Gartside of Scritti Politti

The Doors, LA Woman: Nominated by Craig Finn of the Hold Steady

The Smiths, Meat Is Murder: Nominated by Jackie McKeown of 1990s

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica: Nominated by Peter Hook, ex- New Order and Joy Division

Read the full article here.

- Kat's Karavan UPDATE #2

It's nice to return from my brief hiatus (my second son was born last weekend!) with some updates from the World of Peel blogs.

First up is the continually excellent Kat’s Karavan, who has been kind enough to post some stuff that I myself don't have. For starters, there's some great Top Gear era files on offer, I've blatantly cut and pasted this extract from the mighty blog:


Probably the post of the year on the peel group was from user hills1902, who announced a couple of months back:

I have some old 7 inch reel-to-reel tapes of eight Top Gear
programmes that I recorded in 1969 and 1970, with sessions from the following bands:

26 Apr 69 - Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, Eclection, Family
11 May 69? - Fleetwood Mac, King Crimson, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Bonzo Dog Band
Date unknown - Pentangle, Blodwyn Pig, Mandrake Paddle Steamer, John Dummer Blues Band
Date unknown - Ten Years After, Roy Harper, Third Ear Band
29 Jun 69 - Led Zeppelin, Pentangle, Idle Race,
6 Jul 69 - John Dummer Blues Band, Colosseum, Pretty Things, Imrat Khan
4 Jul 70 - Country Joe Macdonald, Fotheringay, Cochise
11 Jul 70? - Kevin Ayres, East of Eden, Son House

Well, the tapes have now been encoded and properly dated, and they're absolute gems, giving a real flavour of the Top Gear experience for those of us too young to have been there (well, I was technically 'there', but at, 8½, hardly 'hip and happening' enough to set the dial for this). So over the next 8 weeks I'll be uploading these classic shows to the Karavan, starting with this one, which features sessions from, as stated above, Principal Edward's Magic Theatre, Eclection and (The) Family. There's only a slight glitch in Mr. Apollo, as indicated below, but otherwise this is a full two-hour show in very reasonable nick for its age. Manna for Peeliacs.


I've been using the term 'Peelian', although I have to admit I quite like this whole 'Peeliac' thingy. There are some great downloads available, with more promised soon.

- Big Ozine UPDATE #3

As ever, there's a bundle of great new stuff over at The Big Ozine. This week's free mp3s:


-Crosby & Nash: San Francisco 1974

-John Denver: Los Angeles 1971

-Robert Wyatt: Italy 1981

-Simon & Garfunkel: The Alternate Bookends

-Procol Harum: Dallas 1974

-Derek Bailey & Tony Coe: BBC 1979

-Bladerunner: Esper Edition

-Keiji Haino: Coil

-Loggins & Messina: Kansas City 1972

-Jason Molina: Lund 2007

-Miles Davis: London 1971

-Brad Mehldau: Marciac 2006

Why are you still here? Go and download now!

- Primal Scream: The Last of the Rock n' Rollers

Few bands cause such a divide in opinion as Primal Scream, the fact that they have transcended so many different genres means that there is usually at least one appealing album for everyone. This also means that a lot of people only like that one album and don't care much for the rest of their work.




Like most, the album that got me hooked was the awesome Screamadelica, which remains one of my favourites of all time. Of course, the career of the band includes members of other legends such as the Stone Roses, and appearances in other bands, most notably the Jesus and Mary Chain.

In some ways it seems strange that their most highly regarded and critically acclaimed work was completely ignored when time came to vote for the festive fifties, while the earlier, more conventional stuff made regular appearances in the mid-eighties lists. I guess it helps to show the changing nature of John Peel’s listeners over that period.

The BBC broadcast a great documentary charting the twenty-odd-year history of the band this time last year, which I only recently discovered. It’s worth a listen for anyone like me, who has been briefly in love with this band’s work and remains an admirer of their ethic.

Learn more about the documentary here.

Here's a Screamadelica era clip from Rapido:

- Dark Matter: Nick Cave on the Subject of Love

There was a nice article in the Guardian last weekend about Nick Cave, a stalwart of early to mid eighties festive 50s (remind me to make some of those broadcasts available):



Nick Cave's brooding lyrics mark him out not only as a poet of the Australian outback, but as one of the greatest writers on love of our times, argues Will Self

Saturday June 2, 2007
The Guardian

I may not have thought Nick Cave worked for the phone company, but I had no conception of the extent to which his creative gestalt was shot through by harmony quite as much as semantics. He was an affable, if gaunt, bloke I saw at barbecues with his kids.

Then I read his novel And the Ass Saw the Angel and was exposed, full force, to the great Manichean divide that rives the Cave worldview. Exposed also to his very individual and mythopoeic terrain: a landscape, present in his songs and his prose alike, wherein sex kicks up the dust, murders take place in the heat (of the moment) and the sins of the fathers are visited on everyone. To those unfamiliar with the very particularity of the Australian hinterland - both physical and cultural - the backdrop to many Cave ballads, with their talk of guns, knives, horses and brides, may seem cut from a similar cloth to that of lyricists such as Johnny Cash, Dylan and the blues men and country artists they revere.



Read the rest of the article here.

I also love reading Will Self's writing: despite being highly regarded I still think he's one of the few geniuses currently active in the literary world.

- Jeff Mills Live Set, May 2002

I've been trying to upload this for a while without success, let's hope I can manage today.



Mills' set is mentioned lovingly in Margrave of the Marshes, Peel apparently naively suggesting that the 50 records Mills had brought with him would be far too many for the half-hour slot that he was allowed, only to stand back in awe as he proceeded to play every vinyl he'd brought.

Actually, friends, I need some help with this one (for a change). The file is labelled as being from 22nd May, 2002, but the only reference to Mills on the Peel show are for 22nd May, 2003. Indeed, the streaming audo of the 2003 set, which you can listen to on the Peel BBC website is different from the set you're about to download.

- RSS Feeds now available

Apparently, if you click on the little button above my profile, it will let you subscribe to my RSS feed, which tells you every time I update my blog.

Go on, give it a go.

- Black Sabbath, John Peel's Sunday Show, April 26th, 1970

Not quite as serene as the James Taylor & Joni Mitchell Sunday Show I posted a while back, but very cool nonetheless. The earliest Sabbath stuff is the best, I'm sure most of you will agree. Legend has it that it only took them 12 hours in the studio to record the first LP. I was inspired to post this after downloading the AC/DC Peel session yesterday. Indulge me a little!

These performances of 'Black Sabbath' and 'War Pigs' date to about the same time as the Peel Sunday show you're about to download:





Anyway, yeter artik ('enough already' in Turkish):