- 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):