Ray's Tapes

Introduction
"Having lurked for a long time here, I thought it was time to give something back to this wonderful community. I recently took delivery of a bunch of my old cassettes that had been in storage for many years, and have started digitizing them. They are nearly all partial Festive Fifty shows, so no huge surprises here, but to my aged ears these generally sound better than the copies currently available, and in some cases have many of the session tracks that preceded the countdown itself....All mp3s are 256k stereo (probably overkill for a 30-year iron oxide cassette source)."
 * This page catalogues the collection of Peel tapes, mostly devoted to the Festive Fifty, shared by Peel Mailing List member ray_b2.
 * ray_b2 (message to list, 4 Feb 2010):

Festive Fifty Tapes
"First up, FFs from 1980 to 1982. Where these are in two parts, the second is the FF itself. In some cases the first is assembled from two or more separately recorded segments - I was short on tape in those days, I guess, and not averse to liberal use of the pause button."
 * ray_b2 (previous message):

1980 Festive Fifty
22 December 1980 / 23 December 1980 / 24 December 1980 / 29 December 1980 / 30 December 1980

1981 Festive Fifty
23 December 1981 / 24 December 1981 / 28 December 1981 / 29 December 1981 / 30 December 1981

1982 Festive Fifty
15 December 1982 / 16 December 1982 / 20 December 1982 / 21 December 1982 / 22 December 1982 / 23 December 1982 / 27 December 1982 / 28 December 1982 / 29 December 1982 / 30 December 1982

1983 Festive Fifty
21 December 1983 / 22 December 1983 / 27 December 1983 / 28 December 1983 / 29 December 1983

1984 Festive Fifty
18 December 1984 / 19 December 1984 / 25 December 1984 (partial show - missed numbers 30 to 26) / 26 December 1984 / 01 January 1985

1986 Festive Fifty
"1986 Festive Fifty is just the countdown plus one or two preceding session tracks. Thus these are less complete than the recordings already out there, but do have decent sound quality (all mp3s are 256k stereo, as usual)." 22 December 1986 / 23 December 1986 / 24 December 1986 / 29 December 1986 / 30 December 1986

1987 Festive Fifty
"1987 Festive Fifty is complete, 5 x 2-hour shows. I patched in 30 seconds or so per show from the recordings currently out there (which incidentally all run 2-3% too fast) to cover tape flips."

22 December 1987 / 23 December 1987 / 28 December 1987 / 29 December 1987 / 30 December 1987

1988 Festive Fifty
ray_b2 (message, 17 Feb 2010): "Fair bit of FM hiss on some of these recordings. 256k stereo MP3 sourced from chrome TDKs, normalized & patched together with Audacity."

20 December 1988 / 21 December 1988 / 26 December 1988 / 27 December 1988 / 28 December 1988

Peel's Pleasures
"I also present a couple of different copies of Peel's Pleasures shows from 1981 and 1982. The 1981 one features the legendary 'The fleet's lit up' recording in its entirety."
 * ray_b2 (message, 4 Feb 2010):

22 August 1981 / 14 August 1982

Other Shows
14 April 1982 (fragments only) ?? December 1986: ''I also came across this partial show from early/mid December 1986 - have been unable to date it precisely, but it seems to be some sort of "Peel's Favourite Sessions of the Year" show. Sound quality is a bit hissy. Contains some excellent Miaow tracks that I never tire of listening to.'' 04 January 1988: ''A fragment of the first post-Festive Fifty show in 1988. I obviously recorded this to capture the Sugarcubes session, which I have not seen online before. Does that get me a Blue Peter badge?'' 19 December 1988 / 02 January 1989: This time round I had the idea of recording the two shows on either side of the FF, to see if John had any reflections on the chart itself.