The Smell of the Greasepaint and the Sound of the Peel

The Smell of the Greasepaint and the Sound of the Peel isthee name of a 2014 blog created by David Pascoe which attempts to document the fealtionship between mixtape culture, John Peel and the Cornish amateur dramatics scene. As he explains in the blog, Pascoe's first prolonged exposure to Peel came about in the late 90s while he was driving home from rehearsals for shows he was doing with am-dram groups throughout the county:

"I've been doing amateur drama since 1991.  I started acting during my GCSE year, using it as a way of releasing the pressure of the exams.  I followed this up by doing a BTEC in Performing Arts at Cornwall College and through this started making contacts which got me invited to start performing with some of the local amateur dramatic societies - Falmouth Young Generation and Carnon Downs Drama Group were my main societies, all very local and easy to reach after I passed my driving test in 1994.  My horizons started to expand a little in 1997 when I was asked to take part in a production of A Tale of Two Cities with West Cornwall Drama Group based just outside Penzance.  This meant a 90 minute round trip and on the journey home, my company was John Peel, which meant drum and bass while driving through Rosudgeon and death metal in Helston.  A year later, I started acting with St Austell Players, which meant another 90 minute round trip and Peel on the journey home - reggae in Grampound and Indie pop in Tresillian. 2 or 3 times a week, every couple of months, I was exposed to an incredible onslaught of music across every concievable genre by someone who it felt as though was in the car with me. The best possible company while driving through quiet Cornish villages on the long and lonely A30 or A390.

Why this sticks in mind is that once the productions were over, Peel and I would go our separate ways until the next time I was in a play. I didn't listen to his show at home. Sometimes, I would go to Compact Records in Falmouth High Street to try and order a record I'd heard on Peel's show. But it wasn't till 2002 that I finally did what I should have been doing all along and started taping his show at home.

I had no interest in keeping complete episodes of his show because invariably there would be stuff I didn't want to hear again. What I was looking for was the stuff that connected with my ears, with my feet and with my soul. Some of it weird and novel, some of it traditional and everyday, but all I knew was that I would know it when I heard it. And if I could bundle it all into mixtapes with his links included, I would be able to make my own Peel Shows for posterity."

Inspired by the John Peel wiki and the online community which shares so many of Peel's broadcasts, Pascoe has sought through the blog to research the music Peel was playing over the period 1991- 2004 to see what he would have included had he been making mixtapes throughout the time when Peel's life and Pascoe's adventures in amateur theatre would have co-incided. Furthermore, he hopes to track down the records themselves and review them - essentially making his own John Peel inspired record box.

At time of writing, the blog has taken Peel's shows from 2 November 1991 to 10 April 1992 as its starting point, which matches the period of rehearsal and performance for Pascoe's first show - Lionel Bart's musical, Oliver.