International Times: Perfumed Garden Column

Perfumed Garden columns
1967

IT 18, 1967-08-31, p. 9

''Firstly, what has happened? Many good things, some bad. The closing of Radio London was a sorrowful affair but the final hour was exactly right and I was proud to be involved. Losing the Perfumed Garden filled me with a great sadness as it had come to be more important to me than most people realised...''

IT 19, 1967-10-05, p. 13

''Written from the depths of quadruple pneumonia with Dandelion, a hamster, surveying me gravely from her bed of lettuce. Clive Selwood, who call himself "the round peg in the square suit" and who is responsible for the British promotion of elevating Elektra records called me "an Underground William Hickey" after reading the last IT...''

IT 20, 1967-10-27, p. 11

''Written following the premiere of "How I Won The War" and in the midst of resultant heavy gloom."Why gloom?" I hear you cry. Gloom mainly at the sheer desperate futility of it all. Most of the professional film critics whose outpourings I have blanched through seem to find it a bad film. In my strange way I have felt for some time...''

IT 21, 1967-11-17, p. 12

''There is a remote possibility that this will be the last time the coagulated thoughts of Chairman Peel appear in print (sounds of distant rejoicing). This evening I am contracted to lie underneath an elephant for Billy Smart, the B.B.C., and Christmas Day television viewers. I trust that you will all bear witness to this feast of reason and intellect...''

IT 22, 1967-12-15, p. 15

''Written on the floor at Peel Acres in front of a coal fire and Dandelion, hamster-extraordinary. The time is, as usual, some days after various deadlines and outside the snow is melting and running softly down the steps leading into our own Bag End. On Clive Selwood's elderly gramophone revolves one of the amazing records of John Fahey...''

1968

IT 23, 1968-01-05, p. 6

Chateau in Virginia Waters by Marc Bolan, Essex Music

Broken English words cracked the air like a bell...

IT 24, 1968-01-19, p. 10

''This weekend sees the arrival in Britain of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. They will be at Middle Earth on Saturday night and jostling the pacesetters at the Speakeasy on Sunday. If you never again see another group go and see them. Public taste being what it is it may be that the Captain and his strange crew will not lighten our dank and mysterious shores again...''

IT 26, 1968-02-16 p. 10

''Peace News is the only paper in this slow-motion whirlpool country posting notice of the raw injustices and cynical, diseases political moves that make each sun that rises on our loves and hopes more of a miracle than that which preceded it. Like much that is worthwhile they shout for support into a bitter wind...''

IT 27, 1968-03-08, p. 11

''Sympathies and my love to all those humiliated during and following the recent raid on the Middle Earth. One girl told me that she was searched four times by an assortment of robust lady policemen. They found nothing, but didn't seem to mind. In view of all this may I urge your renewed support for Release. You may be next...''

IT 28, 1968-04-05, p 11 / p. 12

''There is a gathering magic in the air and perhaps this will be the summer when we find that for which we have searched for so long. Following the first of the Wednesday night programmes, featuring the Incredible String Band and Adrian Mitchell, came a flood of angry and bewildered letters. Many of these were of the I-fought-the-war-for-rats-like-you" variety...''

IT 30, 1968-05-03, p. 4-13

"This is going to be mainly LP recommendations interspersed with chat and Morris dancing..."

Artists mentioned: John Renbourn, National Gallery, Lollipop Shoppe, Loading Zone, First Edition ("pretty bad"), The Association ("somewhat disappointing"), Fred Neil, Gabor Szabo, the Gunter Hampel Group ("I honestly, and obviously, know very little about this kind of thing"), Spirit, Fever Tree, Appletree Theatre, Simon and Garfunkel ("Bookends...is a masterpiece...the best LP currently available anywhere"), a "Blues Roots, Mississippi" anthology, the Blues Project, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Beacon Street Union, Penny Nichols, the Fugs.

IT 32, 1968-05-31 (Lemon Peel: John Peel sends his vibrations with sorrow for silence in this and last issue of IT. Sends message that personal hang-ups are disturbing his time/space arrangements. Forgive him. He still loves.)

IT 33, 1968-06-14 p. 12 ("Perfumed Garden" dropped as column name)

''The past few weeks have been among the saddest in my life for many reasons that I should not trouble you with. I am sorry that this may have projected itself onto my relationships with other people or onto 'Top Gear' and 'Night-ride'. There seems to be no end in sight either, and I really can't fake happiness - or want to either, actually...''

IT 35, 1968-07-12, p. 6

''Written on the wings of the weekend past which carried with it more love and more hope than I believed was possible. Underneath the Saturday skies the blessed drifted and around them music hung in the air and touched the trees. Those who were not there missed, as they must have been told several thousand times, the nicest afternoon of the year...''

IT 37, 1968-07-12, p. 6

''In a few weeks Ustad Vilayat Khan will be on 'Top Gear' and will play a raga lasting about twenty minutes. Those who don't like Indian music will not appreciate this much but it really is a conspicuous breakthrough. The whole point of Thursday morning's 'Night-Ride' has been to play and do so many different and, hopefully, good things...''

IT 38, 1968-08-23, p. 17

''It appears that I have once again, with the immeasurable grace and finesse at my command, placed my foot in a wide assortment of animal waste products. In a recent edition of 'Disc' there appeared, along with a caption of considerable drollness, a picture of the misshapen Peelian anatomy as it took a bath. Trivial and pointless though the whole exercise was...''

IT 41, 1968-10-04, p. 7

''The autumnal air his heavy with promise — a new Beefheart LP is on the way. Perhaps by the time this is read it will already be in the import shoppes. Following various hang-ups with established and short-sighted record companies the Magic Band's guiding light, Bob Krasnow, has formed his own company. The label is Blue Thumb and the LP is to be...''

IT 42, 1968-10-18, p.12

''My dear John Peel, first, to avoid misunderstanding I hasten to say I am a lonely old person (80 in November) and your broadcast on Woman's Hour warmed my heart and raised my faith in human nature which has sunk VERY low in these last few years. The value of even a smile or kindly word in the street from a passer-by. . . for seven years I have lived alone...''

IT 43, 1968-11-01, p.2

"From his sickbed last Saturday John Peel sent regrets that he could not get any coherent words together for this issue. He had arrived home from Birmingham where he had apparently been smitten with a strange virus which caused unpleasant eruptions over the Peelian frame. In his own words: 'there were swellings all over as well as the usual ones around my head'."

IT 44, 1968-11-15, p.9 (Peel column space "donated" to allow room for John Lennon drawings.)

IT 45 1968-11-29 p. 16

''I have no idea what to write about this morning, but I got up early and perhaps something will fall into the wasteland of my head in the next few hours. Perhaps the friendliness of "The Beatles', currently charting a million turntable miles at Peel Acres, will help. Sorry about missing the last few issues (Is anyone else?) but things have been ridiculous lately...''

IT 46 1968-12-13 p. 19

''There is always a great air of melancholy about Christmas. Perhaps this is because the modern holiday symbolizes everything that has gone wrong during the past 2,000 years. When I was a child — oh, what Christmases we had. Francis and I would wake around 2.00 in the morning, unable to sleep with the excitement of it all...''

1969

IT 47 1969-01-01 p. 14

''Letters have fallen into our lives through the door, there are sounds of small, naked feet on the floor, bathroom lights flicker on and off and on again. The radio rattles out its early morning agony and tells the latest stories of machine-gunners - will this year be that in which the news is of lovers and the loved, of you and the wisdom in woods?''

IT 50, 1969-02-14 p. 8

''It was good to have a holiday in Exeter. The sun shone every day both within and without and Principal Edward's Magic Theatre came and went, some speaking and some not. Instead of promoters and their bullies came Spiderman and Thor and Les and Jeremy and I skulked around Plymouth looking...''

IT 53 1969-03-28 p.17

''This evening there was a touch of spring and other good things in the cinema of the ICA. Principal Edwards Magic Theatre brought their raucous leviathan to The Mall filled with good things (mainly themselves) and played, danced, smiled and sang for a curiously immobile audience.... ''(column cut in half, as too long to fit this issue. As well as mentions for Peace News and some small press publications, Peel reviews records by the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Byrds, Los Calchakis, Harry Partch, B.B. King, Gordon Smith, Steve Marcus, Taj Mahal and Lasry-Bachet)

IT 54, 1969-04-11 p.13

Second half of above and Peel's final column for IT. Mostly record reviews; artists include Umm Kulthum, Roy Harper, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mike Cooper, Keef Hartley Band, Colosseum, Family.