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John Peel Wiki

Show[]

Name
  • John Peel Show
Station
  • BBC Radio One
YYYY-MM-DD
  • 1988-12-20
Comments
  • The first part of the 1988 Festive Fifty, backed by session repeats.
  • Due to the wrong record being played at #45 (see below) and thus running out of time, JP has to end the chart rundown in this show at #42, something he claims he has never done before (however, see 30 December 1986 for a similar previous occurrence). It proceeded the following night from #41.

Sessions[]

Tracklisting[]

1988 Festive Fifty: Numbers 50-42[]

  • (JP: 'And now it's time to start on this year's Festive Fifty, and it starts most encouragingly, I think.')
  • 50: Public Enemy, 'Night Of The Living Baseheads (LP-It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back)' (Def Jam)
  • (JP: [Praises LP, then moves onto NME's Albums Of The Year list] ...They had some strange records in their top 50 - one or two that I sent to the poor of the parish when I was sent copies of them. But they had the Napalm Death LP at number 50 anyway!
  • 49: Wedding Present, 'Don't Laugh (12 inch-B side of Nobody's Twisting Your Arm)' (Reception)
  • 48: Happy Mondays, 'Wrote For Luck (7 inch)' (Factory)
  • (JP: 'The NME thought pretty highly of their LP as well, as indeed I did, and I suspect some of you did as well. I forget exactly where it was in the chart, and it doesn't matter. I do wish I'd brought it down with me, it's most annoying,knowing that it's straight through the floor above me actually. If it was possible to whizz through the floor I could get it.' )
  • 47: Darling Buds, 'Shame On You (7 inch)' (Native)
  • 46: Primitives, 'Crash (7 inch)' (RCA)
  • (John then plays the entirety of the Pixies' 'Where Is My Mind?', before realising the following gaffe.)
  • (JP: 'Do you know, I've just done something I've never done during the Festive Fifty at all? This is really embarrassing. I made a mistake in it: I was really proud of that record, and I've just broken it. That was NOT number 45 at all, I played the wrong side of the record (he can be heard hastily turning it over): well, it is slightly misleading. So what we'll have to do is go back, and THIS is actually number 45 in the Festive Fifty, I apologise for that, so disregard what you just heard.')
  • 45: Pixies, 'Bone Machine (LP-Surfer Rosa)' (4AD)
  • 44: New Order, 'Fine Time (7 inch)' (Factory) (John correctly notes that this is also no. 11 in what he calls the "BBC charts" at the time - UK Charts W/E 24th December 1988).
  • (baaing noises by JP to add background vocals to the end of the track)
  • (JP: 'It's one of the things I do best, actually, a sheep. I'm rather good at that. There are sheep that live just down the road from us, and in the summertime I go out and speak to them, and quite often they're fooled, because they think, here's that fella coming out to talk to us, thinks he's a sheep again.')
  • 43: Mega City Four, 'Miles Apart (7 inch)' (Primitive)
  • 42: Flatmates, 'Shimmer (7 inch)' (Subway Organization)
  • (JP: 'And the Festive Fifty I'll be rejoining tomorrow night at number 41 rather than 40, having messed it up earlier on.')

File[]

Name
  • (a) 20th December 88
  • (b) JP19881220.mp3
  • (c) 1988-12-20 Peel Show.mp3
Length
  • (a) 00:46:47
  • (b) 01:58:55
  • (c) 01:29:31
Other
  • (a) A high quality recording of the rundown from #50-#42 (plus the news and some of the Nicky Campbell show) is available in the 'Festive 50s' folder of IAP's Tapes, but is mislabelled (it can be found in the sub-folder '1987', file F50_1987_5041).
  • (b) Complete show, though the tape is running noticeably fast. Thanks to ray-b2 for sharing this show.
  • (c) Last 90 minutes of the show, beginning part way through the second House Of Love track, created from SB703 and SB704 of Weatherman22's Tapes
Available
Footnotes
  1. However, the author Ken Garner replied by email: "Curious about the ENT track not listed in the book, let me check that... 'Only in it for the music part 2', was in FIRST ENT session late in 87, but that track was omitted from the XMAS 87 best of repeat, so I suspect 'Only in it for the music part 3' (sic) might have been Peel playing that one belatedly as a repeat. Maybe." My thanks to Ken for providing missing session information for this show date, resulting from information provided by members of the Peel Mailing List.