John Peel Wiki

Changes to the look of John Peel Wiki will take place in the near future due to a new skin being rolled out over Oct/Nov across Wikia. Please see the Wikia Staff Blog for further details. On this site, the changes will affect the navigation from the left menu, as well as introduce a fixed page width with narrower content space. Please be patient while adjustments are made for the switch to the new system.

UPDATE: As the change is now in force for some users, I have switched the navigation to the simplified one for the new system. Please check Navigation in the Help section if you can't find things. I also initially made small adjustments to the front page layout, but have now reverted to the old look until all users are on the new system.

COUNTDOWN: Just a reminder for people still using Monaco that the final switch to the new skin is due on Nov. 3. After that, it will no longer be offered as an option. Sorry. Nothing to do with me.

Steve W

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John Peel Wiki

Show[]

Name
  • John Peel's Music On BFBS
Station
YYYY-MM-DD
  • 1997-09-25
Comments
  • Start of show: "Hello again, good buddies, it's John Peel's Music On BFBS."
  • Peel relates that he was warned off playing excerpts from the new Robert Wyatt LP (Shleep) as it could lead to falling sales, but now he has a promo CD from it to play.
  • Captain Beefheart called Peel just before his birthday sounding in good spirits and advising him and his family to "enjoy the evenings."
  • He still appears to hold a grudge against the army for refusing to allow him to go to his grandmother's funeral.
  • Four tracks from the Fall's then-current 'Levitate' LP, which JP is not altogether sure about, and finds himself amazedly stating a cover version to be the best song on it.

Sessions[]

  • None

Tracklisting[]

(JP: 'I got a letter of complaint this week from a listener who said that these new John Peel's Musics From BFBS, which actually are recorded at my house, arrive at his end all sort of pops and squirts and clicks and things. They leave this house in perfect shape, I have to tell you, and it's perfectly possible, I suppose, that it's actually the records, really. Perhaps you just don't like the records, I don't know.)
(JP: 'I really can't make up my mind about this LP, I have to be honest with you. As a lifelong Fall fan, whether it represents a brave new change in direction or whether it is the beginning of the end of a legend, I simply don't know, I really don't know.')
(JP: 'I used to be scared of girls, I have to be perfectly honest with you...really, until I was in my mid-twenties. I was so ignorant, so breathtakingly ignorant, that having gone to boys' boarding schools from the age of 7 and so forth, and life being very different to the way it is now, clearly, I was aware that girls were constructed differently, but I genuinely didn't know quite in what way they were constructed differently. When I was about 14, I was playing hide-and-seek (how many 14 year-olds would you find today that would be prepared to play hide-and-seek?). It was that kind of hide-and-seek which I think is called "sardines", actually, when you find the person who's hiding, you stay with them, and then the last person who finds you is all kind of "it" next time around. I was at my godmother's house near Ludlow, which is quite a big house, and I was in the gardener's toilet. It was that big a place. This girl was the first person who came in and discovered me in there, and, in a girlish kind of way, she sat down to go to the toilet. I mean, horror would sum up my reaction pretty much. I don't think I screamed, but I came pretty close to it, I've got to be honest with you. And I don't think I've ever been quite the same since.') [2]
(JP: 'I wish I believed in an afterlife, I really do. I mean, I'd be much cheered up at the prospect. Obviously, the older you get, the more you'd like to know that there was one, but I don't really believe in it. And if there was one, I wouldn't be one of those people who wanted to meet Shakespeare, 'cos for a start, you wouldn't understand him, would you? He'd be chatting away, in apparently some kind of rural West Country accent, and saying things. "What? What was that? What are you trying to say, mate?" But what I would like to do is sort out mundane things, like sort out with my dad whether he wanted me or my brother Frank to have that Welsh dresser (Frank got it, needless to say). And also, on a more serious level, to apologise to him for being such a terrible, inconsiderate and selfish son.')

File[]

Name
  • Peel Show 1997-09-25 (BFBS)
Length
  • 01:54:05
Other
  • Many thanks to Carsten from Berlin.
Available
Footnotes
  1. John claims this is produced by Brian Eno, but it is the second track, 'Sunday In Madrid', to which he refers.
  2. The same anecdote turns up again, in rather more detail, in the 04 October 2001 show.
  3. As John reminds us, this is Tom Withers from the Stupids.
  4. John forgets the band's previous name, Giant Sand.
  5. No double-takes necessary: this is not the Darren Hayman-led indie band who would charm Peel in years to come, but future jazz artist Lee Jones.