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in: 1968, Peel shows, Available online, Tim's Tapes

28 April 1968

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 Show[]

Name
Station
YYYY-MM-DD
  • 1968-04-28
Comments
  • In his introduction, Peel says he feels happy as he's just been listening to the new Leonard Cohen LP.
  • Opening track is by Gilbert, or Gilbert O'Sullivan as he was later known. JP says he'll be in session on the show soon..He then reads out a traffic warning of problems around Mill Hill Roundabout; "Avoid Mill Hill Roundabout - a dictum I've tried to follow all my adult life".
  • Peel mentions writing "very bad" sleevenotes for Pentangle's LP before introducing their first session track. He was criticised for them by a reviewer in Melody Maker- see Melody Maker: 1968 for details.
  • Peel mentioned last week that one of his favourite Everly Brothers record is "Poor Jenny", but says he will play it next week, and then plays their current single..
  • Peel says he's going to be busy; on Monday he'll be going to the Blue Horizon club in Kenley, and then on Tuesday a Tyrannosaurus Rex gig at University College of London at Gower Street and then Saturday in Loughborough at another Tyrannosaurus Rex gig, and on Friday he will be comparing at Brighton Arts Festival. (Later on in the programme, he realises the gig on Tuesday is actually taking place on Wednesday.) This leads into a corny link to the next track; "On the strength of that, you can call me lightning..."
  • After playing the track, Peel reveals he and Emperor Rosko like the Who's "Call Me Lightning", which "may not be released in this country".
  • Peel says his brother Alan, got married last Friday to a young lady named Frances and dedicates the programme to them. He mentions he was the photographer at the wedding and thinks the photos may be the worst ever taken. He follow this with a now obscure single by David Morgan, which he also played last week..
  • He plays a Simon and Garfunkel track, "Punky's Dilemma", from the Bookends LP and laments that it isn't going to be issued in Britain until August. He sympathises with "Roger the Draft Dodger", mentioned in the song's lyrics.
  • Peel mentions it was his mother's birthday on Saturday but is "not sure what number she accumulated". He also mentions that his mother gave him a Christmas present of an inferior drawing of a pair of trousers and in return on her birthday, gave her "drawings of a high powered sports car and 2 weeks in the Dardanelles".
  • A New Generation's  "Smokie Blues Away" has a melody based closely on the second movement of Antonin Dvořák's New World Symphony (the tune was later used in the nostalgic TV ad for Hovis bread). It was released as a single, with the song credited to "Sutherland" and no mention of the Czech composer.
  • Peel says Tyrannosaurus Rex's single will be played on every programme on BBC Radio One, except for Kenny Everett's, and says he'll "speak to him quite sharply" about it. He mentions that Marc Bolan had been round at Peel Acres the previous day and that they'd watched Peel's hamster "learning to fly".
  • Peel mentions that Barry Booth And His Orchestra's "A Concise History Of Harry Shoes" was co-written by Michael Palin, who he said went to school with. Palin wasn't famous yet - this was before Monty Python's Flying Circus - but he was writing comedy scripts for TV and appearing in shows like Do Not Adjust Your Set.
  • Peel plays the Byrds' version of Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere", orginally from the unreleased recordings of new Dylan songs circulated by the singer's music publisher in 1967-8 with the aim of getting other artsits to record them. The Dylan recordings were bootlegged, became known as the Basement Tapes and weren't officially released until 1976..
  • Boeing Duveen And The Beautiful Soup, whose single "Jabberwock" is played for a second successive week because JP likes it, were a band led by Sam Hutt, the "hippy community doctor". He later became better-known in the 1980s as Hank Wangford, singing in country style and touring with Billy Bragg and the Frank Chickens and doing benefit gigs during the miners' strike in 1984-85. Here, the band name and song lyrics are taken from the works of Lewis Carroll, a popular writer in the hippy era.
  • The Fleur De Lys song title is inspired by another English writer of a simliar vintage to Carroll - Edward Lear's nonsense poem "The Dong With The Luminous Nose", although Peel points out that Lear didn't write it.
  • In contrast, Gordon Lightfoot's song "Black Day In July" describes the Detroit race riots of 1967. Peel dedicates it "to all those who are emotionally buttoning up their brown shirts at this moment".
  • He says before the final Arthur Brown session track that he'd like to have them and all the other session artists back on the show - "we need about five hours for this" - in 1968 he only had two hours per week for Top Gear, plus one hour for Night Ride.
  • Closing remarks; "in the meantime, the park is beckoning...My love to all of you".

Sessions[]

Tracklisting[]

(JP: 'It's what you call a long fader I think technically speaking')
(2:30pm news) Main stories: Troops sent to deal with "the Bermuda emegency"; 13 killed in gun battle on Israel-Jordan border; Kettering Grammar School physics department predict Russian space activity; news of Tour of Spain cycle race
(JP: 'And that what happens when you don't eat the right sort of breakfast, you see...')

Tracks marked @ also on File 2. Tracks marked $ also on File 3. Tracks marked £ also on File 4. Tracks marked & also on File 5.

File[]

Name
  • 1) J P Top Gear 28 Apr 1968
  • 2) John Peel's Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (Peel Session)
  • 3) 1968-04-28 TG mid 68 Simon & Garfunkel 2 songs w Peel intro or outro.mp3
  • 4) 1968-04-28 TG 28.4.68 Chicken Shack love me or leave me.mp3
  • 5) 1968-04-28 TG mid 68 The Who call me lightning (singl) Peel intro
Length
  • 1) 2:00:24
  • 2) 0:15:41
  • 3) 0:02:10
  • 4) 0:03:25
  • 5) 0:02:23
Other
  • 1) Many thanks to Tim.
  • 2) Shared via Peel Mailing List
  • 3-5) Many thanks to Colin Harper
Available
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