Nachtexpress

Background[]

Peel recorded a monthly programme for this night-time strand of the radio station Ö3 (part of the country's public service broadcaster, the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation)) in the Austrian capital Vienna from 1989-1994. The programmes were one hour long, a fact which Peel frequently regretted ^[1], as it meant he had little time to either play longer tracks or treat his listeners to the many new releases that came his way. Nonetheless, the shows are entertaining and he regularly featured tracks by central European bands that would have cemented his reputation with his audience and did not seem to have found their way into his domestic programmes. Almost without exception, the shows went out between 12 and 1 a.m. on the first Monday of every month.
He mentioned his "gorgeous fellow travellers" on the show ^[2], one of whom was Eva Umbauer.
JP visited Vienna in summer 1991 and found time to see the Nachtexpress studios (and a huge pile of bureaucratic forms). The following year, he was in Austria again ^[3], but merely in transit through Vienna airport.
On his death, the station (by now known as FM4) said, "Die Popkultur hat ihre Seele verloren. John Peel ist tot." ("Pop culture has lost its life and soul. John Peel is dead.")