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John Peel Wiki
in: 199-, Available online, Mixtape,
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Songs From The Frontline

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Tape[]

Name
  • Songs From The Frontline
Station
YYYY-MM
  • 14th April 1988 - 27th March 1989
  • A cassette compilation from the collection of Peel Group member mr_maudlin, recorded from the BBC Radio 1 John Peel and Andy Kershaw shows but with no DJ links.
  • A tape of African music from the Peel and Kershaw shows. The title comes from the name given to the states that bordered Apartheid South Africa.  
  • These are tape-to-edits* but from a good FM signal. This tape was almost a year in the making (I would record the Peel and Kershaw shows onto cassette then edit down the tracks I liked to themed tapes - indie/electronic, sessions, world music and reggae). I must have got bored with writing down the broadcast or edit dates as they aren't on the inlay card, and there's no indication which tracks came from Peel shows and which from Kershaw.
  • This is one of those tapes that seems to be more than the sum of its parts, in that the whole thing needs to be listened to. Just taking it from the shelf and opening the case gave me a lovely nostalgic longing for those days when it seemed that African guitar bands could take over the world. Difficult to chose favourite tracks but if I had to it would be the matchless Samora Machel that starts the tape, Sun City by the Rustenberg Boys and the Sona Diabate track (I tried to find records by this artist at the time but it turns out that Diabate, or its variants, is a very common surname in parts of Africa and I gave up...)
  • The inlay card says that the recording source for the last 6 tracks was Tuner rather than Tape, which suggests they are off-air recordings, but I find that hard to believe as I wouldn't necessarily know that an African track was coming up, unless there was a special sequence or show, and I don't recall Peely doing any of those but could it be a Kershaw special?
  • The song titles in italics are my phonetic spellings from the time
  • TDK SF90

Tracklisting[]

File[]

Name
  • C116 Songs From The Frontline
Length
  • 1:27:50
Other
Available
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