Sounds

Sounds was a music paper published weekly in the UK from 1970-10-10 to 1991-04-06. It was founded to compete with Melody Maker and New Musical Express in the developing "progressive" music market. Its first editor Jack Hutton (previously editor of MM) managed to persuade a number of noted writers from other papers, such as Penny Valentine (from Disc & Music Echo), Steve Peacock and Jerry Gilbert (from MM) to join the new publication,.Sounds never attained the fashionability of its rivals but gained a loyal readership, particularly among fans of progressive and heavy metal rock.

Following his previous stints as a columnist with International Times and Disc & Music Echo, Peel contributed a regular piece for Sounds from 14th July 1973 to sometime in 1981. The paper clearly regarded him as an asset, as during the mid-'70s he also had a regular Singles Reviews page. His columns discussed gigs, LPs, or episodes in his personal life, and were sometimes written in a style parodying the boys' adventure stories he had read in his youth. Perhaps as a consequence of socialising with the likes of John Walters and the Faces, some of his mid-'70s pieces contained casually sexist comments (particularly about young women's bodies, and schoolgirls) in the "Jack the Lad" style typical of the era, although he seemed to abandon this tendency once he became a father.

In the 80's, Sounds released various compilation albums and singles, and Peel played some tracks from them on his shows.

Peel Columns

More than a few of Peel's weekly columns for Sounds were republished in The Olivetti Chronicles:

• 1973-12-01, Osmonds 3, pg. 204-7
• 1973-12-15, Osmonds 2, pg. 201-3
• 1974-07-20, Lena Zavaroni, pg. 350-2
• 1974-08-03, Robert Wyatt, pg. 347-9
• 1975-03-01, Roadshows 2, pg. 263-5
• 1975-04-05, Tommy, pg. 297-8
• 1975-04-19, The Mourning of the Golden Flask, pg. 166-8
• 1975-07-01, Knebworth, pg. 133-5
• 1975-11-08, Peel and the Mighty Gorgon, pg. 211-13
• 1976-01-10, The Party’s Over, pg. 208-10
• 1976-02-07, Bores, pg. 27-29
• 1976-04-10, A Boy Named Zuma [1]
• 1976-04-17, Please listen to my programme, pg. 230-2
• 1976-04-24, Pen Pal, pg. 220-2
• 1976-08-14, Babies, pg. 12-14
• 1977-05-21, Hippies, pg. 117-18
• 1977-06-04, Virginity, pg. 320-3
• 1977-06-18, God Save The Queen, pg. 104-7
• 1977-09-10, Reading Festival 2, pg. 245-50
• 1977-10-22, Fab Pic Contest!, pg. 77-9
• 1977-11-05, Fab Pic Contest 2, pg. 80-3
• 1977-12-31, Fab Pic Contest 3, pg. 84-7
• 1978-05-27, Pink Pop, pg. 226-9
• 1978-06-24, Wine-tasting with Walters, pg. 341-4
• 1978-07-01, Shaving, pg. 270-2
• 1978-08-26, Old Bill, pg. 191-4

Please add further information on Peel's pieces for Sounds if known.

Online

1971

• Oct. 16: "John Peel In The Talk-In".
  (Peel interviewed by regular Sounds contributor Steve Peacock. "I'm a starving man - any radio I get I grab". JP talks about his radio career and the frustrations of working at the BBC. He'd recently lost his position as sole presenter of the Radio One Concert shows, says he was "hurt" by the reduction in his weekly hours of airtime and had started doing shows for Radio Luxembourg (read more))

1973

• May 26: "Peel gets back to mono"
  (Article on the stereo systems Peel uses - at home and in his car (read more))
• Jul. 14: (Peel's first written piece in Sounds)
  "Gosh, Dorothea! On the horizon... isn't that the original teenage vegetarian millionaire playboy? You guessed it's John Peel"
  With a smile, hovering, yes, hovering about my lips - the lips still bruised from the excess of passion and... (read more)
  (Claims will devote future endeavours to cinema; column to feature “schoolgirl of the week”.)
  Tags: Rory Gallagher, Noel Edmonds, Faces.
• Jul. 14: Singles Reviews
• Jul. 21: "True stories of life at the top"
  SOBS SHOOK Harriet's frail body. "Is it a glamorous life, the life you lead?", writes quite imaginary reader Teddy Pension of Kings Lynn. Yes, Teddy, it certainly is. Why at the very moment of typing these... (read more
  (Written from the White City festival carpark, after JP thrown off stage by security; recalls similar at Bath festival as well as with Johnny Winter at Roundhouse, and being denied entry to his own gig at Hastings Pier Caper.)
  Tags: JSD Band, Edgar Winter.
• Jul. 21: Singles Reviews
• Jul. 28: John Peel reports from the Buxton Festival:
  CHOPPER CAME down to this Burton Festival from Whitehaven. They're not really a "heavy" band, they say, in fact they'll play any kind of music and any kind of gig from cabaret to... well, you know. The singer gives us a bit of a rude version of "it's impossible" to prove the... (read more)
  (“It’s not just the weather, nor is it the menace in the air. Festivals seem to have become, over the years, like crazy, lop-sided Outward Bound courses. The sense is one of determination to stick it out for some ill-defined good that may or may not emerge once the event is over.” JP thinks medals should be awarded for surviving such events.)
  Tags: Chopper, Edgar Broughton Band, Alex Harvey, Medicine Head, Nazareth, Canned Heat, Chuck Berry.
• Jul. 28: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 4: "Conscience wins but it's a struggle"
  MR. PEACOCK and I have just stepped out for a glass of lunch. Having completed the totally rivetting singles reviews that you'll find elsewhere in ZOUNDS I was recking my small and perverse brain for a lively topic with which to delight you ... (read more)
  (Writes about strip joints in Texas, wonders how many female listeners he has.)
  Tags: Bill Black's Combo, Kevin Coyne, Virgin, Elvis Presley, Van Morrison, Phoenix, Conway Twitty.
• Aug. 4: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 11: "There's something about Manchester that writes trubble for we Peels".
  "ERE", (and how exactly do you represent a Manchester accent on paper?) "when are yer gonna stop playin' all them weird records that are not on?" "Weird" records eh! Must mean Tangerine Dream, the Cheviot Ranters, Beefheart, someone like... (read more)
  (Manchester memories, including past failed gigs, Beefheart; describes latest roadshow at Phoenix, Manchester U, with “tonight” to come in Hemel Hamstead.)
  Tags: Rolling Stones, Faces, Status Quo, Allman Brothers, Rory Gallagher, Stackwaddy, McGuinness-Flint, Gary Glitter.
• Aug. 11: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 18: CURSE you for a Royalist dog Timothy's voice rang out clear and manly in the chill morning air. Above the wooded hill on which he and his adversary stood the gulls wheeled and called in the cloudless sky. For a moment the world stood still as Sir Vere Fairfax-Conduit for the first time in his life knew......I always like to start these columns with a spot of fine writing just to show you that I am not a complete buffoon (read more)
  (Goes on to describe gig in Bournemouth, sees Princess Anne in traffic when driving back.)
  Tags: Liverpool, Blue.
• Aug. 18: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 25: "It seems like I may not again foxtrot to live Faces music. I don't mind telling you chaps, I'm not pleased about that."
  LAST FRIDAY (named after Holla, the Icelandic Goddess of Furniture) I was supposed to journey to Doncaster to bear witness to the Faces in action, and to that end I spent much of the day crouching in the ZOUNDS office peering wistfully at the maidens who work for Popswop and waiting for a phone call that... (read more)
  (Looks forward to his holiday in Kenya and Tanzania and lists some of a "vast pile" of old 78 records he's just acquired. See Peel's Attic 78s (1973).)
  Tags: Faces, Pete Drummond, Birthdays, Football.
• Aug. 25: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 1: "Excuse me Major, when you've finished poking that Camel Duck, can I interest you in Captain Beefheart?":
  THE NEXT time you hear from me, tiny friends, the message will have been carried across the arid badlands of Kenya by a chappie bearing a cleft stick. For several days and pausing only for refreshment the... (read more)
  (Describes a trip to Venice on a previous holiday, and the search for adequate toilet facilities.)
  Tags: Faces, Status Quo, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd.
• Sep. 1: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 29: "Life With The Lions"
  HELLO! HELLO! I'm back again, having sported myself royally for a week or so in the fleshpots of Africa and Yorkshire, and stand ready in helm and breastplate to do battle on your behalf in the blood-stained lists of rock-a-boogie. Was it not Bottom who said... (read more)
  (Describes his holiday in Kenya and Tanzania, including record shopping; new LPs await on return.)
  Tags: Pete Drummond, Cliff Richard, Morogoro Jazz Band, Les Noirs, John Nzenze & Jumbo 747 Band, Victoria Jazz Band 71, Orchestre Todi National, Blue, Lonnie Donegan, Rolling Stones, Family, Status Quo, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, Little Feat.
• Sep. 29: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 6: "Unless I'm in a mood to see 'Swedish Slave Lesbians in Jam' there's very little for me to do"
  As befits the season of the year I am in a gentle and reflective mood. However, do not fret, tiny creatures, I have no plans to bore you with tales from my past. Until another day the story of the night I slew fifty and six... (read more)
  (Autumn, with Shelley quote; no alternative to mooning around BBC in colder weather; welcome back from hols by Gambian lady in Oxford Circus.)
  Tags: Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Allman Brothers Band.
• Oct. 6: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 13: "And now for the serious stuff"
  THIS WEEK'S word is "Gattle", v.t., (obs.) to keep a mongoose in a jar in the kitchen; to compel an unmarried man to accept a gift of blackcurrants. Remember it - there will be searching questions next week and anyone failing the test will have their feet beaten with rods. As I crouch afore my type-writer amid the... (read more)
  (Roadshow dates in Plymouth and Derby, with info kiosk and merchandise; letter re Shakespeare quotes; gospel freak Mick sets Peel off on record hunt.)
  Tags: Ollie Nightingale, Clarence Fountain, Rance Allen Group, Rev. Jules Cheeks, Highway QCs, Mighty Clouds Of Joy, Rev. Oris Mays, Willy Banks & The Messengers, Elton John, Winifred Atwell, Faces.
• Oct. 13: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 20: "The art of Little Jimmy Osmond in relation to the Chinese Bread Riots of 1862"
  "CAN we make it, Jock?" the Captain's voice cut through the heat and steam of the engine room. Stuart "Jock" MacHoodlum dropped a heavy spanner into the oily water that welled over his knees and cursed softly. "We're already running well past safety margins, sir. If there's water in number six tank we'll never make it to Gib." That's just a small taste of the... (read more)
  (“To Tunis with Frobisher” taster replaces “Little Jimmy O” piece; gospel records from Steve Marriott collection set for Top Gear; upcoming roadshow gig in Birmingham; Kevin Keegan pic after LFC 2-2 draw v West Ham.)
  Tags: Osmonds, Humble Pie, Violinaires, Mighty Clouds of Joy, Liverpool.
• Oct. 20: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 27: It brings tears to your eyes"
  IT'S NOT generally known that Aristophanes invented the piano when he was only sixteen. For a young boy living in a wicker-work hovel in the middle of the Steppes, a young boy who had lived all life in a family unit of seven (or so historians tell us) whose only possessions were earthenware jars and a... (read more)
  (Syd B badges available from appreciation society; dentist; typos; upcoming Weybridge roadshow gig, ahead of “wonderful, wonderful royal nuptials we’re all so looking forward to experiencing and paying for” (wedding of Princess Anne); claims to be working on Vol 8 of memoirs, entitled “The War Years and Daisy”.)
  Tags: Syd Barrett, Buffy Sainte-Marie.
• Oct. 27: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 3: "Our hero strolls unmolested through a pack of Osmonds fanciers and lives to try his luck again"
  KEEP YOUR voices down. I'm typing this in a building under siege by Osmond fanciers. For some reason the word has spread about - or been spread about by astute press persons - that some sort of an Osmond has been spotted in the vicinity of Broadcasting House. Every little once in a while a distant... (read more)
  {Keith Emerson ignored by Osmonds fans at BBC; reader’s letter from Cambridge U; upcoming Wyatt benefit at Rainbow; systems for football pools; orders entire Duke / Peacock / Backbeat / Songbird catalogue of 118 LPs from Probe Records’ London office.)
  Tags: ELP, Emperor Rosko, Mighty Clouds Of Joy, Gospelaires, Highway QCs.
• Nov. 3: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 10: "Wyatt, the innocent abroad"
  ELSEWHERE in this lavishly presented issue of Everybody's Favourite Music Weekly (SOUNDS, you confounded fool) you may chance to read an account of the past weekend's frolics at the Rainbow featuring the Soft Machine and those roly-poly funsters, the Pink Floyd. I was once invited to dinner with Pink Floyd, the Pig and... (read more)
  {Compering Robert Wyatt benefit at Rainbow by Soft Machine, Pink Floyd; visit to Wyatt at Stoke Mandeville hospital.)
  Tags: John Walters, Hatfield & The North.
• Nov. 10: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 17: "On the road again: chips, lettuce and schoolgirls"
  IT'S 2:30 in the morning, Dick and I have just checked into a Holiday Inn in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport. The plan was to drive all the way back to Sevenoaks but I'm too knackered and hungry. So we call room service. Sandwiches perhaps? Yes, they have ham sandwiches. Anything else, 'cos I don't eat meat - cheese possibly? No they don't have any cheese - they could make me a... (read more)
  (Roadshow gigs at Stroud Girls' High School, Elizabethan Barn in Tunbridge Wells.)
  Tags: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Soul, Henry Cow, Mike Oldfield, Matching Mole, Status Quo, Faces, Man.
• Nov. 17: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 24: "Now all can be revealed"
  THERE has been worldwide speculation about the dress I may or may not be wearing for tonight's programme. One has heard from one's sources that there will be replicas of one's apparel in the shops almost as soon as one's back is ever so slightly turned. In order to put an end to this rather... (read more)
  (Clothing, diary dates for dentist, youth club disco, roadshow; Jimmy Hill on TV.)
  Tags: Who, Roxy Music, Rod Stewart, Football, Christmas.
• Nov. 24: Singles Reviews
• Dec. 1: "Mystery of the flattened fifth"
  There’s a vestige of a chance, furry friends, that some of you may have cycled along the A30, the same A30 that moved Hengist and Horsa to tears so many years ago, and cursed the long hill that climbs south from the roundabout in what could easily be Egham … (read more)
  (To Royal Holloway College for discussion on general theme of “Rockaboogie, What Now?” Starts well with Osmonds and Tangerine Dream but then loses audience.)
  Tags: Cougars, Pink Floyd, ELP, Gene Vincent, Komintern, Kingdom Come, Otadunni Decency, Linda Jones, Original Blind Boys Of Alabama.
• Dec. 1: Singles Reviews
• Dec. 8: "How Blue can you get?"
  THE Pig, who knows about such things, having been until recently a teacher of Chemistry and allied mysteries has tried on several occasions to explain to me why Fahrenheit and whither Centigrade. Being a bear of little brain I still cannot remember which is which although I'm sure they're both awfully nice in their... (read more)
  (Cold weather; phone chat with High Nicholson of Blue, currently bottom of the bill in America.)
  Tags: Peel Acres, Yoko Ono, Mott The Hoople, Taj Mahal, Shawn Phillips, Steve Miller Band, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, ELP, Yes.
• Dec. 8: Singles Reviews
• Dec. 15: Singles Reviews
• Dec. 22: "It's not too much to ask"
  Some of us chaps here at ZOUNDS have just returned from a sort of awfully jolly pre Christmas romp at a neighbouring hostelry. As I have a heavy cold, which has resulted in my normally patrician nose turning a... (see more)
  (Sounds Christmas party; pub and Phoenix gig with Ian Hunter; lunch with Hugh Nicholson of Blue, bearing gift of Nixon plate; John Walters gift of mug from Canada.)
  Tags: Yes, ELP, Focus, Osmonds, Mott The Hoople.
• Dec. 22: Singles Reviews

1974

• Jan. 5: 1973 Top Ten Albums
• Jan. 12: "The Three Day Week: the cold, dark facts …"
  ALREADY MY eye sight is failing as a result of my first heads-on collision with the Three Day Week. The SOUNDS office, normally a glittering, sparkling place, is in darkness, a darkness broken only be a mean and rust-brown light seeping in through the few windows and by the wholly inadequate illumination offered by a... (read more)
  (Shadowy figures in Sounds office, readers’ letters.)
  Tags: Faces, Focus, ELP, Yes, Liverpool, Terry Wogan.
• Jan. 12: Singles Reviews
• Jan. 19: "The same again please"
  A MUCH better sort of a week really. Not exactly one of those weeks that sidles up to you in a crowded place and seizes you by the scruff of your sub-navel delights, but a week that did go so far as to give me a knowing wink as it sauntered by on the other side of the road. We've all read too much about "pub-rock"... (read more)
  (JP is impressed by the Winkies and by a band whose name he doesn't know, but sees at Dingwall's, which he visits in the company of Richard Williams, formerly of Melody Maker, but who now "lives, moves and has his being" at Island Records.)
  Tags: Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis.
• Jan. 19: Singles Reviews
• Jan. 26: "The things you find in Groove City"
  CHANCES ARE that you have missed one or two of the BBC's "Story Of Pop" programmes - perhaps even three or four. It could even be that you are one of a mutinous handful of citizens who is not at this moment collecting "Story of Pop - The First Encyclopaedia of Pop in 26 Weekly Parts". The reason I... (read more)
  (Writes about the "Northern Disco" scene and buying rare 45s at the Groove City Record Shop in King's Lynn.)
  Tags: Country Joe & The Fish, Reggae, Charlie Feathers, Willie Gauff & The Love Brothers, Brothers Of Soul, Salem Travellers, Earl Gains, Sherli Allen, Ruby Andrews.
• Jan. 26: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 2: "My voyage of discovery and adventure"
  FIRSTLY SOME good news for those billions of SOUNDS readers who are Beefheart freaks and have been plaintively asking when our hero would have a new record released. Part of a recent, largely illegible letter from his desert fastness in California... (read more)
  (Also travels to Blackpool to interview "Northern Disco" DJ Ian Levine for The Story of Pop, goes to Stoke-Liverpool game (LFC "snatch a somewhat fortunate draw out of the jaws of defeat") and describes a gig at North East London Polytechnic headlined by Gong.)
  Tags: Linda Lewis, Warm, Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers, Savoy Brown, T. Rex, Rubber Rhino, Roger Ruskin Spear, Thunderclap Newman, Spontaneous Combustion, Casablanca.
• Feb. 2: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 9: "Like er, yeah man real cosmic"
  CONTINUED AND painfully dedicated research for the BBC's "Story Of Pop" (A Tale Of Derring Do On The Spanish Main) brought me this week to the temporary home of Robert Wyatt. SOUNDS readers seem to take a particular and most gratifying interest in young... (read more)
  (Letters from "The girl from the stars" and "David. London".)
  Tags: Keith Emerson, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Faces, Yes, Genesis.
• Feb. 9: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 16: "At last I’m a Star, I tell you"
  THE first letter out of the postbag this week (the first of some nine letters - at last I'm a star, a star I tell you) came from David of London. David, regular readers will doubtless recall, was and still is the lad who last week called me... (read more)
  (More letters, including again from “David. London”, to claim LP prize; “fan club” for Woggle (A Dog); another gig at NE London Poly, with Casablanca and others, but evening became “like a slow-motion of a Fellini film and my retreating sanity dictated that I flee”; pic of Liverpool captain Emlyn Hughes.)
  Tags: Mike Oldfield, David Bowie, Roger Ruskin Spear, Thunderclap Newman, Spontaneous Combustion.
• Feb. 16: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 23: Singles Reviews
• Mar. 2:" What is Cosmic Music?"
  SITTING here at Peel Acres on a clear, crisp, sunny morning it is not easy to turn what little concentration I have (most of it having been shot away in one night of terror on the Somme in 1915) to the quivering world of rock 'n' roll. Outside there are... (read more)
  (Another letter from “Girl from the stars”, who has been asked “What is Cosmic Music?” Her answer: “Forget your training, your prejudices. Open your ears. Explore the new melodies. Dream with the glittering waves.” Peel suggests that “what we really want” is a ten-page supplement on equipment used by Yes, while lesson from “Serious Newspapers” is “we should concentrate more on dullness” and volume.)
  Tags: Marc Bolan.
• Mar. 9: "Get those fingernails scrubbed"
  AND STILL the abusive letters come. Witness this attempt by John Kerr, of Glasgow to win a free LP. Dear Mr. Peel, you vacant, slow, limited, obtuse, dense, stolid, bovine mooncalf, You unspeakable heap of dung; you miserable, nauseating pile of... (read more)
  (Another abusive letter; applications for Woggle (A Dog) fan club (plus pic); most upcoming roadshow gigs “since 1968”.)
  Tags: Ducks Deluxe.
• Mar. 9: Singles Reviews
• Mar. 16: TERRY SYLVESTER (he's one of the Hollies you know) is a Liverpool supporter. In fact, not just a Liverpool supporter but A Liverpool Supporter. He even travels from his home in Hampstead to places like Preston for pre-season games. He made me feel... (read more)
  (Pinball and chat with fellow LFC fan Terry Sylvester, also a former member of Merseybeat combos the Escorts - JP mentions that another member of the band was the "kid brother" of a rival "Beatle expert" he encountered during his time living in Dallas - and Swinging Blue Jeans; reception for Rab Noakes.)
  Tags: Graham Nash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bill Shankly.
• Mar. 16: Singles Reviews
• Mar. 23: "We could be a cut price Liz and Richard yet"
  REGULAR READERS will scarcely credit this but I've actually had not one, not two, but three good gigs in the past ten days. If you'll draw up a comfy chair and put out that dreadful pipe you're smoking, I'll tell you all about... (read more)
  (Roadshow gigs in Doncaster, Mablethorpe, Birmingham, with Plymouth and Eastbourne still to come.)
  Tags: Pig, Alquin, Golden Earring, You'll Never Walk Alone.
• Mar. 23: Singles Reviews
• Mar. 30: "Beware the Ides of March!"
  ON HIS euphoric and perfectly ripping LP "Marjorie Razor Blade", Kevin Coyne, who is among the best we have, sings, to a rousing beat, a number called "Eastbourne Ladies". This very weekend I was... (read more)
  (Roadshow gigs in Eastbourne and Guildford, with Edinburgh and Newcastle to come.; lawnmower pic.)
  Tags: Mike Absalom.
• Apr. 6: Singles Reviews
• Apr. 13: JP: "What are the Floyd Up To, Dave? Dave Gilmour: I’m not really sure"
  WHAT a week, minuscule terriers, what a week ! Since I was a most comely child of some four summers, since those distant days when boys became men in the flash of gunfire across Flanders mud, since the time when sportsmen of all sorts and... (read more)
  (Goes to Liverpool FA semi-final reply win v Leicester, as well as draw previous Sat; brief chats with Roger Chapman, David Gilmour, Edgar Froese.)
  Tags: Island Records, Beckett, Pink Floyd, Unicorn, Tangerine Dream, Virgin Records.
• Apr. 13: Singles Reviews
• Apr. 20: "I’m not going to make is as an Oliver Reed"
  AH GOOD morning. Nice to see you up and about again. I had planned to bring you some of the intimate secrets of the stars this week but I have been lurching rather unattractively around the country annoying folks in Doncaster, Nailsworth and Smethwick, and had no time for seeking... (read more)
  (White suit; pop radio; roadshow.)
  Tags: Johnnie Walker, Emperor Rosko, Noel Edmonds, Faces, David Hamilton, Mighty Avengers, Toggery Five, Ann Peebles, Edwin Starr.
• May 11: "The happiest day of my life"
  "WHAT'S ROD Stewart like?" asked Phil, as he and I and Keith and about fifty other Liverpool supporters tried to force ourselves into an already overcrowded compartment on the tube to Wembley Park. Now I've been doing radio programmes now for about seven years and deep down I quite like people to believe I know the... (read more)
  (At Wembley to see Liverpool win FA Cup final v Newcastle; Bill Shankly pic; Elton/Rod stadium gig at Watford next day, but no DJ equipment and Peel replaced by tape.)
  Tags: Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Yes, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Faces, David Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart.
• May 11: Singles Reviews
• May 25: STEVE YATES manages The Bargepole restaurant in Leicester. At least, I think that's what he roared. Below us, on the stage of the Leicester Polytechnic Union, Chapman/Whitney's Streetwalkers were firing into an encore and this... (read more)
  (Reviews triple-header in Leicester, featuring Streetwalkers, Rab Noakes, Montrose. Singer "Sam" (Sammy) Hager of Montrose critized for immediately adopting "heavy metal stance, one leg ramrod straight out behind, the other bent and outfront.")
  Tags: Family, Roger Chapman.
• May 25: Singles Reviews
• June 1: "Wanted: four non-musicians"
  ANOTHER RIVETTING Peel gig last night. I missed seeing Alec Lindsey, Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes defying the wiki dago in order to spend an hour playing a selection of chart biggies, raves from the grave and cool climbers to a small cluster of folks near... (read more)
  (Subdued roadshow in Bromley; cheered by letter re Montrose review; enduring the “absurdities of the rock industry”.)
  Tags: Motown, James Brown, Bonzo Dog Band, 10cc, Focus, ELP, Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan, Portsmouth Sinfonia.
• June 1: Singles Reviews
• June 8: "The trouble with being a big star is … getting there!"
  COUPLA THINGS about last week's column. (1) I never described the audience at my recent gig in Mottingham (with an "M") as an "herbaceous order". "Herbaceous border" was more what I had in mind. (2) My apologises to the Portsmouth Sinfonia for calling them the... (read more)
  (Apologies; letter from Roy St John (Phoenix) re David Gilmour article in Sounds.)
  Tags: Island Records, Virgin Records.
• June 8: Singles Reviews
• June 15: "Now for another lecture"
  JACK "BIMBO" Struggles signed. He knew the squadron leader was right and yet... There were too many questions still unanswered. Where, for example, were the six heavy crates that had lain for so long on the floor of 'D' Hanger? Why had... (read more)
  (Bradford U roadshow gig, including “unruly dancing about and shouting”.)
• June. 22: "My mate Gary's OK OK!"
  BET YOU missed Gary and me and Jim Stafford on "Roundtable". That's Gary Glitter but, well, I call him Gary and he calls me John. Just like that. Gary and John - well, why not? The only other time I've been adjacent to the lad was way way back when I was an... (read more)
  (On first name terms with GG, after being ignored at first meeting.)
  Tags: Faces, Duane Eddy.
• June 22: Singles Reviews
• June 29: "Loitering with intent"
  I HAVE just asked Steve Peacock, allegedly a man in some authority here in the SOUNDS office, what he feels I should discuss with you this week. He, rather coarsely in my view, shouted "tits" and directed his attention elsewhere in a... (read more)
  (“Schoolgirl of the Year”, including Pig's views; letters; Woggle visits Sounds office.)
  Tags: Yes, ELP, Focus, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Cosmic Jokers.
• June 29: Singles Reviews
• July 6: "A night out at the Palais"
  THE OTHER night, radiant with purpose and with the fabulous John Peel Roadshow taking the night off before embarking (I think that's the right word) on yet another gruelling tour of the provinces, I slipped along to the Hammersmith Palais to see and hear... (read more)
  (Hammersmith Palais gig, no cheeseburger without burger, pic of Sheena from Sydenham School “satirical review”)
  Tags: Emperor Rosko, Blue Cheer, Kokomo, John Walters, Andy Mackay, Brinsley Schwarz, Dave Edmunds, Manfred Mann.
• July 6: Singles Reviews
• July 13: "What are today's young coming to?"
  MADGE SMILED, a mocking half smile that played about her full red lips like Summer lighting. "My God, you she-devil!" exclaimed Roger, blanching beneath his tan, and without another word he rose from his chair and crossed the room to where Dan lay... (read more)
  (Letters re cheap Fender bass, E1 ’74 festival; request for African records; ”Knickers For Sale” pic.)
  Tags: Ace, Mono Mono, Mahotella Queens, Izintombi Zesi Manje Manje.
• July 13: Singles Reviews
• July 20: Singles Reviews
• July 27: "Knebworth: the roughs and the smoothies"
  IF YOU'D been strolling about arm-in-arm with your best gal in the back-stage area at Knebworth you'd have searched in vain among the gigantic air-conditioned Allman Brothers' caravans for anything like a Van Morrison caravan. No-one placed Van Morrison flags... (read more)
  (Knebworth; Liverpool FA Cup final pic.)
  Tags: Pete Drummond, Grateful Dead, Pete Wingfield, Doobie Brothers, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Thin Lizzy, Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey, Zigzag.
• July 27: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 3: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 10: THIS AFTERNOON (Sunday) a detachment of us were planning to cruise into Norfolk to observe a spot of motor racing at Snetterton. Sadly our plans have been aborted by torrential rain.... . (read more)
  (Writes about his dog Woggle and a bad Peel Roadshow gig in Bexley.)
  Tags: Pete Drummond, Brinsley Schwarz, Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor.
• Aug. 10: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 24: "Our intrepid reporter (ha ha) is back at the grindstone. We tried to lose him on Mount Snowden but a well meaning Boy Scout (little bleeder) showed him the way back."
  HERE'S SOME good news for ELP and Focus fans. Fresh from the wind-swept and rain soaked slopes of Snowdon (which is, despite what you may have been taught at school, at least 20,000 feet in height) I have sat and listened to an LP by a German trio named Triumvirat... (read more)
  (JP is unimpressed by them, but shows more interest in Austrailan bands Ariel and Daddy Cool.)
  Tags: Harvest Records, Australia.
• Aug. 24: Singles Reviews
• Aug. 31: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 7: "After all is said and done, none of it would have been possible without YOU. The fans."
  I'LL WAGER my carefully catalogued collection of European and Commonwealth knicker elastic, some of it dating back to the reign of George VI, that the very last thing you care to read about this week is the Reading Festival. "Why" you may well remark... (read more)
  (JP "enjoyed Reading hugely" and namechecks many of the acts who appeared. Peel and Jerry Floyd hosted the festival.)
  Tags: Traffic, Fumble, Barclay James Harvest, Pink Floyd, Beckett, Jack The Lad, Focus, George Melly, Georgie Fame.
• Sep. 7: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 14: “That’s a strange expression Bruce. Tell me more.”
  IT IS a new morning at Peel Acres. The party of eleven schoolgirls from Rugby has walked, as it has every day this week, the mile and three-quarters from the lodge-keeper's bungalow up to the front door. Vulva, the Norwegian au-pair, has, as she has... (read more)
  (More readers’ Australian rock recommendations; JP can’t get the records other than Ariel’s, and asks for copies.)
  Tags: Australia, Blackfeather, Session, Bakery, Carson, Band Of Light, Mackenzie Theory.
• Sep. 14: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 21: IN THIRTY-SIX hours time I'll be crawling painfully and silently through the lichens, mosses, broken bottles and derelict tin cans of part of picturesque Thetford Chase. On either side of me will be crawling ladies who were until a few... (read more)
  Claiming illness ahead of upcoming trip to Thetford Chase, interview with Rod for R1 “Rock Speak”; pink sugar leg wedding gift from Male brothers.)
  Tags: Rod Stewart, Sparks, Ace, AJ Webber, John Walters.
• Sep. 21: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 5: I'VE LOOKED everywhere for it but I can't find the letter that I got from some dude in Scotland a week or so ago. What he was saying was that he was getting worried about the kind of music that I'm playing on my unspeakable graceful... (read more)
  (Lack of trad “rock” bands for Top Gear leads JP to survey current music scene; “Basically it is that we’re experiencing the musical equivalent of the Big Bang - there is no central and dominant theme, just an ever increasing range of different musicks for the connoisseur to enjoy.”)
  Tags: John Walters, Soul, Rod Stewart, Bad Company, Who, Rolling Stones, Faces, Soft Machine, Hatfield & The North, Henry Cow, Gilgamesh, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Kokomo, Gonzalez, Barclay James Harvest, Brinsley Schwarz, Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, Chilli Willi, Osibisa, Cymande, Batti Mamzelle, Jabula, Be-Bop Deluxe, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tangerine Dream, Don Covay, Mud, Sweet, Status Quo, Rory Gallagher, Montrose, Amboy Dukes, Nic Jones, Martin Carthy, Cheviot Ranters, John Doonan, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin, Robert Wyatt, Betty Davis, Linda Jones, Rufus, Supertramp, Robert Palmer, Sparks, Blue, Pink Floyd, Little Feat, Peter Hammill, Na Fili, Van Morrison, Allman Brothers. Leo Sayer, Ry Cooder, 10cc, Wailers.
• Oct. 5: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 12: "What a useful present this Dictionary of Famous Quotations has proved to be"
  "Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me". So said Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth, Part One. As it was with Falstaff so it is with me. This column should have been written last Thursday. Instead I went to a reception for Ann Peebles and got mildly pissed. Naturally the entire staff of SOUNDS had... (read more)
  (Meets Kid Jensen for first time; in bed with flu, so missed folk dance society evening in Southend.)
  Tags: Leo Sayer, Nic Jones, Radio Luxembourg.
• Oct. 12: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 19: “Give The Wotters A Wace”
  NED SPUN on his heels to face the stranger, the spanner clutched in his hand, his face white with fury. "Get out of here, you cur", he rasped from between clenched teeth. Behind him the sleek bonnet of the Pendine Special gleamed proudly in its... (read more)
  (“Autocar” mag, motor racing books by “Bira”, SCH Davis and others; Isle of Wight roadshow gig.)
  Tags: Nick Mason, Status Quo, Emperor Rosko, John Walters, BBC World Service.
• Oct. 19: Singles Reviews
• Oct. 26: "Memories are made of Merseys"
  In the spring of 1964 your boyish hero was living in a shed at the bottom of old Mr. German's house on Potomac. The shed had been built many years earlier for the accommodation of servants and was well less than palatial. Nevertheless it had a bath and a somewhat antiquated... (read more)
  (US memories sparked by arrival of "Merseybeat 62-64" sleeve and extras, without records.)
  Tags: KLIF, Beatles, Liverpool (city), Hollies, Animals, Searchers, Bill Harry, Faron's Flamingos, Merseybeats, Big Three, Sonny Webb & The Cascades, Undertakers, Escorts, Dennisons, Mojos, Zodiacs, Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, Kingsize Taylor & The Dominos, United Artists, Bill Shankly.
• Oct. 26: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 2: "Same again Rod"
  HIS SHIRT hanging awkwardly over voluminous trousers, Paul leaned over and kissed the Pig on the cheek. "Many happy returns for tomorrow, Pig," he said, putting a hand on her arm and squeezing it affectionately. Unfortunately the featured...(read more)
  ("Paul" is Paul Gambaccini, about to leave the UK for radio work in Boston. Peel also mentions a Tangerine Dream concert at the Rainbow and appearing on Rosko's Round Table with Rod Stewart and Kenney Jones.)
  Tags: Rolling Stone.
• Nov. 2: Singles Reviews
• Nov. 16: "A million dollar show - but they still left early":
  "IT MUST have been about half-way through the third number." The noisome old man turned and spat with relish into the mud. The wedding guests, shivering now in the harsh wind, moved restlessly from foot to foot and glanced longingly at the church... (read more)
  (Describes a chaotic promotional concert with Dandelion label artists including Stackwaddy at City University and his recent Roadshow gig at the same venue. Also mentions Rod Stewart.)
  Tags: Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias, Faces, Kenya, Football, Marmalade, Ipswich Town, Liverpool, Ry Cooder.
• Nov. 30: "T.Dream or not T.Dream" 
  "WELL", CONTINUED Kevin, wiping the chip grease from his mouth with the back of a swollen hand, "I Thought I was on this sort of a planet, you see." Sparky and Graham laughted sardonically but Kevin pressed onwards regardless...(read more)
  (Reports on a Tangerine Dream concert in Guildford and defends the band against their critics. Also mentions Eno, John Lee Hooker and enjoying plays on Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.)
  Tags: Virgin Records, Pink Floyd.
• Dec. 7: Singles Reviews
• Dec 27: John Peel Section: Peel lists his favourite things relating to music, TV and radio, separated into British and International sections.
  Tags: Rod Stewart, Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman, Eno. John Doonan, Bridget St. John, Richard & Linda Thompson, Tangerine Dream, Spencer Davis Group, Robert Wyatt, Be-Bop Deluxe, Match Of The Day, The Archers, Stevie Wonder, Faces, Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, Booker T & The MGs, Sparks, Betty Wright, Ann Peebles, Bob Dylan

1975

• Jan. 4: Top Ten Albums Of 1974
• Jan. 4: 1974 Top Fifty One Singles
  EVER WONDERED why every third person in London is Australian? A letter from a man who describes himself as an "ELP, Yes and Focus freak" might give you a sort of clue... (read more)
  Tags: Australia.
• Jan. 4: "London County Council - Peel's Report":
  1974 HAS been a good year for singles - and a bad year as well. What I mean is ... any year in which a record as manifestly awful as "The Streak" can become Number One in the charts has got to have something dramatically wrong with it. On the other hand ... (read more)
  (Column is in school report format and features "schoolgirl" photo.)
  Tags: Sweet, Bay City Rollers, Mud, Alvin Stardust, Wombles, Suzi Quatro, Marc Bolan, Barry White, Wings, Elton John, Osmonds, Queen, Mott The Hoople, Gary Glitter, Glitter Band, David Bowie, Cozy Powell, Bryan Ferry, Sparks, Slade, Wizzard, Paper Lace, David Cassidy, Status Quo, Rubettes, Cockney Rebel, Showaddywaddy, David Essex.
• Jan. 25: Am I The Invisible Man?
  "THE CHAIRMAN of the Board of Warner Bros. Records and the Managing Director of Warner Bros. Records UK, in co-operation with the United States Embassy Cultural Affairs Office, invite you to a reception at the Embassy ... to honour ... The Doobie Brothers, Graham Central Station, Little Feat, Montrose, Tower Of Power, Bonaroo."... (read more)
  (Categories of reception goers; cocaine; sleeping beauty after Cardiff roadshow, Little Feat at Rainbow to come.)
  Tags: Rock Week, Gary Glitter, Kenney Jones, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart.
• Jan. 25: Singles Reviews
• Feb.1: "Back to stereo"
  IT's SIX-thirty on Monday morning. The shipping forecast is blaring out of our ailing radio, having temporarily replaced Simon Bates, who left us with a charming little number by Max Bygraves. TypealongaMax. Despite the air of electronic...(read more)
  (Comments on poor quality reception of Radio 1 when he is on the air from 5.15-7 p.m, mentions he's going to have an ear operation.)
  Tags: Pig, John Walters, Pink Floyd, Little Feat, Terry Wogan, Matt Monro, Frank Sinatra, David Essex, Liverpool, Ipswich Town.
• Feb.1: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 8: YOUR BOY reporter comes to you today from Berten, 20 kilometres from Brussels - well, Brussels to you, Bruxelles to we travellers - at the home of Paul Evrard, star of Belgian radio. We came to this Euroneck of the woods to see Little Feat at Forest National last night. The Mighty Pig missed the... (read more)
  (Euro trip, Belgian music poll.)
  Tags: Neil Diamond, Leo Sayer, Lou Reed, Elvis Presley, George McCrae, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, David Bowie, Kiki Dee, Suzi Quatro, Donna Summer, Roxy Music, Sparks, Slade, 10cc, Pink Floyd, Mud, Rory Gallagher, Jan Akkerman, John McLaughlin, Jose Feliciano, Manitas de Plata, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Jack Bruce, Ringo Starr, Keith Emerson, Jethro Tull, Kevin Coyne, Kevin Ayers.
• Feb. 8: Singles Reviews
• Feb. 22: "BECALMED!" DAN and Jack stared at each other in dismay as Cap'n Follicle repeated the word and, despite the broiling afternoon sun that even now blazed down over the yardarm, Jack felt a cold shiver run down his back. Becalmed here in the Forties, beneath the guns of King Philip. It was... (read more)
  (Also mentions doing a gig at Crawley Tech and he's surprised to hear the new Pete Atkin single on Radio 1.)
  Tags: Twice Bitten, Noel Edmonds.
• Feb. 22: Singles Reviews
• Apr. 12: WHAT A NIGHT! Not since the last year of the great queen's reign, when I was the resident at the hill fort of Bhangiper, have I slept so badly. The ague you can read about at the top of this week's singles reviews really seized hold during the... (read more)
  (“Holy Grail” reception, with famous friends and unhappy Goodies.)
  Tags: Monty Python, Rick Wakeman, Michael Palin, Bill Oddie, Led Zeppelin.
• Apr. 12: Singles Reviews
• Apr. 26: "Laughing Jack Peel does it for England!"
  WHO, PLEASANT reader, is this rough 'n' tough, oh-so-out-doorsy, he-man doing battle against thigh high flood waters? See how resolutely he fights his way through the raging torrent, effortlessly holding two heavy cases above the boiling...(read more)
  (He mistakenly buys the LP W.C. Fields Is Alive and Drunk At Your Father's Mustache[2], believing it to be a Fields record, and attends a "musical evening" in Bury St Edmunds.)
  Tags: In Concert, Richard & Linda Thompson, Bridget St John, Nic Jones, Orwell String Band, Watersons, June Tabor, Martin Carthy, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Top Gear, Tangerine Dream.
• Apr. 26: Singles Reviews
  (The article, where Peel reviewed the Goodies' The Funky Gibbon single, and apparently got beaten up by the group after he gave a damaging verdict on their record.)
• May. 3: "Fighting the flab"
  IN AN HOUR or so the John Peel Roadshow will sew a fly-button back on it's trousers and set off for Cardiff. I would like to tell you that the Roadshow's button fell off as the result of intense female pressure - regrettably it fell off because the trouser's contents are too fat. The adjoining sweat-shirt's contents are even nastier, a series of... (read more)
  (Going on a diet; gigs in London ahead of Cardiff roadshow.)
  Tags: Count Bishops, Tonge, Ariel.
• May. 3: Singles Reviews
• May. 24: Dicing with death:
  DOUBTLESS THERE are still times and places when and where the hordes scream for Slade and would mob Noddy Holder impressively if they could get their hands on him. On Sunday Noddy was able to walk unmolested and unrecognised through a considerable crowd of young girls. They, as... (read more)
  (Bay City Rollers at Mallory Park.)
  Tags: Johnnie Walker, Wombles, Showaddywaddy, Glitter Band, Cozy Powell, Noel Edmonds, Geordie, Emperor Rosko.
• May. 24: Singles Reviews
• Jun. 7: "This should only be read by the boys!"
  NOW THE truth can be told. The irregular appearance in this journal of this column is recent weeks, has been due entirely to my decision to stop writing it. For some time I have felt that at 19 I am too old to be winning the admiration, nay, adoration, of so many... (read more)
  (Advice for boys from "Rev. Ganymede Ravenspork".)
  Tags: Peel Acres.
• Jun. 7: Singles Reviews
• Jun. 14: 'I hate bleeding' beetles,' said Denzil the copyu:
  YESTERDAY I sat on the floor of a photographer's studio in fashionable North London, with my head between the legs of one of Britain's best known female models. This, as I'm sure you know already, is not a thing I do often. I can't really tell you why I was ... (read more)
  (Photo session; walk in Regents Park; recent gigs.)
  Tags: Osmonds, Rick Wakeman.
• Jun. 14: Singles Reviews
• Jun. 28: Singles Reviews
• Jul. 5: For Wembley, read Wombley - and Peel"
  "GET OFF with you, you old silly!" I hear you cry, as I settle down in a comfortable chair with a large glass of a rather intriguing Rhenish wine, to discuss the events of Saturday, June 21. "We have," you might reasonably continue... (read more)
  (Reviews an appearance by Wellington Womble at the village fete, mentions "the poet Roche" (Pete Roche) "a man whose name has been spelt wrongly and Roach on the last three Fairport Convention albums".)
  Tags: Danny Kaye, Elton John, John Coltrane, Goodies, Wombles, Gary Glitter, Eddie Cochran, Orwell String Band.
• Jul. 5: Singles Reviews
• Jul. 12: Now listen here!
  IT IS 7.30 on Sunday morning. Peel, his firm and manly features most appealingly outlined by fresh white linen, is asleep. He has been asleep for five and a half hours, recovering after the exertions of the affair at Knebworth. The phone rings and the sensitive...(read more)
   (Peel mentions the musicians he met at the Knebworth Festival - Captain Beefheart (who later phoned him) Steve Miller (who told Peel that in his youth in Texas he too listened to Kat's Karavan) and Roy Harper.) 
  Tags: Frank Zappa, Jimmy Reed, Pete Townshend, Lightnin’ Hopkins, In Concert, Pink Floyd.
• Jul. 12: Singles Reviews
• Jul. 19: "Impress your friends - get into Oz Rock"
  HI PALS! Last week or was it the week before? - your best buddy (me) finally became the delighted proprietor of a cassette player. For those among you who care about technical matters, the device is an Amstrad 6000, made in Canada and the rewind doesn't work. Despite this, I have at last been able to squat in my lair and listen to....(read more)
  (... tapes, including one of Australian rock sent to him by a listener, with artists including "the punk rock band AC/DC".)
  Tags: Australia, Ariel, Amboy Dukes, Skyhooks, Sparks, Dingees, Eagles, Country Radio, Linda George, Neil Young.
• Jul. 19: Singles Reviews
• Sep. 6: "The carnivals are over - Kick off with John Peel at Reading".
  It's a week since Reading '75 and my back is still killing me. 'Good ole Peely', you may be thinking, 'deflowering school girls again'. No such luck, mates o' mine, no such luck. No the aching back is the result of three nights spent trying to sleep in the back of a Range-Rover... read more)
  (JP meets Tim Rose, praises Hawkwind, Dr Feelgood and Thin Lizzy, is critical of Yes ("the musical equivalent of an American funeral").)
  Tags: Be-Bop Deluxe, Jack The Lad, Supertramp, Heavy Metal Kids, Robin Trower, Status Quo.
• Oct. 18: "A Peelet's on the way":
  YOU KNOW, it seems such a long time since we last sat down together and had a little chat about this and that. Yet here we are again and I have a feeling it is going to be just as much fun as it was before....  (read more)
  (The principal difference in the complex pattern of my days is this...I am now gainfully employed on Entirely Wonderful Radio One for five nights a week.)
  (Weight loss, hair cut; Anfield as baby name; nightly shows; no roadshows.)
  Tags: Who, Roxy Music, Reggae, Status Quo, Black Sabbath, Barry White, Genesis.
• Nov. 1: A fair old fortnight:
  IT HAS, my little curvaceous divinities, been a bumper fortnight for music. Almost, but not quite, top-hole. Nothing like a Little-Feat-at-the-Rainbow or a Wailer-at-the-Lyceum, or even a Van-Morrison-at-Knebworth, but a load of good, solid, enjoyable, music for all that. Firstly - and I know you will have read all about the... (read more)
  (Gigs at Wembley, York Minster; new LPs, including archive Jimi H.)
  Tags: Roxy Music, Sadistic Mika Band, Tangerine Dream, Richard Branson, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher.
• Nov. 8: Peel and the Mighty Gorgon: a gripping tale for boys (and girls)
  WHAT A dull column that was last week, eh? I'm most dreadfully sorry about it. Here's a bit of action to make up for it. Ned crept across the rocks towards the smugglers' lair. Close behind him moved the silent figure of his new friend Earl, the... (read more)
  (Shopping at Intone Records in Peckham Rye for Reggae, Black Wax in Streatham for Soul; African records from Jumbo at Virgin.)
  Tags: Record Shops, Burning Spear, Cornell Campbell, Bronner Brothers, Esquires Ltd, Papa & The Utopians, Soul Twins, Tommy Ellison, Ray Williams, Members(2), JM Lulu, Mountain Sisters, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Love Birds, Creations, Mahotella Queens.
• Dec. 13: Bore to run (John Peel is the future of rock and roll):
  SHIT, MAN! FROM the rain-swept, rat-infested, snow-driven, black 'n' grey, off-the wall, up against-the-wall, you-blow-my-nose-and-I'll-blow-yours, vainglorious, whore-ridden, er... (read more)
  (Peel mocks and parodies Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith, who's on the front cover of this issue of Sounds.)
  Tags: Rolling Stone, Punk.

1976

• Jan. 24 Mother and child both satisfactory:
  CORRECT ME if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Bill Medley who said, or rather sang, 'You Never Close Your Eyes Anymore?' I think it must have been. And there's no point denying that Bill knew his stuff. William Robert Anfield Ravenscroft (alias Peel) edged his way uncomfortably into... (read more)
  (William arrives!)
  Tags: Pig, Edward G Robinson, Liverpool, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Youth, John Walters.
• Feb. 28 There are NO references to schoolgirls in this column:
  IF YOU were one of the lucky thousands who flocked to the Odeon, Hammersmith, last week to see 10CC, you were almost certainly taken aback by the suavity, the sophisticated nonchalance, of the compere, and by his rugged good looks, his outdoorsy glow, his deep and... (read more)
  (Sees 10cc twice, backstage once, difficulty getting in second time; runs down recent sessions and album features, plus similar upcoming.)
  Tags: BBC Radio Four, BBC Radio One, Chas And Dave, Maria Muldaur, Leo Kottke, Van Morrison, Be-Bop Deluxe, Status Quo, Robin Trower, Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, Maddy Prior & June Tabor, Jess Roden, Thin Lizzy, National Health, Stackridge, Talisker, Brand X, Racing Cars, Bothy Band, Elkie Brooks, Jess Roden.
• Mar. 20 My friends the stars:
  SO I was saying to David - David Cassidy that is, of course - that I thought it was quite ......... Oh, sorry! Didn't see you there, I've spoken to you before about creeping up on people like that. Gave me a nasty turn. I was just telling all the boys and girls about my meeting with David Cassidy down at the... (read more)
  (Sees David Cassidy at Speakeasy, Ali at Thames TV; memories of Stones in San Bernardino; US presidents.)
  Tags: Jeff Beck, Muhammad Ali, Tony Blackburn, Cliff Richard, Rolling Stones, Hubert Humphrey, Ian Callaghan, Olivia Newton-John.
• Apr. 10  A boy named Zuma?:
  Barcelona 0, Liverpool 1. I'M SORRY. I know this isn't a football paper. Now which of you typed that then? Come on, I'm not fooling with you. I want to know. You're not leaving the room until one of you owns up and that's that. Was it you, Vendrome? You, Frobisher? Erg-XL2? How about you, Gilhooly? ... (read more )
  (Neil Young gig at Hammersmith rated best since Little Feat.)
  Tags: Liverpool, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Byrds, Dillards, Buffalo Springfield, Peel Acres, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Little Feat.
• Jun.12 ALTHOUGH THE sun outside is effulgent to the point of folly the air is filled with merry twitterings of droves of songbirds, the Peel heart is heavy. I have sat for some 12 minutes now, my grizzled old head cupped in a gnarled hand (also mine), trying to think of... (read more)
  (Happy memories of previous summer village mini-bus trip to Yugoslavia, but no plans yet this year, says he's "worried about the sinking pound"; Sunday gig at Southend FC, saw Mickey Jupp Band and David Bromberg Band, missed Alvin Lee Band and Budgie due to baby.)
  Tags: Mickey Jupp Band, David Bromberg Band, Alvin Lee Band, Budgie.
• Jul. 3 It's all a lie:
  LISTEN - dreadfully sorry and all that sort of thing about missing last week's bumper ish. Truth of the matter is that I was moving furtively about the Midlands at the time, and the opportunity to sit right down and rattle out a bulletin never... (read more)
  (College gig at Rugby college with Nashville Teens; delivers Leeds Poly lecture.)
  Tags: Stephanie de Sykes, Terry Wogan, Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Carpenters.
• Aug. 7 I'm off for a frolic:
  BEFORE WE take another step into the unknown, here's a little list I think you will find jolly useful. Just carry it with you wherever you go and turn to it in time of stress and tribulation. 1. Hereford Cathedral. 2. Vasco da Gama. 3. Molybdenum. 4. The Who. 5. Family. 6. Roxy Music. 7. Fairport Convention. 8. Rolling Stones. 9...
  (Previews the series of retrospective shows on bands in the list, which will be broadcast while he's and his family are on holiday in Cornwall) (read more)
  Tags: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Status Quo.
• Aug. 14  Babies:
  YES I remember how sensitive you are, and normally, as I'm sure you're aware, I wouldn't think of mentioning it. But - don't turn around right now - he's still lying there on the tiles and staring up at me. From the expression on that part of his face which is ... (read more)
  (Music and baby; band retrospective shows while on holiday.)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, Grateful Dead, Joan Armatrading, Liverpool, Loudon Wainwright III, Who, Family, Roxy Music, Fairport Convention, Rolling Stones, Cream, Soft Machine, Faces, Yardbirds, Beatles, Be-Bop Deluxe.
• Sep. 4 What We Did On Our Holidays:
  BY HECK I missed you. Missed the soft touch of your hand, the silvery elfin tinkle of your laugh, the warmth of your body against mine. Mind you, I did have a pretty rare old time in Cornwall, consuming generous quantities of ... (read more)
  (Holiday to Cornwall included seeing Swinging Blue Jeans, not going to Radio 1 Roadshow.)
  Tags: John Denver, Thin Lizzy, Nick Lowe, Be-Bop Deluxe, Eddie & The Hotrods, Graham Parker, Reading.
• Sep. 11 Rain or shine, Reading’s fine:
  JUST GUESSING, of course, but one supposes that one must have piloted the Peel Roadshow's Team Tampax V 16 racer through the very heart of St. Neots some hundred times over the past five years. A sleepy little market town, assumes the jaded passer-through, nestling in a corner of... (read more)
  (Peel reviewing the Reading Festival.)
  Tags: Eddie & The Hotrods, Supercharge, Mallard, Gong, Reggae, U Roy, Mighty Diamonds, Nick Pickett, Colosseum II, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Van Der Graaf Generator, Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno, Camel, Rory Gallagher, AFT, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, Black Oak Arkansas.
• Sep. 18: My private parts are private … but if you want pictures send an s.a.e. to …
  I WAS genuinely saddened to read in last week's ZOUNDS of the death of Jimmy Reed. It has been some time since he made any really worthwhile records, but when I lived, moved, and had my being in Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s Jimmy Reed was... (read more)
  (Passing of Jimmy Reed; sees Fabulous Poodles at Marquee, autumn dates for John Peel Roadshow; buttocks in photo from Reading the previous week didn’t belong to JP.)
  Tags: Reggae, Status Quo, Andy Fairweather-Low, Rolling Stones, Pretty Things, John Cale, Bryan Ferry, Byrds, Youngbloods, Grateful Dead, Wishbone Ash, Elvis Presley,
• Sep. 25: Rose, oh wonderful Rose, why do you get me out of my bed?
  WE AT Peel Acres, that beacon of pure light in a dark and sombre world, live a highly ritualised life, with ancient ceremonies and rich pageantry guiding our every move. In recent weeks we have added a new ritual to our early morning routines. Whosoever rises first - and as you can readily imagine, this is usually... (read more)
  (Mornings at home; A12; runs into Richard Branson; problematic band names.)
  Tags: Poco, Emperor Rosko, Kid Jensen, Steve Hillage, Todd Rundgren, Sadistic Mika Band, Deaf School.
• Oct. 2: Aber’s greatestit:
  HERE at rambling Peel acres, eight hundred square miles of fine arable farm land nestling in the heart of East Anglia, we are experiencing staff problems, and I find myself called upon from time to time to perform menial tasks which a person of my standing is not normally called upon to perform. For this reason I have... (read more)
  (Departure of home helps; upcoming gigs in Aberystwyth and Middlesborough; tax exiles.)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, Pig.
• Oct. 16: Excuses, Excuses:
  WELL, I simply can't imagine what happened to last week's column, I'm sure. I typed it out ever so neatly, thundering out the deathless prose in the back of the car while Vera - I think her name was Vera - got dressed again, and then I popped the finished work, honed and polished with true craftsmanship, into just the... (read more)
  (Aberystwyth, Middlesborough gigs; upcoming gigs in Leicester, Dundee.)
  Tags: Barry White, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Can, Tony Blackburn, Cate Bros, Racing Cars.
• Oct. 23: Quo for the World Cup?
  : I KNOW YOU won't laugh when I tell you that since last Wednesday evening we at Peel Acres have been adhering strictly to twin vows of silence and chastity. Sackcloth and ashes are being worn; we all, including William (A Baby) , sleep in the garden, praying earnestly for sub-zero temperatures and torrential and... (read more)
  (Dundee and Leicester gigs; inept England performance v Finland; Pistols sign for EMI; small labels “give me heart and bring a little joy into this wicked world”.)
  Tags: Football, Sex Pistols, Stiff Records, Chiswick Records, Pink Fairies, Nick Lowe, Sean Tyla, Lew Lewis, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Who, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Thin Lizzy, Status Quo.
• Oct.30: The looniness of the long distance walker:
  YOU'RE looking at a chap who has just walked 22 miles and is in considerable pain as a result. Now I know you're going to tell me, sneering the while, that 8 year old girls regularly cover 50 miles on charity walks and have energy enough for an hour of netball afterwards, but... (read more)
  (22 mile charity walk; Patti Smith / Stranglers gig in Hammersmith.)
  Tags: Elton John, Poetry, Yes.
• Nov. 6: Damned, exciting what?:
  'WOULD YOU like to meet the Damned then?' I thought of the Pig and of William, the frog / child. I thought of Woggle (A Dog) and Mile (Another Dog) and four nameless cats. I thought of my spacious home-styled housing unit, nestling, as it does, in the lee (whatever, a 'lee' may turn out to be) of a... (read more)
  (Damned gig; cassette from the Stranglers)
  Tags: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Rolling Stones, Who, Stiff Records, Tyla Gang, Graham Parker & The Rumour.
• Nov 13: I haven't been feeling myself lately...:
  "GIVE IT to me straight Doc", I croaked. "I can take it", I lied. I don't know about you of course, but I'm one of those nervous sort of chappies who, upon being confronted with a handy list of the twelve major symptons (sic) of, say, leprosy of Rathbone's black fever or laughing... (read more)
  (Severe headaches, radio 'exclusives' and the Damned sorting out the mega-stars.)
  Tags: Rock Against Racism, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Pretty Things, Dave Edmunds, Rod Stewart, Thin Lizzy, Bob Dylan, Robin Trower, Rolling Stones, Be-Bop Deluxe, Boston, Cate Brothers, Lone Star, Racing Cars, Bowles Bros, Asgard, Brand X.
• Nov 20: Brown boots don't make it:
  VERONIQUE drew herself up to her full height, her thick red hair tumbling about her shoulders, her blouse falling open to reveal rather more cleavage than she had planned. Her face was a mask of fury. 'Jut what sort of girl do you think I am, Mr. Rendering?' she spat... Ah, well! Must turn the back on the... (read more)
  (Max's Kansas City LP with The Fast, Pere Ubu and Suicide; cowboy boots.)
  Tags: Paul Gambaccini, Kid Jensen, Allman Brothers Band, Thin Lizzy, Max Romeo, Upsetters, Eddie & The Hotrods, Jonathan Richman, Luther Ingram, Kinky Friedman, Kool & The Gang, Earl Slick Band, Rex, John Fahey, Alan Freeman, Stuart Coleman.
• Nov 27: Let down by my equipment again:
  OH! WHAT a wonderful thing is the Suffolk morning, or 'matin'. How I love to rise before the sun and crawl on my belly through the hedgerows, marking here the soft murmur of the delphinium, there the shrill protesting of the... (read more)
  (Roadshow autumn tour ends in Birmingham and Bath; NME Encyclopaedia of Rock)
  Tags: Deaf School, Little Feat.
• Dec. 4: Down drinking at the bar:
  IT SAYS here "John Peel plus one," you know', murmured the oh-so-lovely creature on the door, peering at the guest-list. I smiled one of those sudden smiles of mine that seem somehow to light the whole room, fingering reflectively the... (read more)
  (Record company event for Loudon Wainwright III.)
  Tags: Michael Hurley, Richard Thompson, Christmas, John Denver.
• Dec. 11: FIRSTLY... I would like to tip my fedora respectfully in the direction of The Daily Mirror's Keith Waterhouse who, this very morning (Monday) wrote the first reasonable paragraph on the Great Punk Rock Horror I've seen in a national newspaper. Secondly... (read more)
  (BBC Radio 1 football team.)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, Pig, Reading Festival, Kid Jensen, Paul Gambaccini, ABBA, Noel Edmonds, Ipswich Town.
• Dec. 18: Peel flashes his 35mm: watch out Linda McC:
  'ELLO 'ep-cats. This week, at the request of that funny little Miss Gasp in 4b, we will talk seriously and meaningfully about oral sex. But first... this is the column that DARES to be... (read more)
  (Reading Festival photographs; Festive 50.)
  Tags: Big Star, Red Nugent, Black Oak Arkansas, Eddie & The Hotrods, U-Roy, William Ravenscroft, Savoy Orpheans, Anne Shelton, Johnnie Ray, Big Three, Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Otis Redding, Country Joe & The Fish, Jimmy Reed, Faces, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Racing Cars, Damned, Simon Bates.
• Dec.25: Partytime with the fab and the famous:
  'And shall all but rejoice to it all. There stands Qoquaq and shall point to the four corners.' I THINK, you know, that Jon Anderson's heart-warming words (from 'Olias Of Sunhillow') have a particular relevance at this season of the year. I'm sure you agree with me. I was reminded of... (read more)
  (Christmas party at Dingwalls, with music from Pirates; vegetarian at Langans Restaurant.)
  Tags: Phil Lynott, Paul Gambaccini, Rat Scabies, Lew Lewis, Wilko Johnson, Maddy Prior, Johnny Kidd, Liverpool.
• Dec. 25: 1976 Top Ten Albums

1977

• Jan. 1: Days Of Wine And Rose's, (Or Was It Christine's?) etc.:
  IT IS 9:45 in the morning and the Peel mouth, so often the traget of spell-bound school-women seeking just one lingering kiss from my full, burning lips, tastes as though a family of... (read more)
  (Dread of social gatherings.)
  Tags: Liverpool, America.
• Jan. 8: Unhappy new year:
  THIS VERY first bulletin of the New Year - for those among you with an eye for detail, it is 1977 - comes to you direct from Radio 1's cosy Continuity C studio, the same studio from which such universal favourites as David Hamilton and... (read more)
  (Christmas shopping on Oxford Street; festivities; Rod concert on TV.)
  Tags: Pig, Kid Jensen, Faces, Rod Stewart.
• Jan. 15: Beanstalk: not all right, Jack:
  IT IS four o' clock in the afternoon and The Pig is out there somewhere, 'kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet' as Lowell George has so neatly put it. If you ask me the queue is over a half mile long, winding to and... (read more)
  (Racing Cars at Marquee, Tony Blackburn in panto; Status Quo win Daily Mirror poll.)
• Jan. 22: Another Peel TV triumph - BBC2 ratings soar (Is that all right John? Thanks for the cheque. - Ed):
  CARAMBA! Such going on! There I was sitting quietly in the restful atmosphere of the Radio 1 typing-pool, musing on the news in the morning papers that scientists have discovered a live nineteen year old virgin woman on the shores of the... (read more)
  (Sight and Sound with Jess Roden; kidney stones; movie premiere.)
  Tags: Top Of The Pops, Status Quo, Amen Corner, Woody Allen, The Front, John Walters, Stranglers.
• Jan. 29: Stone Me! (Saboteurs Hunt Down John Peel)
  COME ON! Please! Before we take a single step further, a word about my kidney-stones. Simply hundreds of you have sat down with your little crayon sets and written me the most terribly sweet letters to ask whether you can have the next one that issues from my somewhat... (read more)
  (Ace at Ronnie Scott's; Pink Floyd 'Animals' LP, Status Quo on TV.)
  Tags: Claire Hamill, Ramones, Blondie.
• Feb. 5: Spitting Distance:
  EVANGELINE, still a virgin at 14, was frightfully distressed at having to rinse all that spit out of my hair. I was less distressed than disappointed with the new wave music-lovers who had put it there. My admiration for their rowdy cause was based on the assumption that they regarded anyone associated with the old... (read more)
  (night at Roxy; mail at Sounds; Ry Cooder at Hammersmith.)
  Tags: Generation X, Thin Lizzy, Reading Festival.
• Feb. 19: A bum gig at the Albert Hall:
  HOWDY ONCE again, fans of the big, big beat. I have heard tell that quite literally hundreds of thousands of you hurled tear-stained copies of last week's SOUNDS into the bin, or worse, when you discovered that my usual fact-filled funniest of a column was... (read more)
  (Hob-nobbing with the stars; new records; Bryan Ferry at Albert Hall.)
  Tags: Supercharge, Rodney Marsh, George Best, Stranglers, Saints, Fabulous Poodles, Motors, Roxy Music, Paul Gambaccini.
• Feb 26: A load of bulls hit:
  HELLO! Tom Jesse, Captain of Rugger and Skipper of Fosker's House at Haveringham School here. I was chinning with my minor in the grubber the other afternoon about the forthcoming match with our greatest rivals, those scoundrels from St. Hubert's, when this damnably good-looking new-bug smiled at... (read more)
  (Sounds poll results; darts; session artists.)
  Tags: John Walters, Paul Gambaccini, Eno, Teddy Warrick, Football, Alan Freeman, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin.
• Mar. 5: In search of The Slits:
  AS I EXPECT you already know, mes enfants, I do like to start the day (or 'jour') with a five mile run and a sauna, and this very morning, as Evangeline coaxed cod liver oil into the myriad folds and crevices of my body, she remarked that I did not seem to her practised eye to be crammed with what Doris Archer has called 'the joys of spring'. And she is... (read more)
  (Slits already attacked in press; home life, haircut pix.)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, Peel Acres, Liverpool, Stranglers, Be-Bop Deluxe, Pig.
• Mar. 12: Peel escapes police swoop:
  IN MARGINALLY less than arf a mo (now, under Community Regulation R3834/2, approximately 2.73 kilomos) I needs must leave your side and motor to the local health centre for a bit of a smallpox jab. I am not, dearest friends, looking forward to this a great deal, but these days the holidaymaker cannot, as I... (read more)
  (smallpox jab; ‘Boogie Nights’ at Old Kent Road youth club DJ competition.)
  Tags: Yes.
• Mar. 19: "Hip Nip Snip Trip".
  (JP quotes oddly-phrased sleevenotes from an album by Japanese group the Far East Family Band):
    "THE REACTION of the listener of progressive rock sound is like participating in an imaginary game which has no limitations more special rule. Originally, all kinds of music including rock is a stimulating deed in sensitivity within time vector. Except the time... "  (read more)
  (He goes on to discuss the album and other imported LPs he'd recently got from the Virgin Records branch at Marble Arch.)
  Tags: 360 Degree Music Experience, Ray Manzarek, Beans, Rod Stewart, Faces, Steampacket, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield.
• Apr. 23: I'm not feeling myself today:
  WEEP NO more my lovelies, your lordlling returns; fit, bronzed, and stronger than ten men twice his size. Oh, but it does indeed, as master Cohen so eloquently put it, seem so long ago since last we met. Where have I been, my darling young ones? How thoughtful of you to enquire? How generous indeed, these... (read more)
  (Column written this week by Giovanni Dadomo in parody Peel style; XTC flyer.)
• Apr. 30: The Real Thing (accept no substitute):
  MY GOODNESS me but you've grown since I saw you last. Does your dear mater know you're down here? Look, I'll tell you what - why don't we pop into my study for a smallish sherry, and I'll show you the holiday pics. There are one or two views of the sulphur springs that I just know you're going to love. Well, perhaps some other... (read more)
  (XTC at Ronnie Scott’s; holiday in St. Lucia.)
  Tags: Be-Bop Deluxe, Stanley Baxter.
• May 7: I’m worried about Eric …:
  IT CAN'T BE that easy being Eric Clapton. Useful to have the money, of course - no mortgage problems there, eh? - and who wouldn't want to be able to play guitar like that? Nice to be a mate of Dylan's too. But what do you do about the ninnies who yell for 'Crossroads' at the gigs? And applaud hysterically whatever you... (read more)
  (Clapton at Hammersmith, Eater at Dingwalls.)
  Tags: Cream, Lonnie Mack, Jeff Beck, Travis Wammack, Duane Eddy, Yvonne Elliman, Elvis Presley, Dr Feelgood, Yardbirds, Adverts, Chelsea, Country Joe & The Fish, Clash, Desperate Bicycles, Dickie Betts & Great Southern, Users, Johnny Guitar Watson, Ranking Trevor, William Ravenscroft.
• May 14: ‘Balding hippie, 37, big record collection, own car, seeks ex-dancer, 19’:
  "TRY THIS, doll." I gave her my Collins and lit a Turkish cigarette. Her ruby-red eyes never left me. "You blew up a storm at Don's place last night," she said. "Those cats from Cleveland were real hot." "Hillbillies!" I spat. "Strictly a second-rate outfit from Nowheresville." ... (read more)
  (Personal ads; seeking cup final ticket v ManU; records, sessions of 1977.)
  Tags: Football, Liverpool, John Walters, Zigzag, Pirates, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Bowles Brothers, Little Bob Story, Be-Bop Deluxe, Van Der Graaf Generator, John Martyn, Andy Fairweather-Low, Leo Kottke, Jess Roden Band, Dave Edmunds, Roy Harper, Eddie & The Hotrods, June Tabor, Plummet Airlines, Steve Gibbons Band, Stranglers, Barclay James Harvest, Supercharge, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Kevin Coyne, Viv Stanshall, Wishbone Ash, Streetwalkers, Racing Cars, Michael Chapman, Deaf School, Heron, Peter Hammill, Generation X, Motors, This Heat, Nic Jones, Fabulous Poodles, Adverts, Medicine Head, Jam.
• May 21: Those not so beautiful people:
  I REPORT to you, beloved and trusted louts, from the staff sauna at heavily fortified Peel Acres,.... (read more)
  The pleasures of taking a sauna; a group of readers exhort Peel to see band called Sounder in London; what has happened to the 'Beautiful People' of the late 60s/early 70s)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, The Pig.
• May 28: 'VIOLINS, Gateshead and Thou' by Enid St. J. Leyland-Pocock, authoress of 'Papers for Thoughtful Girls' and 'Meadowsweet'. Episode 23, 'Nocturne'. The day - it was a Saturday or I'm a Maltese - started promisingly enough. I had breakfasted well on eggs, poached as they do them in Halifax, and toast, and had wholeheartedly enjoyed a... (read more)
  (FA Cup final defeat; Sunday listening to records at home, watching film 'Deep End’ on TV.)
  Tags: Kid Jensen, Football, Liverpool, William Ravenscroft, Jane Asher, Paul McCartney.
• June 04: Virgin on the ridiculous:
  YOUR FAVE weekly. Last week. Made a bit of a resolution, didn't I. 'I promise I won't mention football again until next season'. You must be joking. Did you see them?.. (read more)
  (Liverpool winning the European Cup final against Borussia Mönchengladbach; God Save The Queen; losing his virginity and a successive sexual experience; Lena Zavaroni's resemblance to Princess Anne)
  Tags: Liverpool, Football, Sex Pistols.
• June 18: What the papers say:
  THIS WEEK’s keenly argued discourse is written during the England vs. Argentina match. William (A Small Boy) and I are concerned to see that our Latin-American amigos have fielded a defender named Killer, who has just savaged one of our plucky British boys ... (read more)
  (Home with TV and baby; ‘God Save The Queen’ media storm.)
  Tags: Football, William Ravenscroft, Sex Pistols, Alexandra Ravenscroft (referred to as "Edward (An Embryo)").
• June 25: The Big Match:
  WELL, THAT'S another boyhood ambition fulfilled and filed away under Completed Business, Jan. to June, 1977. There's only one left now, and I don't really imagine that I'm ever going to sort that one out - there can't be that many sixteen-year-old... (read more)
  (Scoring winner at Wembley; roadshow gig at UEA.)
  Tags: Ed Stewart, Paul Burnett, Kid Jensen, Paul Gambaccini, Michael Palin, Alan Price, Tommy Steele, Paul Nicholas, Richard O’Sullivan.
• July 2: "Was it something I played?":
  I AM WRITING this letter on behalf of many pissed off John Peel Show fans. I remember when his one hour show used to feature rock music (we're not all punks, John!) Now his two hour show consists of any crap he can dig up. As far as DJs go he's not exactly ... (read more)
  (Peel responds to letter of complaint from listener, comparing records and sessions on show from 1976 and 1977.)
  Tags: Dodgers, Cajun Moon, Roogalator, Moon, Peter Hammill, Movies, Lone Star, Albion Dance Band, Frankie Miller, Generation X, Steve Gibbons Band, Brand X, Mighty Diamonds, Runaways, Outlaws, Ramones. Martin Carthy, Blue Oyster Cult, Status Quo. Steve Miller Band, Wailers, Loudon Wainwright III, Starz, Tangerine Dream, Steve Winwood, Barclay James Harvest, Eater, Jackson Browne, Clash, Detective, Count Bishops, Rory Gallagher, Chieftains, Sex Pistols, Rainbow, Rod Stewart, Johnny Moped, Be-Bop Deluxe, Punk, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Yes, Supertramp, Ted Nugent, UFO, Judas Priest, Kiss, Allman Brothers Band, John Walters, Alan Freeman.
• July 9: Further to your letter of March 1970 …:
  'We gotta son called Tristram, An 'two cats named Left and Right; Play squash dahn at th' Squash Club, Drink bleeding wine most ev'ry night.' Gotta mortgage on the cottage An' we've joined the bleeding hunt. Ain't never seen no dole queue. So naff off, yer... (read more)
  (Peel finds listeners letters from March 1970.)
  Tags: Yes, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Slade, High Tide, Barclay James Harvest, Caroline Coon.
• July 30: As he stood erect he could hear the chatter of the cleaners at the far end of the corridor outside, and wondered idly which language it was they were speaking. Some variant on French, he supposed. He looked down at her as she lay on the table, her face still flushed and half-covered with her dark... (read more)
  (“A lover not a fighter”.)
  Tags: Desperate Bicycles.
• Aug. 20: The column you’ve all been waiting for …
  HEY! LOOK, I'm sorry! OK? I know just what you're thinking. 'Peel missed the paper again last week. Out boozin', I shouldn't wonder'. And I do understand your feelings. I do. I really do. So this journal is scarce worth the paper it is printed on without this column. Don't you think we... (read more)
  (Not banned from pirate radio reunion; Brass Tacks on TV.)
  Tags: Radio London, Tony Blackburn, Ed Stewart, Manchester, Punk, Worst, Buzzcocks.
• Aug. 27: CULTURE's 'Trod On' was playing when the white light on the studio wall flashed. I picked up the telephone. 'Hello John', someone said, 'this is the newsroom. We've had unconfirmed reports from America that Elvis Presley is dead'. And as I lined up the next record, the Fabulous Poodles' single, I wondered what I was going to say. And I thought back to... (read more)
  (Death of Elvis, end of a chapter and not the book; Adverts and Steel Pulse at Vortex.)
  Tags: Petula Clark, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Jim Morisson, Paul Kossoff, Jimi Hendrix, John Walters.
• Sep. 3: My wild, wild night with Rod:
  LOOK, DUCKIES! Before we lumber off, bdellium-reinforced glove in bdelium-reinforced glove, into that tear-filled void that those select few of us who travel in time and space have come to call the Unknown, let me hastily apologise for last week's colerm. Much, much more pompons and boring even than the... (read more)
  (In pub with Rod in 1971; Reading Festival coming; Speakeasy footy chat with Phil Lynott; shopping in Chester for trousers.)
  Tags: New Hearts, Slits.
• Sep. 17: goes Nationwide …:
  FATE, in the form of an orange and off-white volkswagen van, has caught up with your laughing boy again and is even now shaking him enthusiastically by the throat. Perhaps I am being punished for my drink sodden coverage of the Reading Festival as cutely misprinted in... (read more)
  (Nationwide trip in VW van; ‘Emmanuelle in Tokyo’ in Gloucester; Wales; Bradford.)
  Tags: Frankie Miller, Slaughter & The Dogs, Old Grey Whistle Test.
• Sep. 24: Arthritic pogoed hit by Slit:
  Tomorrow, after a night spent in the dinkiest little hay-by-the A. 12 has to offer the questing traveller, this big, bad, bronzed hunk o' man will be wiping spittle from his vestments in the company of the Damned, the Rods, and, so it is claimed, others, in the... (read more)
  (upcoming Chelmsford City gig; Newsbeat appearance to remember Marc Bolan, who has died; roadshow to visit Preston, after LFC home match with Motors; assaulted by Slits member at Penetration gig at Vortex.)
  Tags: Jimi Hendrix, Pig, Glastonbury, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Top Gear, Eddie Cochran, Top Of The Pops, Kenny Dalglish.
• Oct. 1: To Beeb or not to Beeb:
  'It's Madness to put us against each other our styles are the same'. These were the thoughts that raced through my head as I heard the very first intimations of the possibility of rumours that I might be asked to take over Radio 1's afternoon tea-time drive show from David Hamilton. To be frank with you, I fairly stormed when the... (read more)
  (David Hamilton's afternoon Radio 1 slot; “debacle” of Chelmsford Punk Festival.)
  Tags: Damned, Doctors Of Madness, Poetry, Slaughter & The Dogs, Joe Walsh, Slits, John Walters.
• Oct. 8: This certificate indicates my preparedness to buy John Peel a pint of best bitter at any bar and without further delay. I have more money than sense. Signed:
  I am terribly anxious to make my body available to John Peel for one night only. I am female. Signed:
  HERE (up above, you ninny!) are two - go on, count 'em - throughly handy certificates for use by anyone planning to attend any of the John 'Doctor Rhythm' Peel Road Show Hep Sounds Autumn Tour Of Europe And Related Places gigs. Already the Road Show, to give it it's proper title, has...(read more)
  (Roadshows; Anfield with Motors.)
  Tags: Liverpool, Noel Edmonds, Kid Jensen.
• Oct. 15: ...Knackered!:
  THE UNNOFICAL (sic) world record for drumming on a mature set of human testicles with wooden spoons is held by the British pair Norman Vosper, the drummer, and John Peel, the drummee. Well, if feels like that anyway. Wednesday evening, our local sports centre, and Peel and chums are playing 5-a-side football against a... (read more)
  (LFC lose to ManU, draw v Arsenal; Walsall Roadshow “a bummer”.)
  Tags: Liverpool, Kid Jensen, June Tabor, William Ravenscroft.
• Nov. 12: A Typical Letter.
  Dear John Peel, I have listened to your programmes since 1949, and I frankly think that what you are playing now is a load of crap. Why don't you play more Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles? Come on, man! There's alot of really great music around. Why aren't you playing it then? Trouble is, if you... (read more)
  (Listener letter.)
  Tags: Sex Pistols, Clash, Lurkers, Island Records, Althea & Donna.
• Nov. 19: The strange business at Peel Acres:
  AT THE CREST of yon green and greasy knoll - Peel's Lump, as it is known to the simple farming folk hereabout - stands a knot of five or six villages. Although it is a fine day they are huddled together as though for mutual warmth. From their attitudes I can tell they are... (read more)
  ('Porphyria Edmunsiensis’, a malady suffered by many DJs; problem of name for second baby.)
  Tags: William Ravenscroft, Kenny Dalglish.
• Nov. 26: Springtime for Hitler:
  ACH, MEIN GOTT! It now looks more than likely that press hysteria and an ph-so carefully orchestrated campaign of what I can only call innunedo and misrepresentation will thwart my attempts to have published 'An ABC Of High-Jumping', a copiously illustrated volume printed in superfine art paper which... (read more)
  (‘Binky’ and cricket; baby not arrived yet; roadshow dates; famous people; shortest LP ever.)
  Tags: Paul McCartney, Sex Pistols, NME, Village People, Dave Allan & The Arrows, Dave Clark 5.
• Dec. 3: Fear And Groping In Leicester:
  I SPRING full-armed hideously pock-marked friends, into your urine-filled bunkers fresh, may, even exhilarated from another night of fun, frolic and illicit sex at Leicester Polytechnic; at Polytechnic in Leicester where mere... (read more)
  (Leicester Poly roadshow; breaking bread with Branson; still no baby.)
  Tags: Althea & Donna, Vivien Goldman, Status Quo, Richard Branson.
• Dec. 17: no column due to the birth of "..another brat, this time a a girl..". (Alexandra) [3]
• Dec. 24: 1977 Top Ten Albums
• Dec. 31: FRIDAY 9TH. December. 5:55 a.m. The telephone rings. Peel, his strong, clean, honest, British face cupped in his hand, lies prettily aslumber in London W.2. The 'phone continues to ring until our hero, waking, springs panther-like from the bed and strides across the room to answer it. A female voice greets him, tired, distant... (read more)
  (Arrival of unnamed baby girl: crammed photo booth pix competition.)
  Tags: Kenny Dalglish, Pig, William Ravenscroft.

1978

• Jan. 14 WHY IS IT, one finds oneself anxious to discover, that the he-man recently voted (by the enticing raders of the Daily Mirror the third hottest spinner of teen wax in the British Isles (tucked in and moving strongly behind Noel Edmungs and someone called Kenny Everett), is... (read more)
  (Daily Mirror poll; holiday season working; predictions for 1978.)
  Tags: Daily Mirror, Noel Edmonds, Kenny Everett, Kid Jensen, Paul Gambaccini, Tony Blackburn, Christmas, Woody Kern, Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish.
• Jan 28 Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?:
  MORTENSON stiffened, and his grip tightened about the Schleswig-Holstein P. 40 concealed in his raincoat pocket. 'But Colonel', he snapped, 'you promised Darby there would be no change of plan'. Outside Peel Acres the blizzard continues unabated. The wind howls in the eaves as it has done since the... (read more)
  (Gaye Advert; Roadshow)
  Tags: Peel Acres, Adverts, Bradford, Pop Quest.
• Feb. 4 Cast aside by the famous and others:
  NEVILLE SMILED, a slow, burning smile that drew Xanthe back, back - back through the crowded corridors of time to the ski-lodge and Richard. She remembered how shyly he had grinned down at... (read more)
  (Bradford Roadshow and student conservatism; meeting Althea & Donna)
  Tags: Bradford, Country Joe & The Fish, Althea & Donna.
• Feb. 11 Rude awakening:
  I suspect, angels, that those placed in authority over the BB's dormitory areas have a device for routing late sleepers from their beds and sending them, choking ever-so-lightly, out into the streets to attend to the Corporation's business … (read more)
  (Staying at B&B; lunch at EMI and ’Swahili Hits Vol 4’; record reviews; “selling out”.)
  Tags: Table, Swell Maps, Mekons, Television Personalities.
• Feb. 18 JUST A quick word in your great, flapping ear - trying, as I bend down to speak, to avoid looking at your hideous, pock marked face - before I go dancing off across the snow-covered wastes (would that it were 'waists', eh?) of East... (read more)
  (R1 football team to Glasgow; Winchcombe Roadshow.)
  Tags: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ranking Trevor, Dr Alimantado.
• Mar. 18 QUITE FRANKLY - I always think it is better to be frank with you - this cannot be permitted to continue. With so many official bodies monitoring every aspect of our day-to-day living, there must surely be some authority which can - as we seem to be saying these days - make a move to intervene. As you can scarce have evaded your... (read more)
  (Hope & Anchor album launch; in tears at ‘Close Encounters’ press review.)
  Tags: XTC, Saints, Buzzcocks, Generation X.
• Apr. 1 HI! It me again, reptiles, gusting to 35 knots here and there and really glad to be back with you. And who gives a rat's arse, as my dear old Nanny used to say, about the League cup anyway, I'd like. to know? Just you wait until next season, that's all I've got to say. We're not going to take this sort of treatment lying down, and that's for... (read more)
  (Radio 1 week in Glasgow; two receptions.)
  Tags: Football, Noel Edmonds, Peter Powell, Kid Jensen, Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, Paul Gambaccini, Richard Branson.
• Apr. 15 Jottings from the stately pile:
  JUST THOUGHT I'd take a bit of a breather from patting Real Irish moss Peat (artfully mixed with loam and a contemptuous little spaniel dung I picked up 'neath my Cuban heels the other day) all about the sempervivum 'Commander hay' and the philesia magellanica, and have a bit of a natter with... (read more)
  (Skids gig in Stoke Newington.)
  Tags: Skids, Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Peter Powell, Rolling Stones, Kenny Dalglish, Kate Bush, Brian & Michael.
• Apr. 29 I must stop picking up young men.
  I must stop picking up young men.
  I must stop picking up young men.
  I must stop picking up young men.
  I must stop picking up young men.
  There! That's it, isn't it? Really, I've been so fearfully wicked lately that I thought I had just had to purge myself publicly - right here in front of all... (read more)
  (Meeting people: non-communication.)
  Tags: Skids, Motors, Mick Jagger, Siouxsie & The Banshees.
• May 27 THE RETURN OF JOHN PEEL (Peel apologises for his absence of 'an entire month')
  SOMEONE claiming to be called Anne has written to me from Preston, only a few miles from where my saintly old white-haired mother was born, offering to fellate me... (read more)
  (Sexual advances from an admirer; European Cup Final at Wembley; Pink Pop Festival)
  Tags: Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish, The Netherlands, Journey.
• Jul. 8 PEEL'S HANDY HINTS FOR TOURIST NO 1: There is no public transport in London at 5 o' clock in the morning.
  PEEL'S HANDY HINTS FOR TOURISTS NO 2: The average shoe, when placed firmly in a puddle of sufficient depth, will rapidly fill with... (read more)
  (British Rail; Cardiff and Welsh Rock '78.)
  Tags: London, Sassafras, Budgie, Tony Etoria, Neil Lockwood, Racing Cars.
• Jul. 22 A missed opportunity with Joan Jett:
  COUPLA things wrong with last week's column, tinies. One. Shel Silverstein's very short record is called 'Twenty-Six Second Song' rather than 'Twenty-Five Second Song', and the track by the Fastest Group Alive, which is 35 seconds long, is called 'Beside' and not 'Bears'. That was... (read more)
  (Faye Fife, Joan Jet; British Grand Prix, cricket; humiliating names.)
  Tags: Rezillos, Flamin' Groovies, Runaways, Cars, Punch, John Walters.
• Aug. 5 ARE THE French air traffic controllers also controlling Britain's weather? Was Paul Gambaccini intended for another planet? I should be looking at these and other disturbing questions as I tell you the story, strumming my tenor banjo for a while, of Sunday's Radio 1 Race Day at Mallory Park ... (read more)
  (Mallory Park Race Day.)
  Tags: Alexandra Ravenscroft, Peel Acres, William Ravenscroft, Noel Edmonds, Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, Goodies, Kid Jensen, Paul Gambaccini, Cars, Bryan Ferry, Darts.
• Aug. 12 "'Buckskins and Buggery' and more piffle":
  WE HAD one of our little soirees - just a few dear, close friends - here at the Acres yesterday. Normally, of course, one would have been abroad in the land bringing joy unconfined to the young and the chronically bewildered via the... (read more)
  (Roadshow at rest; school reports.)
  Tags: Reading Festival, Small Wonder, Beggars Banquet, Desperate Bicycles, George Harrison, Eagles, Barry Manilow, Shrewsbury School.
• Sep. 9 Reading Festers (And a grim time was had by all)
  READING ROCK '78 was either the fifth or sixth Reading Festival at which I've been employed as link-man and professional uncle jolly-boy. It is the first which I have left feeling defeated and confused, as crushed in spirits as I imagine Ardiles and Villa must have felt last Saturday. For the past week I have been trying to... (read more)
  (Peel reviewing the Reading Festival, with photos.)
  Tags: Wayne County, Bethnal, Spirit, Ian Gillan Band, Patti Smith, Jenny Darren, Foreigner, Penetration, Automatics, New Hearts, Dennis O’Brien, Sham 69, Pirates, Ultravox, Jam, Margaret Thatcher, Liverpool, Status Quo, Lindisfarne, Gruppo Sportivo, Nutz, Motors, Tom Robinson Band, Albion Band, June Tabor, Chelsea.
• Oct. 7 John Peel returns from holiday with another thinly disguised puff for the dubious delights of his so-called 'roadshow':
  “A two-all draw”, suggested Madge The Simple Village Maiden And Sometime Road Crew, as the V18 engine of the vintage Alcosprach-Zarathustra (one of the few examples of this wonderful old Austrian marque still on the road} pulled is effortlessly away from the Polytechnic … (read more)
  (Roadshows.)
  Tags: Sheffield, Status Quo, Free, Hawkwind, Mary Monday & The Bitches, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Buzzcocks, Revolutionaries, Parliament-Funkadelic, John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Bee Gees, Frankie Valli, Virgin Records, Mekons.
• Oct. 21 Old Enough To Be Her Father (Again):
  HI, CUTIE-PIES! It is Monday morning, 5:45, and I'm at Mama's little place in Notting Hill. Pretty ethnic, eh? I'll say. In fact, I just happen to know that some of the Slits live, oh, less than a mile from here. 'That's Peel!' you're probably sniggering, 'I just bet he's not at his mother's at all. Expect he's... (read more)
  (TV star; Roadshow in Preston.)
  Tags: Omnibus: The Record Machine, Mark Perry, Desperate Bicycles, Slits, Bridget St John, Paul Burnett, Eric Clapton, Liverpool, Buzzcocks.
• Nov. 25 NOW THEN, where was I? I don't imagine for a second that any of you plain wrong 'uns will have spotted it, but I have been absent without leave from these pages for over a month. The reasons for this gross dereliction of duty have been... (read more)
  (Depression; sinuses.)
  Tags: Liverpool, Yes, Melody Maker, Viv Stanshall, Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Chuck Berry, Eno.
• Dec. 16 Turd tossing and other winter sports:
  NOT SINCE, beloved reader, those dear, dead days when I was Sixth Form Captain at St. Bastinado's, had learned to adjust to being carried virtually everywhere - except, needless to say, in Top School and... (read more)
  (Cold winter weather, Magazine at the Venue; roadshows.)
  Tags: Kiss, Patti Smith, Garry Bushell, Liverpool, Magazine, Queen.
• Dec. 30 1978 Top Twenty Albums

1979

• Jan. 20 HI KIDS! Hope you're, you know, really into 1979. I certainly am. For your amusement and education I attach a snap of myself I mailed to my luckless Mother soon after my arrival in the Americas in 1960. At the time I was going through my In-Certain-Lights-I-Look-Like-Duane-Eddy period. (If you don't know who Duane Eddy is, then ask Nick... (read more)
  (Image; God; Northern Irish gospel.)
  Tags: Duane Eddy, Nick Lowe, Bill Nelson, Joe Strummer, David McCallum, Spinners, Harry Secombe, Jonathan King, Rod Stewart, Kevin Coyne.
• Feb. 3 Unexpurgated and at the front of the paper (well, quite near the front anyway):
  CONSTANT readers may have thought that my last column lacked the cogency and elegant style you have come to expect of me. Unhappily some of the most gloriously crafted and thought-provoking passages were... (read more)
  (Gig-going in Brighton; ‘Vaultage ’78’: Manchester activist.)
  Tags: Brighton, Piranhas, Peter And The Test Tube Babies, Dodgems, Manchester.
• Feb. 10 RUNNING ALONG the southern boundary of Peel Acres is a modest and unassuming stream called, of all things, the Rat. (read more)
  (Graphic account of the flood at Peel Acres on 01 February.)
  Tags: Peel Acres, Pig, William Ravenscroft, Alexandra Ravenscroft, Alan Ravenscroft, Members, Top Of The Pops, Jess Conrad, Tony Blackburn, Kenny Everett, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent.
• Feb. 24 Despatches from the old sod:
  ALTHOUGH THIS week's Exciting True Life Yarn For Boys and Girls of All Ages takes us to Belfast, as well as to Dublin and the Bury St Edmunds by pass, readers will no doubt experience a warm glow of inner contentment when I assure them that they'll get from me none of the colourful stuff about... (read more)
  (Trip to Belfast and Dublin.)
  Tags: Round Table, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Kid Jensen, Good Vibrations, Outcasts, Rudi, Idiots, Feargal Sharkey, X-Daydreamysts, Mekons, Throbbing Gristle, Public Image Limited, Atrix, Protex, Virgin Prunes, U2.
• Mar. 31 DO YOU know Toronto? So delightful at this time of year, I always think. The air is crisp and clear, the winter sun as soft and benign as my hand on your hip. Every prospect pleases, as the... (read more)
  (Visit to Canada, meeting up with Dire Straits; seeing Stiff Little Fingers perform in Nottingham and West Runton.)
  Tags: Kid Jensen, Neil Young, Band, Rough Trade, Robert Rental, Normal, Alan Black, Buzzcocks, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Toto, Billy Joel, Anne Murray, Neil Diamond.
• May. 19 SHOWBIZ OLYMPICS HORROR: PEEL CALLS FOR NEW BALLS:
  TANTALISE me with many more of these diminutive Rumanian and Russian gymnasts and I shall be joining the steady stream of defectors stealing by night into the Eastern bloc. Although I am not, unlike Benjamin Franklin, the sort of swine who has a morbid appetite for the... (read more)
  (TV 'Star Games', DJs v musc biz.)
  Tags: Peter Powell, Denny Laine, Jimmy Pursey, Tony Blackburn, Ed Stewart, Kid Jensen, Leyton Buzzards, Alan Freeman, Football, Acker Bilk.
• Jun. 30 DEARLY BELOVED, attached you will find a snapshot od your Uncle John taking the waters at Le Havre. Note, if you please, the detached air, the natural insouciance, the easy care of the Englander abroad. The picture itself springs from the socially aware lens of the... (read more)
  (Le Mans, Enid Blyton, ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’ on TOTP.)
  Tags: France, Cars, Gang Of Four, Top Of The Pops, Dolly Mixture.
• Jul. 21 ANSWERS to correspondence. 'Bloodthirsty' - There is no recruiting office for the Cape Mounted Rifles in Daventry. There is an illustrated article on making new shoes on the tenth part of our special Henley Regatta Souvenir Number. Your letter has been passed on to Scotland Yard. And now, for connoisseurs of that powerful, nay, powerful, yarn of... (read more)
  (’So You Want To Play For England’; Manchester talent, local radio; ‘John Peel is a ****’; request show.)
  Tags: Factory Records, Joy Division, OMD, A Certain Ratio, Reading Festival, Ian Dury, Anne Nightingale.
• Aug. 11 YOUNG PEOPLE, especially young people in trouble, often write to me to ask whether Kenny Dalglish really exists. Can He save us? Is He truly the way, the Truth and the Light? These are the sort of questions they ask me, and I will be answering these - and others - in full later on in this week's A Question Of... (read more)
  (‘Zigzag vote; Pseuds Corner; request show with Dury.)
  Tags: Private Eye, Brighton, Anne Nightingale.
• Aug. 18 YEARS AND years and years ago, when the John Peel Roadshow was young, gifted and hirsute, it used to visit Wolverhampton fairly regularly - I remember a gig at the Lafayette with Black Sabbath and Medicine Head in particularly, because I attempted subsequently to sign Sabbaf, as they were to become, to my Dandelion label. Imagine if I had... (read more)
  (Jim Simpson; demo cassettes)
  Tags: Big Bear Records, Quads, John Walters, Rough Trade, Small Wonder.
• Aug. 25 My bit on the side with Britt:
  SEVERAL CONCERNED young people have written to me during the past week seeking, nay, begging for, guidance on a knotty theological point. Is it no so, they have asked, that teams playing against Liverpool are technically guilty of the absorbing new offence of waging war on God and his representatives? I have given this issue much thought... (read more - p.11)
  (Telephone message: roadshow in Harpole; photos.)
  Tags: Britt Ekland, Rod Stewart, Russians, Selections, Cigarettes, Dolly Mixture, Honey Bane.
• Sep. 8 What am I doing here?
  WE ARE ankle deep in what Shakespeare has rather catchily described as 'the very witching time of night when churchyards yawn'. It is the morning of Friday, August 24, the racer has shuddered to a standstill in the heart of a featureless industrial estate on the edge of downtown Reading, Berks, and I am doing what I can to persuade a... (read more)
  (Peel reviewing the Reading Festival, with pix.)
  Tags: Bite The Pillow, Motorhead, Doll By Doll, Punishment Of Luxury, Tourists, Wilko Johnson, Police, Cure, Inner Circle, Cheap Trick, Scorpions, Little Bo Bitch, Yachts, Ian Gillan, Root Boy Slim, Molly Hatchet, Members, Whitesnake, Liverpool.
• Sept 8: List of records played by Peel for his 40th birthday on shows of 29 August 1979 and 30 August 1979. [4]
• Oct. 6 JUDGING FROM a number of poorly written and grossly misspelted letters which have reached me from around the land, there are those who feel that Liverpool have already forfeited the League title. This is the most pitiful nonsense, of course, and I would like to remind these doubters that we are not yet a... (read more)
  (Weekends; roadshows; fanzines.)
  Tags: Undertones, Cambridge, Football, Coil(2), Addicts, Crass, Zoom Club.
• Oct. 20 OVER THE past fortnight some achingly lovely words of Mrs Heman's have, as she herself would have expressed it, oft returned unto me! I'm sure you know the ones I mean. 'Gaze on - tis lovely! - Childhood's lip and cheek. Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!' I have spent the weekends so lately flown ankle deep in the ... (read more)
  (Aston University; Shrewsbury School.)
  Tags: (Beat, Nightingales, Birmingham, Genesis, Black Sabbath, Alan Ravenscroft, Mike Hart.
• Oct. 27 Notes on the value of the Spinners to modern culture:
  THANK YOU. That was Dimitty Rawsthorne talking with Barclay Beast - himself recently the subject of a much-discussed portrait by Chalk Farm post-post-impressionist revivalist Snooks McIntyre - about his exciting new film on the life of author/playwright Sean Kok, whose essay on... (read more)
  (TV career; Undertones in Huddersfield.)
  Tags: Factory, Manchester, Killermeters.
• Nov. 3 Small is beautiful:
  READERS OF last week's column were doubtless as distressed as I that the majestic sweep and rolling rhythms of the prose were interrupted by some anonymous sub-editor threatening me with what he called 'a bunch of fives'. That some puny, hourly paid worker should be permitted to get away with this sort of... (read more)
  (Nag’s Head, Wollaston; ‘little John’.)
  Tags: Wishbone Ash, Faces, Stray, Lies All Lies, Bauhaus, Madness, Selecter, Norwich.
• Nov. 24 THE REMARKABLE saga of suffering and of man's inhumanity to man that is the recent history of the John Peel Roadshow continued apace over the weekend so recently passed, ending with a grim half hour at... (read more)
  (Roadshow troubles in Liverpool and Guildford.)
  Tags: Liverpool (city), 2 Tone Records, Status Quo, Buzzcocks, Beat, Vapors.
• Dec. 1 EARLIER THIS year I unbent sufficiently to mail to a Nick Simpson of Nottingham one of my Sympathetic and Mildly Encouraging letters (as opposed to my If The Job At The Abattoir Is Still Available I Should Take It letters), and I was therefore... (read more)
  (Bribery.)
  Tags: 23 Jewels, Beat, William Ravenscroft, Alexandra Ravenscroft, Football.
• Dec. 8 "THIS IS a sample of Conqueror Buttermilk Laid 100g/m" Any of you cute managers recognise the above? This cryptic and seemingly fatuous message is the only clue I have apart from two half names and half of an address to the identity of several young women I wish to interview in connection with a number of staff vacancies here at... (read more)
  (‘I have bugger all to write about this week”; brother’s birthday; international pen friends.)
  Tags: Alan Ravenscroft, PIL, Clash, Jam, Damned, Cabaret Voltaire.
• Dec. 15 Porno - time:
  I JUST know you won't believe a word of this, but there was a time - I expect it was as long ago as earlier this year - when I would, on occasion, slip into a modest newsagent's in the area of London where I was unlikely to encounter anyone I knew, and emerge 30 seconds later, pale, ill at ease, and sweating... (read more)
  (Erotic pix in Sounds; flying kick at Villa.)
  Tags: Football, Liverpool, Clash, Big Bear Records, Festive Fifty.
• Dec. 29 1979 Top Twenty Albums

1980

• Jan. 5 DESPITE my carefree good looks and all-round good guy personality, I am not one of those citizens who receive dozens of party invitations at this time of the year. What tends to happen is that around, say, January 11, I encounter someone - let us call him Jim - who asks me, slightly-consciously, what sort of a... (read more)
  (“The Biggest Record Sale In The World” at Alexander Palace, Granada TV Christmas party, Festive Fifty results.)
  Tags: Christmas. Pink Floyd, Bay City Rollers, Jonathan King, Manchester, Adrian Henri, John Cooper Clarke.
• Jan. 12: Danger: Genius at work
  MED HOVEDGRUNNEN til at dek ikke lar seg gjore a skrive ned disc-jockeyenes lyrikk, er ikke spraket. And I'll thank you to remember that next time. You know, serpents, I was thinking only this morning, as I was hanging the bloodstained... (read more)
  (Writing process, BBC with visitors.)
  Tags: Alexandra Ravenscroft, Clash, Tiswas, Reggae, Mike Read.
• Mar. 8 The male menopause - A Doctor writes...
  IN THE wake of the John Peel Roadshow's recent and more than marginally chaotic appearance at Manchester University. I have received an absolute scream of a letter from two young women who were present. These two signed themselves 'Miss Caroline' and... (read more)
  (Manchester University Roadshow debacle and 'make good' gig at the Poly. A “rather middle aged, shortish man waiving on the boundaries of baldness”.)
  Tags: Diagram Brothers, Armed Forces, Selves, French Kisses, Wah! Heat, Cheetahs, Shovel Robinson Band, Semaphore Signals, Friction Burns.
• Aug. 9:And now literary fans, pray silence for the moment you have all been waiting for. Ladies and gentlemen, at last, it’s time for the return of … JOHN PEEL
  I AM A little stiff this morning, dear dwellers without the gates, following a day spent at the cricketings in the delightful arrondissement of Aldenham. We were styled a Celebrity XI, despite being IX in number and bereft of celebrities, unless you count Mike Reid, and we were locked in combat with the Aldenham Cricket Club. Andy Peebles was... (read more)
  (Column returns, with Celebrity XI cricket, demo tapes, 30 lost sessions.)
  Tags: Mike Read, Andy Peebles, Tom Robinson, John Walters.
• Aug. 16 It has always been a pure and unselfish love for each and every one of you, no matter how mean and lowly, which has engendered these columns, and it was with your interests at heart that I resolved to travel over the weekend to Castle Donington, Hagar to catch a glimpse of the very spot where the HM fighting cocks will foregather next Saturday ... (read more)
  (Castle Donington with family for “Summer Evening Championship Car Races”, week before HM festival, when he will be in Edinburgh for roadshow, after LFC v Crystal Palace.)
  Tags: Reading, Q-Tips, Bad Manners.
• Sept. 6 An everyday story of country folk:
  My seneschal has but recently returned from the field, to tell me that the embers are not yet quite dead in the great bonfire the tenants lit over the weekend to celebrate what critics have described as my (forty first) birthday ... (read more)
  (Birthday celebrations.)
  Tags: Birthdays, Peel Acres.
• Sep. 20 RANDOM THOUGHTS on trying to listen to the Flowers whilst citizens yell "Well, what did you think of Siouxsie then, eh?" in your ear, 5:00 pip Emma Sunday and I'm back in my hotel room around a... (read more)
  (Futurama 2 in Leeds, via Anfield; Sunday Times.)
  Tags: Flowers, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division, Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish, I'm So Hollow, Mirror Boys, Or Was He Pushed, Eaten Alive By Insects, Altered Images, Blah Blah Blah, Soft Cell, Music For Pleasure, Clock DVA, Wasted Youth, U2, Echo & The Bunnymen, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Household Name, Artery.
• Sep. 27 OVER INCALCULABLE aeons your Uncle John has flirted more than one time with the demon television, with the affair being ended smartest each time when the quaint media-folk have discovered that as soon as their cameraman has me unerringly in his sights, I slam my eyes shut and keep them there, and my speech, at best indistinct, becomes... (read more)
  (Filming of Arena TV doc, and an evening with Mike Read.)
  Tags: Nightingales, Liggers, Peel Acres.
• Oct. 25 YOU WILL perhaps have noted, Quaint Fisher-Folk, that since my army of teenaged assistants melted away like the snows of early spring, I have been unable to keep our weekly date 'neath the trysting tree. Both of the little tykes are now heavily enmeshed in further education and I hardly see anything of them, I... (read more)
  (Vacancies for assistants; Au Pairs and Gang Of Four gig in Portsmouth.)
  Tags: Sex Pistols, ELO, Clash, Sheena Easton.
• Nov. 8 Beeb Bacchanalia after The Fall:
  THE WEST End Bar, described in our Directory of Services as 'Our Luxurious Music Hall themed Cocktail Lounge' and filled with resentful businessmen of the type which trafficks in fixtures and fittings for luxurious music hall themed cocktails lounges, was treated last night to an... (read more)
  (R1 Fun Week in Birmingham; The Fall and City Fun fanzine benefit gig in Manchester.)
  Tags: Diagram Brothers, Delta 5, Football, Peter Powell, Mike Read, Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, Paul Gambaccini.

Peel mentioned

1977

• May 21 John Peel's Perfumed Garden (JP interview, Mick Brown):
  THERE IS no need to ask where John Peel was in the summer of love. Anybody with enough brain-cells left to recall the era will know that it was Peel who provided the soundtrack. Peel's programme 'The Perfumed Garden', broadcast on the pirate station Radio London ... [5]

1979

• Aug 4 Would you like this to happen to your sister?
  (Peel pictured with members of Dolly Mixture backstage at gig at Paddock, Northampton.)

1980

• March 01 READERS POLL - RADIO DJ No.1 John Peel [6]

1985

• December 1985 READERS POLL - WORLD'S UGLIEST MAN - JOHN PEEL 3RD PLACE 14 December 1985 (BFBS)

1991

• Jan. 05 Sound Off! (p.47, Letters page) A reader, Karren Colling of Twickenham, has written in response to a previous critique of Peel by a certain 'Tim Poet of Leeds'. Ms Colling sings Peel's praises mentioning "..he should be heartily applauded, indeed thanked, and rewarded.. with a knighthood at the very least." For her efforts, the reader receives the prize for letter of the week - Obey the Time by Durutti Column, the album of her choice.
• Jan. 12
  • 1990 POLL WINNERS (pp.12-17) John Peel placed: PERSON No.3; RADIO SHOW no.1; SURVIVOR No.8.
  • LISTINGS (p.21) Peel's weekend radio shows are mentioned: Sat. 12 Jan. Robert Lloyd & LFO in session, Sun. 13 Jan. Stereo MC's & Mass in session.[7][8]

Sounds v/a Compilations

Plays by Peel of various artist releases from Sounds. 

(v/a 7" - Sounds Showcase 1) 

• 24 February 1987: Fall: Hey! Luciani! (Original Version)
• 05 March 1987 (BBC World Service): Fall: Hey! Luciani! (Original Version)
• 10 March 1987: Adult Net: Spin This Web
• 20 March 1987 (BFBS): Fall: 'Hey! Luciani! (Original Version)

(v/a 7" - Sounds Showcase 2) 

• 04 March 1987: Woodentops: Love Train (Live) 
• 09 March 1987: Mighty Lemon Drops: Hear Me Cool 

(v/a 7" - Sonic Sounds 3)

• 22 September 1987: Happy Mondays: Moving In With

(v/a 7" - Sounds - Waves 2)

• 07 March 1988: Jesus And Mary Chain: Nine Million Rainy Days (Live)
• 08 March 1988: Head Of David: I Am Roadkill (Rockatansky V. Schwarzanegger) (Live)

(v/a 7" - Sounds - Waves 3)

• 14 March 1988: Pogues: Kitty

(v/a 7" - The Sounds Machine EP 3)

• 20 September 1988: McCarthy: Should The Bible Be Banned? (7" version)

(v/a 7" - The Sounds Machine EP 1)

• 04 January 1989: Pixies: Hey

See Also

• Sounds Playlist
• 26 July 1979 - Alternative Chart Top 3

Links

• Wikipedia