Radio silence
Oct. 26th, 2004 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirez[This one starts quietly]
Phonecall from mum: "Are you sitting down?"
"Oh bloody hell" I think, "Who's died?" I'm running out of relatives and I rather like the set I've still got.
It's Peelie though, and it's not until a good five minutes after I've put the phone down and watched the news start to dominate LJ that it comes to me that there'll be no more Festive Fifties. That was like being hit with a rock.
As one who's scoffed somewhat at 'outpourings of grief' it seems a bit rich of me to join in with yet another blokily-gruff post, but if I don't do this now I'm going to go off like a landmine at some stage over the weekend, and that would be a Bad Thing.
The truth of the matter is that John Peel is/was directly responsible for the state of a large percentage of my record collection and the fact that it's a complete and sprawling mess of musics and genres. Ever since I clambered onto the school bus with a cheap guitar in one hand and was yelled at by two chaps who were about to be my best friends: "Oi! Hawkesreed! You're in our band now. Listen to John Peel and buy the NME!" ... And from then on it was off into the strange territory of Peel Sessions and the Fall and Husker Du singles and New Order and some funny band called the Sisters or something who were like the Three Johns but not as good and discovering Adrian Sherwood via the Yu-Gung 12" and Fats Comet and Ivor Cutler, Strawberry Switchblade, JAMC, Curve, PWEI, Public Enemy, Sewer Zombies, Orbital, MBV...
... I don't think I've ever been one of the cool people - I'm too much of a hacker and have one too many Farmer's Boys records for that to happen - but the cool people started speaking to me when one of the punks in the year above me at school handed me a photocopy of his handwritten listing of the 1981 Festive Fifties because he knew that I was one of the four other people who'd want something like that.
The strange thing is that until recently I thought it was just me who'd listened to the chap religiously. I mean, I knew there were many thousands of others, but I didn't know any of them, so it was just me and the blokes who ran the record shops who I'd bother about odd 12-inchers on Dutch East India, Zickzack or Factory.
[Grams: Picking the blues]
[Edit: I think that's playing at the wrong speed]
LJ Festive Fifty. Vote soon.
Phonecall from mum: "Are you sitting down?"
"Oh bloody hell" I think, "Who's died?" I'm running out of relatives and I rather like the set I've still got.
It's Peelie though, and it's not until a good five minutes after I've put the phone down and watched the news start to dominate LJ that it comes to me that there'll be no more Festive Fifties. That was like being hit with a rock.
As one who's scoffed somewhat at 'outpourings of grief' it seems a bit rich of me to join in with yet another blokily-gruff post, but if I don't do this now I'm going to go off like a landmine at some stage over the weekend, and that would be a Bad Thing.
The truth of the matter is that John Peel is/was directly responsible for the state of a large percentage of my record collection and the fact that it's a complete and sprawling mess of musics and genres. Ever since I clambered onto the school bus with a cheap guitar in one hand and was yelled at by two chaps who were about to be my best friends: "Oi! Hawkesreed! You're in our band now. Listen to John Peel and buy the NME!" ... And from then on it was off into the strange territory of Peel Sessions and the Fall and Husker Du singles and New Order and some funny band called the Sisters or something who were like the Three Johns but not as good and discovering Adrian Sherwood via the Yu-Gung 12" and Fats Comet and Ivor Cutler, Strawberry Switchblade, JAMC, Curve, PWEI, Public Enemy, Sewer Zombies, Orbital, MBV...
... I don't think I've ever been one of the cool people - I'm too much of a hacker and have one too many Farmer's Boys records for that to happen - but the cool people started speaking to me when one of the punks in the year above me at school handed me a photocopy of his handwritten listing of the 1981 Festive Fifties because he knew that I was one of the four other people who'd want something like that.
The strange thing is that until recently I thought it was just me who'd listened to the chap religiously. I mean, I knew there were many thousands of others, but I didn't know any of them, so it was just me and the blokes who ran the record shops who I'd bother about odd 12-inchers on Dutch East India, Zickzack or Factory.
[Grams: Picking the blues]
[Edit: I think that's playing at the wrong speed]
LJ Festive Fifty. Vote soon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:47 am (UTC)I won't annoy you with *hugs* but you get my general drift...
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:55 am (UTC)But I think after my parents, he would be one of the largest positive influences on my life thus far, and I think one's allowed to get choked up for that sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:56 am (UTC)I'm not looking forward to the weekend.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:04 pm (UTC)Would rather spend it at home working chronologically backwards through all the sessions archived on the Beeb website. I hope their server is suitably robust; I can only hope his legacy is even more potent than his life and that many new people are introduced to his genius through the mourning.
They could re-issue every one of his shows on a giant DVD box-set and it still wouldn't be enough though, would it?
Fuck. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:08 pm (UTC)if i were going i would commiserate with you. ;/
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:52 pm (UTC)just a quick glance through amazon (213 hits!) for peel sessions shows the amazing diversity. teenage fanclub, the wedding present, autechre, meat beat manifesto, happy mondays, smashing pumpkins, the fall, boards of canada, cocteau twins, t-rex, the cure, babes in toyland, the damned, a guy called gerald, laibach, jesus and mary chain, xymox, OMD, new order, uk subs, plaid, prong, gary numan, jimi hendrix, the orb...
from goth to idm to punk to drum n bass, he was right there and always *listened*, and what's better, shared the secret.
i'm with you on this.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 02:32 pm (UTC)Back when I lived in Clapha, about 10 years ago, our down doors neighbours used to tape every Peel session, and the tapes covered most of one bedroom wall even then.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 03:56 pm (UTC)(And now they're playing 'Alice' from the Sisters session)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-11 01:47 pm (UTC)