What I wrote about John Peel-extracted from "Totally Shuffled"
August 13th
“Do you ever have a night when you
don’t dream about The Fall?”
(This is
clearly not a song or a tune on the iPod but it is something that is on there
and has just shuffled up. It’s shown as “unknown track-unknown artist” and
lasts only a couple of seconds. It’s far from being an unknown artist to
me-it’s a brief audio snippet of John Peel, and I guess it was him introducing
a track from The Fall. I don’t know when it was broadcast or what track it
referred to, but for those brief few seconds it’s like being transported back
in time).
There are
two ways I could use this track. I could either write about The Fall or John
Peel. Or both, I suppose. Whilst I am surprised that I’ve got all the way
through to mid-August without a Fall track shuffling up, I’m sure that there
will be one along before the year is out. Like buses-there’ll be another one in
a minute. This clip of Peel may be the only time that it shows up, so I think
I’ll go with that. I haven’t done an analysis of what I’ve written so far (I’ve
not even re-read any of it or done any editing), but I think that John Peel
must have been mentioned at least once a week since I started this back in
January, so it’s fairly obvious that John Peel was a very significant influence
upon my musical tastes.
I can’t remember when exactly I started listening to
Peel, although I’m fairly sure that I didn’t regularly tune into his show back
in the seventies, when he’d play the whole of a Pink Floyd album in one go. I
think that I must have started tuning in about 76/77 during the advent of punk.
From then on in every Monday to Thursday, 10 until midnight, was reserved for
hearing a whole panoply of music. I genuinely believe that without John Peel’s
influence I wouldn’t have learned to love all the different sorts of music that
I do now. Blues, doo-wop, reggae, soul-even Pink Floyd. I think that I may have
still got into The Fall, but I can’t really be sure. Listening to John Peel and
his clear love of music, beneath his sometimes grumpy exterior, was the best
education I ever had. I know this sounds completely over-the-top and something
I think he would have snorted derisorily at, but I think my attitudes to so
many things, and not only music, would have turned out very differently if I’d
never heard his broadcasts. I probably wouldn’t have been as into music as much
as I am and wouldn’t have considered approaching it with the same regard that
he did. I would have either been not bothered about music (like those people
who when you ask them what sort of music do they like they respond with a “oh,
all sorts really”- and you know they have a couple of Simply Red albums and a
CD by Adele), or overly serious about it all.
I cannot think of any other
presenter apart from John Peel, who just loved music for what it made him feel
rather than if it was fashionable or not, and didn’t see that playing records
on the radio just as an interruption for “his public” from hearing his
wonderful voice. If I hadn’t got into music through his broadcasts, then I
wouldn’t have read the books that I have or watched the films I have seen. I
wouldn’t have developed the attitude to popular culture that I’ve got. I
certainly wouldn’t have ever have gone to Glastonbury in 2010 if I hadn’t heard John Peel enthusing about it, and
therefore by extension not written about it which, in turn, has led to writing
this. If Glastonbury was good enough for him, then I knew it would be ok for
me. I wouldn’t have followed Liverpool Football Club in the manner I have. (I
really wish he’d still been around for the Champions League Final in 2005).
I
don’t want to end this by sounding too maudlin, but every time I listen to an
old recording of one of his shows I still find it hard to believe that he’s
gone. There’s a certain sadness that my children will never have the chance to
hear him playing the wrong record at the wrong speed live- but I’ve still got
this recording and many others to treasure- and they know that he was a great
man.
Totally Shuffled:
Great story. Nice writing.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Like I said-still can't believe he's gone.
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