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From
Andrew Beaujon, Tuesday October 26th, 2004 the day after
the
death of radio legend John Peel:
Whatever
small success I had as a musician was due less to talent
or determination than it was to the intervention of a
few key people, who, for whatever reason, decided to help
my old band out. One of them just died. I'm personalizing
this because John Peel made me, and millions of other
young dopes, feel connected to the imposing world of pop
music. If you wrote John Peel, he wrote you back, even
if you were a nerd from Virginia who wanted to know where
he could find some of the records you heard the man play
on the apartment-fridge-sized shortwave radio you'd dragged
out of your grandparents' garage. Later on when I was
in a band myself, John Peel played our first British single
on his short-lived daytime show, sandwiching us between
Whitney Houston and Leftfield and Lydon singles. He even
included us in one of his "Festive Fifty" broadcasts,
a year-end roundup of his favorite singles. He arranged
for a couple of Radio One sessions for us and for me when
I quixotically went solo.
The
first time we showed up for a "Peel session"
we were surprised to find out that we weren't just going
on his radio show and playing in the next room. Those
were real recording sessions, in a spaceship-like studio
with TWO engineers [one was a lady
engineer named Frit] who would present you with
an intentionally crappy cassette of the results as you
left. If you wanted to hear the songs with decent quality,
you had to record them off the radio or talk your record
company into licensing the recordings, which as I recall
was not an inexpensive proposition.
So
when I first met John Peel (in I think 1995) I was wondering
how connected he actually was to music. By god, he was
like a robot. He asked me about every band I was ever
in; he remembered a bunch of records I'd forgotten about,
and he even managed to cough out a few unearned compliments
about my solo stuff. Then he did the exact thing with
the person next to me. We were both giddy afterwards.
This
month we will be foregoing the theme of hidden/ bonus
tracks to pay respects to Mr. Peel with all four songs
from Eggs' Peel Sessions:
1. March of the Triumphant
Elephants
2. A Pit with Spikes
3. Words [Low]
4. Maureen’s Beans
Unfortunately, I do not have
the show in it's entirety with introductions/ comments
by Peel.
A few links:
Peel
Sessions Fansite (every performance from 1992-2002)
John
Peel's Homepage
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