#john peel

[jt1674]

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[sonicandvisualsurprises]

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1978

So raw

A snapshot of rebellion: “So Tough” caught in one sharp take.

Recorded: 1978-04-17

First broadcast: 22 May 1978. Repeated: 12 June 1978, 14 March 1979

Info from: John Peel Wiki

I’ve already shared quite a few tracks from the John Peel sessions — check out #John Peel Sessions if you missed them.

[sowhatifiliveinfukuoka]

John Peel (1939-2004)

Without John Peel playing music on his nightime show I would have gone on believing there is only one type of music (i.e. pop music). He opened the door to so many styles of music for so many people that his influence on the music industry is beyond compare. And people still wonder to this day who his favourite band was? Legend.

[punkrockhistory]

44 years ago

Joe Strummer and John Peel at a Wimpy bar in Piccadilly Circus, London in July 1981

[flankingmanoeuvres]

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[sowhatifiliveinasmalltowninjapan]

Mark E. Smith, John Peel and The Fall

[larasramblings]

Self-Indulgent NAstalgia Trip: Book 1 - Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel (June 1991)

Well, coming back to it after eight years, I can firmly say it's John Peel's best novel. It's difficult to overstate just how little that actually means, but even so. There's a measure of verve to proceedings that actually suggests that the man is trying, and on a basic dramatic level it doesn't actually hang together too poorly.

It's still kind of paced like a television story (although it is frankly difficult to see the McCoy era taking quite so long for Ace and the Doctor to arrive) but given Doctor Who has only stopped being a television series eighteen months ago by this point, that's no big crime.

A bigger issue, of course, is the weird attitude towards sex and women, on the part of both the Doctor in-universe and Peel the author.

I'd remembered the whole "Ace, you need to be more relativist about sexual harassment/assault" rubbish, but Christ it's somehow even worse than I'd remembered. The Doctor cracking wise about a thirteen year-old sex worker "lying down on the job" is just appalling, no matter which way you slice it. And for all that he has the Doctor pay lip service to the notion of respecting other cultures, it's plainly apparent that Mesopotamia is largely viewed as a savage and backwards place populated by ignorant dupes who credulously believe in the godhood of any old alien that crosses their paths.

One might protest that this is just on account of the civilisation being some four thousand years in the past, but it's simply impossible for that to wash when you're talking about a series headlined by two white British leads and created by a white British creative team.

None of these flaws are ones that Peel invented or introduced to science fiction as a genre, obviously, but for all that there's a greater level of effort on display here than in Evolution or the two BBC Dalek novels, the fact that he chose to write such an unreconstructed amalgam of Orientalist, sexist exoticisation in 1991 says a lot about the man's impulses as a writer, and just how far the New Adventures have to go before they really come into their own. In the end, then, my judgment in my War of the Daleks piece was correct: Peel's greatest importance to the Wilderness Years is in providing a snapshot of what *not* to do.

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[bandcampsnoop]

12/23/25.

There are few things that create a predictable musical reaction from me more than 1980s British indie pop. I'm one of those people who own the 3CD/72 track C86 compilation on Cherry Red and love nearly everything on it. It's also why I post nearly every release from Precious Recordings.

So when I learn about a C86 adjacent band that I'd never heard of, or that has just been reissued (some of these tracks are issued for the first time) my ears perk up.

BOB (North London, England) were active in the late 1980s and 1990s (reforming again more recently) and will make you think of Peter Sellers and the Hollywood Party, the June Brides and so many more bands. But at times, they also remind me of more current bands like Northern Portrait. As I mentioned earlier, they did reform after interest in them was sparked due to their inclusion on a the "Kats Karavan" John Peel compilation in 2009.

This is being released by German label/pool Légère Recordings, Mr. Mellow's Music & Lounge Records.