John Peel Day

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Now a little disclaimer first. I won't claim to be a fan of John Peel, to be honest I never really made the effort to listen to his show, although I kind of wish I had, but the amount of bands I really like that got a break on his show make me appreciative of him at the very least.

Well as you might know it's John Peel Day today. I've been listening to Radio 1 whilst I'm in the kitchen for various things and getting stupidly pissed off at it. First off Chris 'tub-o-lard' Moyles going on about what a legend Peel was and playing clips of him. Stop me if I'm wrong, but didn't John Peel make some statement about wanting to suicide bomb Moyles when he joined the station? Also why does Chris Moyles even pretend as if he ever listened. His favourite band is Oasis or U2 or some shit.

Secondly. I was listening to the piss poor 'yoof news' Newbeat bit on Radio 1 and they're again talking about John Peel Day and all the events going on around the country. Fine no problem with that. But they follow this up by saying something like "...and here are some bands talking about how John Peel influenced them (The Fall, Napalm Death, New Order?) no, fucking The Automatic, fucking Maximo fucking Park and Raz fucking orlight fucking.

Thirdly, the way Radio 1 are eulogising John Peel seems to go at odds with how the management treated him in the months before his death. Shunted from 10.00pm to 11.00pm (or was it 1.00am?) less shows and a generally shoddy attitude. Then he dies and WAHEYYY Radio 1 nail their flag to the credability coffin by claiming him as their own.  I'm sure ths has been discussed before, but still.

Fourthly.  Radio 1 is a piss poor station in the daytime, but the evenings still show some glimmer of hope, well they showed some glimmer. Zane Lowe I can withstand, but where are the shows playing 'Peel-esqe' music. Who is it in his time slot now? Colin fucking Murray who seems to think playing The Flaming Lips and Outkast constitutes obscure music. But people like Rob da Bank or even Huw Welshman get shunted into the early hours.

[The Duck Man]

Tenner says they play Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

I don't geddit - he died on the 25th October.

[The Duck Man]

Anniversary of his last broadcast, I believe.

[benthalo]

Stop me if I'm wrong, but didn't John Peel make some statement about wanting to suicide bomb Moyles when he joined the station?

"DLT in waiting" were the words that always stick in my mind. They were genial enough after a while.

Thirdly, the way Radio 1 are eulogising John Peel seems to go at odds with how the management treated him in the months before his death. Shunted from 10.00pm to 11.00pm (or was it 1.00am?) less shows and a generally shoddy attitude. Then he dies and WAHEYYY Radio 1 nail their flag to the credability coffin by claiming him as their own.  I'm sure ths has been discussed before, but still.

Yes, particularly at the time. Kershaw went public immediately after his death - give me a sec and I'll post an MP3 link which should still work - but this upset the Pig apparently. It's undeniable that he sounded absolutely fucking shattered towards the end, insisting on doing a live show from 11-1 three times a week *and* Home Truths and everything else in between.

Note the recent schedule shake up. Nightingale disappears for a week - causing panic for me - but it's alright, she's moved to Sundays now. Meanwhile, the One Music crowd - Ras Kwame, Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens - who weren't perfect but y'know, tried their best, have been shunted to an even later slot and now we have Colin Fucking Murray in the old Peel slot. Hobbs is now on at 2am!

They've got this cod new music thing going on before 10pm and they've expanded the unsigned bands coverage, but it's all a bit myspacey and dull to me. They also seem obliged to play 'oldies' so as not to scare people away rather than promote new music with the force of their own personality and belief. Zane Lowe seems to do that but he's too much of a twat for me to actually bear. But then, I'm getting old and listen to R3 more than anything else these days.

I fucking hate Peel Day. It serves no real purpose, it attempts to make Andy Parfitt look like the good guy and it's full of people wanking about it being "what he would have wanted". Well, no. He probably wanted another twenty years and a decent slot.

[benthalo]

Anniversary of his last broadcast, I believe.

Final show was 14th October 2004 but, yeah, basically.

[benthalo]

Kershaw went public immediately after his death - give me a sec and I'll post an MP3 link which should still work - but this upset the Pig apparently.

Here we are:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.scott43/FrontRowKershaw261004.rm

Front Row, 26th October 2004.

[Brutus Beefcake]

I haven't listened to Radio 1 since he died and I think that was a good move.

[Bert Thung]

and now we have Colin Fucking Murray in the old Peel slot.

Does anyone like Colin Murray? Enemies have become friends through a shared dislike of the man. I started to really warm to DLT when Murray said his shows "didn't speak to my generation".

[Anon]

and now we have Colin Fucking Murray in the old Peel slot.

Does anyone like Colin Murray? Enemies have become friends through a shared dislike of the man. I started to really warm to DLT when Murray said his shows "didn't speak to my generation".

Hmm...he's hardly on the Chris Moyles scale of awfulness, and it is hard for me to be too harsh on a man who's played a fair bit of Arab Strap on his show recently.  But I do see your point - there is a certain level of lowest-common-denominator "This is what you kids want, right lads?" to his shows that leaves an unpleasant taste, and if he's in any way actually supposed to be comparable to Peel, then we're really in the shit.

[klaatu!]

Here's what's going out in the old John Peel slot these days

Kasabian, Muse, REM, Babyshambles... It's the sort of 'alternative' show that would go out on Virgin.

I was just browsing through some old Peel tracklistings. Two years ago this week Peel had sessions from Polysics, Phillip Roebuck and Trencher, and there's dozens of tracks in the playlist that are still new to me now (and I was a regular listener). Looking at Murray's Radio 1 page, he's recently had sessions from The Zutons, Primal Scream and the Foo Fighters.

Radio 1 claiming that they're carrying on Peel's legacy is just abhorrent.

[chand]

If they want to do a proper Peel Day, maybe they should let their DJs go off-playlist for a day? Obviously that wouldn't work since Chris Moyles and Scott Mills wouldn't know music if it raped them in the face, but at least it'd be closer to the spirit of the thing.

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

Phillip Roebuck

The one-man-band analogy good for Peel too.

If they want to do a proper Peel Day, maybe they should let their DJs go off-playlist for a day? Obviously that wouldn't work since Chris Moyles and Scott Mills wouldn't know music if it raped them in the face, but at least it'd be closer to the spirit of the thing.

That's a brilliant idea.  That's my personal belief that Radio stations should tear up and burn any playlist they have.  Listening to Radio One in the daytime is like listening to a mix CD on constant loop... Scissor Sisters, Keane, Lily Allen, Killers, Zutons...  it's not about innovation, it's about securing the popular hits in the mind of the record-buying public.  It's just a sales opportunity.  They think cutting edge is "so call in and tell us which track off the new Kasabian album is the best..."

[benthalo]

If they want to do a proper Peel Day, maybe they should let their DJs go off-playlist for a day? Obviously that wouldn't work since Chris Moyles and Scott Mills wouldn't know music if it raped them in the face, but at least it'd be closer to the spirit of the thing.

That's a brilliant idea.

Took mouth the words my out of.

I think I figured out a while ago that when Colin Murray was in the Evening Session slot, just before Zane Lowe arrived, it was the shortest lived residency in that slot since Liz Kershaw c.1985. Two months or thereabouts. I hoped this meant something, but it seems not.

I also notice that the Colin & Edith partnership has dissolved for the time being - the new generation's Lamacq and Whiley, there. I'm sure they'll pilot another useless tv show, mind. There was a point at which you couldn't watch any music television without running into one of them. Oh.

[Almost Yearly]

They did that in the middle of the night last night. Yeah, exactly. An attempt at a new avant garde Radio 1 show with that bird DJ whose name temporarily escapes me, including a mix by Mark E Smith etc. No details, as I was working blearily through it.

[Rovis Teffyd]

I agree with benthalo. I think it's an absolutely pointless idea and doesn't serve the man well. All I see when John Peel day happens is loads of teenagers in shitty little bands (who probably don't know who Peel was) shouting "Dis iz fer Jurn Piiiiil!" between every song.

As has been said before, John Peel has done a lot for music over the years and while I hardly listened to any of his shows, I had a lot of respect for the man (and the bands he helped bring to our attention), but all in all this feels like a Radio 1 propaganda exercise. It's lazy, hateful and pathetic.

[Pilf]

This John Peel day just seemed like something Radio 1 felt they had to do to try and get people back on side after waiting over a year to finally do what they wanted to do when he died but couldn't (i.e. shunt all of the specialist shows to the very early hours or get rid of them completely).

They kept shouting about "John Peel day" and then didn't even put anything on themselves. Go and organise gigs yourself and we can get the credit by simply naming the day and trying to get some credibility on the back of it.

Radio 1 is a joke these days, only saved by listen again.

[benthalo]

Radio Times isn't to hand, but how was Peel Day scheduled on Radio 1 this time around? 13/10/05 saw a continuous six-hour broadcast, but have they simply broken it down into packages within yesterday's regular shows? I can imagine a few DJs getting properly into the spirit of things – Mary Anne Hobbs did so with the MES session – but if you're going to commemorate this sort of thing every year, then burying it in such a way as to be unnoticeable by anyone reading the radio listings seems counter-productive, especially if you're dealing with a discerning audience who have drifted away in the wake of his death. Like us lot.

It's much like the station's treatment of comedy since Parfitt took over – the content is there, but it's invariably an item within a regular show and not a devoted block of time within daylight hours. It's a risk to the broadcaster if they treat it any differently. They've dropped OneClick Comedy/The Milk Run altogether, before you mention it. That stopped at the end of June and the already halved slot for it no longer exists as of last week.

That's my conclusion as to the way in which Peel Day is now regarded at Radio 1. For them, it was a demonstration of a desired station identity last year but now it's got to do battle with Scissor Sisters at Maida Vale or exclusive interviews with Justin Timberlake. It's an emblem of a mis-shape figure which now has to fit in. How ludicrous is that? Last year's Peel Day show was unfocused and a bit dull, but it did have a Reithian spirit of sorts, linking up to events across the country as if it were a mini-Live Aid. It was chaotic and in essence that was a good thing.

Doesn't William Ravenscroft have a show on C4 radio now? Is it good?

[The Mumbler]

Doesn't William Ravenscroft have a show on C4 radio now? Is it good?

Tom, I think.

[Ignatius_S]

Radio Times isn't to hand, but how was Peel Day scheduled on Radio 1 this time around?

Radio Times took the 'less is more' approach in its coverage - i.e. absolutely fuck all. The R1 schedule was exactly the same as any other Thursday, surprise surprise. I can only stand the station in microdoses, so can't shed any light about coverage on the day itself.

6 Music are having a Peel week at the end of October.

[Phil_A]

Doesn't William Ravenscroft have a show on C4 radio now? Is it good?

Tom, I think.

Found it:
https://www.channel4radio.com/store/view.php?Id=409&ProductCategoryId=57

Haven't gone out of their way to promote this, have they? The only time I think I've seen it mentioned was on the rolling news channel in my local shopping centre, and then they claimed it was on "Radio 4".

I've listened to the first one and it was nothing special, really. The music is okay, but the format of the show is a bit depressingly restrictive. He's only allowed to play tracks from the Slashmusic website, and each show is only half an hour long, so there isn't really room to do an awful lot.