As I write this, I feel very much in tune with how John Peel was feeling as he opened this edition of his BFBS show. He warned listeners that he was not in perfect working order due to a heavy head cold, but that he hoped the music would make up for it. Both my wife and I have been flattened by the same cold*, a week out from Christmas. I thought I was getting over mine, but an attempt to untangle some Christmas tree lights has left me dizzy and craving the balm of this blog.
I think that the cold which has affected my wife and I may have had its roots in the fact that we just spent a week with our niece, culminating in her fifth birthday party and an army of infants invading my in-laws house. Peel’s cold may have been caused by the filthy weather in which he had watched Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday play out a 1-1 draw in a League Cup quarter final, a few days previously. Perhaps, it was penitence for him having spotted himself, together with Sheila and Thomas, on the televised highlights, sitting behind John Wark as he took a throw-in. Regardless, he had a higher opinion of this piece of crowd work than he did of most of his TV work, as he explained: I’m always rather poor at it to be honest, because all I do is flutter my eyelids in a rather nervous fashion like some gentle woodland creature and just wish that it was over.
Having criticised himself as a TV performer, he also held up his hands to being a lousy interviewer, but while playing tracks from the new Frank Black album, he acknowledged Black as being a nice man because he had made an interview that they did together a much easier experience than Peel had feared it was going to be. He was also sympathetic to Black’s reasons for ending Pixies, with Black having expressed the wish to get off the roundabout of playing the same songs over and over again.
The postbag included a letter from Addis Sharma, who explained that during a visit to a department store in Alma Ata- now called Almaty -, Kazakhstan, they had looked at the music section. It contained 5 albums, one of which was by Billy Bragg. As Addis put it, This is a place where people queue for everything except Billy Bragg records, it seems. Peel received two letters of thanks from people that he had managed to turn on to African music, through consistent exposure to it on the show. One of the correspondents admitted that their girlfriend hadn’t been converted and would punch them whenever they listened to it. Peel responded by playing Sana by Kanda Bongo Man and repeating his standard complaint about the presence of synthesiser players on soukous records. Finally, a prisoner from Berlin called Steve had written to Peel to request some records. We didn’t learn what these were, but he promised to play them next week.
I was able to include all the selections I wanted to include from this show. I did not include, as I frequently never do, the two tracks by Babes in Toyland which Peel played. Both Blood and Jungle Train were taken from a live album, which had been sent to Peel by an American friend who liberated a copy of the album from a radio station in Georgia. A bit of a collectors item, but you’re not getting my copy. This though was in a pre-YouTube world. For those who enjoy them, consider this an early Christmas gift.
*Turned out to be Covid.
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