How John Peel created our musical world

[A Lark Ascending]

Maybe it should add..."in Britain for lots of people between 40 and 70"! 

Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/how-john-peel-created-our-musical-world

I remember listening to those first Roxy Music sessions; and the broadcast of Tubular Bells before release which I duly bought and helped to start the Branson empire!

Though I don't remember:

And if Eno’s speech flags a little and he needs a laugh from the audience, all he has to do is recall the night in December 1973 when Peel played a reel-to-reel tape of the new Fripp & Eno album (No Pussyfooting), backwards without noticing. All 39 minutes of it.

Maybe I'd already bought the record and didn't listen.

I'll be intrigued by the early part of this to see if it matches my memory - Captain Beefheart next to Thin Lizzy next to Martin Carthy next to Kevin Ayers next to Billy Pig (Northumbrian small pipe player!) next to Elton Dean's 'Just Us'. Clearly my memory has selectively excised a lot. 

Lost touch once I went to Uni ('73) and when Peel joined 'the enemy' in '76. But owe him huge amounts for opening my ears between 1970-73.    

Edited September 25, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[Homefromtheforest]

I first became aware of him in the mid to late 80s when he recorded a lot of the indie/punk bands I liked then as a teenager..a very open musical mind for sure.

[JSngry]

Is it true that Emma was the brains AND the bank behind the operation?

[Jazzjet]

I remember listening to Peel's 'Perfumed Garden' on the pirate Radio London station. This was before he signed to the new BBC Radio One. It was about the only way to listen to the new music from the West Coast plus UK bands like Pink Floyd, Spooky Tooth, The Misunderstood etc unless you happened to work behind the counter at one of the import shops like One Stop or Directions. He often came out with stuff like, 'it's a lovely day so why not go and say hello to a cloud'. He rather lost me in the mid 70s with his wholesale conversion to punk and then indie but I still retain a great affection for the man. And, of course, when he was DJ'ing in the US in the early 60s he claims to have been in the underground police garage when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby.

[A Lark Ascending]

I was a bit young for 'The Perfumed Garden' - and living in Singapore from 1965-8 so missed the whole centre of the Swinging' Sixties (though at 12 on my return I'd hardly have been at its heart!). 

Peel actually hated a lot of the music I loved - but there was so much else on his programmes to take in.

Really liked his Saturday morning Radio 4 programmes in the 90s. Amazing how he shifted from this icon of the counter-culture to a cuddly defender of the family. He had a very gentle way interviewing people who had gone through tough times.

His death really hit me. Came right out of the blue. 

[mjazzg]

Some of us were part of 'the enemy' but didn't necessarily see it that way. It was just the music of our teenage years - Misty in Roots, Heptones and Fela Kuti alongside Pere Ubu and others, great times

[A Lark Ascending]

Some of us were part of 'the enemy' but didn't necessarily see it that way. It was just the music of our teenage years - Misty in Roots, Heptones and Fela Kuti alongside Pere Ubu and others, great times

Of course. My tongue was firmly in my cheek with 'the enemy' comment. In the end it's all entertainment. If it brings pleasure it has worked - what brings pleasure changes with each micro-generation (and varies within each of those). 

To be honest, Peel's inclinations were always for the simpler, rougher, less ornate. 

[danasgoodstuff]

The Guardian article linked above crashed my computer in a big way.

[A Lark Ascending]

Bloody lefty journals! Clearly out to destroy the world communication system. 

[mjazzg]

I blame Corbyn personally 

as for the barbarians storming the walls of Castle Prog, I knew you were joking. One man's Year Zero is another's misty nostalgia trip. Don't get me started on that R4 programme.......

It would be interesting to look back at Peel's playlists for 75-78 and see how much of a complete break there was or whether some lines of continuity did exist. I fear a bit for the book but I'm not too sure why.  l hope I'm wrong. I'm fairly certain Peel's self-deprecation (which I took to be honest) would mean he'd shudder at the subtitle

 

 

[A Lark Ascending]

 l hope I'm wrong. I'm fairly certain Peel's self-deprecation (which I took to be honest) would mean he'd shudder at the subtitle.

 

Absolutely. He was never a man who needed his enjoyment to be 'Art'. 

Edited September 27, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[A Lark Ascending]

Another article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/28/good-night-good-riddance-review-john-peel-david-cavanagh

Love this bit:

It’s a chronological history of 265 programmes that Peel presented between 1967 and 2003 that begins with his show for Radio London called The Perfumed Garden. In those days he would recite poems in Latin by the Roman poet Catullus, give up reading the weather halfway through because he found the idea of rain upsetting, and prefaced blues songs by inviting listeners to go for a wander in Hyde Park “straight into all those trees that are whispering ageless, unheard-of secrets to one another and exchanging dark green words of love”.

 !!!

[sidewinder]

Remember one night when he played a track by the Miles Davis Quintet with Trane. One of the Prestige sides.

[A Lark Ascending]

That must have been rare. He often expressed his dislike of jazz (even though he did sessions with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Elton Dean's more 'out' bands). 

Ian Anderson (the other one) who runs fRoots has a similar wide ranging, missionary zeal...but also seems impatient with jazz despite being extremely catholic musically. 

[danasgoodstuff]

That must have been rare. He often expressed his dislike of jazz (even though he did sessions with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Elton Dean's more 'out' bands). 

Ian Anderson (the other one) who runs fRoots has a similar wide ranging, missionary zeal...but also seems impatient with jazz despite being extremely catholic musically. 

Or, maybe he just disliked various people he'd met who liked jazz, been known to happen and not just re jazz.

[Jazzjet]

I blame Corbyn personally 

as for the barbarians storming the walls of Castle Prog, I knew you were joking. One man's Year Zero is another's misty nostalgia trip. Don't get me started on that R4 programme.......

It would be interesting to look back at Peel's playlists for 75-78 and see how much of a complete break there was or whether some lines of continuity did exist. I fear a bit for the book but I'm not too sure why.  l hope I'm wrong. I'm fairly certain Peel's self-deprecation (which I took to be honest) would mean he'd shudder at the subtitle

 

 

This site has playlists for his Festive 50's from 1976 onwards. 1976 is standard stuff in the main and a marked contrast to 1978, although even then Led Zep, Van Morrison, Dylan etc make an appearance so he clearly hadn't completely gone over to the 'dark side' (joke).

Festive 50s

[A Lark Ascending]

Weren't those Festive 50s audience choices? The 1976 one looks very 'album rock' mainstream. I recall much greater diversity in Peel's own taste - and he had no time for the likes of Yes or Genesis (even though the latter did early sessions on his programme). 

I don't remember the Festive 50 when I was a regular listener (1970-3) though I was aware of it in the mid-70s because it got quite a bit of publicity. 

danasgoodstuff wrote: Or, maybe he just disliked various people he'd met who liked jazz, been known to happen and not just re jazz.

Perhaps. Though in my experience, in Britain at least, there is a particular outlook that is suspicious of music that shows any form of complexity or flash. It became rock music orthodoxy from around '76. I think Peel was just instinctively drawn to music that didn't try to be too 'clever'.

I noticed that outlook in a recent Guardian review of the new Dave Gilmour record that ends:

There are simple and undeniably lovely moments here – the hymn-like opening to Today is especially beautiful – but these are heavily outnumbered by displays of muso virtuosity.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/20/david-gilmour-rattle-that-lock-album-review-weighed-down-by-opulence

I've no horses in the Gilmour stakes...to my ears he peaked decades ago. Just found it interesting that the prejudice against what is termed 'muso virtuosity' is still there in rock music. A world view that sees virtuosity as something to be suspicious of is unlikely to warm to jazz (and I know jazz is about more than virtuosity and all the arguments there about technique and feeling).  

A lot of it in Britain is about class (everything in Britain is about class!). Though Peel (like Robert Wyatt) was from the comfortable middle classes and like many of the young well-to-do of the 60s revolted into what Joni Mitchell called 'the boho zone' (where did that accent come from?). Whatever the working class origins of jazz, by the 70s it was often viewed, along with classical music, as a middle/upper class affectation.  

[Jazzjet]

Weren't those Festive 50s audience choices? The 1976 one looks very 'album rock' mainstream. I recall much greater diversity in Peel's own taste - and he had no time for the likes of Yes or Genesis (even though the latter did early sessions on his programme). 

I don't remember the Festive 50 when I was a regular listener (1970-3) though I was aware of it in the mid-70s because it got quite a bit of publicity. 

danasgoodstuff wrote: Or, maybe he just disliked various people he'd met who liked jazz, been known to happen and not just re jazz.

Perhaps. Though in my experience, in Britain at least, there is a particular outlook that is suspicious of music that shows any form of complexity or flash. It became rock music orthodoxy from around '76. I think Peel was just instinctively drawn to music that didn't try to be too 'clever'.

I noticed that outlook in a recent Guardian review of the new Dave Gilmour record that ends:

There are simple and undeniably lovely moments here – the hymn-like opening to Today is especially beautiful – but these are heavily outnumbered by displays of muso virtuosity.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/20/david-gilmour-rattle-that-lock-album-review-weighed-down-by-opulence

I've no horses in the Gilmour stakes...to my ears he peaked decades ago. Just found it interesting that the prejudice against what is termed 'muso virtuosity' is still there in rock music. A world view that sees virtuosity as something to be suspicious of is unlikely to warm to jazz (and I know jazz is about more than virtuosity and all the arguments there about technique and feeling).  

A lot of it in Britain is about class (everything in Britain is about class!). Though Peel (like Robert Wyatt) was from the comfortable middle classes and like many of the young well-to-do of the 60s revolted into what Joni Mitchell called 'the boho zone' (where did that accent come from?). Whatever the working class origins of jazz, by the 70s it was often viewed, along with classical music, as a middle/upper class affectation.  

You're right that the Festive 50s were based on audience votes but my guess is that there was some sort of feedback loop going on, ie the audience votes reflected what Peel was playing. Interestingly, there was no proper Festive 50 in 1977 and Peel chose his favourite tracks. These included pub rock band The Motors at Numbers 1 and 3 but Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane' is in there too. The rest is mostly punk - The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Rezillos etc.

On your last point about the class view if jazz, which I agree with, my view is that jazz was also seen as rather straight, all suits and so on. It wasn't until Miles started to wear funky threads and free jazz stars like Archie Shepp, Coltrane etc started to wear ethnic clothing that jazz began to make some inroads with the young.

[A Lark Ascending]

Jazz sounded 'old-fashioned' to me in the early 70s - I associated it with Dudley Moore on TV variety programmes and 'specials' with the likes of OP, Ellington, Basie who just seemed so old. It was the proselytising of people like McLaughlin and Santana and the Soft Machine/Canterbury musicians (with added Tippetts and Blue Notes!) that first turned my head.

I started to get more curious when my interest in rock started to dry up around 75/76. I found it tough at first - most jazz tracks tended to start in a mood and stay there. I was used to prog-rock tracks that would have huge textural changes every couple of minutes. But it clicked after a while.

Oddly the electric-Miles'n shades did not appeal at all. I bought Bitches Brew in late '76 and hated it - although I could appreciate the musicianship I couldn't cope with the endless playing over one or two chords. It was a chance hearing of 'KInd of Blue' that got me listening to Miles. I didn't go near the electric stuff until the 90s (I am now a convert!).   

I remember the late-70s, when I first started exploring, as a time when jazz was deeply unfashionable in Britain (the period from the late-60s to early 70s when jazz musicians were regularly turning up on rock records seemed to shrivel - I think I just caught the tag end of that, being made aware of someone as jazz hardcore as Stan Tracey through name dropping in the rock papers...there was even a TV programme about him in early '77 portraying him as some sort of grand old man inspiring the young. He must have been about 40!). I had to order 'A Love Supreme' and it took several weeks to arrive from somewhere in Europe. As far as I can recall it wasn't until the early 80s the jazz entered another fashionable phase.with the whole Courtney Pine/Loose Tubes/Andy Sheppard thing (was that the Acid Jazz period?...I missed that completely!). It wasn't until around then that things like the Miles mid-60s records became readily available outside the London import shops.   

[A Lark Ascending]

Nice 1971 interview here:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/30/john-peel-1971-interview-melody-maker-michael-watts-rocks-backpages

Quote relevant to discussion above:

Over-commercialisation: that’s one of his pet hates. The other is the intellectualisation of the music. It occurred in jazz, didn’t it, he says, and we all know what happened to that...

....Jazz was essentially a people’s music, as rock is, and it was taken up by the intellectuals and built up to the point where they said, well, you can’t appreciate this because you haven’t got a college degree, have you? And the fact is, you’ve got people reviewing rock records in the Observer, and stuff like that. Nowadays your Hampstead liberal is listening to rock records instead of Dave Brubeck.

A huge over-simplification but I know what he means.  

Edited September 30, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[danasgoodstuff]

"I started to get more curious when my interest in rock started to dry up around 75/76. I found it tough at first - most jazz tracks tended to start in a mood and stay there. I was used to prog-rock tracks that would have huge textural changes every couple of minutes. But it clicked after a while.

Oddly the electric-Miles'n shades did not appeal at all. I bought Bitches Brew in late '76 and hated it - although I could appreciate the musicianship I couldn't cope with the endless playing over one or two chords. It was a chance hearing of 'KInd of Blue' that got me listening to Miles. I didn't go near the electric stuff until the 90s (I am now a convert!).  "

 

Not to pick on you, but I'm sure you realize now that Kind of Blue is endless playing over one or two chords and that Bitches has way more textural variety...

[xybert]

I first heard Bitches Brew probably when i was about 17. Yeah it was waaaaay too much for me. It was like, the opposite of concise. But there were 1-2 minute sections that sounded really cool to me, and i'd dub those in to my mix tapes along with the hip hop, indie rock, metal and soundtrack stuff that i was generally listening to at the time. It kind of struck me when listening to Flying Lotus' critically acclaimed and highly popular You're Dead! album that he'd done exactly that with the jazzier songs: taken Bitches Brew era fusion and made it bite sized/palatable for the hip hop generation.

[danasgoodstuff]

I first heard Bitches Brew probably when i was about 17. Yeah it was waaaaay too much for me. It was like, the opposite of concise. But there were 1-2 minute sections that sounded really cool to me, and i'd dub those in to my mix tapes along with the hip hop, indie rock, metal and soundtrack stuff that i was generally listening to at the time. It kind of struck me when listening to Flying Lotus' critically acclaimed and highly popular You're Dead! album that he'd done exactly that with the jazzier songs: taken Bitches Brew era fusion and made it bite sized/palatable for the hip hop generation.

It's also kind of what CBS did with the Miles singles of that era...kinda.

[JSngry]

"I started to get more curious when my interest in rock started to dry up around 75/76. I found it tough at first - most jazz tracks tended to start in a mood and stay there. I was used to prog-rock tracks that would have huge textural changes every couple of minutes. But it clicked after a while.

Oddly the electric-Miles'n shades did not appeal at all. I bought Bitches Brew in late '76 and hated it - although I could appreciate the musicianship I couldn't cope with the endless playing over one or two chords. It was a chance hearing of 'KInd of Blue' that got me listening to Miles. I didn't go near the electric stuff until the 90s (I am now a convert!).  "

 

Not to pick on you, but I'm sure you realize now that Kind of Blue is endless playing over one or two chords and that Bitches has way more textural variety...

Yeah, irony surely intentional!

However, consider this - although the music on KOB was mostly modal, Bill Evans' voicings and harmonies moved it around a helluva lot, so if you're listening from a harmony-centic ear, there's plenty of movement, plenty of un-stasis, plenty of movement/resolution.

On bitches Brew, not so much of that, but the rhythm/percussion takes that role. The vampage in that music is really to be found (mostly) only in the bass, everybody else is playing around with the rhythms and colors. The harmony is more overtly static than on KOB, but the rhythm is infinitely less static, as is the color. So...transference of means from one place to another, perhaps? Same thing only different? And by the time On The Corner hit, it was all about rhythm and color, symphonies of rhythm and color (and no small thanks to Teo for that). People who want to say that there's no melody in rhythm, or no rhythm in color, ok, I get that, that's what a lot of people have thought for a long time, and the systems they've constructed from that is pretty damn convincing - within itself. But really, objectively, all it is is one way of aligning certain physical vibrations, and then setting about reinforcing that alignment, asking certain questions of sound, and then getting answers appropriate to the questions. But not all creation asks thsoe questions, ok? Nor do they have a stake in the answers.

All roads lead back to vibrations. Not as in "good vibes, man, heavy!", but the basic fact that all matter, including sound, is energy, and all energy entails vibration. The raw material of existence. So when people hear melodies in drums, or harmonies in wind sounds, or believe that green sounds different than orange, hey, so be it.

Now, what I want to know is who really created Our Modern Musical World, Hugh Hefner or John Peel? Or were they both just pawns of Si Zentner?

 

[Chuck Nessa]

What were the years of the reign of Pope John Peel? I only have faint memories over here.