For my own record as much as anything else, a few weblog posts that, well, I want to keep to hand. I’ll no doubt update this as folk move from stunned to babbling.
Andy R: “Just because the bands I wanted to hear weren’t necessarily among them didn’t mean I thought any less of him for playing what he wanted to and believed in.”
Jenni: “One last unoriginal thought — by gum, before it was said elsewhere, I’d thought to myself, yes, this is my peer group’s Diana Death. Only without all the shops being closed.”
Mo: “The point is that it’s the done thing – when you go to paint woodwork, you sand the existing paintwork before you start: most of the time it makes very little difference and nobody notices either way, but it’s just what you do. When you make an album, you have it pressed and sent to Peel, it’s just what you do.”
Simon S: “I thought it would be always there, mucked about by the schedulers, of course, but always there. And now it isn’t.”
Vaughan: “It was the way he talked between the records – the dry, laconic wit; the side-swipe comments he would make after some playing some particularly ear-shattering noise only available on limited edition 7″ single from one second-hand record shop in Uzbekistan; the endearing incompetence which would see him play an entire track at the wrong speed and, more importantly, prefer it that way.”
Fraser: “For a start, he was probably the only person in the World to be a fan of The Bhundu Boys and Bum Gravy.”
City of Sound: “A personal memory is regularly driving back from football on Wednesday nights in my friend Paul Morgan’s car, listening to his show and hearing the darkest of darkcore jungle, or some insanely brutal thudding techno, followed by some scratchy Charley Patton-style delta blue from the 1920s, segued from one into the other without a care in the world about musical pigeonholes or the narrowmindedness of others. Gives a vague sense of the range of the man.”
Jonathan: “I found it hard dismissing music in the way I had before. I couldn’t hate reggae or techno anymore. Suddenly, it all sounded good. Vainly, I think that John Peel taught me something very important, and made me somehow better.”
Momus: Long and excellent tribute. “Peel, in my personal cosmology, is an angel and a devil, a friend and an enemy, a favourite uncle and a resented, oppressive boss.”
Stuart Hg: “Yet beyond this temporary, self-indulgent pining for the irretrievable lies a long-term respect and fierce admiration for what he represented and what he achieved. He was unique and he will be irreplaceable, but I keep reminding myself that these are reasons for celebration rather than sorrow.”
Tom has loads of links, including the thread on Metafilter which brings home how international he had become.
No Rock&Roll Fun which I somehow forgot to check until Thursday, has buckets of links to all the major and minor press plus newspaper covers.
And some from the newspapers:
Paul Moreley’s tribute: “I don’t think there is anyone interested in music, or broadcasting, or the splendid absurdity of life, who doesn’t owe John Peel something.”
Mark Radcliffe’s tribute: “John showed that it was possible to be a broadcaster on a national radio station and still be yourself.”
Annie Nightingale’s tribute: “His latest discovery, he said, was a band called Steveless. ‘They make an LP [John never said album] every week. They’re called Steveless because there’s no one in the band called Steve.’”
Andy Kershaw’s tribute: “His legacy is far bigger than just having been a veteran DJ. It’s not the longevity – it’s what he did.”
Appreciation in the Independent: “I have never met a regular John Peel Show listener I didn’t like.”
Apprecation in the Guardian: “Oh, god. The sound of a heart being torn open in the best, most jubilant way. Rapture so intense it must surely be forbidden, heard under the covers, in the dark, alone.”
The Sun has a surprisingly good feature – good for them anyway. I was expecting it to slip under their radar but I guess there are some secret listeners on the editorial team.
Caitlin Moran in the Times: “It wasn’t a club one could join without some manner of initiation, however. The very first time I “foundâ€? John Peel, late at night in the dark, he played a song that consisted of three people screaming “There’s a man outside/THERE’S A MAN OUTSIDEâ€? over a terrifying speed-metal accompaniment. And when I looked out of the window, standing outside out house at midnight, there was a man outside! I couldn’t sleep for two hours, from the terror. I’d only ever listened to The Hollies and Tears for Fears before. I thought Peel might actually be channelling the Devil.”
Non-music based interview from 1995: “Denied any opportunities to be shown how to use their energies creatively, obviously they’re going to be destructive. I remember a record I used to play in the punk days about vandalism being a creative instinct – if you wreck something you can go passed it the next day and say “I did that”.”
Jenni’s Diana comparison is very apt. I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, and it’s day two after the news, and I still haven’t recovered from it.