This week’s special mix is by Wireshaker-one of the original Friday night ‘Drop The Biscuit’ crew, celebrating the most influential, late an great John Peel-
WIRESHAKER- Ah, those Friday nights down the Grove: conversation, comestibles and a soundtrack supplied by the attendees that put the eclectic into electric…….
The kinda thing I tended to contribute was a disparate bunch of sounds taken from all over the map and a few from the terra incognita beyond. Not unlike, come to think of it, a fairly typical edition of the John Peel show. Which brings us to this, my DTB debut.
Not long ago, a charity shop visit netted a copy of Michael Heatley’s John Peel-A Life In Music which coulda been a cheap’n’nasty cash in after the great man’s demise. A quick glance at an index which included, one after another Kurt Cobain, Eddie Cochran, Jarvis Cocker, The Cocteau Twins and Shirley & Dolly Collins demonstrated otherwise. So I shelled out the 90p asking price and began reading with an eye on the possibility of the contents inspiring a playlist / mix. And here’s a distilled version of the result.
All the acts herein feature in the text. With a few obvious exceptions, I’ve tried to avoid the overfamiliar, and the sequencing, apart from the top & tail, is random –in the spirit of the programme itself. Any conceptual, thematic or musical segue is down to pure serendipity.
RIP you old, bald cnut.
1 Grinderswitch –Pickin’ The Blues
2 The Fall –Psycho Mafia
3 Frankie Laine –The Kid’s Last Fight
4 The Misunderstood –I Can Take You To The Sun
5 Ivor Cutler –Life In A Scotch Sitting Room
6 Soft Machine –We Know What You Mean
7 Bridget St John –Fly High
8 Field recording –Live Bee Jew’s Harp
9 Prince Far I –Under Heavy manners
10 The Faces- Three Button Hand Me Down
11 Dick Dale & The Del-Tones –Surf Beat
12 Lightnin’ Hopkins –Black Cat Bones
13 Essential Logic –Aerosol Burns
14 The Liverpool Scene –Bat Poem
15 The Stupids –You’ll Never Win
16 Captain Beefheart –Well
17 Ladytron –Seventeen (hey! serendipity indeed!)
18 John Fahey –In Christ There Is No East Nor West
19 Henry Cow –Guider Tells Of Silent Airborn Machine
20 Marc Bolan –Hippy Gumbo
21 White Stripes –One More Cup Of Coffee
22 Forest –Do You Want Some Smoke?
23 Lol Coxhill –Soprano Derivitivo / Apricot Jam
24 Tangerine Dream –Sunrise In The Third System
25 Stetsasonic –Talkin’ All That Jazz
26 The Bonzo Dog Band –Rockaliser Baby
27 Gene Vincent –You’ll Never Walk Alone
28 The Undertones –Teenage Kicks