A Tribute to John Peel

Under the forgiving guise of radio, John Peel never really aged throughout his 37 years playing records on BBC 1. His aptitude for discovering talent stayed consistently ahead of his peers, from first plugging Captain Beefheart and David Bowie back in the seventies to being the reason any of us ever heard of The Strokes.

Apart from informing so many of the bands working today, John’s most permanent legacy resides in the vast number of Peel Sessions he recorded with some of the most notable acts of the last few decades. Originally conceived in 1986 as a means to fill air time with consideration for the BBC’s rigid broadcast standards limiting the amount of recorded music a DJ was allowed to play, Peel had his favorite bands record what were normally four song setlists, rendering versions that sounded somewhere between a studio recording and a live set, with an added intangible quality that came from the legacy of the studio and of the man behind the glass.

Had Peel not died of a heart attack back in 2004, today would have been his 70th birthday. To mark the occasion, what follows is a compilation of some of the best of the Peel Sessions.

Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, “Listen, mate, *life* has surface noise.”

– John Peel

Track List

The Wire – I Am The Fly

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

The Strokes - The Modern Age

Gang of Four - I Found That Essence Rare

Pulp - Babies

New Order - Dreams Never End

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

The Cure - All Cats Are Grey

Young Marble Giants - Final Day

Mira Calix - She Keeps Her Secrets

The Human League - Being Boiled

cLOUDDEAD - Side A Part 1

Apparat - Van

Aphex Twin - Pancake Lizard

Autechre - Drane

Boards of Canada - Happy Cycling

Spritualized - Don’t Go

The Pixies - In Heaven (Lady In the Radiator Song)

Slowdive - Shine

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci - The Film that Changed My Wife

Smog - I Break Horses

Graham Coxon - Shipbuilding