Seven years ago today saw a vast number of popular, seminal or struggling musicians and an even vaster number of music lovers around the world shed a tear over the unexpected death of an avuncular balding gentleman from the Wirral with various children named after vestiges of Liverpool Football club and a wife he fondly referred to as “the Pig”.

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, better known as John Peel, was responsible for bringing artists as disparate as The Smiths, Bob Marley, Orbital, Bolt Thrower,  The White Stripes, Public Enemy, PJ Harvey and The Bhundu Boys to a wider audience.

His late night BBC Radio One show, with its specially recorded sessions (which somewhat logically became known as Peel Sessions) had generations of spotty teenagers like myself waiting, fingers poised over the rec and play buttons of a radio cassette recorder, for the latest offering from The Fall or the latest import from far away, be it New York, Kinshasa, Nagoya or Brussels.

Although it was tempting to provide links to Peel Sessions by the holy trinity of my teenage years – namely The Cure, The Smiths and New Order, each of whom recorded at least a couple of Peel Sessions – or other much-loved Peel staples The Fall, Half Man Half Biscuit or The Wedding Present, you’re going to get another couple of personal favourites.

First up is another balding (now completely bald, but in the 1980s he was merely balding) fellow,  from Stoke-On-Trent.

Ted Chippington.  Ted by name and Ted by nature,  Chippington dressed like a 50s Rock-n-Roller, brothel creepers and all. I was fortunate enough to see this legend of “top entertainment” in his prime and even purchase one of his “A Good Mate of Ted” badges afterwards. Deadpan before Jack Dee had bought his first suit, poker face before Lady Gaga was out of nappies, Ted was, at the time, a unique proposition: old style comedy coupled with the kind of 70s karaoke singalong one might encounter at a Brit-filled bar in Benidorm. But with his own personal touch, as seen in the following visualisation of his oeuvre below:

Peel played Ted’s first single “Non-Stop Party Hits of the 50s 60s and 70s” featuring Ted’s own spins on chestnuts such as “Hound Dog”, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” and “Rock around the Clock”, along with a first airing of his own composition “Rocking With Rita” and a wheel was set in motion.

An album, Man in a Suitcase, was released with a trucking theme to its sleeve and Peel’s nemesis Steve Wright (not the murderer, but the Radio One DJ) soon picked up on Ted’s masterful rendition of the Beatles’ “She Loves You”. Fame and fortune beckoned, with Ted even getting a TV spot on Pebble Mill at One. It used to be up on YouTube, but after a glance at this, some sourpuss has taken it down.

So here you can enjoy one of Ted’s trucker’s tales, set to music instead:

Other joys on this quintessential slice of alternative Midlands variety were a version of Russ Abbott’s cheesy wedding-disco anthem of the time – “Atmosphere” (the original of which Peel once memorably  introduced on Top of the Pops as a Joy Division cover.)

Later, a version of “Rocking With Rita” was released with an all-star crew of labelmates from Vindaloo Records, meaning that Ted was accompanied by We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It (who had also released a Peel Session by then and who would later go on to bother the charts with radio hit “Pink Sunshine”) and The Nightingales. If I recall, Vindaloo Records rock was produced for the occasion, featuring the legend “Greetings from Ballsall Heath“.

A follow-up – “The Wanderer” was released in 1987 (where Ted revealed he was not the wandering type, but would rather spend a quiet night in “with the missus”). Shockingly, it did not set the UK Top 40 alight, and only made 28 on the indie charts.

By 1990, Ted had apparently had enough of the rock n roll lifestyle and retired from “the business” (allegedly) to become a trucker in the US, but abandoned  this romantic career option when his lorry shed its load on the highway somewhere.  After fleeing to Mexico to work as a cook (it says here) he returned to the UK, eschewing Stoke-on-Trent and Bank’s Bitter in favour of a house on the English Riviera.

Other soon-to-be-far-more-popular fledgeling comedians were later to take a leaf out of  Ted’s book. As well as Jack Dee (who I mentioned earlier) Stewart Lee has often spoken of his love for Ted’s unique brand of entertainment, and even subsequently tracked him down  at his Torquay abode to record this. His sometime sidekick Richard Herring was no less forthcoming in showing  respect to Stoke-on-Trent’s finest. Even Vic and Bob were apparently regulars at Ted’s early gigs.

In 2006 he returned to the stage, dog collared-up, and re-styled as The Rev. Ted Chippington (possibly inspired by Run out of RUN DMC or Kurtis Blow), and the following year Lee and Herring and other comedy luminaries hosted a “Tedstock” benefit gig to raise money for a very noble cause: a 4 CD Chippington box set.

The other week Ted performed to “a crowd of  aggravated Welshmen” , supporting The Fall and The Nightingales, with a mixture of old and new material.

Predictably, he was bottled off.

Peel was an avid supporter of Ted Chippington, and once played a legendary set that he had performed on a ferry in Liverpool in 1985 (supporting Scouse indie-dance chancers The Farm) in its entirety on his show. Hopefully some kind soul will post this today as I personally love to hear it again! However, let’s leave Ted with a clip of the b-side of his first single, introduced by John Peel himself, and then a few random moments of “True Greatness”

Ted Chippington – Non Stop Party Hits of the 50′s, 60′s & 70′s (b-side)

Ted Chippington – She Loves You

Ted Chippington – Feel Like Buddy Holly

Ted Chippington – The Wanderer

Ted Chippington – I’m a Human Being

Ted Chippington – Ted Chippington

The Popguns were a jangly pop band from Brighton, fronted by one Wendy Morgan and featuring ex-Wedding Present sticksman Shaun Charman. They recorded two Peel Sessions, both – I think – first broadcast in 1990. Amazingly they never became the “next Sundays”, the “next Primitives”, or even the “next Darling Buds” (who were themselves the next Primitives), although their first two albums Snog and Eugenie should rightly be championed as indiepop classics.

I forked out for the 12” singles of their debut “Landslide” (which made the lower echelons of the Festive Fifty) and follow-up “Waiting For The Winter”… both had a special quality, maybe the combination of those jangly guitars and the singer’s voice, the wistful lyrics… but one of the rare moments that Peel played something and I thought I’ve got to have this record instead of just contenting myself with three or so minutes of a C90.

Charman left the band and the Popguns’ moment in the indie limelight seemed to be running out. A third LP – entitled Love Junky – was released in 1995 and the following year a final album - Á Plus de Cent - appeared, featuring covers of both Serge Gainsbourg (in French!) and A Tribe Called Quest. Their finest hours were compiled on a Best of the Midnight Years collection.

Amazingly all four LPs, along with the compilation, are available on iTunes, and the band even have a website with bits and bobs from their fleeting career here. 

Here is their first Peel Session from 1990.

The Popguns – Debut Peel Session.

We’ll be Keeping It Peel next Tuesday.

But here’s a tune to play in the meanwhile…

Grinderswitch -Pickin’ The Blues (download)

The above song – Que veux-tu by French band ( (c) Air 1998) Yelle – has been lodged in my head ever since I (*cough*) discovered it on the internet in its abovely remixed form. As you will see, it features abundant wild dancing by a fellow in a pith helmet, probably due to the fact that the album from which the track is extracted is called Safari Disco Club.

Apparently the guy who remixed it is only 17, also French, and goes by the soubriquet (did you see what I did there?) of Madeon.

He’s also done a handful of other remixes, from the Killers (you can download that ‘un) to Deadmau5.

The Killers – Smile Like You Mean It (Madeon remix)

Deadmau5 – Raise Your Weapon (Madeon remix), “ripped” off Pete Tong on Radio One

The remixes have a sort of vaguely Justice-y French Touch 2.0 feel to them, and monsieur Madeon has even made a LIVE mash-up that sounds like a whole new beast by combining the best bits from 39 songs – including his Yelle remix, along with Daft Punk, Justice, Stardust (no surprise there), The Buggles, Kylie, Britney, Coldplay, The Who, Ratatat, Gorillaz, Chromeo…  - into a 3’25 pop collage called “Pop Culture” using some piece of techno wizardry called a Novation Launchpad.

Push the button..

In anticipation of a decent chunk of time becoming available to dust off this blog, I thought I’d install a flag counter to see who’s looking in and from where!

It seems I’ve installed it in the wrong place though.

Ho hum…

Six years since John Peel shuffled off his mortal coil (not This Mortal Coil.. oh you know…) in Cuzco, Peru and left behind him a legacy of music from Bowie to Bogshed, from C86 “shamblers” to happy hardcore, old skool hip-hop to Brit Pop, prog to punk, M.E.S to D & B etc, etc, etc.

Six years in which the sales of CDs have fizzled out, vinyl has returned to the non-specialist record shops and ringtones and glorified karaoke singers have swamped the ears of our ever more homogenous youth.

There are, of course, those who bravely try to follow the great man’s example – Rob Da Bank, Jarvis Cocker, 6Music in general, but that combination of enthusiasm, championing the new from all fields of the musical spectrum and an overwhelming love of The Fall is a hard act to follow. It was thanks to Peelie that I first heard the indie heroes of my youth – New Order, The Cure, The Smiths – but also heard what was then known as electro, old blues records, dub reggae, and.. er.. more indie subgenres. His programmes also cemented friendships between myself and my oldest friends who often met up in one friend’s big-ish bedroom to listen to records bought on the back of hearing them on his Radio One programme… Psychocandy being a prime example.

So first up, to celebrate the great man’s anniversary, here is my commemorative Spotify playlist. Lots of session tracks in there, plus Festive Fifty favourites and my own Peel show memories. Sadly Ted Chippington, Bogshed, Eton Crop and Billy Bragg’s first album are not very well represented on Spotify so you’ll have to make do with the below:

Keep ‘Em Peeled

Oh, and I almost forgot… for Keeping It Peel I’m meant to include a favourite Peel Session, aren’t I?

Well, I’m sure no-one else will be posting this one… *coughs* …

Back in the midsts of the early 1980s Peel played a track by a German band whose name translated as The Dead Trousers – Die Toten Hosen, who had a 7″ called Bommerlunder which was basically a hymn/drunken paean to a rather potent schapps or something similar. Peel became quite enamoured with the track and subsequently acquired the band’s debut album Opel-Gang and played tracks fom it on the show despite it being all in German. The band – with names like Trini Trinpop, Campino, Breiti and Andi – then got in contact with Peel (or was it the other way round) and a partially English language session was recorded in Maida Vale. I recorded it on a C90 many years ago, but it found its way onto the web, and here it is below to enjoy again, with bits of Peelie himself talking between the tracks.

Die Toten Hosen later recorded a great hip-hop collaboration version of Bommerlunder called Hip-Hop Bommi Bop with Fab Five Freddy which I loved but never “did” anything chart-wise. The band did however become a stadium-filling cartoonish punk band (imagine Green Day if they hadn’t heard any ska records and sang in German) in their native land, complete with a new drummer called Vom (not his given name, I’d wager). In fact so massive did they become that in Germany you can even buy a Toten Hosen Sing Star karaoke thing for your PlayStation!

Die Toten Hosen – John Peel Session 1984

Die Toten Hosen – Hip Hop Bommi Bop

Die Toten Hosen – Bommerlunder

Oh, and on the band’s website you can find a video to the original Bommerlunder, re-recorded… in Polish.

Raise a glass to the late, great John Peel!

I felt a perverse obligation to return to the keyboard as Monday 25th is Keeping It Peel day, a blog-wide hat-tip to the late John Robert Parker Ravenscroft OBE, better known as John Peel. Music-lover, countryman, father, dj, writer, TV star, Liverpool fan, curry aficionado and all-round good bloke (by all accounts), Peelie formed the backbone of my record / tape / CD / MP3 collection with his boundless but tempered enthusiasm, his eclectic taste and his thirst for good new music, from grindcore to ‘appy ‘ardcore and beyond.

So I’m about to pop round to the Keeping It Peel website and add this very ‘umble and fairly lightweight blog’s particulars to the “blogroll” supporting  the cause.

It was either that or carve “4 PEEL” into my forearm, and I have to admit I’m not very handy with a Stanley knife. Plus I wouldn’t really want my young son copying me when I only let him use a fork and spoon.

I’ve already got my own “respec’ to the godfather” Spotify playlist lined up, and I’ll see what I can dig out of the proverbial crates for the day.

So, in the words of Shaw Taylor: keep ‘em peeled!

Not at parties or in the pub or anything (I’m sure he couldn’t even place my country of residence on a map let alone hunt down a pub here), but as a phenomenon. I had seen his vaguely emo-combed hair and his probably prepubescent mush gurning from a flyposter that barked of him being a NEW TEEN SENSATION or something similar, and I was also vaguely aware of an internet campaign to send the lad on a tour of North Korea, as well as having encountered his seemingly obsessive hopefully female barmy army on Twitter.

But I had, until now, managed to avoid his music.

But when I heard it, I rather liked it.

Probably because the version I heard was a more eclectic reworking than when Andy Weatherall turned I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have into Loaded. A fellow under the nom-de-plume of Shamanti had the bizarre idea of putting the TEEN SENSATION’s latest piece of throwaway pop pap through some timestretching gizmo, slowing it down by 800%  and transforming it into as into a 35-minute aural extravaganza that had stultified listeners like myself, dj’s, music journos and many more muttering words like “ambient”, “bliss”,”Eno”, “balearic”,”Cocteaus”, “sonic cathedrals” and the like. Even no less a luminary than Mr. Rob daBank himself described the track as “lush”.

This was last week.

Now a new site called Slow It Up has been created to deal with similar creations, and already both Frank Sinatra and Miley “can’t be tamed” Cyrus have been put on the digital equivalent of the medieval rack to similar effect.

But hats off to Shamantis, who had the idea in the first place. Which begs the question… if you play Music For Airports or Higher Than the Sun 800x faster, would you have a US-radio-friendly pop hit on your hands? And is someone going to try the Slow it Up trick with Original Nuttah?

J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

SlowItUp website

…for the absence.

Due to post World Cup comedown, summer holidays, school holidays and other things too boring to mention. Oh, and did I mention “late running”? That was always a London Underground favourite excuse back in the day. Not that this is an excuse that I’m making…

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

And no I’m not going to end with a link to “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word”.

In any version.

Because it’s shit.

I said “captain”, she said “what?”

Well, sort of.

Good work lads, viva el tiki taka, and here’s to fair play’s triumph over dirty football and iffy referees.

Here are the front pages of today’s Spanish papers

… and yes, the miracle has happened: the Catalan press and the Basque!!

Further, more detailed analysis in the next post.

Now imagine this.

Imagine, and I know it’s pretty unlikely, but try.

Just for one minute, try and imagine what would happen if England qualified for a World Cup final.

Especially after a less than brilliant series of matches sealed by some spectacular, if occasionally lucky goals.

After a semi-final against a powerful opponent who had possibly played better than anyone in the tournament so far.

A semi final in which EVERY SINGLE PLAYER pulled their weight, defending, assisting, passing and repeatedly shooting at goal.

There would, by rights, be dancing in the streets, singing, drinking, cheering and flag-waving. There would be a sense of unity and shared joy up and down the country, and the next day all the newspapers would have a big picture of the team or the goalscorers, maybe a Union Jack somewhere and a big headline saying YES! or FOOTBALL’S COMING HOME or IT’S 1966 ALL OVER AGAIN, and (in the case of the tabloids) several politically incorrect drubbings of the other team – especially if they happened to be Germany, Argentina or France.

But all the papers would have the beaming faces of Rooney, Lampard, Ashley Cole, Capello and the rest of ‘em splashed all over the front page and the back page too, from The Guardian to the Daily Mail, from the Yorkshire Post to the Tooting and Mitcham Advertiser, regardless of political leanings. I would even wager that England players might even make the front pages of The Scotsman despite the fact that many Scotland fans had vowed to support any other team but England.

So, given the fact that Spain have just achieved such a feat, and have never made it past the quarter finals before in any World Cup, you’d expect the press to be united in their praise of the national team’s sterling effort, putting political and regional differences aside for once?

After all, Marca journalists did witness Spanish flags in the Plaza Canaletas - where Barça fans celebrate their teams victories – and people shouting “oa oa oa, Barcelona es española”, which did at one stage seem as likely as Maradona wearing an England shirt.

But then again, the goal that made the difference was from “shaggy-haired warrior” Carles Puyol, Barça captain and genuine Catalan. Xavi, and Piqué are also Catalans and on the blaugrana payroll, while Capdevila was born in Lérida (or Lleida, if you must). Iniesta is a key Barça player, and if I’m not wrong Cesc Fabregas came to prominence in the Camp Nou youth teams. Pedro also played a key part in yesterday’s match, and he also has a few blue and red shirts hanging in his wardrobe back in BCN.

So really, much as many Madridistas (of which I count myself) may knock Barça – especially after Joan Laporta tried to use the club as a springboard to his dreams of a recession-proof future in nationalist politics (until the fraud squad get on to you.. or DEC/Salvame/La Noria etc, ask Julián Muñoz!) the truth is that many of Spain’s best players play there, and from next season that includes David Villa as well.

However, the old saw that there are “two Spains” (I’m not talking about the team that played Switzerland and the team that played Germany, I’m on a geopolitical tip here) is rearing its ugly head again. Even within Catalonia itself.

Take a look at the two editions of today’s Barcelona based newspaper El Periodico (great “cool” Barcelona minimalist name – it means “the newspaper”) below, the Spanish version on the left and the Catalan version on the right.

The Spanish version is headlined RED GLORY and boasts a huge photo of triumphant Carles Puyol just after his soon-to-be-legendary header.

The Catalan version DOES NOT EVEN MENTION the match at all, and opts to go for a story about Cuba planning to free some political prisoners, along with a picture of some politicians denying any links with corruption on the costas.

It’s as if the match never happened, a bit like what the papers were like in the times of Franco… if something happened that the rulers disapproved of then rather than report on it, albeit critically, it was just ignored and not mentioned. Check the date at the top of each paper.. a big eight, TODAY.

But to look at them you’d think the Catalan one was Wednesday’s.

Come on people, this is a great day, and if you want to use the excuse that a Catalan and a Barcelona stalwart has got a handful of Barcelona players and another handful of hangers-on into a World Cup final then go ahead. But maybe if you are really shortsighted enough to consider the likes of Casillas, Sergio Ramos and Xavi Alonso as hangers-on then it could be that refereeing is the career option for you. We all love Puyol today. A credit to the nation. Whatever your concept of his nation is. Plus, in being a fan of Napalm Death, Cannibal Corpse and The Ramones (you’d never have guessed to look at him, would you), Puyol shows he has moderately better taste than the likes of (Saint) Iker Casillas who put the likes of Julio Iglesias and Manolo Escobar on his iTunes playlist. (Schweinsteiger had “Paper Planes” on his!)

Catalan sports papers like the imaginatively named Sport (Sport, El Periódico.. can you see a pattern here?) were full of praise for last night’s feat, coining the term PUYOLAZO into the bargain (you Google it!). So, “serious papers” (and what I believe people back in Blighty refer to as “haters“) in Catalonia, just get a grip and enjoy the party (and the partido on Sunday) and for God’s sake don’t line up some “Sorry Spain fails again” headline if by some unlucky chance Holland wins the match.

Then again, the Catalan Periódico did have some solace for football fans on its front page… a picture of our old friend Sara Carbonero.