John Peel's First-Ever Night Ride, 6th. March 1968

"This is the first of a new series of programmes in which you may hear just about anything", says JP at the start of this show, and he's not wrong.

So here we have the very first of John Peel's Night Ride shows, complete and in glorious mono. Tonight's sessions come from The Incredible String Band and Adrian Mitchell. There's also a bit of John Dunn's part of Night Ride at the end of this recording, which, to quote Peel from a later era, is in marked contrast to the one which preceded it. But despite presiding over a far more traditional selection of music himself, Dunn is fulsome with praise for Peel's show and expresses disappointment that he wasn't able to listen to it himself.

Peelie mentions that this is the first time he's been allowed to operate his own equipment for some time, I'm guessing since his Radio London days. And he does well; there's only one slight hiccup, when he forgets a song name and has to read it off the record as it spins down.

My thanks to Colin Ellis and Guy Brown for this one. Colin's recording of the show seemed to be in stereo, but it turned out to be a sort of bastardised mono, with the left channel being just a horrible, raspy echo of the right. So I've used the right channel to make a 'good' mono recording, which got rid of 95% of the noise in one fell swoop. Also, Colin's version was in two halves, and the tape flip happened right in the middle of the Incredible String Band's 9-minute epic Ducks On A Pond, which is a hell of a shame as that's quite a rarity.

This is where Guy Brown comes in, because Guy's session discs contained another recording of the session version of "Ducks". This version was also incomplete but this time it was only the end that was missing. A case of "be glad for the song has no ending (but does have a middle)", one might say. Thank you, I'm here all week.

So with a bit of slicing and dicing in Audacity I've merged in about 20 seconds from Guy's version which completes the track and the show. You'll notice the joins if you're really listening, but I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.

I've decided to provide this one as a lossless FLAC encode. As it's mono, and only one hour long, it's not too large.

Download (167Mb, mono, FLAC, duration approx. 1 hour)

Tracklisting

• The Misunderstood - I Can Take You To The Sun
• Incredible String Band - You Get Brighter (session)
• North Vietnamese music - A Joyful Northern Air (from BBC archives)
• Adrian Mitchell - Take Stalk Between Teeth, Pull Stalk From Blossom, Throw Blossom Over Arm Towards Enemy, Lie Flat and Await Explosion (session)
• The Iron Butterfly - Possession
• Chat with Adrian Mitchell
• The End - Shades of Orange
• Incredible String Band - All Too Much For Me (session)
• Domenico Scarlatti - Sonata in E Minor (K 15, L 374) ("We'll try and get him in for the programme next week")
• Incredible String Band - Ducks On A Pond (session)
• Adrian Mitchell - To You (session)
• Adrian Mitchell - Prince of Wailers (session)
• Simon and Garfunkel - Sparrow
• Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - Cold Black Night
• Tulana Jinjote Ragum (??) (played on veena, mridangam and tambura) (from BBC archives)
• Incredible String Band - Goodnight (session)
• Handover to John Dunn for the rest of Night Ride
• News
• The Laurie Johnson Orchestra - The Theme From Beauty Jungle
• Hank Garland Quintet - Pop Goes The Weasel (part)

Sorry for the download problems

D'oh! It appears that my divshare account has exceeded its download limit until the 1st. September. I wasn't even aware there was a limit, but never mind. For now, I've put up alternative links for the 27th. December 1969 show below.

John Peel's Top Gear, Saturday 27th. December 1969, 15:00 - 17:00

There's Christmas crackers, celebrity guests (some of them even genuine), an appearance from Miss Top Gear and, by the sound of it, a jolly time being had by all as Top Gear celebrates the er, bit between Christmas and New Year in truly festive style. Also featured: the pick of the year's session tracks, interviews (most of them hilariously inept) with Dick Heckstall-Smith, Robert Wyatt and Sandy Denny (pictured with JP opposite) and a very, let's say "competitive" chat with Pete Drummond.

Many thanks to Mick Capewell at the ever-excellent Marmalade Skies for supplying the tape of this show. (There's definitely a "Mick's tape" pun to be made there, but for the moment I can't be arsed.) For all you musos, here's the steps I used to rip the tape:

Maxell UR120 tape --> Pioneer DC-X88Z tape deck/amplifier --> headphone socket --> Stereo jack leads --> ADSTech Instant Music --> USB --> Toshiba laptop --> PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor --> Audacity --> LAME --> Kat's Karavan --> you

Feel free to pipe up with any suggestions if you think I've gone about capturing and encoding this all wrong, as I'm still relatively new to this. Oh and I did try to use Audacity to get rid of the tape hiss, but the end result was horribly metallic-sounding so I've left it well alone (apart from normalising).

(You may notice that this program does not, as promised in Peelie's intro, feature anything by the Keef Hartley Band. I can only assume that whatever track of theirs Peel was planning to play got bumped, because they're not mentioned in the outro. Certainly the show appears complete, with perhaps a little bit missing from the middle of the news bulletins.)

Total running time: 1hr56m. Files are 192K MP3.


PART 1 (29:20) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• Johnny Walker handover
• Miss Top Gear ("Pat Campbell of Nottingham") turns on the studio lights(!)
• Top Gear theme
• The Rolling Stones - Live With Me
• The Plastic Ono Band - Dizzy Miss Lizzie
• Richie Havens - High Flying Bird (session)
• Chat with Dick Heckstall-Smith
• Colosseum - Lost Angeles (session)
• The Incredible String Band - This Moment (session)
• News

PART 2 (30:18) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• News (continued)
• Juicy Lucy - She's Mine/She's Yours (session)
• Michael Chapman - Postcards Of Scarborough (session)
• The Family - Cat And The Rat (session)
• Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Orange Claw Hammer
• Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Wild Life
• Roy Harper - Tom Tiddler's Ground
• Chat with Robert Wyatt

PART 3 (27:33) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• The Soft Machine - The Moon In June (session)
• Griffin - What A Day It's Been (session)
• Tyrannosaurus Rex - A Day Laye (session)
• Chat with Sandy Denny
• Fairport Convention - Farewell, Farewell
• News

PART 4 (28:49) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• News (continued)
• Joe Cocker and The Grease Band - Lawdy Miss Clawdy (session)
• Banter with Pete Drummond
• Led Zeppelin - What Is And What Should Never Be (session)
• Blodwyn Pig - It's Only Love (session)
• The Beatles - Mean Mr. Mustard
• Viv Stanshall no-show
• Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Sofa Head (session)
• Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Give Booze A Chance (session)
• "Disinterred 33 1/3": The Firehouse 5 - Running Wild
• The Fairport Convention - Jigs & Reels Medley (The Lark in The Morning/Rakish Paddy/Foxhunters' Jig/Toss The Feathers) (session)
• Top Gear theme