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)

John Peel - Nameless Show (Night Ride) - 28th. May 1969

(AKA "The one where John created a furore by admitting he'd had VD")

Many thanks to Sam for this one.

You'll have heard Peelie mention his Wednesday night 'nameless shows' if you've listened to very many of the Top Gears below. As explained in this previous post, these programmes were essentially JP's bit of the post-midnight multi-format Night Ride shows, extracted and moved to a bit earlier in the evening. And these Night Rides/nameless shows/whatever, featuring BBC archive tracks from all over the world, studio guests and discussions mixed in with contemporary Peel favourites, are probably the most free-form, eclectic radio Peel ever did. And if you have the slightest idea about the bloke you'll realise that's a hell of a statement. In my opinion, having enjoyed Peel shows from all eras, I'd say these are probably the best he ever made. I really wish there were more out there.

OK, on to this particular show. The session is from John Fahey (above and/or right, depending on your browser and screen res) and the studio guest is the poet Pete Roche. There are also interviews with Theresa Lever, about the Youth Drama Centre in Euston, and Tony Vandenberg about Radio 4's upcoming report on Venereal Disease. This latter interview has acquired some notoriety as it's the one where Peel reveals that he contracted the disease earlier that year. From Wikipedia (which seems slightly wrong, as it suggests Peel is still suffering from the disease at the time of broadcast):

During 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his Night Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because of admitting on air to be suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 OZ obscenity trial. The judge in that case even instructed that a glass of water he had drunk from be thrown out.

[EDIT: Looks like that entry has been corrected now. One of the editors reading this blog, perchance?]

Whatever controversy the VD comment was to generate, John P, a notoriously inept interviewer, actually handles the chat with Vandenberg very well. But on to the details:

Download (83Mb, 192Kbps MP3)

(Quality's slightly dodgy for the first minute or two, but settles down after that.)

Tracklisting

• Jeff Beck Group - Plinth
• John Fahey - Bucktown Stomp (session)
• Pete Roche - A Thing Apart (live poem)
• Indian classical music - Whistled and played on a bowed string instrument and accompanied on drum and drone (from BBC archives)
• Choir of the Krakow Philharmonic - Apotheosis (from "Dies Irae: The Oratorio in Memoriam for the Victims of Auschwitz" by Krzysztof Penderecki)
• John Fahey - The Death Of The Clayton Peacock (session)
• Peel chats with Tony Vandenberg about Radio 4's upcoming report on Venereal Disease.
• John Hiseman's Colosseum - Plenty Hard Luck (from "Those Who Are About To Die Salute You")
• John Fahey - Sunflower River Blues (session)
• Pete Roche - To See How Far It Is (live poem)
• Radio Ceylon Orchestra - Wind, String Instruments and Percussion (from BBC Archives)
• Peel chats to Theresa Lever about the Youth Drama Centre in Euston
• Phil Ochs - I Kill, Therefore I Am (from "Rehearsals for Retirement")
• John Fahey - In Christ There Is No East or West (session)
• Romanian Radio and Television Folk Orchestra [pipes: Dumitru Zamfira] - The Hora (from BBC archives)
• Peel chats to Jon Curle about his part of Night Ride
• Pete Roche - The Skin Diver (live poem)
• Shirley and Dolly Collins - Nellie The Milkmaid (from "Anthems in Eden")
• John Fahey - Steel Guitar Rag (session)
• Terry Riley - In C (part)
• Intro to Jazz Workshop

John Peel - "Night Ride" - 7th. May 1969

Ivor Cutler/Bob Cobbing

To all intents and purposes, this is one of Peelie's "Night Ride" shows, featuring the usual mix of BBC archive tracks from around the world, Peel favourites from the time and of course session guests. In this case the session is from Ivor Cutler, in the very first of his many well-loved sessions for Peel over the years. Peel's other studio guest is Bob Cobbing, whose "sound poem" (with François Dufrêne) is by far the most "challenging" piece on the show. Also featured are The Who, with tracks from their recently-released "Tommy" opus, and a couple of wonderful numbers from Leonard Cohen and Louis Armstrong.

However, this is not technically a Night Ride show at all: Night Rides normally went out at midnight and featured other presenters as well as Peel. It seems that Radio 1 had a reshuffle around this time and Peel's bit of Night Ride was taken out and moved to the earlier 8:15 slot, sandwiched between "My Kind of Folk" and "Jazz Workshop". Apparently Peel referred to this short-lived show as "Son of Night Ride" (thanks to Colin Ellis for that info), and the announcer refers to this as one of John Peel's "nameless extravaganzas".

But hey! Enough of my yakkin'. Whaddaya say, let's boogie!

Download (192Kbps MP3, total time 58 mins approx.)

Date
Wednesday, 7th. May, 1969
8:15 till 9:15

Studio Guests
Ivor Cutler, Bob Cobbing

Session
Ivor Cutler
Recorded - 5th. May, 1969
Producer - Pete Ritzema
Engineer - Mike Harding
Studio - Studio S2, Sub-Basement, Broadcasting House

Tracklisting

• Leonard Cohen - A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes (from "Songs from A Room")
• Finnish Kantele Music (BBC archives)
• Ivor Cutler - Trouble Trouble (session)
• The Who - Christmas (from "Tommy")
• Ivor Cutler - An Old Poltroon (live poem)
• Ivor Cutler - Bounce, Bounce, Bounce (session)
• Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - The Leaping Order of Nuns (from "Not Only ... But Also")
• The Who - Go To The Mirror (from "Tommy")
• The Shepherd Song from Sweden (BBC archives)
• Ivor Cutler - There And Back Via Sweden (live poem)
• Ivor Cutler - In My Room There Sits A Box (session)
• Peel, Ivor Cutler and Bob Cobbing - Discussion about the upcoming "poetry marathon"
• Bob Cobbing & François Dufrêne - Spontaneous Appealinair Contemprate Apollinaire
• Mikis Theodorakis & Maria Farandouri - O Andonis (from "The Ballad of Mauthausen")
• Modernised Folk Song from Ceylon (BBC archives)
• Ivor Cutler - Beatrice And Her Dirty Knees (live poem)
• Merrill E. Moore - Rock Rockola
• Ivor Cutler - An Indirect Love Poem (live poem)
• Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five - Struttin' with Some Barbecue
• Tho Who - The Overture [part of] (from "Tommy")

John Peel's Night Ride, 1st. May 1968

Peelie on Night Ride, 1968

Apologies for not posting anything for a month or so, but here's a vintage show to get the ball rolling again.

Many thanks to Colin Ellis for this sending me this, and to Monni for recording the show!

Details

Featuring poet Alan Jackson and singer/guitarist Davey Graham in session.

Encoding: MP3, 192Kbps.
Duration: 55:40.

Tracklisting

• The Misunderstood - Who Do You Love?
• Peel chat
• Davey Graham - Bruton Town
• Peel chats with Davey Graham
• The Reverend A Johnson - God Don't Like It
• Alan Jackson - Out Here Now
• Davey Graham - Tristano
• Peel chat
• The United States of America - The Cloud Song
• Archive Music - The Priest Who Committed Suicide
• Peel chat
• Davey Graham - I'm Ready
• Peel chats with Davey Graham
• Little Son Jackson - Roberta Blues
• Peel chats with Alan Jackson
• Alan Jackson - Lord Save Us - The Devil - The Worstest Beast
• Alan Sondheim - 770
• Davey Graham - Rock Me
• Peel chats with Alan Jackson
• Donovan - Epistle To Derroll
• Davey Graham - Good Morning Blues
• Peel wraps up

Download (76.5Mb)