John Peel - Kats Karavan: The History Of John Peel On The Radio

Four-CD celebration of genre-spanning DJ’s picks

Since John Peel’s death in October 2004, the much loved and lamented DJ has been feted as a champion of punk and indie pop. The new bands stage at Glastonbury has been renamed in his honour, and swathes of the Radio 1 schedule have been given over to annual “Peel Days”. Five years on, it would be easy to forget that this was the man who began his career spinning R&B in Texas and pirate psychedelia somewhere off the coast of Britain, before going on to promulgate every genre from dance to death metal (often side by side) to a grateful and only occasionally aghast audience.

This new compilation is a timely reminder of that broader legacy, covering Peel’s radio career over five decades and eschewing the obvious anthems such as Teenage Kicks or anything by Joy Division and The Smiths. It takes its title from the show hosted by a young John Ravenscroft on a local station in Dallas back in 1961 (he didn’t adopt “Peel” until ’67), and mixes rare and exclusive session tracks with occasional snippets of the man himself to create a reasonable replica of the Peel show through the ages. Needless to say, it’s great.

Disc One covers the 60s and 70s, boasting the most bona fide hitmakers of the set in the shape of session tracks from the Small Faces, Thin Lizzy and The Jam among others. Of course, it wouldn’t be Peel without some obscurities, so we also get Deaf School and The Fabulous Poodles, while the compilation opens with The Misunderstood, the band Peel managed in the mid-60s and which he credited with performing one of his all-time favourite gigs. Among previously unreleased versions of tracks by John Cale, Medicine Head and The Boomtown Rats, Free’s Walk In My Shadow also gets an airing – its first since original broadcast in 1968!

In similarly exclusive vein, Disc Two takes on the 80s with rare takes from Elvis Costello, The Cure, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Julian Cope, while Peel provides his one and only vocal performance on Altered Images’ cover of Song Sung Blue. Factory is represented by A Certain Ratio, and the inevitable appearance by The Fall sits just as uncomfortably as you would hope alongside The Passions’ German Film Star and Pass The Duchie by Musical Youth. You can’t help feeling that Peel would be proud.

Discs Three and Four grow even more eclectic, as Peel’s voice becomes ever more cosy and classless. The acts that passed through the doors of Peel Acres in this era encompass everyone from Laura Cantrell and The Orb to Ivor Cutler and The Cuban Boys. Highlights here include unreleased session tracks by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Hole. One of the final tracks is CLSM’s critique of dance music on Radio 1, John Peel Is Not Enough. After four discs of this quality, however, you can only disagree.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Universal | 2714151 (4-CD)

Reviewed by Simon Hugo
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