At the (wrong) speed of sound: John Peel remembered

For a man who was part of Radio 1’s original line-up back in 1967, it’s hard to imagine where John Peel would fit in at the station today, with its “woo-yeah!” dayglo mentality and presenters who sound like they've been promised McDonald’s on the way home if they behave at the supermarket.

Whereas most of today’s Radio 1 hosts seem to have landed their jobs because programmers thought they were ‘pretty good’ on T4 and various kids’ shows, Peel earned his place as a national institution through his encyclopedic musical knowledge and undying passion for sniffing out and sharing new sounds.

Rather than whoop and shout like today’s presenters (seriously, listening to Gemma Cairney is every bit as unpleasant as standing in a freshly laid dog turd whilst barefoot), Peel was relatively reserved, but still had plenty to say (even if it was a long-winded anecdote about how he was once given a demo tape encased in goat’s cheese by a Bulgarian acid skiffle band, or something).

First and foremost, Peel understood that it was all about the music – he wasn't averse to scrapping the planned schedule to play an album in its entirety just because he liked it and thought we should too. He wasn’t concerned with what was ‘cool’ or what other DJs were playing. He championed hip hop at a time when black music was still viewed with considerable suspicion by the higher echelons at a painfully white, rock-orientated Radio 1 (he was also one of the first people to bring grime to a mainstream audience) and was also an enthusiastic supporter of happy hardcore – the only DJ to give it any real airtime outside of the pirate stations (Kiss FM aside), a move which would inspire the hardcore track ‘John Peel Is Not Enough’ by CLSM in 2003.

The sheer range of music played during one show was astounding. In the space of 20 minutes, you might hear jingle-jangle indie-pop, hypnotic West African rhythms, industrial strength gabba and the spoken-word eccentricity of Ivor Cutler, interspersed with Peel’s inimitable bashful charm. There’s a good chance at least one of those records would have been played at the wrong speed too.

This diversity is what appealed to me. It’s no exaggeration to say that I probably owe about half of my record collection to Mr Peel. While I can’t pretend to like everything he played, he was certainly a major influence on my musical upbringing. I liked the element of the unknown that came with his shows: you never knew what was coming next but there was a good chance it would be something you’d still be listening to in 10, 20, even 30 years’ time, compared to the throwaway landfill pop pushed by the daytime presenters.

Towards the end, it seemed like Radio 1 didn’t really know what to do with Peel. He himself felt increasingly marginalised, as his show was pushed further back to some ungodly hour.

I like to think that, were he still with us today, he would have ended up with a weekday evening or weekend afternoon slot on 6 Music, leaving Radio 1 to the hyperactive children’s TV presenters and candyfloss EDM.

It’s interesting to note that after he died, it took THREE different presenters – Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame – to fill the slot he vacated. And not ONE of them came anywhere close to carrying on his legacy. And how could they?

Ten years on and there’s still a vast, Peel-shaped void in the airwaves. 

Times fly: an appreciation of Orbital

My first memory of Orbital is the sight of two 20-somethings standing awkwardly behind piles of synthesizers and mixers set up on two fold-out tables of the kind normally found in car boot sales or community halls.

The location is the Top of the Pops studio. Paul and Phil Hartnoll are dressed like they’ve come straight from doing community service and the trademark torch glasses have yet to make an appearance. Nothing’s plugged in, of course – like every other act on the show at the time, they’ve been forced to mime by the producers. Not entirely sure what to do, the brothers make little effort to mime, instead pretending to push buttons at infrequent intervals while a studio full of teenagers claps and whoops as if being made to do so at gunpoint. Orbital look embarrassed.

To their right, a woman in a baggy silver jacket gyrates like she’s been hooked up to the mains. She’s at least getting into the spirit of things, even if she’s been hired by Top of the Pops to add to the ‘performance’. She dances like she’s just jumped on stage and is enjoying her moment before security drag her away.

It’s March 1990 and, if anything, the Hartnoll brothers have been caught off guard. ‘Chime’, a track which by their own admission was knocked up in a hurry on their dad’s old tape recorder before they headed out to the pub, has unexpectedly hit the top 20 and its makers have become reluctant pop stars, thrust into the world of Top of the Pops, Smash Hits and Bruno Brookes.

With its haunting, stabbing string refrain (reminiscent of ‘Strings of Life’) and choppy rhythm, ‘Chime’ immediately stood out from other chart entries at the time. It eventually found its way onto side four (I say that because I had the double cassette version) of Now That’s What I Call Music 17, sandwiched neatly between Adamski’s ‘Killer’ and coffee table house also-rans Tongue N Cheek’s ‘Tomorrow’. Needless to say, side four got worn to shreds by my 10-year-old self.

Anyway, I’m not going to give you a potted history of Orbital – you’ve got Google for that. Put those fingers to good use.

What I will say, however, is that, for me, Orbital were unique. Like Aphex Twin, they’d pretty much become their own otherworldly genre. Were they techno? Were they breaks? Were they trance? They were none of those things and yet all of them at once. They defied categorisation, just carrying on with their own thing with little or no regard for what their peers were doing.

They built up a fiercely loyal live following (their 1994 Glastonbury performance remains a career-defining moment), assisted by a dazzling array of lights and visuals, and not forgetting the torch specs, of course.  I was fortunate enough to catch the brothers Hartnoll live on one and a half occasions. I say ‘half’ because the first time was at the Sonar festival in Barcelona in 2009 where we stepped into the aircraft-hanger sized arena halfway through their set (to the opening lines of ‘Satan’, no less) thanks to an irate taxi driver who somehow misheard “Sonar, please” for “take us to a beach 10 miles away even though it’s midnight and therefore pitch black”.

The second time was at the O2 Academy in Birmingham as part of the ‘Wonky’ tour, towards the end of 2012. The crowd was largely men in their late 30s and early 40s (many of whom I imagine also remember that early Top of the Pops appearance) but the atmosphere was pure electricity.  The mind-warping visuals were present and correct, as were the cheeky samples laid playfully over the top of various classics (my particular favourite being The Carpenters’ ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ over the main synth riff on ‘Are We Here?’, complete with the lyrics projected onto a screen). It was not only the LOUDEST gig I have ever been to, but probably one of the best by several million light years.

Whether I’ll ever get to enjoy the Orbital live experience again remains to be seen – they’ve split up before, after all, so there’s still a glimmer of hope that this parting of ways isn’t permanent. And if it is, then they’ve left behind a truly outstanding musical legacy (albeit one which will go completely over the heads of the Guetta crowd).

Thanks for the music, guys. Be sure to visit our planet again soon.

Ten things I did instead of watching X-Factor

1. Watched a bit of ‘World War II In Colour’ on Channel 5.

2. Pondered the very meaning of our existence. No answers yet, but I’ll let you know.

3. Scratched my arse.

4. Made a mental shopping list for tomorrow’s trip to the supermarket.

5. Wandered into the bathroom to see if I needed to add toilet paper to that list. Answer: I’m okay for now, but I may need to replenish my stocks next weekend.

6. Put a carrier bag away in the carrier bag cupboard in the kitchen. Tidiness is a virtue, even when you’re busy trying to swim against the mainstream.

7. Caught a fly with my hand as it flew into the periphery of my vision. My left hand too, making it all the more impressive.

8. Made dinner.

9. Ate dinner.

10. Wondered whether anyone had ever named their child Ebola.

Time well spent.