Subject: Re: the gaps maketh the man

[Martin Wheatley]

I wrote
>>Since the researcher on the Peel show is Stig's generation I'd guess
there is
>>an expert in the library who has prepared them for him.  Later on Peel
will no
>>doubt select the tracks himself.

Stuart McHugh replied
>Miaow! 

I know!  I just got irritated because someone was dismissing (or rather
denying the existence of) whole swathes of music without hearing it.
My point was the decision to play mostly Music Hall stuff pre WW1 was an
artistic decision rather than one forced on him by absence of anything else
Whether you approve of that decision is another matter entirely although it
would be difficult to make a proper judgement without knowing the other music
It's probably a pointer that we shouldn't expect the mainstream or obvious
in other eras too

>What this little spat has shown is that the stuff Peel has been
>playing so far in the Peelennium is pretty much unrepresentative of music
>of the start of the century, 

Which is a exactly what Peel does with present day music so
why is that surprising?

>I would have loved to hear what early 'ethnic' music was like.

Pre WW1 there was a lot of folk music.  It was the era of Victorian clergymen 
wandering around the Sussex Downs with recording equipment!  Most of it was
not commercially issued at the time but probably still available to the BBC
American ethnic would be early black jazz (as distinct from commercial white 
watered-down jazz) and hillbilly music 

>Ah well, not long till Robert Johnson, eh?

Quite a while.  If he is going to play US music which is not yet clear
there is
a decade of female blues singers first (many of them wonderful) and then
people like
Charlie Patten and Blind Lemon Jefferson before you get to Robert Johnson.  
His stuff was 1936 - that's about August!

martinw