I feel Voxish

[Tom Roche]

OK, some background. 

I first wrote Peel nearly 20 years ago from Florida to say thanks for the BBCWS show, not expecting a response. But he wrote back promptly, as he didn't get much mail at all re: the WS show other than of the "play more U2" sort. Then, in Atlanta, I kept writing, often sending regional US rock stuff and odd music articles, as I do to this day, at some expense. But I do so happily as I'm glad to join in the public service ethic Peel still clings to.

I may be able to lay claim to being the show's first overseas internet listener, too.

The Benz is gone, he drives a big silver Audi I think with a elaborate CD changer and a high-falootin track/control display. Sheila has a new PT cruiser, a spacious fun ride. The day I got there was the day he came home from Barcelona. He arrived from his 3 days in London with three huge Royal Mail sacks full of parcels of CD's and vinyl -- from the mightiest of labels down to the starving garage kids begging for a break, and everything in-between, sent to his BBC address. This was about 14 days' accumulation. Still more stuff comes in daily to his Stowmarket address, mostly Euro-vinyl it seems, from interesting labels he's entrusted his home address to. A dangling participle there, the first of many. 

So began the inside view of just what "the chaos of Peel acres" really means.

One night John and Sheila had a dinner party they had to attend, thrown by the Dr who'd saved Sheila's life. So I volunteered to open and organizes all three 4ft tall sacks while they were out. It took me, (well me and Paul the Cowcube guy who'd stopped by to hand deliver my CD purchase) 5 hours straight to open it all - basically from the time J&S left to when they came back at midnight... when I was still at it. He branded me absolutely mad for my perseverance. Well takes a madman to know a madman, right? Someone had to do it. This task, plus the pricey Lightnin Hopkins 78s I'd brought, would serve as rent.

There was new stuff from dozens of mystery bands, postmarked mostly from UK but also Spain, Germany, 10 different US states. Then historical stuff, old soul, jazz, Hawaiian, rockabilly, scads of reggae reissues. Then theres all these bands he played first and then moved on but they still send him product- stuff I saw as diverse as Ash, James, King Crimson reissues, Ramones & Smiths anthologies and on and on. Plus ragged non-label demo CD's... a few arrive each day, all year. Just processing all this input - irregardless of the audition process - how does he do it?

John says that the big irony in his professional life is that if he were to give each item the proper attention and evaluation for his radio shows he would have no time to do the radio shows in the first place.

So these incoming CD's, with press releases folded inside each, slowly make it from the kitchen table to his work area just off the kitchen. One turntable, one CD player, one TV usually on a sports event with the sound down, a nice view out to the garden, and CD's piled into dozens of 1,2 ,3, and 4 ft stacks. The room, maybe 8ft x 16ft, is lined with shelves packed with vinyl and books. (A stack of 8x10" sheets neatly piled over 20 inches tall sits on a lower shelf - the manually-typewritten single spaced run sheets of every show he's done in the past 10+ years or so. )

A center shelving unit full of more paperwork and albums serves as his desk, he works standing upŠ he lifts another single out of the sleeve, looks at each side, places it on the turntable, starts his wristwatch clock and stands there examining the sleeve as the record blares....  as he has methodically done ten thousand times. His audition process is surprisingly slow, as he doesn't hop around CD's and tracks; he listens most items all the way thru so as to log an accurate duration - the running times on the labels cant be trusted.

Yet he has such a good knowledge of what the current most innovative labels are, and of course a keen instinct of an item's potential based on the cover art or song titles, that it seemed to me that more than 70% of what he elects to audition is worthy of airplay.

So when he arrived Thursday evening (after two Radio 1 shows, and a day and a half in-studio working on interviews and voice overs for Home Truths) to begin what to you and me might be a restful weekend, all he saw was six hours of blank run sheets for the shows to air the following Tues-Wed-Thursday. Plus the German show. Plus the Radio Mafia show. Plus the BBCWS half hour, due at some undefined point. Plus another Radio Times column needed right away, said a message from the editor.

He takes a blank sheet of lined paper and divides it into fourths. Each block will be a 30 minute segment. He starts wading through the piles of product. If the track is strong it makes the list. If it is, say, a techno thing he might put it in the 2nd or 3rd block depending on how much techno, or reggae, or white guitar stuff or whatever is already in that blockŠ so there is actually a structure to the randomness. If a CD happens to have one strong cut after another, he can block out new blank sheets for future shows and slug that stuff there, allowing him to make good on the occasional promise of "we'll hear more tomorrow" or whatever. He places a rectangular sticker on each auditioned CD or LP and rates each cut with one to 3 stars. Few items it seemed make it past one or two 3-star cuts, but the Half Man Half Biscuit EP arrived that day, all cuts got 3 stars and all cuts immediately were entered across the week's shows.

One single from Germany he auditioned had this odd semi-ambient tape loop sound - you know, this current mini-trend where we have moved from intentionally muddying samples to looping samples intentionally off beat with pops and clicks added (I'm sure there is a NME-esque name for this genre by nowŠ one of the "problems" with Peel's shows is so much is so new the name for the trend hasn't been coined yet.) The single had birds chirping too, and it sounded just thoroughly great and one-of-a-kind to my Americanized ears. "I really like that, that's really unique" I said and he said yes, its good allright, but there is so so much of this sort of sound coming out right now.

To me this was a good example of how just as we are all catching on to some new thing he is already nearly over it and itching for something else.

So the auditions went onward, for practically every waking hour of the whole weekendŠ before breakfast at sunrise, late into the night, constant music coming from the room off the kitchen. Sometimes the midday nap happens on a chair in that room, 12-inchers piled on his sleeping lap.

Its easy for some hotshot Americanski like me to observe all this and start to offer some dumb suggestions on how this might all be streamlinedŠ why not give up the manual typewriter and get a computer here and a keyboard there and  move songs to harddrives bla blaŠ maybe sort your stuff this/that way, etc...but, no, his system works just fine...  there's really a tortoise vs. the hare aspect to all thisŠ he does it all alone, his wayŠ and eventually, finally, in the end he has 6 hours of programming ready... All excellent stuff that's fresh yet timeless, all sequenced wisely and properly timed. (His show always ends only a few seconds either side of midnight and no more, had you noticed?)

I'd always assumed these shows just rolled out before me for my enjoyment as if by effortless magic. Now I know better.

By next Friday morning, 6 more hours of blank run sheets stare back at him....

Hope this was helpful. Sorry about any stream-of-consciousness typos....


tom r