The Guardian 12/10 'No one can ever be the next John Peel'

[Tom Roche]

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1369879,00.html?gusrc=rss 



'No one can ever be the next John Peel'

Dom Phillips meets Rob Da Bank, the main contender for the most 
difficult job in pop

Friday December 10, 2004
The Guardian


Sunday's child... DJ Rob Da Bank. Photo: Martin Godwin



  It is 6pm on Sunday but upstairs at the Lock Tavern in Camden, north 
London, nobody is interested in tea-time or the Antiques Roadshow. 
The pub is hosting a party and it's going off like peak-time Saturday 
night. In control is the free-wheeling club Sunday Best and their 
fashionably tousled, arty crowd are dancing on tables, swilling pints 
and necking sambuca shots, squeezing good-naturedly through the 
throng, or swaying to a good-time soundtrack of old-time hip hop.

Rob Da Bank, ponytailed DJ and Sunday Best impresario, has just 
dropped House of Pain's bouncing rap classic Jump Around - and is 
about to introduce a cabaret trio in trilbies called Mr Hat. He 
seems, on the face of it, an unlikely candidate to become the New 
John Peel.

The Blue Room chill-out show he co-hosts on Radio 1 is confined to 
the spectacularly unsociable time slot of 4-7am on Saturday morning. 
And he is best known for playing music that makes people dance. But 
since the sudden death of the veteran broadcaster, Da Bank has been 
hosting his show three times a week - and the New John Peel is what 
sections of the media are already calling him.

"It's been an absolute rollercoaster, but amazing as well," he says. 
"Just finding out so much more about music than I thought I ever 
would. And interacting with Peel fans who'd been listening to John 
for 37 years ... it's been very emotional."

Both Rob - real name Robert Gorham - and Radio 1 insist he's just 
sitting in until Christmas, when a decision will be made. It's a 
sensitive time for the station and everyone is keen to play down any 
suggestion that Peel can - or will - be replaced. "I think anyone 
would find it weird, full stop, to be trying to present the Peel 
show," Gorham says. "That's why no one can ever be the next John Peel 
and no one's trying."


But Gorham has tackled the Peel Show with a balance of careful 
reverence for its founder and enthusiasm for its music. While he 
can't match Peel's effortless sense of engagement, his lazy, nasal 
drawl seems to work. "I think it's probably one of the most difficult 
things we've ever asked anyone to do," says Ian Parkinson, Radio 1's 
head of specialist programming, "and Rob has done much better than 
anyone could have expected." So far, the listeners approve. "The 
feedback from the audience has been very positive. They said it's a 
really, really difficult job but thank you for what you've been 
doing."

Gorham had already been selected to look after Peel's famous Radio 1 
show while the 65-year-old DJ took a holiday. He was at the station 
"vibing up" when news of Peel's death hit. Gorham had been a Peel fan 
since childhood, and had even shared Peel's office at the station. "I 
felt complete shock," he says. "Total disbelief and a cold feeling 
all over."

On the face of it, the laconic 32-year-old makes an unlikely new 
Peel. He is ringmaster for the Sunday Best circus - which grew out of 
Sunday night chill-out sessions in a Battersea tea-room to embrace 
compilation albums, a label that houses acclaimed artists such as 
Grand National and parties in London, Miami and Ibiza. It's all 
decorated with the pastel-pink, quirky cartoons of his wife, Josie, 
an illustrator who also owns a Sunday Best-style bar in Hoxton, east 
London.

Gorham and Josie - "creative director of all things Da Bank" - travel 
the summer music festivals in their VW camper van, Stella, which is 
parked out back of their home in south London. Built into one corner 
of their neat garden is a silver spaceship, put there by the previous 
occupant. You sense it might have been as much of an incentive to buy 
the place as anything else.

We sit upstairs in a room jammed with records, where Rob is sorting 
out tonight's show. "We've got some reggae, some indie, some really 
mad Japanese techno," he grins. Luckily, Peel had left boxes of 
records earmarked for airplay. Rob brought his own music along, and 
went record shopping with Peel's two young producers. "I tried to 
keep it as low-key as possible," he says, calling himself "a 
caretaker playing the right tunes in the right order".

Gorham grew up in the village of Warsash in Hampshire, where his dad 
was the local GP. He and his siblings all performed with their father 
in the village brass band (Rob played trombone). He was a goth/indie 
kid, listening to John Peel under the covers. "Full Robert Smith 
back-combed hair, walking around sullenly, kicking cans down the 
road." He wrote little stories, hated school, and built up an 
impressively varied record collection when not playing bass in a rock 
band.

He came to London to study French and history of art at Goldsmiths, 
but landed a work placement at now-defunct dance magazine Muzik - 
then refused to leave until they gave him a job. "I couldn't believe 
what an amazing world it was. You get free records. Pete Tong would 
walk into the office - very exciting for a 21-year-old," he says.

He became clubs editor, and something of a clubland celebrity. The 
magazine featured a picture of him, arms gleefully aloft, in the 
middle of a swarming dancefloor. The headline read: "He is. Are you?" 
He retains that sense of cheek. In one of his shows, he invited 
people to decide who is the more "fit": Chrissie Hynde, or Yeah Yeah 
Yeahs' frontwoman, Karen O. Male and female listeners instantly 
responded.

Rob became a DJ almost by default, after opening Sunday Best as a 
low-key, chill-out session at the Tea Rooms des Artistes in 1995. It 
cost just £1.99 to get in, but star DJs such as Andrew Weatherall and 
Norman Cook were happy to seize the chance to play whatever they 
wanted: hip-hop, disco, chill-out, old classics. Along with the Big 
Chill, Sunday Best redefined what constituted both a club and a DJ 
set. Now, freestyle DJ sets and lounges are common; then, it was 
revolutionary.

Earlier this year, Rob released an album under the Lazyboy alias he 
shares with rising producer Mr Dan (he produced Kylie's hit Slow), 
featuring guests such as Lee "Scratch" Perry and Roddy Frame. Their 
next single, Police Dogs Bonfire, has been picked up for a mobile 
phone ad campaign.

It's a mini empire - although in a rambling, boho sort of way. "There 
is no Da Bank masterplan, it happens by the day, by the week, by the 
month," he insists. But you don't end up with a Radio 1 show, a 
world-famous club, a record label and a recording career by accident. 
Rob's approach might be shambolic, but it's certainly effective.

At the Lock Tavern, one of his oldest friends tells me that Gorham 
has always been the high achiever in their social group. Gorham says 
vaguely it's about searching for happiness. "That's what all of this 
is all about for me. It's the old escape thing. It makes me happy 
doing music."

The club night is a reunion for Sunday Best's first festival - or 
"Bestival" - which brought 7,000 people to the Isle of Wight last 
September for a weekend of Basement Jaxx, Chas'n'Dave, Kate Bush 
impersonators and morris dancers. Rob Da Bank's freestyle DJ sets 
come packed with humour. Duellin' Banjos is one his favourite party 
tracks. DJing with half of comedy hip-hop duo and Sunday Best 
stalwarts the Cuban Brothers at this year's Big Chill festival, he 
got a huge crowd dancing to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, before 
attempting the world's longest Greek dance.

Gorham has the idiosyncratic mix of qualities to take the John Peel 
show forward: musical passion, deadpan approach, the catholic taste 
of someone who has been through 1980s new wave, hip-hop and acid 
house. He's not in this, says Parkinson, "because he wants a chat 
show". But it may be that Gorham gets just one of the three Peel 
shows a week.

"No one person can replace John," Parkinson says. "What we need to do 
is work out all those things that John brought to Radio 1, such as 
championing styles and artists that other people didn't like. If you 
can continue doing the same things, that's the way forward." Hearing 
Rob Da Bank on radio, as he gleefully cues up happy hardcore, raucous 
punk rock or spaced-out reggae, you can't help feeling he's made a 
very good start.



· Radio 1 is hosting Keep It Peel, a live John Peel night with 
special guests, on Thursday, 7pm-1am.


Related special report
John Peel, 1939-2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/johnpeel/0,15271,1336461,00.html
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