not dead, am doing a book

[ken_garner]

I had thought about joining this group but the news about the book I 
am working on getting out before the (imminent, I am assured) 
announcement, means I thought I should, that some of you might be 
interested, and, more to the point, I hope some of you might be able 
to help me in a modest way.

To cut to the chase, yes, there is going to be a book by me in the 
shops in October, tied in with Peel Day 07, published by 
randomhouse/bbc books, called (notwithstanding what Amazon is saying) 
THE PEEL SESSIONS, subtitled 'a story of teenage dreams and one man's 
love of new music'. It will be at least 320pp, poss up to 360-380. 
The front half, in colour with pics, will be the story behind the 
show and sessions, essentially about two-thirds of the IN SESSION 
TONIGHT main text edited / reordered, plus a new intro and a new 
chapter on 92-04. The back half, in mono, will be the reference 
section, comprising (so the current plan goes) a full Sessionography 
as in IST but for 67-04 (approx 90pp we think); a night-by-night 67-
04 calendar of all Peel shows, day by day - not the full scripts! - 
with main items in each show listed briefly (eg, and here's a sneaky 
peak: "M 9/6/80 The 2-Tone Special: (The Beat, Madness, The Selecter, 
The Specials, The Bodysnatchers)" (brackets = session repeats) (about 
40pp); the Festive 50s, and (I hope) the Peelenium (about 20pp).

I was not remotely thinking of doing such a book when randomhouse 
tracked me down and phoned out of the blue shortly before Christmas 
last year; but they were so up for it (the publisher was a Peel 
listener himself) they sucked me in, and once I started 
thinking about it being done, I realised I wanted to do it, and do it 
properly. When I recently contacted Alison Howe, Peel's producer in 
the mid 90s (and now producer of Later with Jools Holland), her 
response was "And about time too!" which I chose to take as an 
endorsement, but I know what she means. If this isn't documented 
soon, it'll be too late and too much data will be lost and forgotten. 
Still, it's a scary deadline getting it all done in 6 months, when I 
am not exactly idle in my day job running our accredited journalism 
degrees at Caledonian university here in Glasgow.

And here is where some of you might come in. Indeed, at least one 
other member has already helped me quite a bit! The first thing to do 
is finalise that show by show index, so me and my researcher know 
what we're looking for in the various data and tape archival sources 
in the BBC, and crucially, that we are not missing anything (in a 
later post I might have to 'fess up to you all about the 6 Peel 
sessions at least that I now know I missed in IST). With help from 
others and pulling many sources together, that calendar is now more 
than 94% complete for all 37 years, all approx. 6000 shows.

But, and here it comes, even after putting in every known session 
date and repeat date, every concert, every special, every night off, 
Peel's (few) holidays and breaks (I spent several days in January 
reading the Mitchell library in Glasgow's complete run of Radio 
Times), I am still currently looking at almost 400 shows for which I 
either know nothing, or for which I have good reason to suspect the 
data I do have may be incomplete (eg only one session listed for a 
show in 82, when there was almost always two per show then).

Long chats with Peel's last producer Louise Kattenhorn, and some 
rather comically-unsuccessful data retrieval experiments with the 
aged Radio 1 Romeo computer system, have confirmed my fears that the 
data I need only now truly exists in the microfilmed programme 
scripts or PasBs at BBC Written Archives, Caversham. I will have to 
go there, of course, but this time around time is of the essence 
(with IST I had 20 months!), and I want to try everything I can to 
minimise the hours, days, weeks required in front of the film reader.

I wonder if any of you have diaries, tapes, etc, from late 1978 
through to about 1987? These remain the tricky years, partly because 
Peel was simply on air so much, 4 shows a week til late 84. Just as I 
do not have access to BBC tapes to bootleg for you (honest, I don't, 
and couldn't), I don't need to hear your cassettes or MP3s. What I 
need is data, confirmation of what happened on what date, according 
to your own memories / tapes / diaries.

The deal is simple: everyone who helps me confirm a single fact of 
which I was previously unaware for the book gets an acknowledgement 
in it, although I hope those pages in the book won't turn into the 
several miles of credits for the fans at the end of the Lord of the 
rings extended DVDs.

I'll put up in the files section here my list of blank dates, and 
would be enormously grateful for anything anyone can tell me about 
any of them: bands in session; no show that night; title of a session 
track or two played even better; a records-only show, whatever. 

Obviously I have all my original data from IST, I want the evidence 
of your own ears instead.

Sorry this has been such a long post, but I'm kinda hoping you won't 
mind. I'll be more concise next time, and aplogies if the above 
offends any net etiquette, with all of which I am hopelessly 
unfamiliar,

ken garner