Did the BBC Tape the Peel Show?

[ken garner]

Did the BBC tape Peel's shows? Er, yes, and no. Very few from early 
years, lots from latter years. Really depends on the year, producer, 
and the period. Up to 1998 a small number each year were taped on 
reel to reel as a sample and put in the BBC archive, either by 
producers (Bernie Andrews taped the first Top Gear and several others 
67-68 himself, for example), or from 87 ish by R1 archivist Phil 
Lawton.

>From 97 ish when radio 1 moved to digital for archiving the running 
orders and its legal requirement to tape shows and hold them for 28 
days (in the analog days theses wer v slow low quality r-t-rs and not 
kept beyond that), therafter normally a CD was burned in the studio 
of every show as it went out (including the ones at Peel Acres from 
Spring 99 on Thursdays), but this did not always work. Some are 
missing. But, for example, almost every show from 2000 and lots/most 
from 2002 onwards are there. You can confirm these are all in the bbc 
catalogue, which you can search the index of online - though not 
listen to - at the altered URL of:

http://catalogue.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/

type in john peel, and you are looking for ROT ("record of 
transmission") of John Peel radio appearances, under all / various 
entries except the first which comes up, which includes other people 
called john peel!

But the BBC has no immediate plans to broadcast or make these 
available to the public. There is the much-trumpeted creative archive 
project from 2004, which set out to do this...

see here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/26/
creative_archive.shtml

...eventually putting all its holdings online, but this project 
appears to have got stalled a bit in er, its other more pressing 
problems! Like a new director general and new scandals, you know, the 
usual. I would not hold your breath.

Other international projects for making spoken word programmes 
available to students online, like the one my university is involved 
in (not me personally, not really), have made significant progress, 
but exclude music shows:

http://www.spokenword.ac.uk/

However, until the end of the century, the other official recorders 
of the Peel show and Peel Sessions were the British Library's 
national sound archive. They have extensive Peel holdings, which you 
can apply to listen to in person in a booth if you visit the library 
at St Pancras, London. I know they taped quite a lot in the late 70s 
and 80s, 2 or 3 dozen shows a year sometimes, and have archived the 
peel sessions they have. Info & tips from their pop music curator 
Andy Linehan (good man)here:

http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/tipspop.html

the fact remains that, in terms of accessible and complete 
recordings, it is regular listeners like the members of this group 
who are the most public documenters and sharers of the Peel legacy, a 
point I have tried to make pretty clear in my book, both in order to 
celebrate and pay tribute to you lot, but also implicitly point the 
finger at the BBC for its corporate tardiness in this regard,

ken



--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, Riving Ton <deedeeramain@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Ken!
> Wow! I am not knowing!
> I was one of those guys who loved Peel for ages at one point then 
got older and lost track! I was working overseas on oil rigs from 
1985 until Peels death and in that time only caught the odd show.
> He was a formative part of my youth and upon his death I wanted to 
catch up on some of the shows I missed. Listening to Peel was an 
education! He really was humble and introduced you to a bunch of 
music that you would never have considered normally.
> I always missed being able to tune in to his show. If I was working 
on an oil rig in the desert in Yemen for example, the world service 
was always crap reception on short wave (even with the flash Sony 
radio and external antenna I had) and I was usually on night shift 
which meant I needed to be sleeping when the man was transmitting!
> I couldn't rely on my flat mates to tape Peelie for me so had to 
make do with the tapes I made (infrequently) on my days off in the 
UK. Then; I stopped coming back to the UK so often and just lost 
track of the music scene.
> With the advent of the digital age and digital radio I was looking 
into the options of digitally listening to Peel but out in the desert 
(now in Saudi) - us rig pigs weren't seeing the advantages of 
internet yet (we didn't even have access to email when I left the 
rigs in 2005!).
> I was tempted to write to Peel to say 'Hey! You're getting on now, 
you won't be around forever - are your shows being tape recorded? 
Perhaps you could answer that Ken? Did the BBC ever record his shows 
or were they launched into the ether and that's that?
> I started trying to collect Peel shows using eMule but that was 
taking forever! I found more shows being shared by some of the cool 
websites on the 'net paying homage to Peel and that led me to install 
and use the BitTorrent program to download more shit.
> I found the 'stuff' I'm uploading on a search off the 'net 
at 'goonerproductions.co.uk'. £40 for 17 DVDs. I'm just sharing the 
love as my contribution to 'Community Spirit' so I can't claim to be 
any kind of expert!
> You might want to contact Darren at the aforementioned site to 
question him. Just don't tell him we're sharing the stuff he's trying 
to make money from! I presume he collected it off the 'net in the 
first place so I don't worry about passing it around!
> I'd be really interested to know if Peel's shows were recorded by 
the BBC. I suspect not but can you confirm that?
> Thanks on behalf of everyone and me!
> Dee Dee
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: ken garner <ken_garner@...>
> To: peel@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:25:52 PM
> Subject: [peel] Re: Where's Peelenium? What happened?
> 
> 
> Dee Dee - I have not checked the whole list, but I could not help 
> spotting that your Peelenium listing (are those the recordings of 
the 
> actual sections of all the relevant nightly shows, from May 99 to 
Jan 
> 2000? Blimey!) had four records as usual for 1962 and 1985, when 
the 
> master list Peel Producer at the time Anita Kamath had - which she 
gave 
> me and which I used for its inclusion in my PEEL SESSIONS book - 
only 
> had 3 for those years. I wonder if Peel simply added in a bonus one 
of 
> his own on the nights in question without agreement? Or is it 
(groan) 
> another error in BBC documentation? I heard quite a bit of the 
> Peelenium going out but not all, and I was not taping...
> 
> ken garner
> 
> 
> 
> 
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