The Pink Floyd (was Re: Festive 50 1978 Part 2)

[troche@...]

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Subject: [peel] Re: Festive 50 1978 Part 2

>I remember he was the fist one to play "Another Brick in the Wall"
single in 1979, though. That single famously got to #1
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>Almost certainly that would be the last time he played Floyd, I think.
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The oldest Peel cassette I have is from '82 when I was visiting London from my college home in Tallahassee Florida. I had brought along a fancy-at-the-time Walkman cassette player that could also record FM. (Yes yes I should dig up that tape and upload it someday.) The few Yanks here who knew of Peel then had to cope with truly pathetic shortwave reception from the BBC World Service, but it was worth it. I should say that BBCWS had fine engineering, but good SW radios were v expensive then and I could only afford a cheap one.

On this Radio 1 show distinctly remember Peel playing a good chunk of the current Pink Floyd LP The Final Cut, which some of you may recall was a pessimistic and depressing album (think Falklands and Thatcher.) It was a poor seller with no hit single but still, briefly, a UK #1. 

John's intro was interesting in that he said, paraphrasing here, "there is a new album by The Pink Floyd, and it is not being heard on the radio at all, Radio 1 is not playing it in the daytime, Kid is not playing it, and when I listened to it I thought that.... well it doesn't matter what I think of it, I am going to play some of it now and let you decide, that is what is important." And then he played about 10 somber and droning minutes of it. 

It was also the show where almost certainly he played The Four Brothers for the first time, from the Earthworks album "Viva Zimbabwe" - one of the first African pop compilations ever. And it ("Makorokoto") was such a amazing track, with such fast guitar I first though the record was at the wrong speed. I went down to HMV the very next day, and brought it back to the states. John's playing of that one track began a passion - and near obsession - with African music that continues to this day.


Tom Roche