Ken's Peel Sessions Book

[rushomancy]

--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, "ken garner" <ken_garner@...> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> No, there is currently no online resource of errata to my book! But 
I am compiling my own 
> marked up master copy, and have a half baked plan - don't hold your 
breath anyone - to 
> start a blog via my university website giving a kind of weekly 
update on various further 
> corrections that have come to light. I had planned to do a hard 
copy corrections slip - ie a 
> few pages you lot could stick in the back of the book - this year 
privately, but have run 
> out of time and I suspect a blog might be more visible. So, folks, 
please do not be bashful 
> about sending me anything you spot that's wrong, puzzling, or 
incomplete - yes, I know I 
> missed Van der graaf generator's session releases, for example - my 
full email is visible 
> here anyway. All comments gratefully received

Right.  When I get a chance, I will get to work on corrections!

> ps your query about which sessions are known not to exist is the 
big one of course. Until 
> my book, the R1 and BBC archivists would tell me "we don't know 
what we haven't got" 
> Why would they? Their job is documenting the vast stuff the BBC 
does every day now - 
> they are not paid to ferret around and try and find out what they 
might be missing from 
> 1972! I do know that Hannah Brannah-Martin (nee Jacobs) and some 
Maida Vale people 
> are gradually starting to go through ticking off things they do 
have, thanks to my book, 
> which, by implication, will slowly reveal what they are missing. 
The old rule of thumb used 
> to be, unless it was personally produced by Bernie Andrews, Jeff 
Griffin, or John Walters 
> (and was one walters liked), nothing pre-1977 survives. But we now 
know that's not quite 
> true. Very little of all sessions (incl non-peel sounds of the 70s 
etc) survives from 1970-
> 1975, but 1967-1969 is not too bad at all. I heard that The Nick 
Drake night ride session 
> has recently turned up in an off air collection, as has the Leonard 
Cohen on Top Gear, for 
> example. Not sure that's right about Tim Buckley's 2nd, though: 
Bernie produced it 
> himself so I bet he has it and / or it's in the R1 archive.

Regarding the Nick Drake, I do know about the four minutes known to 
exist, and I have heard that the complete session may survive, but 
without Peel's intros and outros.  Certainly I could be completely 
wrong about the Buckley, but if it does survive this fact seems not 
to have been widely known- Tim Buckley is one of the artists whose 
archive recordings are most frequently commercially released.  While 
the first session has been officially released (although in fairly 
poor quality), the second has not, and isn't around as a bootleg 
either.  I do remember that Peel repeated the first Buckley session 
late in his career- after having the predictable (for Peel) problems 
with the CD he attempted to play it from initially, he wound up 
scrounging around for a minidisc and playing it from that.  I don't 
recall the source of the minidisc, though.  I am pretty sure both of 
the Beefheart sessions only survive as off-air recordings- when the 
shows were repeated it was from off-air audiocassettes made by fans, 
and shortly before his death the compilers of a box set of unreleased 
Beefheart tapes specifically asked him if he had recordings, and he 
didn't, although I think he may have been the source for the '68 
Kidderminster recording on disc 2 of the set, I can't rightly recall 
offhand.