<Wiki> Editing other people’s work / FF79 & 80 questions

[Mic]

Hi all,

I'm new here and I've joined up pretty much to get hold of & listen 
to Festive Fifties. Well, to start with anyway; I'm sure there are 
many, many great John Peel shows out there, it's just going to take 
me some time to get there...

Anyway, while I'm here, I thought I'd try and help out so as 
to `repay' those people who've been cataloguing and digitising those 
shows. Unfortunately, I don't really have the skills or technology to 
assist with recording or anything, but I thought I might do something 
I was going to do anyway: listen to the Festive Fifties. Oh, and 
while I'm doing that, I can make notes for the Peel Wiki.

So I've done a few pages of that, for the 78 – 80 Festive Fifties, 
and the associated shows:
http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/1979_Festive_fifty
http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/1979_Festive_fifty
http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/1980_Festive_Fifty
However, other people have been working on those too, so I thought 
I'd draw attention to what I've been doing here. Rather than just 
editing their work and running away. Does anyone have any comments? 
I've tried not to actually delete anything that's been previously 
added, but my stuff's easily revertible if you want.

Has anyone any thoughts on what I've said, either? Too much 
information? Too little? Since I'm not an expert on John Peel, or 
music of the period or anything, I've tended to stick to `facts'; 
that is, I haven't really commented on mood or feel, I've just quoted 
what John actually said in places. And rather than sticking all his 
comments at the top of the page, I've tended to list them in the 
tracklisting, so that people can find them easily if they so wish. I 
also haven't really said anything about the details of Peel 
sessions... the shows I've been listening to have all been "best of 
the year" shows, so it makes sense to me to just link to the original 
show... however, many of the shows aren't on the Wiki yet, but I 
don't really feel right writing about shows I haven't heard anything 
from. If that makes sense.

If anyone's still reading after that rather lengthy preamble, I've 
also got a few questions about the 79 & 80 Festive Fifties. Starting 
from the top, I was wondering about the various 1979 recordings 
available. For a start, I'm rather confused about the top 10 mp3 
mentioned on the 1979 page itself. Now, as I said, I'm new here, so 
I've probably missed lots of talk about this already, but it doesn't 
sound like a top 10 mp3 at all to me. Once again, I don't have any 
fancy technology, I've just been listening to it on my PC with run-of-
the-mill headphones, so I may be wrong, but I reckon I can hear 15 
separate edits in it. And the between-song links don't match those on 
the other compilations mentioned on the page. And the other big clue 
is that "White Riot" wasn't actually in the 1979 top 10. So this 
actually sounds to me like a reconstruction of the top 10 from other 
Peel shows and John's countdown towards the end of the Festive Fifty 
(between #2 & 3 and skipped in the other recording). Or have I got 
the wrong end of the stick here?

Next, a question about the 24th December show from 1979. I've got 
this from torrent compilation 8 where it's labelled (three times) as 
being the 24/12 show. However, it struck me that there's nothing to 
confirm this on the recording – can this be verified in any way?

Finally, we have the 1980 shows, and what I'm most interested in here 
is the provenance of the various recordings. I've come across three 
sets of recordings, all of them only of the countdown part of the 
shows. Firstly there are the 30242b recordings. As I say on the Wiki, 
these are mistagged, but that's not a problem. Also, one of them's 
missing from the website, and this seems as good a place as any to 
bring it to someone's attention – I can't see any contact info on the 
site.

Next there's the set on torrent compilation 1. I think these have a 
better sound quality, but I'm not entirely sure. The first two have 
identical content to the first two from 30242b, but I think there's a 
bit less noise – perhaps these are earlier generation tapes, or do 
people think they've just been digitised differently? Or am I just 
hearing things?

Confusingly, the third mp3 from the torrent seems to be made up of 
the third & fourth from 30242b, thus suggesting that that is an equal 
or later generation tape. Or perhaps the same tape, digitised in 
different ways? Could anyone throw any light on that for me?

And after all that, there's yet another set on torrent compilation 2. 
These are individual mp3s, they only start from #40, and for some 
reason #7 is missing (the replacement is tagged with "a stretch 
mark"), but they sound to me like the best set of recordings. No 
offense to whoever took the effort split them into individual tracks –
 it's very well done, and quite handy to have them in that form – but 
does anyone know if this recording is available as whole segments 
from the shows?

That's it for now. Thanks for reading my huge spiel, and thanks in 
advance for any answers you may have. And, of course, thanks everyone 
who's been recording and keeping records of these shows.

Mic.