BBC Peel Sessions Pages

[ken garner]

The source of those pages was a project commissioned by Radi 1 from Somethin' Else Productions, see here:

http://www.somethinelse.com/project/johnpeel/17276.html

...and the work was undertaken in 2005 by some people who phoned me up and asked if if coud give them my data from IST digitally. I said I doubted I could. From what I was told and contextual evidence I am fairly certain they created the data by either rekeying or data copying over from the old Radio 1 computer system Romeo: many of the errors and lacunae in Romeo are replicated exactly on those pages. Here are just some of the types of errors on those pages, and my analysis of how these mistakes were made:

Q: Almost all broadcast dates from 99 onwards are missing
A: Session sheet data was sometimes typed into R1 Romeo computer before broadcast date, and the broadcast date was never retrospectively put back in

Q: Almost all band line-ups from 99 onwards are missing
A: Romeo entries have 2  screens, line-up is not visible until the 2nd screen, if you search by show

Q: Many DJ, electronic or other `own studio' sessions are missing
A: no session sheet was ever filled in for such sessions, so no Romeo entry created

Q: Some sessions are under artist index, but not in day-by-day
A: Day-by-day index is indexed by recording date, but many 'own studio' sessions don't have one

Q: Some bands have two entries under two different spellings
A: Innumerable inconsistencies in typing in from session sheets

Q: Many track titles incomplete
A: Romeo has very limited maximum character-string length per line

Q: Many sessions pre-77 are missing entirely
A: no session sheet survived, so no entry was ever made in original 80s R1 computer system Romeo

Q: website appears to make no distinction between sessions and concert sets
A: if you search romeo by show or artist, everything they'd done pops up

Other dead giveaways as to how they did it, are things like the entry for the REM session appearing to suggest that it was recorded at a mythical radio station in Greece: The Romeo entry and session sheet (and that website) generated reads "live from Radio Thea" because the computer had run out of characters to finish off with "tre Broadcasting House".

It looks beautiful and is easy to navigate, but it is barely credible as what it claims to be.

Regarding Zeke Manyika, it is always possible he did do one for Peel in 85 and I've missed it. But unlikely. I'd be interested to learn if anyone else - like me - who was a regular listener at the time ahs any recollection of such a session. My gut  intinct tells me this was an EVENING SHOW session which got miscatalogued when the Romeo entry was made. I will ask my R1 music archives contacts (who know what they are doing, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Peel site) if there is any more information attached to the recordings that might help resolve this one....

ken


--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, robf <robfleay@...> wrote:
>
> Probably been discussed before but did we ever discover the source of the BBC Peel Sessions pages? Loads of stuff is missing but conversely I found a page for Zeke Manyika listing a session that doesn't appear in either of Ken's books
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/1960s/1960/Jan01zekemanyika/
> 
> Quite clearly not fron the 1960's (as the URL suggests) - this would have been 1984/1985 - if it did happen. Anyone?
>