XTC Peel sessions update

[ken_garner]

I think I said this in my book but all BBC music, shows, and archive audio, is digitized as lossless wavs.

The original quarter inch session tapes which survive are now stored in a special archive secure facility at BBC TV Centre.

I am not sure what they've done with the DAT masters (which replaced reel to reel tape) from sessions recorded after 1989 at Maida Vale (ie after the new 24 track SSLs with computer-aided mixing were installed). I think they might be junked... but I did see cupboards and cupboards of DATS at both Maida Vale and Radio 1 when I did the recent book in 2007...

The original raw multitracks, most recently (up to mid/late 90s) on Studer A80 two inch tape, were NOT kept at the time, this tape reused in the studio from session to session, day by day, week by week

k

--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, tomzero <tomzero12@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the info Ken...
> Â 
> Don't remember if this has been asked or answered before...but out of curiousity...once they digitize, are they dumping the old tapes? And if so, are they saving the recording in lossless format instead of mp3?
> Â 
> tom
> 
> --- On Fri, 1/15/10, ken_garner <ken_garner@...> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: ken_garner <ken_garner@...>
> Subject: [peel] XTC Peel sessions update
> To: peel@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 4:14 PM
> 
> 
> Â  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Richard, the Radio 1 media manager /archivist, in response to my queries, has confirmed the first four sessions (among other XTC sessions) have all been digitised and are safely housed at Maida Vale.
> 
> I have a hunch as to why the band might have been told they were missing in response to a basic record company phone enquiry to Radio 1. Richard, earlier this week, to his surprise, could not find these sessions listed in the online catalogue accessible at Radio 1. A simple phone call to the guys manning the hard drives at Maida Vale, however, confirmed they really were in the digital archive, they had been digitised along with all the other surviving old Peel stuff ten years ago. In other words, they must never have been catalogued for the new online archive back in 2000/2001!
> 
> I know you're all now thinking what I'm thinking: what else might have never got catalogued but is actually in there?
> 
> It's certainly a new twist on the BBC pop archivists' permanent lament "we don't know what we haven't got": they don't know about everything they have got either!
> 
> Anyway, happy to help: feel free to pass this on to the band, if anyone has such a route: maybe one day a full proper quality release/set could be countenanced now...
> 
> k
> 
> --- In peel@yahoogroups. com, "jake" <rayytann@ .> wrote:
> >
> > I hope you're right - but it does look like some of XTC's session tracks have either been lost or wiped. 
> > 
> > This is a quote from Andy Partridge talking about the "Transistor Blast" boxed set of XTC's BBC recordings (which only includes "Cross Wires" from their first session):
> > 
> > http://chalkhills. org/articles/ Pulse9903. html
> > 
> > "We went back to the BBC and got the use of all the sessions that we did for them--well, the ones they haven't wiped. They're notorious for wiping stuff. They've wiped the greats. They've wiped Hendrix. They've wiped just marvelous stuff. They've wiped eight of ours. But all the remaining stuff, we then sifted through it and we made up four discs. Two live discs, live in concert, and two studio sessions discs." 
> > 
> > 
> > --- In peel@yahoogroups. com, "ken_garner" <ken_garner@ > wrote:
> > >
> > > 
> > > I doubt that. The tapes were there in the archive when i did IST in 92, so should still be there in the digital archive now...
> > > 
> > > k
> >
>