Decktician's Log, Volume 1: Top Gear 1969-09-21 > 1970-12-26

[ken]

I have now completed scanning and annotating (refering to my own old copies of PasBs) the first volume (of 5) of Decktician's logs of running orders of Peel shows. They cover 5 periods between 1969 and 1975, with gaps between, but each period in each volume is nearly (if not quite) complete between its start and end dates.

Volume 1 is hand written running orders from September 69 Top Gears right through to the end of 1970. One or two shows are missing, and one or two incomplete, but I have been able to complete these gaps, once I had all my data in order in front of me, as it were. On many occasions decktician's log differs very slightly from the official script, in ways in which it is clear to me that he is almost certainly right, and the PasB slightly wrong - tracks played in a slightly different order, one long session track actually NOT played, and so on. The Sunday Show concerts in 1970 were not logged, it is Top Gear only. But we now have complete, 99% reliable running orders in some form for every Top Gear from 21/9/69 to 26/12/1970.

And here is where you come in...

I have forwarded the compressed file of jpg scans of decktician's original pages plus a word document with notes and details filling gaps and so on, to Steve and Steve at the Peel Wiki. If you would like to volunteer to help type these up into the wiki for all to enjoy, contact them and they will pass the stuff, or bits of it, to you.

My OCR software was useless for these handwritten pages (it's pretty useless for old typed PasBs too!), which is why i have left them as enhanced jpg scans. But they are legible and comprehensible: Decktitican had a habit of circling the number for tracks if they were album tracks; session tracks can be identified easily by cross-refering to the shows and sessionography in my book; and everything else, er, must be a single, by definition! There are occasional slight differences in track titles, understandably, but where the eventual/common title can be clearly inferred/deduced, I have not commented on this. But there may be things clear to me that might not be so to you, so ask me if any insurmountable issues emerge.

I am now moving on to volume 2, which jumps to 1972 and includes some exciting revelations I can tell you. Oh yes.

Once Rocker's team of reel to reel tape rippers get going, it is just possible, says decktician, that some of the tapes will be from this first period. But even if not, the running orders in themselves are a great find, for which we are all in his debt: thanks,

ken