I think John Peel was a much misunderstood DJ who through the desperation of the BBC and the ignorance of the public became recognised as some kind of musical authority. As an influential man he was able to guide the public into some of the deepest musical lavatories whilst at the same time steering people away from other styles which he hated. This is the attitude of the fool who listens to pop and rock but condemns classical, and the opposite who only listens to classical whilst sneering at rock. Personally I think that his musical appreciation was crude and lacking in any sophistication. Give me good old Bob Harris any day.
The People's Pop Poll: Day 8 12 May 2020 These are the groups for Day 8 of the People’s Pop Poll! Obviously it contains SPOILERS for the day’s matches so if you’d prefer to be surprised read no further!…
And Then I Took Some Of THESE 25 Jan 2018 Mark E Smith, 1957-2018. Some things to read. My favourite ever piece or sequence of pieces on The Fall is our own Kat Stevens' stint on One Week One Band.…
2018 Music Diary Week 4: The Week Of Peel 29 Jan 2018 NEW MUSIC Day 24: FIRST AID KIT – Ruins: Slickly produced, occasionally countrified, notes on romantic disappointment by a pair of Swedish sisters who sing with a Nordics-meet-Nashville twang. There’s…
ELTON JOHN - "Are You Ready For Love?" 11 Feb 2020 Elton John’s best moment at number one comes with a forgotten track from a barely-noticed late-70s EP, lucked onto years later by someone in Sky Sports’ ad agency, remixed (delicately…
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A PERFECTER PERFECT DAY -- by !!SCIENCE!! 6 Apr 2014 Imagine YOU have been appointed (time-travelling) decider on the 1997 multi-artist version of Perfect Day? Who would you keep? Who would you drop? Who would you draft? Assume you have…
I Used The NME 8 Mar 2018 My NME was rubbish. I wasn’t there for the underground press invation, or for the Titanic sailing, or the Kinderbunker. I missed the post-structuralist years. I never read about Youth…
About the Author
Steve does most of the pictures, colouring in etc. which is nice.
As well as contributing to Freaky Trigger, Steve has his project portal at ghostfood.uk, showcasing graphic and web design work, video edits, audio mash-ups and music mixes. Truly the media node of node hall.
10 Jul 2000
The Pokemon Phenomenon This piece was going to be an unabashed paean to Pokemania, explaining what a cracking game it was and how the mass tweener hysteria which greets every fresh Pokegame, cardset, pillow-case, or doily was a good thing inasmuch as ten-year-olds are natural obsessives and it wasn’t like they were wasting their time […]
10 Jan 2012
Hi, I’m Lauryn Hill circa my breakthrough role in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and it is a real pleasure to be able to present to you the top ten FreakyTrigger tracks of the year. When my mother told me I couldn’t join the choir run by a fake nun, I got really […]
15 Aug 2006
The Notorious Bettie Page is a film about the good old days of porn. You know, when it wasn’t exploitative, and all the girls portrayed within were not only fun loving conspirators in an art project, but believed in Jeebus too. Most film about porn are about the good old days. Inside Deep Throat told […]
22 Jan 2009
This is a graph – done by anatol_merklich off the Poptimists LiveJournal community, so massive thanks to him – showing the number of new entries in the UK singles chart for each year from 1952 to the present.
15 Aug 2007
On my eleventh birthday I received a copy of a tape called “Rave ’92” through the post from my sister Grace, who was away at university. It was the second tape she had made for me whilst she was away, (the first being a random mix of grebo, soul, indie and ‘Love Shack’ by the […]
3 Apr 2017
So for a while myself and Pamela Hutchinson, of Silent London fame have been talking about doing a more regular podcast. And while we love talking about silent films, we also like new films too. And so The Sound Barrier was born over a Campari Spritz or four, we take a new release and we […]
20 Jul 2007
I semi-remember just two lines from the NME’s (Charlie Shaar Murray’s?) review of “Armed Forces” (secret unused title “Emotional Fascism”). One was that one of the other songs resembled ELP “jamming in the bottom of an oil drum”! The other — more germane to this post, as well as being true — is that “with […]
I think John Peel was a much misunderstood DJ who through the desperation of the BBC and the ignorance of the public became recognised as some kind of musical authority. As an influential man he was able to guide the public into some of the deepest musical lavatories whilst at the same time steering people away from other styles which he hated. This is the attitude of the fool who listens to pop and rock but condemns classical, and the opposite who only listens to classical whilst sneering at rock. Personally I think that his musical appreciation was crude and lacking in any sophistication. Give me good old Bob Harris any day.
i think you’re an idiot
I second that. Idiot.
An idiot of the category of Julie Burchill, who claimed Peel never played black music (!)
Deepest Musical Lavatories: brilliant name for a club night.