John, But Not Forgotten :: Keeping It Peel in 2009

Ben Etc writes about the closest thing he's had to Hero he's admired from afar:

For over twenty years of my life there was at least one constant I could count on, no matter where I went or what I did. It was John Peel.

I might have gone long periods without hearing the voices of my parents or brothers, but there weren't many weeks when I didn't manage to somehow hear the deadpan tones of John Peel, the pioneering British DJ who died suddenly in October 2004 – leaving an irreparable gap in the lives of his loyal listeners and fans across the world.

Peelie –as he's affectionately known– was already an institution when I discovered his show. At first I tuned-in hungry to hear the reggae, dub and seemingly unintelligible rap of Jamaican "Toasters" he would feature; but before long almost everything he played suited me – especially since we shared an appreciation for twangy guitars, whether they were playing the blues, surf, rockabilly rumble, Zimbabwean jit-jive, Congolese soukous, or adding to the drama of The Smiths or the Bad Seeds, overwhelming the songs of Sonic Youth and Jesus & Mary Chain, or calling the girls to get up and dance with Franz Ferdinand.

And then there was rap. And techno. And garage, gabba, grime, grunge and grindcore. Plus dancehall, speedcore and happy hardcore. Drum & bass, dubstep, ambient, country, folk and –oh– those heartbreakingly yearning 70s soul ballads. Not to forget the impassioned hollering of the Riot Grrl movement; or those cowgirls recorded yodeling all high & lonesome, long before your parents were born.

And what of artists like Ivor Cutler? To put this Scottish songwriter, poet and humourist in a category like "spoken word" doesn't do him justice… But whatever it was, it was all good to me.

Ask "What kind of music did John Peel play?" and you could reply: he played good music. Or at least, he played what he thought was good. And I still naively think that's the whole point. It sounds like a blazing simple concept to me, and it's what I assume a DJ should do: Play music that they like. Except... I don't know how many working DJs actually do this. I certainly can't tell if those I've heard on Singapore radio even have any passion for music. Maybe they do. But the sound of their own voices seems to be their primary love.

And when evidence suggests that to be a radio DJ today requires a fake accent that no ordinary person in any country would ever normally speak with, we can assume that the likes of Peelie would now have difficulty getting a job on radio. Maybe he also contrived radio persona for when he was on air; but if he did, it was a good one. It was good enough to make us feel like we'd lost a member of our family when John Peel died.

When the news broke I knew I wasn't alone in feeling like I'd lost a slightly befuddled but incredibly wonderful uncle. And I knew immediately that I'd miss him. He was an incomparable and sincere enthusiast – a man who didn't have eclectic taste simply for the sake of it, but because great music isn't limited to specific genres or countries. He didn't seem concerned with the tedious pursuit of attaining hipness. His shows really WERE about the music.

I'm never quite sure what people mean when they tell others to "keep it real" – especially if they're vulgar, gold-drenched showbiz sensations whose sense of reality appears to have long since split. But if you're going to tell me to "Keep it Peel": please know that I already did. And I don't intend to stop any time soon.


John Peel Day is commemorated on every 2nd Thursday of October. This year it's being done in Singapore like this (click here for the Facebook event page)