The John Peel show

I started listening to John Peel in about 1976. Punk was just beginning to break out and some people at school said that you could hear this on Peel's show - indeed it was the only place you could hear it. The record shop in my home town actually refused to order in punk records as the owner didn't like them! If one charted, then he had to stock them and the first punk record I bought was Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Hong Kong Garden". My dad was not happy with me playing this on his hi-fi and was convinced that the loudness would damage it.

The other day, as part of my continuing decluttering, I came across two boxes of cassette tapes in the garage, both full of "mix tapes" that I had edited out of the Peel show from 1977 (when I first acquired a cassette recorder) through to about 2003, when I finally stopped editing tapes from the show. Today I transferred half a dozen tapes to digital and am thinking that I may be able to gradually work my way through the two boxes (a huge job, but one ideally suited to the times when I will be studying).

So today's tapes were number 124 to 129 covering the period around 1988. Fantastic tracks that I had long forgotten by bands like the Bhundu Boys, Inca Babies, The Siddleys, I ludicrous, The Farm, Head of David, and so on. Plus tracks I hadn't heard for years by groups such as the Wedding Present, Eric B and Rakim (the fantastic cold-cut remix of "Paid in full"), Grynor, and so on.

I have also invested in a 500GB external hard drive to store what could become a huge amount of stuff over the coming months. I am rather shocked to discover that I actually produced nearly 400 mix tapes from the Peel show over the years.

Peel's death a few years back was actually a really big blow to me at the time - not far off the effect that my dad's death had a year or two later. For someone as fanatical about music as myself, Peel was clear evidence that other people shared this obsession. How great would it be to still be able to hear a show of his now?