It's the Peel thing

There is a brief moment in my musical-tastes-timeline which deserves a special mention, perhaps particularly because it was so short-lived.  It was the very early eighties and a whole new crop of UK bands had released songs that just didn’t fit neatly into an existing genre.  Even with hindsight I can’t think of a perfect name for it – it wasn’t punk, nor goth, nor rock, nor pop.  Being generally referred to as ‘Post-punk’ is ok, but still sounds a bit too broad.  And  I suppose ‘Indie’ would be an understandable tag,  but that rather blandly convenient term brings to mind a slightly later upsurge of bands.  So I’ll share with you a name which sums up my listening habits of the time:  ‘Peel bands’.  It was John Peel who brought these sounds into my bedroom through his late night radio show and for that reason they’ll always be inextricably linked.

Perhaps one of the first things to draw my attention to these Peel bands was their weird and wonderful names.  They gave no indication as to how they might sound, so when John announced at the beginning of his show, “Tonight we have a session from Crispy Ambulance and records by Ski Patrol and Second Layer..." my curiosity was already stirred.

At the start of that decade I was an art student, feeling happily in the margins, with not too many cares in the world all things considered.  I bought my singles from places like Small Wonder, who, as well as being a label for acts like Patrik Fitzgerald (and releasing the first Cure single), had a record shop in Walthamstow.  I never went there but it operated a great little mail order service.  You could phone up and speak to founder Pete Stennet  himself to place your order and send your stamped addressed envelope off for the latest list.  It’s funny how little random snippets linger in my memory for no apparent reason; like sitting on our brown-carpeted stairs with the curly cord of the big-dialled cream telephone stretching round the doorway from the kitchen when I rang up excitedly to reserve a 12" EP by the Tunes.  A Saturday lunchtime I think.  A rhubarb crumble baking in the oven.

Back then it just seemed arty, now it would be a selfie

Much as I'm happy in the present,  I’m quite glad I’m of a certain vintage. My world was so small in so many ways, my life’s limits bound by the cost of a train ticket or bus fare, late night curfews set by parents and only three TV channels, all of which turned into mute, black screens by bedtime.  But maybe all that just made me appreciate even more the exotic pleasures to be had from listening to the one and only John Peel. 

Here's a little treat from my record collection at the time.  Definitely a 'Peel band'!

The Tunes: Headlights