All the drastic events here in Holland and there in the US kept me from putting up a thread, but he deserves one: the great, now late, John Peel - trailblazer, enthusiator, discoverer, free mind - free actor and protector of every major new groundbreaking genre and movement in cutting-edge music in the past thirty years: John Peel, of the Peel Sessions, and just how many of our musical heroes cut some Peel Sessions before they cut through and became famous? And how many great musical minds became famous only
thanks to those Peel Sessions, and the dogged insistence Peel would show on any new act he truly believed in?
John Peel, without whom music history wouldn't have been the same, but who only ever acted out of plain, pure love for the thing.
Were any of you twitching the dial back when on your radio, to catch some buzzed-through distorted reception of his BBC radio show? I could only catch Radio One if the wind was right, when I was in high school ... and how many kids did tune in to his show, out of curiosity and certainty that he would always come up with something good and totally new? And how many of 'em became trailblazers themselves? I'm listening now to a DJ spin his house records, but he too will later in the show play some wholly different tracks that he remembers first having heard on John Peel - folks, a thread for John Peel.
Thousands mourn Peel at funeral
Your Tributes to John Peel