sound of the suburbs

My God it's Monday again, and I see we are up to session 13 which must mean it's been three months that I've been using this theme. To celebrate something musically speaking a little bit different. Had John Peel always been the hip disc spinner that we so fondly remember him as? The answer to this question is rather complicated as it highly subjective, sure being a DJ on a pirate station must be hip in anyone's book, but really calling your show 'perfumed garden' does stink a little! When he got his feet back on dry land and job on the all new wonderful Radio One he called his show Top Gear, a name that might be better suited to a motoring program, still this was the goovy sixties, hence part of the problem with his shows which were very much a product of this era, and the likes of the Fall were still many years away. For the Top Gear show there were sessions so I guess we can consider them as Peel Sessions.

In the early seventies as with many a lad of my age I liked my music to be loud and rocking, something to do with hormones, at a tender age I had picked up a copy of '24 Carat Purple', probably one of the worst record sleeves ever still it was a budget release, a compilation af classic Deep Purple. Now while I will agree with you that they could go on a bit as in 'Child In Time' when they decided to rock they did us spotty teenagers a big service. Rare are males of my age that don't still have a soft spot for that old pub covers band standard 'Smoke On The Water'. The band are still around, and apparently very big in Russia, I believe they are up to their seventh line up! I saw an amusing advert recently where they were tying to persuade us to buy tickets for the bands forthcoming tour as a fathers day gift!

Before Deep Purple had taken the heavy road they had been another band of contenders for fame in the late sixties and as was common then a popular song would be picked up and recorded by different artists all hoping for a piece of chart action, this was the case with 'Hey Joe' which is taken from their second Peel Session as recorded at the beginning of 1969. The best known version of the song remains to this day that by Hendix though it is not my favorite maybe due to over exposure of the Lulu show. The version that I still find fresh and that always seems to bring a smile on my face even to this day was signed by America's answer to the Beatles the Byrds, and I know it's not from a Peel Session but what the hell here it is.