What should become of John Peel's record collection now?

Ya gotta start somewhere.

Liverpool University has the
The Institute of Popular Music
http://www.liv.ac.uk/ipm/

About:

The Institute of Popular Music (IPM) was established in 1988 and it remains the only academic centre in the UK created specifically for the study of popular music.

It specializes in the provision of popular music teaching, research, information and archives, and it has a growing national and international reputation.

I didn't think he'd been looking too healthy recently....

Yup. Got to do something with all theose millions that just keep on flooding in from AMG.

Twos.

I would happily share. In fact, if Radio 1 had any spare air time . . .

If only. ;-)

You don't actually think this thread has any resonance with the Peel estate do you?

Anyway, digitise idea - very urgent and key.

I'm a-scared that this "US radio company" is in fact Clear Channel, who'd likely melt all of the records down to make unsafe toys for children in Guatamala.

So, I say again: Twos.

Welcome to the British Library Sound Archive, one of the largest sound archives in the world. Opened in 1955 as the British Institute of Recorded Sound, it became part of the British Library in 1983.

"We must do everything in our power to disallow the public any opportunity to hear this music collection and have more evidence that present commercial radio is crap."

NOT BONHAMS.

I cannot stress this enough.

I absolutely agree. The thought of an American radio company buying his collection makes me feel sick to my stomach.

British Library/National Sound Archive is a good one if it were to go somewhere outwith the family.

Or else a huge car boot sale out the back of Peel Acres.

It's records, man. He'd prob understand.

The broadcaster John Peel held discussions with the British Library about leaving his extraordinary record collection to the nation prior to his death last week.

The Radio 1 DJ, one of the most influential figures in music over the past four decades, amassed an unrivalled array of vinyl, CDs and tapes from around the world. His exhaustive collection, made up of many of the bands he loved such as the Fall, the Undertones and obscure African acts as well as early demos from bands that went on to make it big, ran to hundreds of thousands, all carefully stored in alphabetical order.

It would be the biggest and most important batch of material ever deposited with the national Sound Archive, which is held by the British Library. It is not clear what will happen to Peel's collection because his will has not yet been made public, if indeed he made one.

Peel's widow, Sheila, and other members of the family are still in Peru, where he died of a heart attack on Monday while on a working holiday. They are arranging the return of his body and are expected back in the UK early this week.

The archive's curator for popular music, Andy Linehan, visited the DJ at his home in Suffolk to examine the stack of music which had to be housed in a purpose-built extension owing to its size. "It's a fantastic collection. The nature of the material that was sent to him was the kind of stuff that we couldn't possibly get hold of," he said.

The Sound Archive, largely housed at the library in St Pancras, London, runs to around 2.5 million important recordings. Unlike the library of print publications, there is no legal requirement to deposit material, so it relies on donations and acquisitions.

Peel had been a tireless champion of new music from the days of mid-1960s psychedelia when he first began broadcasting in the UK as a pirate DJ. His enthusiasm helped many of the world's biggest bands find an audience, including Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and the White Stripes, during his 37 years at Radio 1.

His death at 65 left the music world in mourning and prompted glowing eulogies from those who are indebted to his patronage such as Elvis Costello, Feargal Sharkey and Jarvis Cocker. His friend Roger McGough yesterday presented a special edition of Home Truths, the Radio 4 series Peel created looking at the quirks and strains of family life. It featured some of the most memorable moments from the show.

Peel's long-time manager, Clive Selwood, confirmed the discussions with the British Library. "The idea certainly had favour with him, but we'll just have to see what happens. We would have to act in the best interests of the family. It should stay in England, but I've got to try to look after the interests of the family. This was his great asset. He was never a great saver of money."
1 November 2004 14:56

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John Peel’s record collection to become an “online interactive museum”

http://www.factmag.com/2012/02/23/john-peels-record-collection-to-become-an-online-museum/

..won't actually be able to play any of the records... but..

I miss this man.

HOLY SHIT U GUYS

http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/news-john-peel-archive-to-go-online-may-1.html

THE FIRST 100 records from John Peel’s personal record collection will be online as of tomorrow (May 1).

The records are being archived as part of an online museum project called The Space, which hopes to digitise the entirety of the late Radio 1 DJ’s whopping vinyl stash — some 25,000 vinyl LPs, 40,000 vinyl singles

Wonder what sort of order they're going to do these in?

Update: According to The Independent [via Twitter], the collection will not – as was previously claimed – be streamable

Anyways...
http://thespace.org/

awwww :(

So what's the point, then?

"This is one of the greatest libraries ever. PS the books are all encased in glass."

This is what FACT said, guess we'll find out tomorrow:

It will, however, showcase Peel’s meticulous cataloging system he had where, for each record, he would “type out a filing card for every album. Starting in 1969, he made a postcard-sized card for each new LP, and inscribed the name of the album; the name of the band and all the tracks.”

In the words of Sheila Ravenscroft, John Peel’s widow, “Even just within those first 100 records from each letter, I think people are going to be very interested as to what’s in the collection. I think they will be amused and intrigued by it.“There’ll be information about the record sleeve, front and back, all the information about the record itself, as well as whether John rated the album or not.”

“Then out of those first 100, we’ve chosen one artist that we’re honing in on, that we’re going to do a special thing on each week.”

Well, this is all quite neat to look at, but the actual content seems to be a bit like a card file version of discogs.com but with a lot less detail.

Ha, they have AMT listed as Acid Mothers Today

Maybe there is some mystical aspect at being able to view this stuff that I'm failing to grasp.

So, you have to watch the video to find out what, exactly, they are going to do with it.

I do appreciate the spotify link to Mike Absalom who I always meant to check out but kept forgetting about.

"This is one of the greatest libraries ever. PS the books are all encased in glass."

eh -- "this is one of the greatest libraries ever but we haven't digitized all the books so the website is just a catalogue, what were you expecting" -- the curatorial issues don't really work the same way. i wonder what percentage of the 25,000 LPs + 40,000 singles is actually not available in digital form already somewhere.

Among the first artists are Abba, ABC, AC/DC and Adam & The Ants.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-17894985

BBC getting a great handle on his role as champion of the obscure and unsung.

huge copyright problems with just digitising these albums and putting them online, am surprised anyone thought that they would. (actually, i'm not, kids today...)

Yeah seriously wtf?

actually, there must be records in there that are out of copyright, most of Pig's Big 78s for instance. and those British Hit Parade 1961 compilations on amazon suggest that anything before 1961 is fair game... (although i think the rules have just changed again, thanks Cliff)

a lot of people are gonna be disappointed to find out it mostly contains grindcore. not me.

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

it means of all the albums he heard every year from his fifteenth birthday from his death, he found 400 that he thought were worth keeping

until his death, even

Kept Scoundrel Days, binned Hunting High & Low

so, ten a week then.

I can only imagine the volume he 'rejected' then, how do you get rid of those sorts of quantities of stuff?

leave them in a box at maida vale for people to take? i dunno, it doesn't seem that tough

anyway, what this demonstrates is that john peel's average critical nous over a lifetime should be ranked at .4 peak weingartens

I guess, mainly because I'm imagining these all being sent to "Peel Acres" as was.. (xposT)

i see there are spotify links provided for most records so its not as useless as people are saying - there was no possible way they'd ever have the cash and time to clear every one of those records.

so am i missing the part where you can look at front and back covers and info on records? the record spine thing is annoying.

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

16,573 of them are Fall records.

so am i missing the part where you can look at front and back covers and info on records?

You have to click on them!

i did. i'll try a different browser.

i guess if yer gonna own just one roy acuff record, that's the one.

NERD RAGE - is this in the order he left them in, or is it meant to be alphabetical? Because I've just clicked through Acceleradeck-Abyssinians-Accrington Stanley, and now I'm cross.

ah, okay, works with firefox. pictures are too small though. and taking pictures of the inner sleeves is kinda crazy. nice closeups of the labels would have been urgent and key as people like to say.

> how do you get rid of those sorts of quantities of stuff?

he used to give them away in competitions, several feet at a time. the play / blog / radio show 'john peel's shed' was written by one of the winners (and is great btw)

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

It's a lot less than I would have expected. As for singles, I believe that before he had to sell them all off due to his contretemps with the Inland Revenue, Mike Read's collection went into six figures.

I think the thing with showing the inner sleeves is that he's written on the track playing times on them.

right, i kinda got that, but its a missed opportunity to have nice pictures of record labels that have never been photographed...

> ah, okay, works with firefox.

not here. ok in chrome though. odd.

That website is useless, I keep navigating around it and I never find anything. Suspect it's a browser issue and it bugs me how website developers can't make sure their sites work across browsers.

Thing is, nine times out of ten I want to hear something I don't go rifling through my collection but find it online. I guess that's the "future" of record collecting in a nutshell.

Yeah, and eight years ago too.. Downloading tracks cuz you can't be bothered to look for in your own collection Blues...

eh -- "this is one of the greatest libraries ever but we haven't digitized all the books so the website is just a catalogue, what were you expecting" -- the curatorial issues don't really work the same way. i wonder what percentage of the 25,000 LPs + 40,000 singles is actually not available in digital form already somewhere.

and yeah, you're right. even without the audio it's a worthwhile project. but as a music lover, I'm just reflexively bitter that copyright law will prevent it from being the resource it could be in my lifetime. sure, you can get most of it online right now... but not all of it, and it certainly isn't curated.

So basically it's not a resource.

I don't think pop music was ever meant to be a "resource" or be "curated."

Pop music, no.

Then again, Pop music has currency whereas not all music does.

e.g. the number of people who complained about RedNex' "Cotton Eye Joe" being 'turned into' a dumb ol' dance number from the 'historic' early americana of the original. Forgetting that back then it was a dumb ol' dance number even then!

Neither was pop music ever meant to be a Bureau de Change.

I don't think anything you see in museums was originally "meant" to be a "resource" or be "curated".

we are all curators now.

In truth, museums are wrong.

burn all the museums down. that's my motto.

record stores ARE museums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nN-KME0Tqw

I wouldn't go so far as to burn them down, but they have gotten above themselves in the last 150 years or so.

"record stores ARE museums."

not mine, man. everything is priced to sell. get it on out of there.

museums are shrines to the rich. you can never have too many of those.

not mine, man. everything is priced to sell. get it on out of there.

the defining characteristics of a museum are not its collection being permanent or priceless. a record store, to me, is exactly what a museum of pop music would look like, not some rock n roll hall of fame sort of thing.

there should be no "museum of pop music," it's a contradiction in terms.

Scott - wish more record shop owners in London subscribed to your way of thinking.

It's Not A Mus E Um Of Pop Music!

THIS BELONGS NOT IN A MUSEUM

\m/vsev\m/

they say damp records the past. if that's so, I've got the biggest library yet. the biggest library yet.

Site is down/broken already.

don't like the flash aspect of it. plus the index cards are just photos of cards - not searchable. someone needs to do a mashup.

A Tent is a gem, so the site has already introduced me to one thing. Post-punk chillout, pre-post-rock style.

http://open.spotify.com/artist/4UpplhXmvjfGVEz2wkBYmH

Site was back, still did not work on IE

I can't see any Flash content on the site, although perhaps the interface is a little over-egged on the skeuomorphism front.

you are right, it is html. doesn't work in firefox on linux either and i don't have any other alternative installed.

in fact, this morning it's not even working on chrome, when it was yesterday.

every click is trying to contact twitter.com for some reason, and i think that's failing.

Worked fine on Firefox on Linux yesterday. Check your setup.

They should check their setup!

was adblock...

was getting "FB not defined" as i've blocked a lot of those horrible facebook button scripts

Any technical problems I'm going to treat as a tribute to miscued records and botched segues.

fun. and handier than the the peel site. maybe he'll do the whole alphabet.

http://thequietus.com/articles/08697-john-peel-collection-record-review

irl lolled at the entry for Active Minds

Aw, I was thinking that'd be a good blog project, but doing it all in 24 hours seems nuts.

guessing Stubbs is a bit busy to do this on the reg tbf

We might do one or two more letters but, yeah, life and money are both too short to do the whole thing.

i feel like transcribing all the index cards, get them into computer readable form, but 100 a week is probably beyond me.

http://spinalbap.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/fearne-cottons-record-collection-goes.html

funny

The b's, the bees, the beeze...

http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/recordbox.html?letter=B

I'm glad the Belching Penguin record was mis-filed or else we would never have heard of them and that would've been a great shame. Belching Penguin!

Right, it seems to be working on my browser.

Um, how come each letter seems to only go up to the lower reaches?

i.e. A goes up to Ad for "Adam and the ants", B -> "Ba" = Bailey Brothers ?

Cos he had lots of records? They're only doing the first 100 from each letter.

.. and I can see Billy Bragg in the 'far right' on the "B" page...

xpost oh was that the plan? Is there a plan?

The one amazing thing about the plan is that it implies he even had 100 records by bands beginning with the letter X.

Off the top of my head, I think I can only name four bands beginning with X and two of those are shit.

I'm sure he does!

XRaySpex, XTC, "X", "Xmal Desutchland" without even trying...

that was an x-post (ha), and that's 4 bands...

hmmm.....

Oh duh, yeah I forgot three of those! I had X, X, XYZ and Xentrix

Xenophobic Gerbil

2 bands called X?

(I suppose it could happen)

There was an Australian one as well as the US one.

there are two different 'Bad Company's in that list so...

Guessing he wouldn't have the XX album.

Xiu Xiu, Xennakis

The XX album probably past the first 100 of "X" anyway.

Should mention that the featured band this week is Babes In Toyland and there's a five minute video about them if you go in the front way: http://thespace.org/

Not trying to plug the site btw, I just love Babes In Toyland so much.

Guessing he wouldn't have the XX album.

pretty far-fetched "guess"

both Xs are p good sometimes

I need Scott or someone to tell me who Babe Ruth and/or Back Door were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPVI73Ocxg8

i think he would have had trouble picking up that XX record back in 09

A disco cover of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican" appeared in the late 1970s, performed by the Bombers. This version inspired an electro/freestyle cover produced by Jellybean Benitez in 1984, for which he managed to recruit Haan on vocals - the cover subsequently becoming noted for its popularity as an underground dance hit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth_(band)

xp

I think it was also used as one of the breaks in 'Planet Rock' though Rev or Alex in Montreal (who introduced the song to me in outloud) probably knows more about that than I do...

Man, I had no idea that Hatfield was such a funky place in the 70s.

The Badgeman! Unsung heroes of the Salisbury scene....

this record is sick:

http://www.discogs.com/BCKid-Stop-Those-MFs/master/45045

abwarts are amazing! ex-members of neubauten. kind of no wavey.

i checked out a: grumh's 'no way out'. which is industrial as fuck electronic music. a bit screamy and harsh but im getting into it.

Even in death, Peel is still inspiring and sharing his great love of music. It's a joy to see.

C are up:
http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/recordbox.html?letter=C

C is up, rather

Looks empty to me!

Nice big chunk of Cabaret Voltaire

That Cactus World News album is terrible though

Only goes up to Cameo, so Captain Beefheart just squeezed out

or do people file him under 'B'?

That Randy California album is great, 'Downer' is such a mean-sounding song.

Oops, Califone record mislabelled as Calexico...

Sure you've already discussed this upthread, but are the index card numbers just Peel's chronological handiwork? We seem to get into the 20000s around the mid-'90s.

Yeah, I think he started numbering in the late sixties (?), so all the ones bought prior to that are in alphabetical order, and everything bought subsequently just gets the next number as it comes thru the door.

Everett True tries his hand at what David Stubbs started a couple of weeks ago by doing the 'C's:

http://thequietus.com/articles/08799-john-peel-record-collection-everett-true

The Ds:
http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/recordbox.html?jpID=D060

this mike absalom album is so lovely!

Don't think anyone's mentioned this, they are scanning a bunch of letters and other ephemera from Peel's collection as well:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpeelarchive/

this is lovely from terry

http://thespace.org/items/e000080q

This guy had way more Sammy Hagar records than I ever would have guessed.

only four Half Man Half Biscuit albums?! im surprised

Yeah, he's got more Hall & Oates than that, must've all been on CD

'X' shelf was a bit sparse after all:

http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/recordbox.html?jpID=X

Wouldn't mind that Xhol record, could take or leave most of the rest of it.

This also now leaves a strange and unpleasant taste in the mouth.

hmmm yeah, i hear you

for anyone still following this, i've been making playlists of the spotifyable stuff.

here's the big a-x one.

http://open.spotify.com/user/grannykart/playlist/7e2UT382pTSwuFcgQSLJAj

here's a "best of" with 130 tracks (there will be more when y and z are posted):

http://open.spotify.com/user/grannykart/playlist/3c6GRo8jtVwikKMfhoYByc

awesome work, much appreciated.

shocked he didn't have Los Angeles by X!