My cd player is fucked. My record player is fucked. I'm left with playing old cassette tapes. Do you ever get into a rut where you only play the same record? Well, this week I've played over and over again an old cassette tape that I taped off "The Peel Show" from a period where John Peel played every session he'd done up until then with The Fall. And he did one every year. In 1990 he had done eight!! Of course, now you don't have to resort to old recordings on a long deleted format to hear these sessions. Each and every Fall session John ever did has how come out in a collected box. Wauw! But me, I'm still playing old wobbly cassettes. And of course, although the sound is probably much superior on those (probably expensive) cd's, there's one thing you don't get on them: John Peel!! To get his comments on those brill sessions you have to listen to old cassettes. Hah!
[and yes, the headline is a Peel quotation from the tape]
About John Peel and The Fall; As I mentioned he would ask them into the BBC studio every year to record a session. They were his favourite band for so many years. I remember a Peel interview once where he said both he and Mark Smith were a bit awkward whenever they'd meet and just slap each other on the shoulder or something. I don't even know if The Fall still exist. They probably do. They're like The Cramps. Or the 9 o'clock news. Or The Ramones in the old days. They're always going to be around. And in the case of The Fall they're never going to change. It's funny really, just like with The Ramones all their records sound exactly the same. It's like they've re-recorded the same record over and over again. My girlfriend M. many years ago (and on the other side of the planet) once said to me about The Ramones' songs; "They all sound the same!" to which I grinned and said: "Yeah, isn't that great". Haha. She reminded me about it over the phone a little while ago. And yes, I can see why someone would think that is, ahm, boring. And it would be if it wasn't for the fact that all these bands did something that is so hypnotically enchanting that it grabs you every time. Even if the difference is the same. Oh, and I just bought a Ramones bootleg LP; "Joey is a Punk", haha.
Maybe I should buy a new tape-deck. Hmmm.
