alt.peel

John Peel's legacy.

If he had been responsible for introducing me to number six alone, that would be enough for me to worship the guy and cherish his memory.

But he created "alternative". He stood as a beacon in a dark night of the massive commercialisation of culture (and of course, in an irony that shouldn't be missed, a pioneer in the commercialisation of minority cultures -- because giving them airplay broadened their appeal, leading to their coming to the attention of the greedy fucks who want to infiltrate every last corner of our lives and sell ourselves to ourselves).

Yes, it swamps all of us, moulds us, squashes us into boxes, so that even those who wish to be "individuals" find themselves comically in a uniform of dreads, camouflage and black that marks them out as consumers of a particular demographic just as much as the fucking idiots who think an SUV is suitable for urban driving because some turd in an ad agency came up with the image of freedom that flicked their switch (freedom! you dickheads -- how many hours of your lives went into your SUV? The differential between it and a regular car could send me to China for six months!).

But they do not know, they cannot ever quite put a wrapper round, the moment when a song we love catches our heart and we fucking fly.

There is a heartstopping moment in As it is when it was that you could never bottle and yet it makes me feeeel (I don't even know what, it makes me feeeel something that doesn't even have a name, something not even the Greeks had a name for). Yes, London Records bought it, but it could never make it, it could never take the ingredients and put it together, try as it might. Only four young people from Manchester could, and I only know they could because John Peel gave three of them a break when they were a property London Records would not have touched with a very long pole.

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:43 pm