John Peel's Top Gear, Saturday 27th. December 1969, 15:00 - 17:00

There's Christmas crackers, celebrity guests (some of them even genuine), an appearance from Miss Top Gear and, by the sound of it, a jolly time being had by all as Top Gear celebrates the er, bit between Christmas and New Year in truly festive style. Also featured: the pick of the year's session tracks, interviews (most of them hilariously inept) with Dick Heckstall-Smith, Robert Wyatt and Sandy Denny (pictured with JP opposite) and a very, let's say "competitive" chat with Pete Drummond.

Many thanks to Mick Capewell at the ever-excellent Marmalade Skies for supplying the tape of this show. (There's definitely a "Mick's tape" pun to be made there, but for the moment I can't be arsed.) For all you musos, here's the steps I used to rip the tape:

Maxell UR120 tape --> Pioneer DC-X88Z tape deck/amplifier --> headphone socket --> Stereo jack leads --> ADSTech Instant Music --> USB --> Toshiba laptop --> PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor --> Audacity --> LAME --> Kat's Karavan --> you

Feel free to pipe up with any suggestions if you think I've gone about capturing and encoding this all wrong, as I'm still relatively new to this. Oh and I did try to use Audacity to get rid of the tape hiss, but the end result was horribly metallic-sounding so I've left it well alone (apart from normalising).

(You may notice that this program does not, as promised in Peelie's intro, feature anything by the Keef Hartley Band. I can only assume that whatever track of theirs Peel was planning to play got bumped, because they're not mentioned in the outro. Certainly the show appears complete, with perhaps a little bit missing from the middle of the news bulletins.)

Total running time: 1hr56m. Files are 192K MP3.


PART 1 (29:20) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• Johnny Walker handover
• Miss Top Gear ("Pat Campbell of Nottingham") turns on the studio lights(!)
• Top Gear theme
• The Rolling Stones - Live With Me
• The Plastic Ono Band - Dizzy Miss Lizzie
• Richie Havens - High Flying Bird (session)
• Chat with Dick Heckstall-Smith
• Colosseum - Lost Angeles (session)
• The Incredible String Band - This Moment (session)
• News

PART 2 (30:18) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• News (continued)
• Juicy Lucy - She's Mine/She's Yours (session)
• Michael Chapman - Postcards Of Scarborough (session)
• The Family - Cat And The Rat (session)
• Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Orange Claw Hammer
• Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Wild Life
• Roy Harper - Tom Tiddler's Ground
• Chat with Robert Wyatt

PART 3 (27:33) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• The Soft Machine - The Moon In June (session)
• Griffin - What A Day It's Been (session)
• Tyrannosaurus Rex - A Day Laye (session)
• Chat with Sandy Denny
• Fairport Convention - Farewell, Farewell
• News

PART 4 (28:49) Listen/Download (divshare). Alternative link (megaupload)

• News (continued)
• Joe Cocker and The Grease Band - Lawdy Miss Clawdy (session)
• Banter with Pete Drummond
• Led Zeppelin - What Is And What Should Never Be (session)
• Blodwyn Pig - It's Only Love (session)
• The Beatles - Mean Mr. Mustard
• Viv Stanshall no-show
• Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Sofa Head (session)
• Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Give Booze A Chance (session)
• "Disinterred 33 1/3": The Firehouse 5 - Running Wild
• The Fairport Convention - Jigs & Reels Medley (The Lark in The Morning/Rakish Paddy/Foxhunters' Jig/Toss The Feathers) (session)
• Top Gear theme
  

John Peel's Top Gear - 27th. July 1969

OK, sorry about the delay. But we pick up the story 3 weeks after the last show I posted, finding Peel in an unusually showbiz mood, with a handover from Alan 'Fluff' Freeman and a bit of banter with his erstwhile Top Gear co-presenter Pete Drummond. Peel also chats about an upcoming holiday to France with his brother Alan and a recent visit to Birmingham, taking in Handsworth market and The Diskery. Sessions tonight come from Roy Harper, Ten Years After and Third Ear Band.

This one is missing the last 22-25 minutes and once again starts a little slowly. It also gets a little crackly towards the end; maybe it was the end of the reel, hence the truncated recording.

Download (225Mb, 320Kbps MP3)

Tracklisting

• Ten Years After - Woke Up This Morning (session)
• Crosby Stills and Nash - Helplessly Hoping
• Fairport Convention - Si Tu Dois Partir
• Roy Harper - (It's Tomorrow And) Today Is Yesterday (session)
• Chicago Transit Authority - Listen
• Third Ear Band - Hyde Park Raga (session)
• McKenna Mendelsohn Mainline - Beltmaker
• News
• Steve Miller Band - My Dark Hour
• David Bowie - Space Oddity
• Ten Years After - Crossroads (session)
• Roy Harper - Hell's Angels (session)
• Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Pachuco Cadaver
• Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Pachuco Cadaver (brief reprise)
• Johnny Winter - Black Cat Bone
• Third Ear Band - Druid (session)
• The Glass Menagerie - Watching The World Pass By
• Roy Harper - She's The One (session)
• Blodwyn Pig - The Change Song
• Tim Hardin - Simple Song of Freedom
• Ten Years After - Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
• Roy Harper - Hey Francesca (session)
• Bizarre applause - end of tape
  

John Peel and Pete Drummond - Top Gear - 1st. October 1967

That original Radio 1 lineup in full.
Drummond front row, third from left, Peel front row, extreme right.

To bookend the recent posting of the final Top Gear, we rewind eight years to the very first of Peel's Top Gears. This is not quite the first ever Top Gear, but it is the first on which Peel appeared. In fact this show, which Peel co-DJed with Pete Drummond, was Peel's first ever show on Radio 1, having played his last show on Radio London a couple of months earlier.

The Beeb really put the boat out for this one, as the session guests were (The) Pink Floyd, Traffic and Tomorrow.

This will probably be the most "DJ-ish" Peel you've ever heard, as he attempts at times embarrassing Smashie and Nicey-style "matey DJ chat" with co-host Drummond: very un-Peel. But its worth bearing in mind that John was only on a 6-week contract at this stage (only employed by the Beeb at all thanks to the championing of Bernie Andrews), so probably felt he had to toe the party line. At least to start with...

Interesting to hear JP refer to his current abode as 'Peel Acres' about 15 minutes in, as he was yet to move to Suffolk at this stage, and was currently living in a London flat.

Download (60.5Mb, 44 mins, 192K)
Recorded from 6music's rebroadcast about 18 months ago (from DAB). From memory, I believe I owe thanks to Pinball at Cook'd and Bomb'd for this MP3. Far better than my own crappy stream capture.

Tracklisting

• The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Devil's Grip
• Tomorrow - Real Life Permanent Dream (session)
  
• Nirvana - Pentecost Hotel
• The Pink Floyd - Set The Controls (session)
• Tim Rose - Morning Dew
• Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
• The Velvet Underground & Nico - Sunday Morning
• The Pink Floyd - Reaction in G (session) [fades after 30 seconds]
• [**Edit**]
• Tomorrow - Colonel Brown (session)
  
• Amen Corner - World of Broken Hearts
• Traffic - Paper Sun (session)
• Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Yellow Brick Road
• Big Maybelle - Every Day I Have The Blues
• The Move - Kilroy Was Here
• Skip Bifferty - On Love
• The Pink Floyd - Flaming (session)
• Tim Rose - Fare Thee Well [fades after 1 minute]

Note: Looks like the date is wrong in the filename, as apparently the show was broadcast on the 1st., not the 11th. of October '67. And you can't seem to rename your uploaded files with divshare, so I'm trusting you, gentle reader, to rename it after download. I care about these things, you know.