John Peel RIP

Another year, another year without John Peel on the radio. Those flat Scouse tones enunciating huge enthusiasm for the widest range of music you could imagine. No snobbery, just pure interest in what's out there. Between Peel, the Evening Session and Mark and Lard's evening show, my musical tastes went from nothing to almost everything in a year or two. Shame that Radio 1 is now a bilge pipe for the worst manufactured junk: it's just an extension of major label PR departments rather than a critical and informed outlet.

John Peel's Festive 50 lists of his and his listeners' favourite tracks look - with the exception of the nosebleed techno he came to love - like my shelves of records. I even got a request played on his show once (a Gorky's Zygotic Mynci song), and he took the time to note that I shared a surname with his producer, leading to a little gentle banter. Happy Days…

If you want to celebrate John Peel's influence, you could do worse than go to a Nightingales gig (on tour now, at the 100 Club in London tonight): my friends were Peel's favourite band, alongside The Fall and The Wedding Present. The difference is that The Fall are an angry parody of a band and the Weddoes are now a sad cabaret act, whereas the Gales are writing some of their best ever music.

Here are some of the tracks from the 2004 Festive 50 list, the year he died.

Sluts of Trust: 'Leave You Wanting More'. Stroppy, shout, angular: everything he loved (and wasn't).



Ballboy and Laura: 'I Lost You But I Found Country Music' (wryness from the band which also sang 'All The Records On The Radio Are Shite'):



For his electronic side, XBooty's remix of Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman':



And from the comedy section, Allo Darlin's 'Henry Rollins Don't Dance': Peel died before this came out, but he'd have liked it.

Meanwhile, on my hard drive

I've mostly been listening to The Charlatans (Some Friendly and Up To Our Hips, both of which stand up better than I expected after 20 years), The Cure (Disintegration - still astonishing) and Smog's Dongs of Sevotion, which is brilliant. I particularly like 'Dress Sexy at My Funeral' (as an added bonus: John Peel's sainted voice at the start)



Next up though is a band most of you probably won't have come across. I can't even remember how I got to know The Bitter Springs - probably on a split 7" on a trendy record label. Whenever I play some, I wonder why I don't play (and buy) their music more often. They used to be Last Party and also perform as Subway Sect when Vic Godard's on tour.

The only two albums I have are Five Die Filming This Lazy Lark and Benny Hill's Wardrobe, titles which remind me of Half Man Half Biscuit, though The Bitter Springs are much more indie (in the old sense of miserable and self-pitying) than HMHB's folk-indie. Their website hasn't been updated since 2005 - but they're worth checking out if rumours that they're still alive are true.



One of my favourite Christmas songs:

Please Mr Postman

Actually, thanks, Mr Postman. Today I received an advance proof copy of Paul Auster's latest, Invisible thanks to Librarything's Early Reviewer's group, The Coming Insurrection (download it free in English or French through that link) by The Invisible Committee (the manifesto of the Tarnac 9 group of French communists) and Kats Karavan, a 4 CD compilation of Peel favourites. Yummy. Though I'm surprised that the Nightingales aren't on it.

The Coming Insurrection is a bracing piece of revolutionary rhetoric - but I can't help feeling that any movement whose manifestos are elegantly published by Semiotext(e) and MIT Press is one that's become a bourgeois fetish object already. I downloaded a copy a long time ago, when Tarnac was in the news, but the book is a beautiful piece of design, revelling in its anonymity - available via Amazon. How this differs from 70s students waving Mao's Little Red Book, I don't know. I do know that, however much sense is in the publication, it's already dead.

Cynical Ben will hate this

My twee, Sarah- and Postcard-loving soul thrills to the delivery today of the Belle and Sebastian BBC sessions. John Peel liked them too, so you can all sod off.

Where have all the great record companies gone? I used to collect Fierce Panda stuff, until they decided to become a super-indie rather than a launch pad for all sorts of weirdoes. Ankst used to be fun but their moment's gone. Bella Union are reliably brilliant, as are 555.

I see that my friends The Nightingales are no. 14 in the Dandelion Radio Festive 50 for last year - and they're getting better and better, mostly because we bought Alan a theremin.