Bye bye, my music uncle
Posted at 2:06pm on Tuesday, October 26th, 2004John Peel dies of a heart attack.
I guess everyone has a John Peel story… In my teen years he had the 10 o’clock show on Radio 1 and during his tenure there introduced me to current acts like the Cramps, We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It and Half Man Half Biscuit as well as older acts like Joy Division, Beefheart, and Lord knows what else. But. It was one night in April 1999 that I will always remember him for…
Lying in the bath, listening to the radio, John Peel told his listeners with some sadness that Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence had died. He went on to play a homage to Skip, including Omaha by Moby Grape and War In Peace from Oar. Those two tracks (and subsequently the two albums they’re from) have stuck with me ever more and the albums have stayed close to the stereo ever since.
Trying not to be trite, my thoughts go out to his family. We really have lost a great voice.
