21 Songs for John: 20 - The Wedding Present

The Wedding Present – Two Bridges

Peel once credited 'the boy Gedge' with shaping his musical direction, high praise indeed from a man who perhaps shaped more musical directions than anyone in history.  He also credited David Gedge with writing some of the best love songs in modern music. The Wedding Present appeared in session nine times for John Peel between 1986 and 1992 and, following a hiatus while Gedge concentrated on the Cinerama project, returned with the Take Fountain album in 2005.  'Two Bridges' saw them achieve their 51st appearance in the festive fifty and their first number one when it was voted as the best release of 2013 by Dandelion Radio listeners.

http://www.scopitones.co.uk

21 Songs for John 

21 Songs for John: 19 - Dub Sex

Dub Sex – North By North East (Peel Session)

A band who clung to the fringes of the late eighties Manchester scene, Dub Sex always defied easy categorisation and were consistently fascinating.  Their initial recorded output amounted to a single album, Push!, in 1987 and they came to a halt with the classic 'Swerve' single in 1989, which gave them their only festive fifty appearance.  They've now thankfully reformed and released the single 'Over and Over' for Record Store Day this year.   Dub Sex recorded four Peel sessions and this, from the last one in 1989, has never been released until now.

www.facebook.com/Dub.SexUK

21 Songs for John 

21 Songs for John: 18 - R.O.C.

R.O.C. – Come Back Jonee (Devo cover)

A unique musical project with a healthy desire not to be constrained by any stylistic preconceptions, R.O.C. sounded like nothing else when their self-titled debut album came out in 1995, and still don't.  By that point, 'The Girl with the Crooked Eye' had already delighted and disturbed in roughly equal measure and had duly secured a place in the 1994 festive fifty.  1995 also brought the group's only Peel session.  Recently, the Metal Postcard label has reissued their startling first album and there is the promise of new material in 2015.  'Come Back Jonee', a previously unreleased track, sees them characteristically making this classic Devo tune sound entirely their own,

www.rocmusic.com

21 Songs for John 

21 Songs for John: 17 - I, Ludicrous

I, Ludicrous – Cheer Up

I, Ludicrous became one of the few bands to make the festive fifty before they'd had an official release when the flexidisc version of Preposterous Tales that came free with Blah, Blah, Blah magazine got to number 11 in the 1987 listeners' chart.   The band also recorded their only Peel session that year, but John Proctor and David Rippingale, augmented since 1998 by bassist Martin Brett, have continued to make great music, recording two sessions for Pete Jackson's Dandelion Radio show, first in 2009 and the second earlier this year.  This is an early mix of a track that will feature on their forthcoming album, their seventh in all.

www.iludicrous.co.uk


21 Songs for John

21 Songs for John: 16 - Haunted House

Haunted House – The Kindness

John Peel spoke of Lianne Hall with the kind of awe he'd rarely employed since attempting to describe the voice of Sandy Denny.  She recorded two sessions and an additional two tracks for his Xmas 2001 show and was a great favourite of the DJ in his later years.  Now, she teams up with Paul Hartnoll of Orbital as Haunted House and this track will feature on their forthcoming album Brave The Woods.  Orbital were a staple of the John Peel show throughout the nineties, taking techno away from the self-selected club-going elite and into appreciative living rooms and minds all over the world, while pioneering an entirely new use for miners' head lamps.  They contributed five sessions including a set from the 1994 Glastonbury Festival and were frequent visitors to the festive fifty, charting on five occasions.

http://thishauntedhouse.org

http://liannehall.com

http://orbitalofficial.com

21 Songs for John

21 Songs for John: 15 - Jim Milne

Jim Milne – A Cock on his Dunghill

Jim Milne formed Tractor with drummer Steve Clayton in Rochdale and were signed by John Peel and Clive Selwood to the Dandelion Records label, releasing their debut album in 1971.  At this point the band were still called The Way We Live and changed their name, reputedly, after Peel saw a tractor in a field and recommended it to them.  This track comes from Tractor's unreleased Peterloo album, based on the 1819 massacre in Manchester and is sung in the character of Joseph Nadin, the corrupt Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, immediately before the Lancashire Yeoman Constabulary's fateful charge into the crowd at St Peter's Field.  The album was scheduled to be the final release on Dandelion Records but never saw the light of day.  However, the track will feature on the forthcoming release of Peterloo – The Finished Master 1972-2014.

www.facebook.com/jim.milne.14?fref=ts