Digital Music, Radio — September 11, 2012 at 11:10 pm

Stream 458 episodes of John Peel’s radio show — 846 hours spanning 1967 to 2004

For fans disappointed that the online debut of the late John Peel’s record collection didn’t feature actual music off those platters or broadcasts by the legendary British DJ, here’s the real deal: a streaming collection of 458 episodes of Peel’s show, presumably digitized off cassettes, that totals 846 hours and spans the years 1967 to 2004.

The collection — posted to SoundCloud by a user only known as +dB from Yorkshire, England — was brought to our attention by Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, who tweeted, “What technology was invented for: 458 John Peel shows in full. Like the encyclopedia britannica of music. Dive in.”

The set, which can be streamed below is by no means complete; one of the shows from 1980 finds Peel celebrating his 800th episode, and he still had 24 years of broadcasting head of him at the time. Some of the episodes are ID’d with bands that played in session, such as Joy Division in 1979 and The Fall in 1987, but if you’re trying to track down episodes with certain in-studio performances, use Wikipedia’s List of Peel Sessions for reference.

UPDATE 9/12/12:  It appears either SoundCloud or the user has removed all of the Peel episodes — but, as @keepingitpeel points out, they area all still accessible via Google’s cache, for the time being at least: “Please help us at peel.wikia.com  by d/loading, these shows need to be kept and transcribed for prosperity.” To download the shows, click through to each episode’s individual SoundCloud player, at which time you’ll see a download button.

 

 

 

10 Comments

  1. Wow!

    The Wikipedia article won’t help you find the sessions though – it lists recording dates and not broadcast dates (usually 1 to 2 weeks later). You can find broadcast dates on the BBC site (even though it’s no longer being updated): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/

  2. what a shame, looks like all the files have already been taken down. managed to download a couple of them before they went away, though. i had a feeling something this awesome wouldn’t be allowed to stick around for too long.

  3. this got shut down. might want to update. tossers!

  4. The user only removed the “set” that conveniently grouped all of the shows together. The shows themselves are still online – no need to use Google cache, just use this link: http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=John+Peel+Show+%2BdB

  5. It looks like +db’s account has been suspended.

  6. Patrick Walton

    I’d like to listen to the John Peel Show
    September 13th, 2001

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