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john peel corner

John Peel picks tracks for his new compilation album, and an old interview with Radio B92 where he talks about working for Texan radio:

And you worked for WRR in Dallas…
PEEL: WRR had a late night program that all the kids used to listen to called "Kat's Karavan" which was a rhythm'n'blues program and played almost entirely black music. But the audience was almost entirely white in one of those kinda strange things that goes on in American culture, and the kids who listened loved the music but if any of the musicians had turned up on their front door they would have called the police, because it was quite a racist society at the time. But I had some records which were only available in Europe - some in this country, some in the Netherlands - and I took them to the radio station and they asked me to go on the program and talk about these records, which I thought they'd done because of my extraordinary knowledge of the music, but I think they probably did because they thought I had such an amusing accent — which by Texas standards I certainly did.

Comments

There are, needless to say, tracks we could not get the necessary clearance to include. In a decently ordered society, the Ramones' I Wanna Be Sedated would have been there, as would Pepe Kalle's rapturous tribute to the Cameroon footballer Roger Milla, and Cutty Ranks's The Lambada. (The last name boasts a few seconds of rather tentative scratching, and audiences, believing that this is my own work, have occasionally broken into amused applause. It is my practice at these times to smile an enigmatic smile, dimple prettily and get on with sorting out the next record to "spin".)

i've done this before...

You DJ?

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