John Peel’s Record Collection will go online tomorrow, 1st May. The John Peel Center for Creative Arts will start uploading details of the DJ’s famed collection. Each week 100 discs will be made available, covering every genre of music, and unveiling 2,600 albums over the coming 6 months.

Tom Barker, Director of the John Peel Center for Creative Arts explains:

Each of these releases of 100 records will be accompanied by one mini documentary video of a featured artiste for that week. These are pretty special, as the artistes have been chosen by Sheila, John’s wife, and their children - so they are all artistes who meant something to John and his family.

When you come to the website you will see John Peel’s home studio, from which you will be able to access the contents of the record collection as it is added each week, as well as other videos added each week, photos, peel sessions and radio shows. Once in the collection you will be able to move up and down the shelves of the record collection, picking out certain choice records and going through the first 100 as though you were standing in front of the shelves in John’s studio.

You will be able to see the hand-typed cards that John diligently typed for every album in the collection, the record sleeves, as well as listening to tracks via spotify and itunes where available.

And because we know that John meant a great deal to many people, we will be helping you to connect with other music lovers and Peel fans through our John Peel Archive social media accounts. Look out for never-before seen material, like letters to John, being exclusively released via social media. This will also be a great way to stay up to date with new material being released each week - so please do ‘follow’, ‘like’ and say hello - we want to hear from you and your stories of John.

In our heads throughout the planning process, has been making sure that we do John (and his fans) proud and ensure that the legacy of this legendary man lives on.

We hope you like the John Peel Archive - and that John would have done too.

Check the site from tomorrow on to see what goodies will be uploaded.

Updates will be tweeted on the John Peel Archive .

John Peel on Facebook, G Plus and Pinterest

Now here’s a John Peel Day Mix made by ttfb.

01. “Itchy Cut” - Cowcube
02. “New Rose”  - The Damned
03. “The Voice Of John Peel” - Delia Derbyshire
04. “O Superman” - Dan The Drummer
05. “Hard Row” - The Black Keys
06. “Cuntry Music” - Listen With Sarah
07. “Diddy Wah Diddy” - The Magic Band
08. “Shotgun Funeral” - Party Of One
09. “High Resolution” - Dj Rupture
10. “Two Sevens Clash” - Culture
11. “Death Letter” - Son House
12. “The Classical” - Pavement
13. “Groovin’ With Mr Bloe” / “Green Eyed Loco Man” - The Fall
14. “YMCA” - Galactic Symposium
15. “The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)” - Half Man Half Biscuit
16. “My Radio Sounds Different In The Dark”  - The Would Bes
17. “The Kill” - Napalm Death
18. “Live At Maida Vale” (Excerpt) - Jeff Mills
19. “Abridged Too Far” - People Like Us
20. “Speed” - Pico
21. “Roy Walker” - Belle And Sebastian
22. “Doctor ?” / “Chime” - Orbital
23. “Dr Dre Buys A Pint Of Milk” - Grandmaster Gareth
24. “Tokyo Registration Office” - Hyper Kinako
25. “Dracula Mountain” - Lightning Bolt
26. “The Nation Needs You” - The Cuban Boys
27. “John Peel Is Not Enough” - Clsm
 

 
How did I miss this wonderful exchange that happened between Siouxsie Sioux and Paris Hilton a little over 10 years ago?! THIS is why I adore Siouxsie!

Let’s hope Siouxsie runs into Kim Kardashian next!

 
Marxist anthropologist David Harvey talks to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman about what to expect during tomorrow’s May Day protests.

On Tuesday, May 1st, known as May Day or International Workers Day, Occupy Wall Street protesters hope to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country under the slogan, “General Strike. No Work. No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere.” Events are planned in 125 cities. We speak with leading social theorist David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about how Occupy Wall Street compares to other large-scale grassroots movements throughout modern history.

“It’s struck a chord,” Harvey says of the Occupy movement. “I hope tomorrow there’ll be a situation in which many more people will say, ‘Look, things have got to change. Something different has to happen.’”

David Harvey’s latest book is Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.
 

 
Via Alternet

 
Henry Rollins spins some of Iggy Pop’s classic tracks and a few lesser known songs in a nicely done career overview of America’s patron saint of punk rock.

Henry runs it down thusly:

We are going to go at it somewhat chronologically, although I may have a couple of songs out of order on that front but by and large, it’s a trip through the man’s catalog. Two hours isn’t enough time to be completely release-by-release, so I went for what I thought sounded good.”

01. The Stooges - 1969 / The Stooges
02. The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog / The Stooges
03. The Stooges - Down On The Street / Fun House
04. The Stooges - T.V. Eye / Fun House
05. The Stooges - Search And Destroy / Raw Power
06. The Stooges - Raw Power / Raw Power
07. The Stooges - Open Up & Bleed / Heavy Liquid
08. The Stooges - Scene Of The Crime / Anthology Box - The Stooges & Beyond
09. The Stooges - Gimme Some Skin / Anthology Box - The Stooges & Beyond
10. The Stooges – Johanna / Heavy Liquid
11. The Stooges - Tight Pants / Anthology Box - The Stooges & Beyond    
12. Iggy Pop & James Williamson - Consolation Prizes / Kill City
13. Iggy Pop – Funtime / The Idiot
14. Iggy Pop - The Passenger / Lust For Life
15. Iggy Pop - New Values / New Values    
16. Iggy Pop - Get Up And Get Out / Soldier      
17. Iggy Pop - Run Like A Villain / Zombie Birdhouse
18. Iggy Pop - Repo Man / Repo Man Soundtrack
19. Iggy Pop - Fire Engine / Anthology Box - The Stooges & Beyond
20. Iggy w/ Debbie Harry - Well Did You Evah! / Red Hot + Blue: Tribute To Cole Porter    
21. Iggy Pop - Bang Bang / Party    
22. Iggy Pop - He’s Frank / Heroes Soundtrack
23. Iggy Pop - This Is A Film / Arizona Dream
25. Iggy w/ Teddybears – Punkrocker / Soft Machine
26. Iggy Pop - Fix Me / Rise Above 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the WM3

Rollins, like myself, found much inspiration in the first Stooges album. For me, there was a delayed reaction. It took me seven years after hearing that seminal chunk of punk before I started my own band in 1976. One of my first gigs was at a country and western bar in Boulder, Colorado. The shitkickers, bikers and assorted mountain men grew homicidal when my group, The Ravers, tore into “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” At the end of the song, the place fell silent and it suddenly hit me as hard as a pool cue to the forehead that being a punk in the land of “Rocky Mountain High” was as about as much fun as being set upon by a pack of rabid wolves. But I got used to it.

Of all the records I own, some of the most frequently played, decade after decade, are ones that Iggy has had something to do with. One of the great hot-night listens of all time, perhaps the purest rock & roll recording I have ever heard, is the self-titled first album by the Stooges. So minimal and perfect. Every note, beat and lyric are essential to the whole. The older I get, the more I learn about music, the more amazing this album is to me.” H. Rollins.

So kick back and enjoy the show.
 

 
Two solid sets of hard rock and a bit of blues and country by Jack White at New York City’s Webster Hall from this past Friday. First set is with his all-female band The Peacocks followed by a set with his dude band Los Buzzardos.

I lean toward The Peacock set - more roll, more thump and more organic feeling. Drummer Carla Azar, from Autolux, is particularly fine. Dig the barefoot technique. White and The Peacocks reminds me of Bo Diddley with Lady Bo and The Duchess.

White mixes it up with new stuff off his “Blunderbuss” album and older songs from The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather…as well as a couple of covers.
 
The Peacocks
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (The White Stripes song)
Missing Pieces
Freedom At 21
Love Interruption
Hotel Yorba (The White Stripes)
Two Against One (Rome cover)
Top Yourself (The Raconteurs song)
I’m Slowly Turning Into You (The White Stripes)
Blue Blood Blues (The Dead Weather song) (With “Screwdriver” Riff Intro)
Take Me With You When You Go

Los Buzzardos
Sixteen Saltines
I Cut Like a Buffalo (The Dead Weather)
Weep Themselves to Sleep
Trash Tongue Talker
You Know That I Know (Hank Williams cover)
We’re Going to be Friends (The White Stripes)
Hypocritical Kiss
Hello Operator (The White Stripes)
Carolina Drama (The Raconteurs song)
Catch Hell Blues (Fragment) (The White Stripes)
Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes)
Goodnight Irene (Leadbelly cover)
 
Update: It appears that Vevo was offering the entire show for one day only (Sunday). Kind of a drag. Sorry. You can watch the show in segments here.
 

 
Thanks to The Gothamist.

 
Holy shit!  Here it is: The Patti Smith Group’s entire 1979 performance on German TV’s “Rockpalast.” While this has been readily available on the ‘web in bits and pieces, I’ve never seen it uninterrupted and looking this good (other than on a bootleg DVD I own). This is very very cool must-see stuff. Patti fans rejoice!

01 Rock ‘n’ Roll Star
02 Hymn
03 Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger
04 Privilege
05 Dancing Barefoot
06 Redondo Beach
07 25th Floor
08 Revenge
09 5-4-3-2-1-Wave
10 Pumpin’ My Heart
11 7 Ways Of Going
12 Because The Night
13 Frederic
14 Jailhouse Rock
15 Gloria
16 My Generation

Watch it while you can.
 

 
Well no wonder she looks so great at 54! She had a sunscreen regimen going on back then.

I don’t know who the guy is, though. Anyone?

 
The 1983 documentary UK/DK: A Film About Punks And Skinheads features some great live performances from The Exploited, Disorder and The Adicts, among others. It does a solid job of capturing the tail end of the British punk scene as it was being supplanted by hardcore and the pop elements in the music replaced by something faster, more aggressive and humorless.

Featuring lively interviews with band members, journalists and fans… and lots of Crazy Color and mohawks. One of the better documentaries on the subject I’ve seen.

Exploited – Fuck The USA
Vice Squad – Stand Strong Stand Proud
Adicts – Joker In The Pack
Blitz – New Age
Business – Blind Justice
Adicts – Viva La Revolution
Varukers – Soldier Boy
Chaos UK – No Security
Disorder – Life

The Damned provide comic relief.
 

 
If Visiting Kids strike you as Devo-esque, it’s probably because this late 80s surreal spin on “The Partridge Family” was founded by Mark Mothersbaugh’s wife at the time, Nancye Ferguson, and included Bob Mothersbaugh and his daughter Alex, and Devo drummer (their fourth) David Kendrick. Mark wrote some of the tunes for the group and Bob Casale produced the Visiting Kids’ only album, which was released in 1990 on New Rose (it’s extremely rare).

Here’s Visiting Kids singing the appropriately titled “Nepotism” with Bob Mothersbaugh sounding more than a little like Fred Schneider on vocals.
 

 
More Visiting Kids after the jump…

 
L7 on MTV interviewing The Breeders, Green Day, The Beastie Boys, George Clinton, Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, A Tribe Called Quest and more at Lollapalooza 1994. Poet Maggie Estep is also featured.

This was when MTV still had a connection to music.

The bit with George Clinton is ridiculously cool.
 

 
Part two and some awesome live footage of LZ after the jump…

 
Happy 65th birthday Jim Osterberg.

One of my all-time favorite rock n’ roll experiences was seeing Iggy at The Ritz in New York City in 1986. Iggy had started to clean up his act, in no small part thanks to his wife Suchi, and was in fine form. And the band was badass.

Bass – Phil Butcher
Drums – Gavin Harrison
Guitar – Kevin Armstrong
Keyboards, Guitar – Shamus Beghan

It’s amazing that some rockers like Iggy and Keith Richards that you didn’t think would last might outlast us all. Rock and roll: what doesn’t kill just makes you stronger.
 

Iggy talks about lessons learned from David Bowie: “No,you’re not coming to the dinner table on heroin.”

Jérôme de Missolz’s documentary Wild Thing (2010) was made for French television and it’s a pretty good look at rock n’ roll outlaws from the 1960s thru to the present day.

Here are some excerpts featuring Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch, Iggy Pop and Jello Biafra. Lunch’s anecdote about The Dead Boys is a jaw-dropper. The Boys ate Lydia’s Lunch.
 

 
To watch the entire film (much of which is in French) click here. There’s some fascinating interviews (in English) with Eric Burdon, Genesis P-Orridge, Kevin Ayers and many more.

Robert Gordon, Tommy Dean, Bruce Springsteen and Dee Dee Ramone
 
I love this story from Backstreets magazine:

Among his many accomplishments, Joey Ramone also played a small but significant role in Bruce Springsteen’s musical career, as Bruce himself related in his liner notes for 1995’s Greatest Hits: “I met The Ramones in Asbury Park and Joey asked me to write a song for ‘em. I went home that night and wrote this. I played it for Jon Landau and, earning his money, he advised me to keep it.” The song in question? “Hungry Heart,” which in 1980 became the first Top Ten hit both written and recorded by Springsteen.

Joey Ramone’s own hilarious recollection of asking Bruce for a song, filmed during a 1995 radio interview, appears as part of a bonus video segment on the DVD of End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones, the great no-holds-barred documentary on the triumphs and tragedies of the band’s career. In grand punk tradition, Ramone humorously berated “that Landau guy” and remarked that Springsteen “owes us.” When the interviewer suggested that perhaps Bruce could sit in with the band sometime, Joey replied that The Ramones didn’t want to be onstage with “some Jersey boy screwin’ up our song” if he couldn’t keep up with their ultra-fast playing. Ramone did, however, conclude the interview on a slightly more serious note by expressing “admiration” for Springsteen.

 
Here’s Springsteen covering The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.” Boston, April 22 2009. Not bad, but Springsteen ain’t no Johnny Ramone.
 

 
While no one will mistake this for a historic meeting of the minds, it does have its odd charm. The Marshall McLuhan of punk Billy Idol chats with Timothy Leary about rock n’ roll, cyberspace and computers. “Pretty deep,” Joey Ramone observes while Television (the band) let old skool technologies like drums and guitars do the talking.

ABC In Concert, 1993.
 

 
The last paragraph is great.

Update: The original source for this is from Miriam Linna’s blog Kicksville 66.

Via WFMU’s FB page

 
Legendary post-punk performer James Chance (aka James White, aka James Black, best known for the classic “Contort Yourself”) features on a fetching new tie print by Vivienne Westwood.

If you are a fan of late 70s No-Wave skronk AND snazzy ties, then this is may be of interest (here’s looking at you Richard!) However, to purchase this tie you’re going to have to hunt for it, as it is not featured on the Westwood website’s “Men’s Accessories: Ties” page.

And while we are on the subject, here’s a clip of the re-formed Contortions playing live in Poland in 2008:

 
Via Michel Esteban.

 
Watch a young, fresh-faced Robert Smith and The Cure running through seven songs at the “Berg En Bos” Dutch rock festival, held in Apeldoorn in 1980. The band’s line-up at the time was Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Laurence Tolhurst and Matthieu Hartley.

The set list: “A Reflection,” “Play For Today, “In Your House,” “M,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” “Another Journey By Train,” and “A Forest.”
 

The Mojos
 
Confessions of an unrepentant garage rocker:

I was living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The year was 1964. I was thirteen. Beatlemania was running wild and millions of kids across the USA were buying cheap Japanese electric guitars, drum kits, and forming garage bands. My dad bought me a set of Kent drums at Sears and I formed a group called the Continentals. We covered tunes by The Beatles and The Stones, of course, and had a set list that included “Louie Louie,” “I Got My Mojo Workin”, “Shout,” “Hang On Sloopy” - a couple dozen three and four chord rockers. We played at local firehouse dances, supermarket openings and, along with groups like The Mojos and The Ascotts, the Princess movie theater’s Saturday morning kiddie show.  We actually performed songs live as opposed to lip-syncing to some Four Seasons or Jan and Dean tune. We were the real fucking deal.

I had a moptop and it got me into trouble at school, where the rule was no hair over the ears and bangs had to be the width of two fingers above your eyebrows. I broke the rules on a consistent basis. A pattern I would follow my entire life. One day I was sent home for wearing madras pants to school. Those were some fucking slick slacks. But, when all the other kids were wearing Gant shirts and Weejun loafers, my madras pants were an affront to the refined sensibilities of the pre-yuppie status quo of the early 60s. In those days, high school had a caste system composed of longhairs, straights, jocks and greasers. I was a longhair. And greasers hated the longhairs. But I dug the greasers. Cause they were rockers. We were fellow parishioners in the church of rock and roll. It took a woman to help me discover this. Her name was, and I’m not bullshitting, Rhonda.

The Continentals were working the crowd before a screening of a cartoon marathon at the Princess. We were tearing through “Eight Days A Week”, “Not Fade Away” and “Gloria,” working up a sweat under our matching lime-green Nehru jackets, as the audience of pubescent teenyboppers bobbed their heads and swayed in mystical union with the almighty power of rock and roll. I felt like Elmer Gantry with drum sticks. We finished our set, took our bows, and walked off the stage.

As I made my way up the isle to the concession stand, there she was: Rhonda, a greaser goddess from the planet Maybelline. She had a jet-black beehive that defied gravity. Marie Antoinette had nothin’ on this home girl. Rhonda’s do was sculptural: a follicle wonderland where Antonio Gaudi and The Ronnettes sniffed hairspray and dreamed of Mayan pyramids. Rhonda had the fairest skin, the pinkest lips and the palest blue eyes I had ever seen. She was graceful and tall and moved with a slow serpentine stroll. She was way out of my league. This was woman in all her archetypal majesty – Shakti with a serious wighat. To my amazement, she was smitten by me. She said she liked the way I played the drums and she leaned over and gave me a kiss that tasted of lipstick and cigarettes. My knees buckled and I felt for the first time that rock and roll was more than music, it was supernatural.
 

The Princess theater is now a church. But in its own way, it always was.
 
This 1967 film footage of a Battle Of The Bands at Pierre Van Cortlandt Junior High School Gym in New York captures that tectonic time when thousands of suburban garages all across America shook, rattled and rolled.
 

 
Thanks to Rick Watson

 
In Kill Your Idols director Scott Crary attempts to find some connection between No Wave bands of the late 1970s like Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, Suicide and Swans with contemporary post-punkers Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Dice, Liars and others. The link is too tenuous to stand up to close scrutiny, but the movie is fascinating none-the-less for its exciting archival footage and compelling interviews with New York City’s avant-garde old guard. Listening to Lydia Lunch’s bilious rant about rock and roll’s new breed of hipster bands as a “pandering bunch of mama’s boys” who are “desperate to have their music used in the next car commercial” is a hoot. As are similarly contemptuous critques from Lee Ranaldo and Arto Lindsey.

Contrasting the newer bands with their older influences hits a resonant chord when DNA’s Lindsey describes the 1970’s NYC scene as an era when “we didn’t have a whole industry selling us back to ourselves.” This is the significant difference between creating and re-creating. In their self-consciousness, the new bands lack the vision, fearlessness and recklessness that no-wave’s pioneers brought to the mix every time they stepped on stage. It is impossible to replicate the “shock of the new.” Nothing seems dangerous anymore because everything has been radiated in the pasteurizing glow of our retro-obsessed culture. Rock and roll is disappearing up its own asshole. It wasn’t always this way. With every note, No Wave hit the self-destruct button. Gone. This doesn’t mean that the new groups aren’t good - I love Yeah Yeah Yeahs - but trying to find the link between them and the original no wavers is like trying to find fingerprints on water.

Update: The numbnut who uploaded Kill Your Idols pulled the movie from their Youtube channel. If you have a Netflix account, it is available to stream here.
 

 
Wormrot is a grindcore band from Singapore with a baaadass fan base.

This cloven-hoofed little devil is definitely taking mental notes for his future punk band: Goatface Killa.
 

 
Via Facebook