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John Peel’s ‘Night Ride’ 1968: A Miscellany

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I’ve compiled two audio montages – around 80 minutes’ worth in total – from various fragments of Peel’s late-night episodes of ‘Night Ride’ from 1968, from a couple of off-air reels. Poets, ethnographic oddities, folk, blues and beyond. Some of the music is from LP, most is from session recordings – full details in the blurb under each video. Most of the poets are live in the studio, a few are poetry recordings from unknown stage performances. Session tracks include Stefan Grossman, Marc Brierley, John Renbourn & Jackie McShee, Fairport Convention, Pentangle and others. Poets include Adrian Mitchell, Brian Patten, Roger McGough, Pete Morgan, and Adrian Henri with Andy Roberts. Enjoy.

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  4. Thanks, Colin. I’ll be digging into these later.
    I have some John Peel recordings from 1968, mp3s, that I downloaded from somewhere or other a few years ago.
    Specifically; 24th of July ’68 (55 min), 11th of August ’68 (1h:13m) and 27th of October ’68 (2h:00m).
    No info. on what they contain, but happy to share if they’re of interest to you.

  8. Marvellous work, thanks a lot Colin! I look forward to these.

    one thing that is rather striking is the number of poets who appeared. Not many wordsmiths in evidence in the programmes from the Imperial Peel Period, as far as I can remember.

    • Ivor Cutler got a regular run-out, rendering all other spoken-word artists redundant, And let’s face it, Baron Ravenscroft wasn’t averse to hipperty hopperty music or dancehall, featuring a for amount of pottery….er, poetry.

    • Bear in mind, Fatz, that ‘Night Ride’ was a different programme to ‘Top Gear’ and its ‘John Peel Show’ successors – there were a few rock sessions for it, but mostly it was low-volume folk/blues stuff and ethnological whimsy on BBC archive recordings plus spoken-word people dropping by the studio. I believe Roy Harper just turned up with his guitar at the door of Broadcasting House a few times, and got into the show once or twice. At that stage in the night, it was more or less Peel and the doorman, as far as I understand it.

      • What a wonderful image! Late at night at Broadcasting House with little sign of life. Nobody except Peel, the doorman, a few World Service journalists perhaps and Roy Harper and maybe a few other minstrels attempting to gain admission to the rabbit warren leading to the Night Ride studio.

        It is a film just waiting to be made!

  9. “Imperial Peel Period”.
    Is that some kind of sobriety test phrase? To be recited while walking along a painted line on the floor and touching the tip of your nose with a forefinger?

    • Plenty more Peel sessions on my ‘channel’ if you’re interested. They’re from inherited reels. Might as well share them – unlikely they’ll ever appear on CD, given the contraction of the reissue record industry and the high prices charged for BBC licensing these days.

      • Actually Colin, those two FC songs are available on CD.
        They’re on the 4-CD collection “Fairport Convention – Live At The BBC” from Island Remasters, released in 2007. Out of the 69 Fairport session tracks on it, there are 31 from Top Gear in all, broadcast between December 10th 1967 and August 1st 1970.

        • Sorry, Mike – I should have made clear that I wasn’t speaking about Fairport, who have been well-served by box sets (including BBC ones) – although I think there are two or three things FC-wise that I’ve uploaded that either aren’t on the FC BBC box or are there in lesser quality. I was speaking about the likes of Eclection, Liverpool Scene, Stefan Grossman, etc. and many more to come.

          • My misunderstanding.
            Yes, a lot of time and effort has been put into tracing and cleaning up the old Fairport stuff that’s been knocking around. Enough demand to make it worth people’s while. I’ve heard there are a few tracks still missing. Either in too poor quality for release or just plain lost.
            Indeed, other less popular artists haven’t fared so well. Not enough financial incentive, unfortunately.

            • Well, I know there’s a load of tracks from a Full House era ‘Folk on One’ that I’ve yet to digitise, let alone upload, and there may be more. Not enough hours in the day.

              I have numerous FC releases, but not the BBC one so I’ve no idea if what I’m uploading is better quality than released stuff or filling in gaps. Other people can work that out.

          • You hit the nail on the head there, Colin, as regards the mix of different artists.

            With hindsight, we can see that some have stood the test of time, other not. But at the time, the verdict of posterity was not on many people’s minds.

            How magnificent to be able to revisit the Liverpool Scene in 20191

            And how magnificent to be listening to music today that would have fitted in so perfectly on Night Ride.

            Lucky me! i attended a wonderful concert by Anouar Brahem last night.

            Hard-core, card-carrying, unrepentant supporter of the Peelite Tendency. That is me.

            The Night Ride Falange is still rolling and we are in Top Gear!

  12. Interesting to remember how mainstream(ish) poetry was for a time. The Liverpool poets drove a lot of this I think, and we had the beat poets like Ginsberg on our radar through Dylan and the like.

      • There was a Liver Birds episode … can’t get much more mainstream than that … only a few years after Night Ride, which featured poetry readings in the girls’ local pub, and the poets (all male) were portrayed as the kind of local stars the Beatles would have been eight or so years earlier.
        It’s a real time capsule.

  13. Poetry was not only mainstream. It also gave birth to the whole British Underground scene when Ginsberg and other appeared at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall.

    https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/how-allen-ginsberg-and-an-anarchic-gang-of-poets-ushered-in-the-60s-counterculture-68717

    DuCool gave me a marvellous book a few years about that whole movement and the Ginsberg gig featured very prominently.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX6A0O_KCPg

      • Locus classicus! A marvellous new Latinism that i will endeavour to use.

        The Classical scholars of yore are alive and well and living in the Perfumed Garden.

        Was Troutmask a good or a bad thing for Mr Ravenscroft?

        Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, I might argue that it began a fascination with music that was pretty unlistenable. Mercifully this was balanced by his wonderful eclecticism and a stupendous ability to spot promising young bands.

        • It was a right poncified way of saying that it was probably his favourite record, or at least a touchstone for him (there I go again, touchstone? Why can’t I just use normal language?)

          PS. At this rate you’ll never be a judge, KFD😉

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