In memory of the great John Peel , here is a gem from the Canongate archives (August 2000).Introduction to The Great Rock Discography vol. 7When I first received my hardback copy of the Great Rock Discography and being familiar with what I'm afraid you might feel compelled to style the obsessive attention to detail of
Martin Strong, I turned to the Bob Seger section in the faint hope that I might read something like, 'In the seventies and eighties an unknown middle-aged woman was often spotted in London's bustling Notting Hill Gate area wearing an ill-fitting Bob Seger band tour jacket'. That would have been my mother but, alas, Martin has chosen - recklessly in my view - not to include her in his book. So far, that is about the only notable omission I have spotted.
There is, inevitably, a lot of stuff here you're not going to need. Not for a while, anyway. I mean Rhyl's The Alarm apparently started out as The Toilets. And Robert Palmer was in Mandrake Paddle Steamer. I've got two copies of their single, if you're interested.
But there are things here about people I thought I knew. I have always believed that The Fall - ad I hope you'll excuse what may seem unpleasantly like bragging - had released their debut single by the time they came to record their first session for Radio 1. Not so, it seems. And I never knew that Captain Beefheart, as a child - and what can he have been like as a child? - made clay figurines for a local television programme. What a guy! And what's this? Did you know that Bill Oddie, the bird-watcher and former Goodie, sang on two Rick Wakeman albums? Armed with that fact alone, you could bring conversation to an awe-struck silence in most pubs in Britain.
I don't know, of course, what you're going to use this extraordinary work of scholarship for, but I suggest you use it for something. If nothing else, you'll know the answer the next time someone stops you on the street and asks, "Whatever happened to Fred Neil?".
I'm going to keep my copy by the bed, and plan to learn a fact a day. You have been warned.
