TS: Tony Blackburn vs John Peel

saw a bit of the doc on blackburn and switched off after a bit by precisely what your talking abt.

i have never heard blackburn and peel i could never stand for long (he really annoys me) but he did introduce me to beefheart.

"Blackburn was virtually alone in the early-mid '70s in playing and promoting soul/funk/black pop on British radio"

Maybe, but his attitude towards / treatment of reggae was pretty unpleasant

don't know. peel brought a lot of different music to my attention aged 13-18, and i've always thought he was pretty good you know, but, yes, as time goes on the smugness and sanctimony become grating (and mc is right about the self-elevation thing, peel is always a little too pleased with himself), burchill has something of a point regarding smug hypocrisy...

...but theres something all rather harsh about this at the same time. blackburn is just an oddity really, as a person at least.

as for whos the happier, blackburn has never struck me as being even slightly happy (nb, i havent seen the programme so may be wrong)

peel said on his show last week that he was disappointed (i think that was the word he used) at something tony had said about him recently because peel had always (um, maybe not always, he used to openly call him the antichrist) liked tony blackburn and was glued to the recent jungle show and glad tony won. i think the antichrist thing was more peel kicking against WHAT blackburn was (ie a breakfast dj) rather than WHO he was.

i also came out of the documentary with a curious respect for blackburn, sounds like he's been through a lot. think the student shows are demeaning though.

um, just found this:

Tony Blackburn disses the 43rd Greatest Briton:
"John Peel is a strange character," he says, and the mood suddenly darkens... "I did suggest he should be on Radio 3 and not Radio 1 any more because he was buggering up the evenings and nobody was listening to him."

sounds like fallout from the great britons thing. not sure about 'buggering up' or 'nobody was listening'.

um, the full thing is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,816548,00.html
quite a way down

"I think he's become slightly elderly and a bit grouchy. He needs to rethink his whole life."

um, not sure about this though. i'd be disappionted at this too.

andy
avid peel listener for 25 years. bias, what bias?

Cheers, I've just read the article.
Blackburn comes over as a slightly bemused old man. I think his mechanism's gone. He's like a well-meaning character, tottering around a village somewhere. He's all sweetness and light, then suddenly he snaps into serious mode. I wouldn't leave him alone with the missus.
Peel is much better than Blackburn. Peel may be a bit faux-fuddy-duddy and self-deprecating but he probably genuinely feels uncomfortable with taking the massive credit he is undoubtedly due. At least he hasn't behaved like a daft twat several times in the past, like Blackburn. As for needing to "rethink his whole life", well I think that Peel is probably a lot happier with his lot in life than Blackburn ever will be.

Blackburn is certainly an odd fish, not an easy man to admire or love. But while the ever-desperate-to-be-hip Peel was championing the likes of Principal Edward's Magic Theatre as the future of music, he rarely let a show go by without pouring contempt on "Timmy Bannockburn" for his tame love of "crap" like Motown. This inspired a deep loathing for "the antichrist" among Peel-influenced hipsters, a group of whom went as far as to kidnap the mild-mannered Blackburn in what was not a joke event but obviously a pretty terrifying ordeal. Not surprisingly even the normally inoffensive Blackburn was prompted to retaliate by suggesting (correctly, as most would now agree) that Peel was the man playing crap.

One wouldn't want to give too much credit to Blackburn for being right: as a popular Radio 1 DJ, he just predictably preferred the best commercial pop of the day to the trendy obscurities preferred by the "cognoscenti". With that kind of bias history won't always validate your taste, but it will much more often than not.

I only know that story about Peel damning Blackburn for playing Motown crap because Peel repeats it now and again, always to make the point that he was a fool and TB was right. A lot of the criticisms of Peel are fair enough, but what I mainly want from a DJ is that he finds good and interesting and surprising music, and plays it to me. Peel has been doing this for me since the mid-'70s, and I still listen to his shows regularly. My tastes are far from identical to his, but he's introduced me to a hell of a lot of stuff that is now among my favourites.