FabricLive. 07

Particularly in the wake of his passing less than two years later, it’s amazing that nobody had issued an official John Peel DJ mix until nearly a decade into the format’s life. Certainly, fans had long traded tapes of Peel radio shows—though it’s surprising to learn from the introduction of David Cavanagh’s great Peel history Good Night and Good Riddance that shows from several early-seventies years were basically nonexistent. You can also find CDs containing two episodes apiece of Peel Out in the States, his 24-episode half-hour program for American college radio stations. Those are fascinating, if a bit stilted and time-bound.

Released in December 2002, FabricLive 07 is something else entirely—a kind of Peelian greatest-hits, both in terms of selection (longstanding favorites include Maloko’s highlife-guitar makeover of “In the Midnight Hour” and the DJ’s professed favorite recording, the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”) and pacing. There’s no shortage of head-spinning changeovers, though the one going from Trouble Funk’s D.C. go-go funk “Let’s Get Small” to the Capris’ doo-wop “There’s a Moon Out Tonight” to the Fall’s “Mr. Pharmacist” (his favorite group and a sixties garage-rock cover, a Peel exacta) seems to me a mini-essay within the larger framework. It’s clearly intentional, and it makes each song seem newer, somehow. Peel was a DJ, not just an announcer.