He had an immensely eclectic taste in music and always sort diversity in programmes, always pushed boundaries and promoted artists working in various genres, including pop, reggae, punk, hip-hop, dance music, heavy metal, death metal, hardcore punk, breakcore, grindcore and every other kind of ‘core’.
The thing that most people probably looked forward to hearing on his shows was his legendary 'Peel sessions', which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist live in the BBC's studios, and often provided the first major national coverage to bands and would often propel them to fame. Many of these sessions have been released before, via Strange Fruit vinyl releases, but now EMI along with the BBC have got together to release ‘Movement – BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions 1977–1979’ a 2CD compilation of some very rare and previously unreleased tracks from these sessions which will includes artists like The Jam, The Slits, XTC, Steel Pulse, Aswad, The Specials and many more.
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John Peel OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004)
