Music Arcades: Various: In Session Tonight

Being the CD of Peel Sesions that came tucked inside the back cover of Ken Garner's 1993 book of the same name, a tireless piece of research that delved back into the days before pop music sessions were properly catalogued and archived (if they weren't taped over, they were distributed across the shelves of various vaults in the Home Counties). And it covers not just sessions for John Peel, but those for Kid Jensen, Simon Mayo, Andy Kershaw (all the Robyn Hitchcock sessions up to '93 are listed). Randomly my eye alighted on a session by Hunter Muskett, first broadcast on Folk on 2 in December 1971 (that's what it appears to say, though, confusingly, the recording date is given as 1973). Hunter Muskett — there's the kind of name they like to savour on the Word Magazine podcast, and sure enough they're mentioned here in connection with a recent re-issue. Ah, everything gets re-issued in the end.

In the early part of this decade I remember reading on the web about the difficulty Garner was having getting anyone to commission an update to his sessionography. Then Peel dies, and suddenly the publishers are only too keen, The Peel Sessions arriving three years later.

It's weird, and slightly sick if you ask me (you didn't), that a large chunk of the population seems to organise their entertainment like a continuous wake for the recently deceased. So this summer they're buying Michael Jackson albums (and Les Paul ones too?). Patrick Swayze dies and, immediately, people I don't think of as weirdos are pondering aloud on Facebook, "wonder which film of his I'll download to watch this evening". I re-evaluate: they are weirdos.

Anyway, along with FabricLive.07, this CD, compiled when Peel had more than a decade left in him, is a much more fitting tribute than the posthumous ones. It also contains evidence that The Only Ones had at least one other song in their repertoire, in addition to Another Girl, Another Planet. This will be news to anyone who runs BBC 6Music.