On Saturday I had my first experience of being a best man at a wedding. It was my Dad’s wedding which made it a little weird. Not blowing my trumpet but I have played to literally millions of adoring fans around the world as the rock star I am but I’ve never known nerves like waiting to give a best man’s speech. Fortunately I was drunk enough to pull it off.

We all stayed in the hotel where the wedding was. I flaked out early being the total lightweight I am but my Dad raged hard till 3 or so.

Next morning I came down to meet him and Anne for breakfast and noted early on that he was looking sheepish and she was talking for him. Weird. I immediately sized it up as being a case of him getting spannered and doing something stupid.

However, I didn’t bank on it being this good.

Anne informed us that he got in bed, felt a bit “rum” and then went to be sick in the toilet. Fair play, I thought, no shame in that.

Turns out though that in the morning Dad woke up feeling a little odd in the mouth and then realised that not only had he flushed several litres of prime chunder away when he pulled the chain, he’d also flushed away his false teeth.

I read this lovely tribute to John Peel on Tangents today at work and it touched me greatly. I expect it’s a story that many of us will recognise from similar experiences but to me it really summed up what was so great about Peel and his shows. Go read and enjoy.

I now feel even more guilty for not having listened to John Peel’s show in at least a couple of years since the radio on my stereo stopped working properly. I thought that he’d be there forever so missing a few (hundred) shows wouldn’t really matter so much. As with everyone I spent my teenage years listening to Peel on a crappy taperecorder; anxiously fiddling with newfangled FM to try and get something listenable, taping all kinds of incredible stuff and sending off for these odd records from friendly people all over the place. He’s certainly been a huge influence on everything I’ve done and I was thrilled when he read out my name on air and said I had a lovely name. As with the recent death of Paul Foot, another personal hero of mine, another man who did everything to help the people who never get heard, we’ve lost someone truly irreplaceable and far, far too early.

Thanks to everyone who’s posted so far. Chris’s post has almost made me cry!

Anybody who’s anything to do with independent (in all senses of the word) music now – more than ever – owes it to themselves, and to all of us others who are involved, to keep on making the effort. A mainstay, whom it was all too easy to take for granted, is now gone.

Condolences to the Peel family. John will be sorely missed.

I’m really upset, and there’s no way I’m going to escape this bad mood now. All I want to do is listen to sick noise music and sulk.

I had the privilege to meet John Peel a couple of times, and he was just the nicest, most garrulous and enthusiastic guy – his radio personality seemed to be exactly who he was, whether he was with his family, hanging around with musicians of any level of infamy, or talking to some anonymous fuck-off who was doing their level best not to be overawed in his company. He even profusely thanked me for giving him a record by a band called The Cunts once.

And you just somehow counted on his radio show being there throughout all the shit that radio1 goes through. I shudder to think how things will be without him. Rest in peace John.

I just wrote a huge amount about Peel and Blogger crashed. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something.

I’ll try again.

You would never have caught Peel running into a bands dressing room after a gig and yelling

“I AM REBORN! THAT WAS LIKE TAKING YOUR FIRST E!”

I witnessed it.

Peels importance is not as a divining rod of talent, it’s as a symbol against the modern music industry. A pays B to make record. A pays C (who A and B do not know personally) to talk about how good Bs record is to D, E and F. D, E and F do not know C personally either but they trust their word.

Therefore if you run out of money somewhere between B and C you won’t get any radio play or press. The idea that someone who has been paid to talk about a record is more knowledgable that someone who just wants to talk about it is fucking absurd.

Peel being on Radio One was the finger to that idea. You could release your own record and send him it and he could well play it. Hell, he could ring you up while you’re at work and tell you how much he liked it. He also had an acute understanding of how much money a session fee actually represented to a band who worked full time and had little time or energy to spend making music. It represents tour money, money for another record release, money to pay your rent, studio money, equipment repair. I am sure I would have given up playing music ages ago were it not for the small but important cash (and confidence) injections afforded by Peel in the last few years.

I hope to God the BBC don’t see this as the opportunity to get rid of a program they have never understood. There’s a great team behind the Peel show right now who could take it over easily and it would be right, do not re-design, do not look for a celebrity replacement. But you know what’ll happen.

Here’s a picture from my 25th birthday with lots of people who contribute to Diskant in one way or another.

Nice one John.

Russ Meyer has passed away. I know/realise he hasn’t made any films for about thirty years but his movie Mud Honey did give birth to the band of the same name, so there is one tenuous link to our little music land. And generally on a personal note, back around 1995/1996 I had the greatest time discovering his movie stuck on the early hours of Sky Movies Gold where Sky rightfully almost seemed to be embarrassed to be showing them (a move later repeated by Channel Five years later).

Russ Meyer films are utterly tacky, tasteless and exploitation but at the same time pretty funny (in a giggle way) and the sort of films you felt/feel at the same both dirty and hip time watching. My personal favourite is Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens, complete with regular appearance of Charles Napier who later turned up as one of the pursuers in the A-Team and cameo by AWOL Nazi Martin Borman. The film is question features a nutty town in smallville America where everyone is at it with eachother to disastrous consequences all narrated excellently by an Uncle Jesse (Dukes Of Hazard) style character delivering a basic “this is the state of the nation” address on small town America, the theme of which, albeit done completely differently, seems to be the main subject of so many of the fantastic US independent films.

The most famous two Russ Meyer movies are probably Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! which is basically everything the band The Cramps ever stood for on screen and Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, pretty much the story of Courtney Love and Hole done twenty years early.

Anyways, whatever, I’ve just always enjoyed watching (the good) Russ Meyer movies is all.

Their singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain was murdered in 1994.

I would like to apologise to Jonny Metgod and his family as my Matthew Newnham pointed out he’s

“He’s more Dutch than a room full of tall men with long faces shouting “shhhhee looovessss iiittt”

He’s Dutch. But he has got a foot like a traction engine.

Yesterday was January 5th and in Washington DC and in New York it was officially “Charles Mingus Day” to mark the anniversary of his death (24 years ago).

Mingus represented something that no longer exists. The world is downsized. People are unemployed because there are more people than jobs. Work decreases because the people in charge cut corners and find new ways to make more money from less people.

The music industry represents this perfectly. It’s why the role of the DJ and the covers band in the modern world is so fucking disgusting. Why hire 50 acts to play in a night when you can hire 1 to play the music of 50 people?

If you don’t know him, Charles Mingus was a composer. He’s best known as a jazz bassist but somehow that doesn’t do justice to the enormous breadth of knowledge and broad ranging sweep of musical styles he employed. Bass might have been his instrument but thats only because he didn’t have enough arms and legs to play the whole big band himself. He watched as jazz became a marginalised music form and eventually he watched as “fusion” took over jazz completely and turned it into what it is today – either a slick, calculated Kenny G sax nightmare or something that is retro to the extreme. It’s been said hip hop is the only modern form of jazz and it’s probably right. And it’s only going to be a matter of time before some fucking executive works out what’s going on and that gets downsized too. In fact maybe it’s already happened.

Mingus fought the downsizing with huge big band efforts and orchestral pieces. He struggled financially until the very end of his life (when ironically he found it easy to get gigs but physically harder to play them) but refused to yield to the times. He was a part of the free jazz movement but scoffed at it’s leading practisioners (i.e. Ornette Coleman) for their lack of formal ability. He believed in hard graft as a musician and he believed in doing it big. Whether that means a huge band line up or eating 6 steaks at a sitting.

So, there you go. Charles Mingus was a big, fat genius. Go and read more about him at MINGUSMINGUSMINGUS.COM a site run by his widow and 4th wife, Sue.