04 February 1968

== Show ==
;Name
*Top Gear
;Station
*BBC Radio One
;YYYY-MM-DD
*1968-02-04
; Comments
*Complete w/intro/outro and introducing “The communal sweater”.
*Start of show: "Top Gear, home of the communal sweater. This afternoon we have for you Tyrannosaurus Rex, Tomorrow featuring Keith West, the Moody Blues, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, which can’t be bad. Also, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, records by the Pretty Things, John Mayall, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and Roy Harper, among others. Getting underway with Jimmy Cliff and ‘That’s The Way Life Goes’."
*Peel's first solo-presented Top Gear; as well as featuring a Tyrannosaurus Rex session, Marc Bolan was with John in the studio. He chats with Peel about each of his songs before they are played.
*JP fails dismally to eliminate "nice" from his vocabulary. Also ponders whether another name would be better than "John Peel".
*He recommends two BBC TV programmes to his listeners; the comedy series The World of Beachcomber, with Spike Milligan, and BBC2's adventurous and wide-ranging arts series Release, which went out on Saturday evenings.
*The Tyrannosaurus Rex session tracks along with John and Marc's chat are available in noticeable higher sound quality on File 3 below.
*Another tape (not currently available) starts with the last ten minutes or so of the previous programme, the Kenny Everett show.
== Sessions ==
*Tomorrow #2 First broadcast. Recorded 1968-01-31.
*Captain Beefheart #1 First broadcast. Recorded 1968-01-31.
**No known commercial release.
*Moody Blues #2 First broadcast. Recorded 1968-01-29.
**No known commercial release.
*Tyrannosaurus Rex #1 Repeat. First broadcast 05 November 1967.
**'Highway Star' and 'Dwarfish Trumpet Blues not broadcast. First play for 'Pictures Of Purple People'.
**Available on Bolan At The Beeb.
*Jimi Hendrix Experience #2 Repeat. First broadcast 24 December 1967.
**Available on BBC Sessions.
== Tracklisting ==
*Jimmy Cliff: That's The Way Life Goes (single) Island WIP 6024
:(JP: "Change of style there for Jimmy Cliff… And I’ve been warned not to say ‘nice’ about anything this week, because apparently I’ve been doing it too much. So I’ll try not to say that records and things are nice. I’ll make a very brave effort. The record company that Jimmy Cliff records for, actually they are developing a sound of their own, also do Traffic and Spooky Tooth, and they all sound quite similar – an ‘area of land surrounded by a body of water’ sound, as we might say.")
*Tomorrow: Blow Up (session)
:(JP: "Originally written for the rather good film (Blow Up) of the same name. You’ll be able to hear tracks from the new Bee Gees LP … on Scene & Heard, which follows this, and Pick Of The Pops, which follows that.")
*Bee Gees: Birdie Told Me (LP - Horizontal) Polydor 582 020
*Tyrannosaurus Rex: Scenescof (session)
*Moody Blues: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?) (session)
:(JP: "Thank you, nice record-buying public, for hearing the Moody Blues again. That’s very good indeed … And it’s nice to have them with us.")
*Warm Sounds: Nite is A Comin' (single) Deram DM 174
:(JP: "This next record may strike some of you as being un-Peelean actually. It’s by someone called Henson Cargill, who is a deputy sheriff in Oklahoma City, which can’t be bad, and it’s #26 on the American chart, which shows there is some wisdom left over there. And if you listen very carefully to the words it’s nice. It’s a sort of Country & Western thing basically, but listen.")
*Henson Cargill: Skip A Rope (single) Monument MON 1015
:(JP: "Recorded of course in a country where there are children, and in some countries there’s a great possibility there will be no children for the next generation. Anyway, for my first solo flight, I don’t think there’s any groups that we could have on here that would have made me happier than our next guests…")
*Captain Beefheart: Sure Nuff 'N' Yes I Do (session) @
:(snow warning for Derbyshire and Cheshire)
*H.P. Lovecraft: The White Ship (single) Philips BF 1639
:(JP: "Those are nice sounds too – I’ve said it again. I’ve got to stop saying ‘nice’, it’s very bad, because I get more letters about it.")
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: Day Tripper (session)
:(2.30 news)
:(JP: “Time for the #4 record in the Top 100 in the United States of America.”)
*Classics IV: Spooky (single) Liberty LBF 15051
*Pretty Things: Talkin' About The Good Times (single) UK Columbia DB 8353
*Tyrannosaurus Rex: Child Star (session)
:(JP: "That’s Child Star from Tyrannosaurus Rex, who, along with Adrian Henry and Andy Roberts (of Liverpool Scene) and several other people I have spoken to or who have written to me and asked me to join in my communal sweater. And all we need now is someone to knit one, you see. We need someone to knit a sweater with room for about 20 people in it and we are going to go and wander about in Hyde Park and things and go shopping in Oxford Street and cause considerable trouble and whatever to people.")
*Tomorrow: Strawberry Fields Forever (session)
:(JP: "In case you think our communal sweater is just an idealistic scheme, what we are going to do when we have got about 2000 people in it is go down and surround politicians and they’ll be knitted into the sweater by teams of outriders armed with enormous needles and we are going to talk to them and tickle them and feed them ice buns until they become considerably less horrid than they are at the moment. A very practical idea I think, all things being considered. This is the nicest record the Lovin’ Spoonful have had for some time.”)
*Lovin' Spoonful: Money (single) Kama Sutra KAS 211
:(JP: "All about the thing that causes a great deal of most of the trouble we have at the moment actually anywhere in the world. Anyway, it’s nice to have Uncle John Mayall on the programme next week, and this is his latest single.”)
*John Mayall's Bluesbreakers: Jenny (single) Decca F 12732
:(JP: "It would be nice if that sold, because then we could see them on Top Of The Pops, you see. Which is a clever way of saying I’d like to thank Jimmy Savile, because I was on Top Of The Pops earlier in the week. I’ve never been so terrified in all my life actually as I was, but he was very kind and helped me and sort of guided me through it, so thank you very much, Jimmy, for that.")
*Captain Beefheart: Yellow Brick Road (session)
:(JP: "Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, who are incredibly jazzed about their recent visit to England, although the trendies didn’t receive them quite as warmly as I would have liked. Anyway, they want to come back again and I certainly hope they will. It’s good to see this in the charts …")
*Moody Blues: Nights In White Satin (session)
:(JP: "Well, it’s probably a good thing that not all music is as good as that, otherwise my ecstasy count would go straight through the ceiling. That is incredible.”)
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: Spanish Castle Magic (session)
(file break)
*Tyrannosaurus Rex: Pictures of Purple People (session)
:(JP: "And I think after the programme ends after 4 o’clock, you and I, Marc, will have to go for the first of our Peelean rambles across Hyde Park and things, because it’s a nice day.")
*Albert King: Cold Feet (single) Stax 601029 (Distributed by Polydor)
:(JP: "And now a track from what I consider is going to be one of the LPs of the year, perhaps the best American LP of the year.”)
*Love: A House Is Not A Motel (LP – Forever Changes) Elektra EKL 4013
:(JP: "And if you don’t own that, 1968 is not going to be such a good year for you as it might be…. Unfortunately Tjay Cantrelli, who was with Love, left the group, which is a pity because it was a nice name, Tjay, spelt T-J-A-Y. I sometimes wish I was Tjay Peel, but there you are, can’t have everything.”)
*Tomorrow: Now Your Time Has Come (session)
:(JP: "I would like to digress briefly here, not for the first time this afternoon, but there is a record advertised in some of the music papers which is opposed to the disease known as hare coursing and it says in it that ‘this is our answer to John Peel.’ And of course that means the old hymn to brutality ‘John Peel’, and not John Peel me. So don’t sort of get confused about that, because there is nobody in the country probably who is more opposed to hare coursing, which I think is very sick and sad and brutal and horrible.”)
*Moody Blues: Dawn Is A Feeling (session)
:(JP: "And actually John Peel is rather an unfortunate name – I was thinking about it during that record – and it would be much nicer, you know, if you didn’t have to have names like John Peel and Marc Bolan and things like that – although Marc Bolan is all right, said he carefully. It would be nicer if you could be called Arabell Neaelstone or something like the names they have in Lord Of The Rings, because they have such good names.")
*Fleetwood Mac: My Heart Beat Like A Hammer (LP – Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac) Blue Horizon 7-63200
*Roy Harper: Freak Street (LP – Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith) CBS BPG 63184
*Captain Beefheart: Abba Zabba (session)
*Jimi Hendrix: Wait Until Tomorrow (session)
*Buffalo Springfield: Expecting To Fly (LP – Buffalo Springfield Again) Atlantic 587 091
:(JP: "Tyrannosaurus Rex and I work together as much as we can and we like to go to universities and colleges and things where people are prepared to listen, rather than do sort of dance things, because I did a dance in Bletchley last night, which although there were some good people there was basically an exercise in non-communication. Because if ever there is a chance to meet people it is at dances and nobody ever does – they just stand around and talk to people they already know, which is very sad indeed.")
*Tyrannosaurus Rex: Hot Rod Momma (session)
*Tomorrow: Incredible Journey of Timothy Chase (session)
:(JP: "And I’d like to say thank you to Jonathan King, famed television personality, from whom I’ve just nicked an LP by Steppenwolf, who are a Los Angeles group we may hear on the programme perhaps next week if the LP is as nice as the sleeve. And also he came in with Kenny Everett, whose programme precedes ours…”)
*Anders 'n' Poncia: Virgin To The Night (single – So It Goes) Kama Sutra KAS 212
*Moody Blues: What Am I Doing Here (session)
:(JP: "And if you read the Sunday papers, you’ll see that Billy Fury, who is one of the kindest people I know of, has a little animal sanctuary in his home, has been forced to move by those sick, said people who find it necessary to prove their virility by going out of a weekend and killing everything that moves. And I’m sorry to see that, Billy, you know, and if there’s any help in any way that I could give you or anything I could do, I’d be glad to do it, because it’s ridiculous. I get very angry when I read about things like that.")
*Captain Beefheart: Electricity (session)
*Phil Ochs: Cross My Heart (LP – Pleasures Of The Harbor) A&M LP-133 (US release)
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: Getting My Heart Back Together Again (aka Hear My Train A-Coming) (session)
*Track marked @ also on File 5
== File ==
;Name
*1) TG4Feb68Pt1
*2) 1968-4-2 TG Pt2
*3) MarcBolan1967-1969EarlyBroadcasts
*4) John Peel - 4th February 1968
*5) 1968-02-04 Capt Beefheart Top Gear 4.2.68 Sure Nuff.mp3
;Length
*1) 1.03.11
*2) 1.01.42
*3) 1:07:02 (0:26:50-0:38:35)
*4) Split into 2 files, same as 1) & 2)
*5) 3:00
;Other
*1) Newly shared in Oct. 2012. Many thanks to Rob C (originator) and User:Johns corner!
*2) (User:Johns corner): Has some “wooliness” but reasonable quality. Tape flips clean edited. Speed 1-3% slow. Trial upload Mp3 format > 192Kbps 44 Khz
*3) Many thanks to Sugarmegs
*4) Perfumed Garden blog
*5) Many thanks to Colin Harper
;Available
*1) Mediafire 64.82Mb
*2) Mediafire 63.53Mb
*3) Archive.org
*4) Download (Part 1) / Download (Part 2)
*5) Mooo
Category:1968
Category:Peel shows
Category:Top Gear
Category:Sugarmegs