The lockdown days are not over yet, and streaming music turns out to be one of the best soothing diversions. As Open Culture reports, to keep that river flowing, Dave Stickson, a long-time fan of legendary British DJ John Peel, has made available online an archive of 1,000 Peel Sessions. These can be streamed on YouTube now.
These sessions, legendary on their own, included practically everybody who has made a big name in music, from David Bowie and Elvis Costello to Bob Marley, or has gained a cult following, like Japanese girl band Shonen Knife or The Fall.
Still, this is just a fraction of all the Peel sessions, as there are over 4,000 of them. But, there is enough music to last aficionados for months.
If that is not enough, the fans can always resort to the Grateful Dead live recordings. Far Out Magazine reports that the Internet Archive has compiled no less than 14,566 Grateful Dead bootlegs and has placed them into one convenient collection. New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten commented on The Dead’s live recorded legacy: “If you took an interest, you’d copy a few tapes, listen to those over and over, until they began to make sense, and then copy some more. Before long, you might have a scattershot collection, with a couple of tapes from each year.”
If the Peel Session collection will last you for months, The Grateful Dead one could do that for years. Hopefully, the lockdown will not last that long…
