Spanning four decades, John Peel's passing will be mourned by successive generations of new music lovers and radio listeners. Preceeding the Summer of Love in 1967, John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (Peel) brought to our attention such luminaries as Zappa & the Mothers, Capt. Beefheart and Jimi Hendrix, to name but a few.

In the punk revolution of the seventies he was playing the Damned, the Undertones, the Clash, the Pistols and the Fall when no-one else would give them houseroom. And then there was Brighton...The Piranhas, The Chefs, the Dodgems and Nicky & the Dots all went on to record at his Peel Sessions at the BBC. Click to read his review of Vaultage 78 from our Oct 2001 Archive, which was published in Sounds, Feb 1979. All the best, John, you will be sorely missed.

Our thanks to T.M Newbery for the headline, and Dave, who sent us enough to build a page on Smeggy & the Cheesybits, from where you can access his hilarious House of Cheese website.