How I miss John Peel, how I loathe Dave Fanning

DublinWriter

Driving home today I tuned into Dave Fanning.

Having not heard him in some time, I was swiftly reminded what a talentless chancer he is.

He interrupts each and every song halfway through just to read out a list of requests he will not be playing.

Is he in love with his own voice, or wha?

The whole format of his drivetime slot is right out of the RTE manual circa 1978, in that he rarely, if ever, plays tracks back to back.

It's at times like that that I really miss John Peel.

I never thought he'd survive the transition to Radio 4, but his Home Truths programme turned him into more of a national treasure.

Many peoples' lives wouldn't be as enriched as they are today thanks to the eclectic mix of music he introduced people to on his Radio 1 programme.

mike65

Funny you should post, on Thursday evening I found myself listening to the into to his programme, and I thought the tape had speeded up. Its been so long since I've heard his voice that I'd forgotton how intensely annoying it is. Needless to say I flicked over to something else quick enough.

I can only belive he has managed to "purloin" his career thus far by being in right at the start of "modern pop media" in this country. He knows all the right people!

Mike.

DMC

There are a couple of things wrong here, not all of them Dave's fault per se....

One thing is that his Radio 1 show is a shortened version of his last weekday 2FM show. There, he was allowed to talk and play music in full, I don't think he can with the time constraints of the Radio 1 show. But teasing us with just playing half a song is a crime. Oh yes.

Fanning also suffering from the RTÉ disease of the need to multitask; i.e., you are not allowed to be one trick pony as a DJ. No. Dave does films too, so when Dave discusses films, it kinda shows that his eye is not on always on music, unlike Peel, who didn't really go into other items of popular culture. Home Truths was a rare breed of a show.

Also, this is something that all shows that accept txts from the general public, is that if you don't read out the ones who wouldn't necessarily read, you risk alienating an audience of who you have asked them to interact with the show.

I'm not all for comparing Fanning to Peel, I think its an unfair comparison to both gentlemen, tbh. Fanning just got tarred with that brush from day one, and Peel had no peers.

smirkingmaurice

Could be the old "coke" that he's taking,whoops, sorry the red bull he has on his person.

Marty DiBergi

DMC wrote: »

There are a couple of things wrong here, not all of them Dave's fault per se....

One thing is that his Radio 1 show is a shortened version of his last weekday 2FM show. There, he was allowed to talk and play music in full, I don't think he can with the time constraints of the Radio 1 show. But teasing us with just playing half a song is a crime. Oh yes.

Fanning also suffering from the RTÉ disease of the need to multitask; i.e., you are not allowed to be one trick pony as a DJ. No. Dave does films too, so when Dave discusses films, it kinda shows that his eye is not on always on music, unlike Peel, who didn't really go into other items of popular culture. Home Truths was a rare breed of a show.

Also, this is something that all shows that accept txts from the general public, is that if you don't read out the ones who wouldn't necessarily read, you risk alienating an audience of who you have asked them to interact with the show.

I'm not all for comparing Fanning to Peel, I think its an unfair comparison to both gentlemen, tbh. Fanning just got tarred with that brush from day one, and Peel had no peers.

In the early days Fanning did not appear to have any interest in money. I have heard him slightly bemoan the fact that he took his eye of the money ball so to speak. I remember the 12 to 2am slot on early 2 fm when U2 were regularly in the studio. However about 10 years ago he seemed to be making as big an effort as he could to accumulate the cash (pushed this way methinks). Hence all the movie review crap the he tried to corner.

I miss Peel myself. It's a little bit ironic that most of the DJs now on the BBC radio channels are now serious music heads. They have a deep knowledge of the type of music they are into and appear focussed on playing new and interesting sounds. Peel was shoved all over the time slots. He admitted that his new schedule was killing him to Andy Kershaw a few months prior to his death. I made many recordings of his shows over the years and maybe one day I will get to convert them to digital format.