Who the Hell is Lee Thacker (& why should I read his rantings about John Peel's Festive Fift

I'm vaguely aware of John Peel. His radio show was probably broadcast sometime somewhere here in the land of Oz but I never listened to it.

I just recently finished reading Lee Thacker's Magnum Opus (review to follow sometime soon) but at the moment I'm less than midway through his collected reviews of John Peel's 50 #1's and All Time Festive 50's.

It's a nice little book lavishly illustrated, sized about the same as a 45 rpm single (Remember those boys and girls?).

Published in 2010 AD under his imprint Raw Shark Publishing named as an hommage to the character Rorschach in Alan Moore's Watchmen and not as I thought a reference to the Raw Shark Texts.

Most of the reviews take up half a page but as the two word review of The Beach Boys God Only Knows shows he does have a sense of humour ...

You have to turn the book over & upside down halfway through reading it just like a 3 dimensional vinyl single from the 80's. Each half has an introduction one by The Cuban Boys and the other by David Gedge.

Lee lives in Birmingham or at least he did on March 22, 2010 when he wrote his intro. He also illustrated each review with an image of the musicians responsible for each single. Some I've never heard of before and some are completely familiar to me. As the John Peel quote says

"I just want to hear something I haven't heard before."

Here's just a few of the illustrations to be found in the book ...

As an OZ TV DJ might have put it "Do yourself a favour and go out and buy a copy of this book"