I am happy to announce that this PeakeCast website is up and running again! It offers up ten unique radio shows that Thomas produced while at WREK, and as you might expect the music is as varied as WREK’s programming itself. Saccharine Trust, Television, Mecca Normal, Loren Mazzacane, Neon Christ, Rock*A*Teens … But most important is that you get to hear Thomas’s happy voice, and hear his love for the music.
Dave and I set this site up in September 2009, and then over the next few years mined the tape archive that Thomas had left behind to produce these new digital versions. The website went down several years ago, and today I have completed restoring it.
The site is still a bit rough around the edges, and I’ll improve it with time, but at least it’s back up.
Steve Rhee with Thomas; photo by Thom Osburn via Facebook
This episode brings us a WREK Sunday Special that Thomas did in September 1996, featuring the duo Mecca Normal. One of Thomas’ most beloved bands ever, he had actually been graduated out of Georgia Tech and done with WREK for a couple years when this duo (Jean Smith on vocals and David Lester on guitar) made a rare tour appearance in Atlanta, compelling Thomas to come back to the studio just to do this show.
In fact, Thomas played host to the band on their Atlanta visit, and interviewed them for an article in Stomp and Stammer. Jean Smith has her tour diaries and notes online, and has several excerpts from the article that Thomas wrote:
Mecca Normal’s aesthetic body politic shares a rare ability, a la Czech novelist-in-self-imposed-exile Milan Kundera — to make the political personal. … Lester’s guitars are as inventive as ever. Gracefully attacking and lulling, he has captured Smith’s emotional range in strings.
We’re now one full year into this podcast, and loving it immensely.
By the way, if you haven’t already heard about the Beautify the Beltline project being conducted on the morning of Saturday October 9th, in memory of Thomas, please see the previous episode.
In this episode of the Thomas Peake Memorial Podcast, we offer up a “regular shift” — Thomas doing a 90-minute Atmospherics block on June 5th, 1992. Atmospherics is the name of a programming block on WREK that airs right after midnight every weeknight, offering up ambient and electronic sounds — in the parlance of Thomas, “mutant space blues, resonating stones, exotic foreign acoustic music”. It started as a weekly specialty show in the late 80s (hosted by Dan Leithauser) and then expanded to the nightly block. You can hear the care and enthusiasm that Thomas put into all of his on-air time, and also you can hear him stepping aside to let the trainees (“dummy ops”) run the board for bit.
This tape comes to us courtesy of Dena Peake; Thomas had recorded this show for some reason. It does have some of his favorites on it, including Neil B. Rolnick, to whom Thomas would dedicate an entire Sunday Special a year later.
As mentioned in the intro to this episode, there is a Beautify the Beltline project being conducted on October 9, 2010, in memory of Thomas. Coordinated by Dena, it will run from 9am to noon, and participants will meet up at The Depot at 904 Memorial Drive.
Playlist:
“Loopy” by Neil B. Rolnick from album “Solos”
“Among Icebergs” by Jay Greinke
“Rain” by The Judgment of Paris
“Evening Song” by The Guo Brothers and Shung Tian
— voice break
“Fortune” by Felt from album “Crumbling Antiseptic Beauty”
“Bydlo (Mussogorsky)” by Tomita
“Canopy” by Kit Watkins
— voice break (with dummy op, apparently)
“Voyager” by Jay Scott Perry (?)
“The Wind and All This Noise” by Lonely Universe
“Agua e Vinho” by Egberto Gismonti
— voice break (dummy op, still learning)
“Playing The Bridge For Heaven” by C. W. Vrtacek
“Rosindo El Post” (?) by Arawi, The Contemporary Orchestra of Native Instruments
“As the Bell Rings the Maypole Spins” by Dead Can Dance from album “Aion”
“Roots III” by Wagner Tiso
“Miss Noble” by Nicholas Blanton from album “Ways Upon Bells”
— voice break, with a different dummy op
“The Hole To Heaven” by Randy Greif from compilation Dry Lungs II
“Ballerinas of Manaus” by Monochrome Bleu from compilation Dry Lungs II
“More Dust” (Herbert Brun) by Cincinnati Percussion Group from a box set on Opus One Records
photo by Michael Russell / Lovette Russell via Facebook
Almost exactly 20 years ago, on July 22nd, 1990, Thomas did a WREK “Sunday Special” on Guitar Roberts, aka Loren Mazzacane Connors (see Wikipedia entry and his website). Thomas loved his sparse, atmospheric, bluesy meanderings, and listening to this makes for a serene and contemplative experience.
In a nice coincidence, old friends Andrew Burnes and Neel Murgai played with Connors just last month. Andrew and Neel also hosted specialty shows on WREK, and in fact one of our future PeakeCast episodes will be of Thomas substituting for Andrew on his Strung Out guitar show …
Thomas contributes a minimum of chatter to this one. Playlist is transcribed below. Enjoy!
“TB Blues” (Jimmie Rodgers) from album Blues Master 2
“Kath’s Blues” from the Pushin’ up Daisies 7″ EP (1982)
Prelude #1 from album In Pittsburgh (1996)
“Excerpt from Part 2” from album Solo Acoustic Guitar, Volume 6 (1980)
Wee Wee Hours (Chuck Berry)
“Little Tree” (feat. Kath Bloom) from the Pushin’ Up Daisies 7″ EP (1982)
“Blues #5, #6 and #7” from Blues: The Dark Paintings Of Mark Rothko (1990)
Please help us share Thomas’ bright-eyed wonder at the world of music by sending us your recordings of his shows, his mixtapes, whatever you’ve got!
In the menu bar above, you’ll see three important links:
the Thomas shows: an inventory of the shows that we know Thomas did; look at the list and maybe it’ll jog your memory about a recording you’ve got!
how to submit: how to get your recordings to us, so we can digitize and send back out to the world via this podcast
how to listen: how to listen to this podcast; this is especially important info if you’re new to this whole podcast thing and just want simple instructions on how to hear a show. Subscribe to us, via email or RSS, so that you’ll know when we have new shows ready to hear. Just click on “how to listen” above for instructions.
Take a look, start digging, and send us your stuff!
And stay tuned for the first episode coming tomorrow!
