John Peel collected over 25,000 LPs and 40,000 singles in his four-decade career as BBC Radio 1’s new music guru — that’s over 65,000 slabs of vinyl. And don’t even get us started on how many CDs were in his collection, because honestly, there are probably too many to count. Now, however, the late (and last) DJ’s entire stash is going to be archived online for all of us to peruse and imagine what über-tastemaking in the 1960s and ’70s must have been like for the man who did it, arguably, best.
Says the BBC (via Rolling Stone), the collection will be included in the British Arts Council’s new project, the Space, thanks to cooperation with the John Peel Centre for Creative Arts, a Suffolk-based community project and art space patroned by Peel’s widow Sheila. The collection will serve as a sort of virtual museum of the DJ’s legacy, with approximately 100 albums per week being uploaded to the online collection.
The Space, which consists of 53 projects in total and is backed by a hefty £3.5 million (that’s $5.5 million USD), launches this May, according to its website, and runs through October. Of that dough, the Peel Centre has applied for £85,000 (about $134,700, or 2.4% of the lot).
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In true SPIN fashion, we encourage you to listen to the below recording of Nirvana performing “Drain You” during their John Peel Session in September 1991:
