– Lene Lovich – in session for John Peel – December 12, 1979 – BBC Radio 1 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

This one should test a few memory banks tonight. The inimitable Lene Lovich, in session for the equally inimitable John Peel from December 1979.

Sadly, the sound isn’t as good as usual – since it does come from an aircheck (recorded off the air from not a hi-fi source), but Lovich is such a cornerstone in the 70s milieu that it almost seems apropos to present it in rough shape.

The late 70s were so off-the-wall that, hearing Lene Lovich now, you more or less wonder how she managed to be as popular as she was. But there was no one like her around at the time – her voice was one-of-a-kind and her stage persona was so other-wordly you couldn’t help but be completely knocked out by her. And she had a string of worldwide hits to her credit too. So she was no one-hit wonder, by any stretch.

She helped make it all worthwhile. And this ten minute snapshot should give you some idea what all the excitement and craziness was all about.

Pretend it’s 1979 and you’re hearing this in your car . . . .as a lot of us did. You’ll get the picture.

And now a word . . .

You know we’ve been weathering storms, hysteria, lock-outs, shutdowns and malfunctions since 2012 and in all that time we’ve never stopped making Past Daily a place where you come and discover things – old things and new things you may have missed. Past Daily is a huge endeavor and it normally would take a bunch of people handling different chores to pull off the day-to-day that we do. But it’s just me and my archive – this batch of sounds that I refer to every day is what I do because I don’t want to be part of the problem. Knowing things, especially History makes you an informed person – someone who can look at the world objectively and make up your own mind. We don’t do click-bait, come-ons, phishing expeditions or thirst traps – what you see is what you get – and hopefully what you get is a different perspective on things that can only help and not hurt you.

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